Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. If Stallman was a charming, charismatic, handsome guy with a square jaw and good hair the whole conversation would probably have a different lens placed on it.
Are you applying the incel meme of the chad and virgin here? Quite disgusting honestly...
In Defense of Richard Stallman
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Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman
#502Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Well, never mind Stallman, didn't the law used to agree on that? Wasn't e.g. Jerry Lee Lewis, an adult, allowed to legally marry his 13-year old cousin (as well as countless other people)? I find it bad myself (I'd say: have sex after 16 and generally with people closer to their age progressively -- e.g. a 16 yo should be able to sleep with a 18 year old, but not sure with a 25 or 40 year old, it would be more manipu…
Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman
#504Diversity -- 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’m not sure if this is just more grandstanding of the “SJWs run amok” variety, but in case you’re unaware, his recent comments were just the tip of the iceberg: https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendi... Someone else downthread also linked about how a woman he worked with on a Linux project had to be warned of his arrival ahead of time so she could leave because of his aggressive advances toward…
Or perhaps a counter-balance to the "Stallman run amok/let's crucify him" variety? How about that?
Is the "tip of the iceberg" meant to be sarcastic? One of the headings is even "1. Richard Stallman has problematic opinions". Opinions are enough to have someone persecuted? What happened to free discourse then?
Are only "non problematic" opinions allowed? And who would be the arbiter of this? At some point a gay man being married was also a "problematic opinion". Or a mixed race couple. And not in Nazi Germany, in e.g. 70s USA. Let that sink in, before condemning "problematic" opinions.
"MIT, by endorsing Stallman, also gives legitimacy to these ideas."
MIT endorses Stallman as an academic or whatever he employs him for. Not as a wholesale controller and endorser of Stallman's ideas and personality.
"I recall being told early in my freshman year “If RMS hits on you, just say ‘I’m a vi user’ even if it’s not true.”"
That's a horrifying story? At best it's a joke about someone who hits on freshman students frequently.
"He literally used to have a mattress on the floor of his office. He kept the door to his office open, to proudly showcase that mattress and all the implications that went with it."
Oh, the humanity.
"the mattress was also known to have shirtless people lounging on it…"
Spoken like a person who has never experienced the 60s and 70s campuses...
"I don’t know if he and I were the last two left, but at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him."
OK, that's creepy. Could also be a desperate attempt at connection by a depressive. It was also a conversation between two adults, and one could tell him to fuck (which from what I gather, is what happened, if more eloquently, and without further issue).
"But MIT is a privileged place. We have the right to choose who we admit, hire, or endorse."
I thought the whole idea these days was against privilege.
And where were all these good souls when their privileged MIT helped threaten Aaron Swartz with jail, and helped led him to commit suicide?
Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can start here: https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendi...
> You can start here: https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendi... Start with what exactly? What is this in response to?
Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman
#506How far would Linus Torvald have made it in today's political climate?
Jonathan Haidt's The Coddling of the American gives some great insights into the issue of feelings vs. truth.
Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
But, and this is important, there is no natural law algorithm for working out what the words "raping" and "children" mean. People have to occasionally talk about difficult issues to find out. There isn't a common moral or legal standard about what either of those words mean on the margins, in globally or in the US. If people can't voice opinions that are wrong, they have no easy way of finding out why those opinions…
There are plenty of places where you can talk about what "rape" and "children" mean. There are lots of legal discussion groups that would welcome this conversation. Except he's going to have to meet a somewhat higher bar than "I haven't got a fucking clue what I'm talking about, but here's what I reckon anyway". When someone linked to your organisation is accused of raping a child that's probably a bad time to start…
Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman
#508Diversity -- 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…
No person has any more value than any other.
Do you work in an organization where if someone sent out a company-wide email containing a mere fraction of the comments made by Stallman they would not be fired?
If so, I would not want to work there.
Please spare us the "quirky non-conforming aspie" bullshit.
Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman
#509> There are two possibilities here. Either the author of the Medium post was not capable of correctly parsing the sentence, or she didn’t care about truth and was leveling as many accusations as possible in the hope that one would stick. Either I am vastly overestimating the quality of american top university education, or the first option is highly unlikely. So, who benefits from Stallman getting removed from the pi…
The core of the drama is a MIT visiting professor has a poor grasp of social context and an inability to synchronise with other people. It seems totally possible that some graduate mechanical engineer totally misread a text. Mechanical engineers aren't known for being social butterflys.