In Defense of Richard Stallman • Hacker News Board

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#281

Post by seba_dos1 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:28 AM UTC

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #202

coldtea wrote: post #76

Diversity -- but no diversity of opinion... Inclusiveness -- but let's ostracize the non-conforming aspie... Fairness -- but let's fire people or make them resign from unrelated positions for their personal opinions, because obviously all of a person's life should serve as a big PR, and god forbid they don't play the role 24/7. Someone might call them for it on Twitter, and what could their employee/organization do o…

I'll speak up: I'm happy that Stallman resigned from his positions, but the final straw for me was the surfacing of Stallman's pedophilic musings over the years. You left that part out.

What you call "pedophilic musings", I call natural thinking process that probably every critical thinker went through in their life. It even reaches standard socially-acceptable conclusion - it just took him way longer than usual (which frankly is hardly surprising).

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#282

Post by CathedralBorrow » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:28 AM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #250

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll speak up: I'm happy that Stallman resigned from his positions, but the final straw for me was the surfacing of Stallman's pedophilic musings over the years. You left that part out.

Please provide a link. I’ve seen this repeated, but no source. I don’t necessarily doubt it, but if you don’t provide a link your basically committing slander.

“I am sceptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.”

“There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.“

I can give you the links but it's quite easy to Google.

Edit since I dug them up for another comment:

https://stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%20...

https://stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2...

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#283

Post by lazyjones » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:28 AM UTC

gosub wrote: post #20

I hope RMS is safe, and that someone finds a way to let us all help him, in any meaningful way. The most disgusting thing is that whose who witch-hunted him, from their higher moral ground, will face no consequences at all.

> The most disgusting thing is that whose who witch-hunted him, from their higher moral ground, will face no consequences at all.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. At the very least, the FSF has lost some annual contributions...

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#284

Post by praptak » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:28 AM UTC

meerita wrote: post #237

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there were also those posts about having sex with children sometimes being quite fine. Edit: The downvotes are interesting given that this is how Stallman himself characterized those posts: "Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it."

What posts are you talking about? He didn't state anything related to child sex, plus, Eptein wasn't only offering that so it is unclear that Minsk had sex with minors. It's obvious that Stallman condemn that, but to his eyes, nothing is crystal clear and he is not the kind of person who will fall so easily in any logic fallacy. I think people is mob lawing him without any reason more than "he just stated some facts"…

It's a public post from 2003. Funny how nobody has dug it up for 16 years.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#285

Post by eternalban » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:28 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #252

eternalban wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that we're experiencing a somewhat less brutal version of Mao's Cultural Revolution. But who knows, possibly "psychological and moral re-education centers" are just over the horizon. They pulled the same crap in China, with excitable young minds as useful idiots serving the hidden political agendas of actors behind the scene. It is informative to seriously review the Cultural Revolution, and the ensu…

Interesting you bring it up. I don't know the history of the Cultural Revolution except for the description of it in Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem , but I've been meaning to reference that book in my next comment. There's a description there of the young people, excited about new ideas, delivering psychological and then physical violence to academic professors, because suddenly the technical, physical concepts stopp…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/book-review/ji-xianlins-...

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#286

Post by meerita » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:29 AM UTC

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #256

meerita wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What posts are you talking about? He didn't state anything related to child sex, plus, Eptein wasn't only offering that so it is unclear that Minsk had sex with minors. It's obvious that Stallman condemn that, but to his eyes, nothing is crystal clear and he is not the kind of person who will fall so easily in any logic fallacy. I think people is mob lawing him without any reason more than "he just stated some facts"…

“I am sceptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.” “There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.“

Can you link those posts?

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#287

Post by DanBC » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:29 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #257

ykevinator wrote: post #164

I'm not sure someone with such bizarre views on consent should be in a leadership position or be a teacher. I usually agree with articles like this but then I read stallmans views and they are probably disqualifying.

If you did a survey of any corporate or political organisation there would be large numbers of unbelievably competent people who hole weird and objectionable views. If a view isn't relevant to what someone is doing we have to be able to look past it. You are underestimating, radically, the diversity of thought amongst humans. And particularly on the margins of leadership where the people who come up with new ideas ar…

> who hole weird and objectionable views

And if they publicly talk about those weird views they may find themselves being asked to leave their organisation, especially if those views are that child sexual abuse isn't so bad.

> in Australia consent is age 16 so he had a point there.

Can you link to the Australian law that shows the age of consent for coerced prostitutes is 16?

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#288

Post by AsyncAwait » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:29 AM UTC

ThinkBeat wrote: post #97

kolektiv wrote: post #18

Sigh. No. It's not just about one incidence of some mistakenly pedantic comments, as has been made clear by many, many people. It's a pattern of behaviour over years combined with no interest in listening to other people or accepting that he might be in the wrong. His behaviour towards women in particular has resulted in a lot of people sharing stories of his behaviour which, on their own, should be enough for someon…

Maybe, but maybe they would have other tools, better tools, built by the people his behaviour, and the behaviour of people like him, have driven from the industry before they got a chance to have the impact that people like him seem to assume is a right. They ware free to develop whatever they want. If they do not wish to be a part of the GNU project that is fine, make your own project and develop whatever you want.…

> Maybe, but maybe they would have other tools, better tools, built by the people his behaviour, and the behaviour of people like him, have driven from the industry

We do have some evidence as to how likely that is given that projects such as Mastodon, NodeJS, GIMP and others have been forked by groups claiming to be dissatisfied with the 'toxic' behavior around said projects. They have indeed produced elaborate code of conducts, but no computer code to speak of.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#289

Post by rndgermandude » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:29 AM UTC

jimhefferon wrote: post #133

efdee wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming they were actually willing and claiming they presented themselves as actually willing are two very different things. These are very dangerous accusations you are throwing around - you might do well to stick to what he actually said and wrote.

It seems to me not credible that a 70 year old Minsky believed that a quite young lady would, on minutes of meeting him, be so attracted that she would be anxious to be intimate.

He might have thought she was attracted to him. Anna Nicole Smith claimed to have been attracted to her 90-something husband. There have been enough historical examples where power or intellect apparently attracts. Or maybe he thought she was attracted to Epstein's money and wanted to be on his good side by "entertaining" his friends. Or maybe he was fully aware of the situation.

We cannot know what he thought, and we cannot even ask since he is dead, and we did not even know what actually happened after she "offered" herself (unwillingly and coerced by Epstein, of course).

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#290

Post by viraptor » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 11:30 AM UTC

rndgermandude wrote: post #254

viraptor wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we can't, as a group, tolerate awkwardness, we are very much down the rabbit hole of mandatory social conformity. There's a difference between tolerating it to a degree and letting leaders continue uncomfortable awkwardness. If it's enough to distance people, maybe they're not a great candidate for a leader. That doesn't remove anything from their achievements and abilities to contribute or to spread new ideas.…

There has to be a third option between "tolerate everything" and "completely oust him from public life as violently as you can".

Why do you think the second case happened? He resigned from a prestigious position on his own terms. If I expected anyone to tell straight "I've been forced to resign" or "I've been fired due to politics", it would be RMS. He didn't, and nobody seems to be preventing him to take part in public life - as evidenced by the number of posts, there's a number of people who still want to work with him.