freedom is using blender as a hobby :yes:
As far as I know, computers were invented to calculate ballistics trajectories quickly and accurately, and robots were machines created to do repetitive tasks, replacing workers on the assembly lines.
Your “right” to do something is wholly irrelevant if you lack the means.
In that sense, the “freedoms” that many of us are told we have, but that so few of us can actually enjoy, are nothing more than a well crafted illusion.
An illusion that the weak-minded among us are all too quick to accept, along with anything else that’s repeated more than once by some television bobble-head.
Good point. I guess then we can never truely be free until we’re free from money. I have the right to travel freely across Europe, but lack the cash, the means, to do so.
Didn’t think of that. I’ve done a number of repetitive jobs that a bot could do, pity their too busy making things we don’t need, cough-ipad-cough and working out the best way to blow things up. 
freedom is the ability to exercise choice… what you choose to do or not…
freedoms are not without consequence however…
you can choose to take drugs or to not take drugs , to murder to steal or to abide by local laws…to br pro or anti establishment… to stand up for what you believe or to go with the flow and take the popular opinion…
freedom is being able to choose
Though to have an opinion that your freedom to choose goes that far would be considered a dangerous option to exercise, which can end up with jail-time or even the death penalty.
Putting limits on such extreme lengths of perceived freedom may be one reason why you’re not seeing hardcore Linux evangelists storming Microsoft’s headquarters to eradicate Windows and DirectX from the PC arena (as far as I read about the Linux fanbase I wouldn’t be surprised if a select few have such extreme views towards commercial software) , or the reason why many of us may even be alive right now.
You also have the right to work on a ship to get across the ocean instead of pay to do it, and you also have the right to eat shrubs and berries while you travel across beautiful green Europe.
Whenever you decide you need something, you bind yourself to another person’s rules. That’s why I think freedom comes from the inside, not outside. By saying that another human gives you your freedoms, you are not truly free because you are subjecting yourself to their definition of “freedom”.
Ridding our planet from the perceived shackles of money may be almost impossible to be honest.
Sure as a result we can all see a much higher level of technology to enrich and enhance our lives (think of a worldwide Maglev rail network for example) as a result of financial restraints being non-existent for one thing, that and no bankruptcies, no debt, no inflation ect… But the problem is that the system we call money and the prospect everyone should get something in return is so engrained in our society that it’s almost impossible to completely switch to a pure goodwill-based global society.
Sure at times I wish we can remove the concept of money from this world completely, but where do you even start? (and no, I wouldn’t say the concept of Open Source Software and Public Domain has made massive headway on being a start quite yet)
That’s not a right; It’s a job for which you’ll have to apply, and for which your application could either be accepted or rejected.
Whenever you decide you need something, you bind yourself to another person’s rules.
The fact that humans require food, water, and shelter were not decisions that were made by humans - those are simply necessities for survival, at the most basic levels.
To just “walk around eating shrubs & berries” is a pleasant notion (for some of us), but ultimately your ability to do so depends on whether or not you are allowed to do so, by the entity that holds the rights to the land on which that food grows (corporations, governments, private interests, etc).
At the most basic levels? But what gives us the desire to survive? It comes from within. To live is not something (usually perhaps) bound on us from the outside. We want to live, and thus place ourselves under the possessors of the land, food, shelter. Or else get our own (which is of course the same thing: we give something so that the original owners will transfer ownership to us).
But how hard is it to eat a few berries unmonitored?
Yes, we have the freedom to kill ourselves.
Is that the core of your argument?
In either case, my original point stands completely unchallenged.
But how hard is it to eat a few berries unmonitored?
It depends on various factors, not least of which is the location of the “oh so easy to find” berry patch.
Considering the current social trends, in which privacy is becoming an increasingly untenable concept, due to advances in surveillance technology, and the overall idiocy of the populace that thinks nothing of putting their entire life on Facebook -> I imagine that a wide variety of “covert actions”, including berry picking, will become quite difficult in the not-so-distant future.
However, the relevance of that point is questionable, especially when one considers the sheer desperation of only two available options: indentured slavery, or death.
Freedom: Having no one telling you what to do and being able to choose what you want to follow -given you tell no one what to do and everyone minding their own fn business.
@Social, you’re right, of course. My arguments are frail… and I don’t really believe in them myself. But I didn’t quite understand your last statement. Are you saying that our only two options are slavery or death? Slavery to the system etc…
btw I’m not Communist 
Perhaps freedom isn’t something that can be described in absolute terms, but in varying degrees depending on a balance between the choice, consequence and freedoms of others involved?
So my freedom to eat berries in some European field has to be balanced against the owner’s freedom to grow berries without them being stolen. This balance also has to include the owner’s freedom to protect his berries with surveillance and my freedom to remain private. The balance resluts in me having to be warned where there’s CCTV in operation and knowing I’m being watched leaves me free to eat the berries where the camera’s not watching. So I can eat the berries, I’m just not completely free to do so.
I’m probably wrong about this this, but, I don’t feel it’s possible to exercise a freedom without impinging on the freedom of another. The Blender Artists site gives me the freedom to post this nonsense at the expense of treading on my employeers freedom of stopping me from using their internet for personal uses. Maybe your level of freedom depends partly on the extent that you feel you can disregard others’ freedoms?
You’ve got a point there, battery 
I like to think that in a perfect world, there would be no infringement and everyone would do right: perfect freedom comes with a mistake-free race.
Freedom to me, is to become whole in a shattered society ever since someone had a bright idea to have a free lunch from the tree of life. If you look at the world as a shattered crystal ball then you see where are the chaos, confusion and fear comes from. Once those cracks are healed then the world would be the way that God had intended.
People think that they are different from everyone else while in reality they are no different at all, I don’t care how radical you are in your thinking, the truth is you are no different then the other dirt bags that exist in the world today. You try to separate right from wrong and truth from lies while in reality you can’t separate the two. All roads will lead you back to the beginning cause you can’t be whole unless you can complete the circle.
Definition of freedom is various.
Okay, I’ve got a question. Which one of the below is actually free?
A) A full goldfish in an aquarium.
B) An hungry whale in an ocean.
Al_Capone, of course there’s sin, evil etc. That’s why this conversation is purely theoretical . (…and it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil btw 
) .
demohero you truly are the master of riddles lol
I’d say it depends on what the animal wants the most. Does the animal have a desire for physical freedom, or is it okay with dependency and confinement so long as its belly is full? We can’t really define it: only the creature itself can (unfortunately I don’t think goldfish can think abstractly like that… hm…) .
@Al_Capone: I can see how the more complete you are as a human being and society is as a whole can lead to greater freedom. But even in a fractured society an incomplete individual still has the capacity of free will, and thus will have some degree of freedom to exercise their free will.
An interesting proposition, but I’m inclined to agree with hackedmind, it would depend on the animals concept of freedom, what it values and it’s understanding of the choices available - which in this case we can only speculate. Perhaps one could argue that freedom is also dependent on the organisms concept of consciousness and free will? So the neither fish in demohero’s question could be free because their lives (what they ‘want’) are governed by basic instinct not free will and they’re not conscious of themselves so are not aware of choice nor able to exercise choice. Compared to humans who can choose to ignore their basic instincts - my body is telling me I need to eat and sleep soon, but I can ignore this for sometime before I need to start searching for food and a bed. Unless fish have more higher thought processes than I’ve given them credit for?
@battery good observations…
This link might change your mind about the fish’s thought process
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/programmers-view-of-universe-part-1.html
(you can scroll down to section titled “my betta”)