In Defense of Richard Stallman • Hacker News Board

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#521

Post by coldtea » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 2:05 PM UTC

ziofill wrote: post #371

CogitoCogito wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No. None of the things you mention is actually the issue. > Diversity: It's not about opinion, but about an authority figure doing things that harm his colleagues. I could have the opinion that you're an idiot and a liar, but if we were working together and I would constantly say that in the workplace where everyone hears, I would probably get fired. > Inclusiveness: It's not about ostracising, either, certainly no…

The ability to brush off the words of a respected superior (parent, manager, supervisor, etc...) is not equally distributed in the population. Female students have a disadvantage over male students, especially in fields that are male-dominated (such as CS or Physics), LGBT members are even more disadvantaged. The harm is in the compounding of a hostile environment, and when the hostility comes from a person of consid…

>The ability to brush off the words of a respected superior (parent, manager, supervisor, etc...) is not equally distributed in the population. Female students have a disadvantage over male students, especially in fields that are male-dominated (such as CS or Physics), LGBT members are even more disadvantaged.

They might have been in the 70s and 80s. In 2019, if a LGBT member makes some threats, the institution will usually cave. In the old times people could lose their job if they were found out to be LGBT. Today people lose their jobs if they are accused from an LGBT perspective.

Pretending the power dynamics are the same as in decades past is hypocritical. Parents, relatives, and rural societies can still be (and are) cruel against LBGT people. Major companies, institutions, the law, modern media, etc? Not so much.

Too many people champion LGBT rights, feminism, etc today only because it's the default in "polite society" and the circles of power. If it was 1970 they would have followed the then mainstream treatment of women/LGBT, either like sheep or to their advantage -- as in fact, the majority (their parents) then did. Doesn't matter if they're different people than their parents -- the hypocrisy and the mechanism is the same is the same.

Only few courageous people have written/spoke out for decades about such matters, and now people come and use them to pursue careers, or gain followers -- and even more so, many use those causes to be cruel to people and gain power and social capital, the same way they would use their privilege against women/LGBT back in the day...

It's like Kurt Cobain seeing all the BS jocks that put him down sing "Smells like teen spirit"...

As for the "lots of research", in social studies it takes time to catch up with society (and it follows what brings in grants). There was lots of research back in the day too...

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#522

Post by malcolmgreaves » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

Stallman has been past his prime for well over a decade. He schmoozed with a well-known child sex trafficker (read: slaver). He made some nice software a long time ago and had a great idea about software licenses.

However, he failed to realize that the world isn't nearly partitioned. His personal life decisions bled over and ruined his professional reputation. He'll always be the "free software nerd who sexually discrimated against women and had friends that raped girls" to me.

Move along: there'll be a dozen smarter, less slimely bright people to replace him.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#523

Post by phillipcarter » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

Insanity wrote: post #17

I don't know RMS personally, but from what I've seen and read about him, he's a bit eccentric. There's nothing wrong with that, but people tend to dislike or distrust those whom are different from what society considers 'normal'. I suspect part of the 'witch hunt' was in part fueled by this eccentricity.

He also has a history of harassing women and supporting pedophilia, which goes a bit beyond "eccentric".

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#524

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

sannee wrote: post #42

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#525

Post by coldtea » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #503

coldtea wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a deep hair splitting derail on the precise meaning of words, including whether 'fine' and 'nothing wrong with' have an equivalent meaning. I can't speak to judges or Jerry Lee Lewis or any of what you're adding to the derail here.

In other words, you have no counter-argument to offer, and you weren't above using an ad-hominem ("to derail").

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#526

Post by FactolSarin » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 2:12 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #464

FactolSarin wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> and not taking "no" for an answer. Citation needed for everything after the "apparently"; but in particular - even the gossip I've read suggests he took No as an answer just fine. The stories on HN over the last week have generally been him asking women out in a bizarre way and then accepting a quite predictable "no". And even then most of the stories are poorly sourced.

I didn't mean "not taking no for an answer" in the sense that he'd get mad or force himself. I mean in the sense that people would tell him they weren't interested, and he'd just keep hitting on them.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#527

Post by malcolmgreaves » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

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…

"Diversity of thought" means "I think that white men people have experienced every perspective."

Ridiculous, ain't it?

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#528

Post by pvaldes » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

ianleeclark wrote: post #336

pvaldes wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace This sword cuts both ways. MIT is not a kindergarten, they are adult people moving in an adult work context. It has been said here, that some women are so terrified of Stallman that will carry plants around with they. If true this would speak volumes but not about RMS; about those women! I assume that there are a lot of very smart but socially awkward people (m…

> A fully growth women, so terrified of any contact with men to barricade herself behind a geranium all day, should raise a red flag. Cool victim blaming. > Any adult women should be able to stop and deal elegantly with an undesired proposition. They're in a professional environment, they shouldn't have to deal with this.

> victim blaming

Not. We need to use the correct terms. Victim blaming would be suggesting that the woman triggered the situation somehow. I'm not saying this at all.

I'm talking about the reaction. IF that history was real [and not just a silly rumour] then we must notice that there is more than a people acting weird here. To freak out and carry an antiviolator house plant because you received a twisted visit card with dirty humour, once, well... this is not normal either, IMHO.

> They're in a professional environment, they shouldn't have to deal with this.

Fair point. 100% agree with that, but if you put several adult people in a room, they will inevitably try to develop relationships.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#529

Post by johnday » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #421

johnday wrote: post #12

It does rather smack of the old police tactic: When someone's known to have done something Bad, but the police cannot prove it, they send them to prison for a minor crime such as tax evasion. I'm not saying that RMS has committed any crimes of course, but there are other reasons that people do not see him as a political figure that they can rally behind in the modern day. A lot of this is entirely about image. People…

This is a weird way to think of it. All of these organizations have been putting up with Stallman's problematic behavior for a long time. This incident reopened a dark chapter in MIT history, too soon and Stallman has a history of, at best, minimizing the impact of pedophilia. This was a final straw situation.

I agree with you, that's roughly what I was saying. The events of the last few weeks were the catalyst that allowed people to start externalising those things, small or big, which they had previously been withholding in the name of "getting on".

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#530

Post by coldtea » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #520

coldtea wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think that expressing opinions should never have any consequences whatsoever. Which is irrelevant, as the parent didn't say that "expressing opinions should never have any consequences whatsoever". He just said that having that particular opinion should not have any consequences. That said, > That's an absurd proposition to me. What exactly is absurd about free speech and no consequences for expressing what…

> (of course you shouldn't write a post about how "X company is crap" if you work for X and not expect to get fired") I'll use this as my example for why I think it's absurd. Why do you think you shouldn't write that post? It's just an opinion, right? If I understand you correctly then you're saying that there are some opinions that you could expect to be fired for expressing, even if they are completely legal to exp…

>Why do you think you shouldn't write that post? It's just an opinion, right?

Au contraire, I think you should write that post if you're of that opinion. And I think it would be beneficial to society to write it too.

What I wrote is that you shouldn't write it "and not expect to get fired" -- because that's what will probably happen. If it was to me, that shouldn't happen either. But a company is a private business, and the law allows them to fire people at will (I'd change that too, like we have it in Europe).

I stated though that you should not "lose your job [for your opinions], especially if it's totally unrelated with your opinions" (the job being unrelated to what you spoke, that is).