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In Defense of Richard Stallman

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Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#431

Post by brain5ide »

sascha_sl wrote: post #243
brain5ide wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be willing to provide a few links to those stories over the years? I never knew enough about his personal behavior to judge that and have no idea how to search for it.

my last comment is a good jumping off point https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21113873 I might have to add a bunch of sources since we seem to have a lot of people in denial. The responses to the Medium article are... not nice.

Thanks for the link. It's interesting start. But it doesn't show me a predator as I expect at the end of sexual assault accusations. It shows more of a sad lonely guy, that's probably sometimes annoying and is not welcome by people. This date-suicide thing is still abusive, but on very personal and not even ethical level. Not sure if it should involve some organization in any way. It's a bit hard now to figure out what's happening, as I've thought of RMS as a moral person and somewhat aligned my morals to him. It's now dificult to dissect them to figure out what's wrong. And also, it rings a bit like the story of Socrates and what Seneca said about it.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#432

Post by Kbelicius »

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #419
Kbelicius wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, but he did say that having sex with children is sometimes fine Can you quote/link those instances since the two statements that you quoted don't say that at all.

"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." He's rejecting the arguments that pedophilia causes harm to children, because sometimes it's voluntary and therefore isn't harmful. Do I really need to explain…

> He's rejecting the arguments that pedophilia causes harm to children

No, he is not saying that. In that quote that you used he isn't even saying that pedophilia isn't harmful when it is consensual. I'm really interested how you reached that conclusion while reading the same text I'm reading.

> Pedophilia is sometimes not harmful to children

As far as I can see those are your words and not his. Where does he say that? Besides, not harmful and fine are to completely different things.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#433

Post by Ensorceled »

Valmar wrote: post #219
Ensorceled wrote: post #122

Can we stop these threads? They are not productive, we have all chosen our sides on this particular "metoo" vs. "cancel culture" debate and nobody is having their minds changed.

These threads raise awareness for more people. Especially people who may not otherwise have known. Silencing, censoring, the discussion only allows it to keep getting worse, instead of potentially less worse.

There have been plenty of threads on this matter on HN, I think most people know by now.

I have no power on HN, and thus, no ability to censor.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#434

Post by FactolSarin »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #201
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 for one agree 100% with you here. And I don't really know what angers me more - the explicit desire to destroy a person's life, expressed by many including the original blogger that started this mess, or the relentless denial of reality, the willingness to repeat bald-faced lies, even though the source material was accessible and widely quoted. Until this debacle I didn't realize so many people in our industry can…

I agree that based on this single email alone, it would be shocking for someone to be forced out. On the other hand, apparently RMS has had a long history of making women feel uncomfortable around him, and not taking "no" for an answer. I feel like this is probably something that's been building for a time, and this letter might have just been the straw that broke the camel's back. It wasn't that bad in and of itself, but it's just the latest thing.

Most of the people around the campus probably don't think of him as "RMS, open source evangelist," they think of him as "RMS, that creepy guy who keeps hitting on people even after they ask him to stop." In that context, this letter can be read in a much worse light.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#435

Post by icebraining »

foldr wrote: post #185
isoprophlex wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Wrong. You, and many others, seem incapable of parsing basic sentences. RMS claimed it was plausible that she presented herself to Minsky as willing, due to coercion by Epstein. There's a big difference.

And what could be more normal than an 17 year old girl on a billionaire's private island willingly offering free sex to a man in his 70s? How could Minsky possibly have suspected that anything was amiss?

I guess it's possible Minsky confused her for a 18 year old prostitute. Whether that counts as "willing" depends on your views on prostitution, of course.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#436

Post by domnomnom »

Barrin92 wrote: post #10

> They focused on his tone deaf communication style and awkward demeanor. They spoke of behavior from decades ago and pointed out the fact that he had a mattress in his office. It wasn't just awkward demeanor. He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again. > He held his positions at MIT, GNU, and the FSF for over thirty years, and in that time nobody accused h…

Honestly I'm starting to feel that at this point we should just have businesses that are like sororities and fraternities because people can't seem to handle themselves or handle how others fail to handle themselves.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#437

Post by CathedralBorrow »

Kbelicius wrote: post #432
CathedralBorrow wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." He's rejecting the arguments that pedophilia causes harm to children, because sometimes it's voluntary and therefore isn't harmful. Do I really need to explain…

> He's rejecting the arguments that pedophilia causes harm to children No, he is not saying that. In that quote that you used he isn't even saying that pedophilia isn't harmful when it is consensual. I'm really interested how you reached that conclusion while reading the same text I'm reading. > Pedophilia is sometimes not harmful to children As far as I can see those are your words and not his. Where does he say tha…

Edit: No actually I think I can make it clearer. Here's Stallman himself summarizing his own words:

> 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.

In those words he was saying that in some cases there is nothing wrong with an adult having sex with a child. So I guess what's left is whether "fine" and "nothing wrong with" are equivalent.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#438

Post by sascha_sl »

rando832 wrote: post #344
sascha_sl wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://twitter.com/corbett/status/994012399656042496 https://twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/994267277460619265 https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/994010501460865025 https://twitter.com/wiredferret/status/1173042834179534849 https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendi...

So, basically, exactly what the article says, a big nothing. The plants thing is stupid, rms doesn't hate plants. Sarah Mei appears to have no special reason to hate rms, shes a well known person who is extremely negative about anyone in software who's said anything offensive, including Linus, etc.

>The plants thing is stupid, rms doesn't hate plants.

Source? I have no reason to disbelieve the claim, this discussion on Wikipedia seems to correlate it too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Richard_Stallman/Archive_...

Besides dismissing one person at face value... is that all you have to say about these?

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#439

Post by thanatropism »

I think the most interesting part of this gotterdamerung is the claim in “Remove Stallman appendix A” that if the work of a Great Genius hinders The work of some number of talented skilled folk, then society is ultimately at a loss.

I’m not certain that this is necessarily true. Or false for that matter. I have an intuition, possibly colored by an overall culture of hero worship, that it is false.

This is the rationale: the dynamics large groups of people inevitably approaches that of a committee. Committees are averaging devices that smooth potentially groundbreaking ideas out of serious consideration. Genius on the other hand is not only extraordinarily capable of such groundbreaking ideas but is able to insist on them doggedly.

OTOH it means that one true genius (and maybe Stallman isn’t one, but true geniuses have very very often been assholes) is worth almost an infinite number of merely talented folk.

The ultimate question: what lifted us from mere animal status 10-15K years ago? A handful of geniuses or a general society awakening?

But also; how may “young talented physicists” it takes to change a lightbulb?

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#440

Post by booleandilemma »

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #367
booleandilemma wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is musing illegal now or what? Can people still have controversial opinions without getting their lives destroyed?

Stallman wasn't convicted of any crime, so please drop the "illegal" thing. He can have whatever controversial opinions he wants.

He can have whatever controversial opinions he wants.

Not without losing his job, apparently.

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