In Defense of Richard Stallman

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

That is not making it clearer. First, I was interested in how you interpreted the quote you used as you did. This doesn't make it clearer. Secondly, I don't know if the quote you are using now is referencing the firs quote or something else. I suspect that you do not either.

Also it seems that you have some axe to grind against the man. Here is the full quote:

>> 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.

>> Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why.

> In those words he was saying that in some cases there is nothing wrong with an adult having sex with a child.

We are not talking about those words, are we?

IMHO, the modern left has become very harsh in condemning people, showing very little compassion, and engaging in witch-hunts. I think t his is extremely unhelpful.

I think this has arisen out of a feeling of righteousness as a result of having been morally right on many things in the past several decades, but it is just indulging the same human tenancy to hate others that perceived as not being part of one's tribe as racism etc, but with a better superficial justification. It is, IMHO, more unhelpful though. People can see racism is bad, but it is quite easy to fall into the trap of thinking that abusing a racist is perfectly fine, and go along with it, but there is a reason we don't use vigilante justice for everything. People become outraged at the treatment of people that they see as unfair, and, IMHO, this is where hatred of political correctness, and unwillingness to engage in attempts to be more progressive come from. IMHO, this hatred by the left, and with-hunt like behaviour, is at least as big an obstacle to progress on many social justice issues as people holding bigoted views that it seeks to break down, because it makes the bigoted people look reasonable.

At the beginning of this issue, I saw headlines or twitter comments alleging a lot of things, read what RMS had actually said, and concluded that the headlines and tweets are bullshit, and dismissed them all, resolving to never believe this type of thing without examining the evidence myself again. This would probably have led to me dismissing a lot of complaints about people in positions of power, assuming they they are similarly unreliable. A friend has said that there are other examples of RMS being disrespectful towards women, but I haven't had a chance to look at them yet, and are not prepared to believe them without evidence, because I have seen that much of what is said second-hand is complete crap. People exaggerating what he has said probably did so because they want to see action and create a safer space for victimised groups, especially women, in CS, but the effect has been to make all allegations highly suspect, at least to me, and I suspect many others, thus having the opposite effect. In a world where allegations that aren't true aren't extremely rare, no allegation can believed without a lot of evidence, and most crimes don't leave much.

The effect of these social media with-hunts that happen when anyone says anything objectionable has been to make most of the population highly resistant to condemning people I think, making it hard to do so when someone actually says something terrible. I think that a significant part of the reason that there is someone who advocated sexual assault as president of the US is that people have heard wolf-cries about people so much that they just don't care if they hear that someone has advocated sexual assault, because last time they heard that, the person had just said something mildly insensitive or something, and so they have started dismissing all allegations unless they have a lot more evidence behind them.

I think that people on the left going overboard in hating their opponents have created more problems for their side than their opponents. I say this as someone who is extremely left wing on most issues. Exaggerating things is never helpful I don't think.

What extremes?

I said Stallman was an equal opportunity autistic asshole rather than a sexual predator. You impugned my social skills.

I never said people felt threatened by autistic people. They’re disgusted. Just like fat or ugly people. People aren’t creeped out by scary, violent men, they’re afraid of them. Being creeped out is about disgust, not fear.

I have no comment about society because that’s every individual’s own problem, just like being fat or ugly. No one except maybe your family and friends care, so deal with it or suffer or deal with it and suffer. But don’t sugar coat it and pretend things are ok and people are nice. This is a fallen world and if you find your way into a pleasant part it’s through continuous, vigourous effort.

I mean of course words have consequences. Denying it is just absurd. If an employee of yours regularly expresses his opinion that your children are sexy and he'd like to have sex with them, what would you do about it that does not in any way discourage him from expressing his opinion? Surely you can't reprimand him or fire him.

Or an employee that regularly talks publicly about how horrible your company is and that no one should work there. Can't discourage any expression of opinion, so what can you do?

No, but I'd understand if I had been publicly saying that sometimes there's nothing wrong with having sex with children. When I say that words can have consequences, it matters which words you use.