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In Defense of Richard Stallman

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Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#571

Post by doubleunplussed »

benreesman wrote: post #454

https://stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%20... Done. You go on record that it’s sometimes ok to fuck children you’re gonna have a bad time. Full stop. Who gives a shit that the Minsky comment got misquoted or whatever, he has worse shit on his website. Why is this a conversation?

So a while ago people would have said the same about homosexual sex. Luckily, people questioned it anyway, despite being vilified for doing so. How do you know which supposedly unconscionable things are actually bad and which are not, if we are not allowed to question them? Whilst I'm not defending this particular point, on the meta level we need to be able to question things, however settled they might seem, or else we will never again recognise the areas where we are wrong.

A friend of mine is fond of telling people who make such absolute, unquestioning claims that they would have made an excellent SS officer.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#572

Post by klingonopera »

throw0101a wrote: post #152
klingonopera wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't get X good thing without Y bad behaviour. Consider the following: Humans have limited capacity, thus time, money and energy spent limiting Y inhibits resources available to creating X.

While life is short, it is long enough that people can learn not to be assholes / jerks IMHO: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule * https://hbr.org/2007/03/why-i-wrote-the-no-asshole-rule * https://www.td.org/insights/dont-tolerate-brilliant-jerks * https://www.inc.com/jim-schleckser/why-netflix-doesn-t-toler...

Taking a closer look at "The No Asshole Rule", I'd say it's an opinion piece, and it runs the risk of enforcing something like Newspeak and a conformist atmosphere.

They argue with a single example of how getting rid of a salesman at a company, who was an asshole, but had great results, that the following year, the company's revenue went up (correlation does not imply causation). Then, OTOH, they argue that every company needs a "token asshole" citing Steve Jobs as an example (in direct contradiction to the previous cited example).

On the whole, there doesn't seem to be enough scientific evidence to support the anti-asshole sentiment, just a bunch of opinions, hamstrung with authoritative arguments.

I'd refer again to the drill sergeant as a hyperbole as to why some people are assholes, and how it serves the greater good in defiance to the brunt of people having to accept such assholery.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#573

Post by doubleunplussed »

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #561
doubleunplussed wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would try. It would be almost impossible in the current climate though, so I would be unlikely to succeed given that I myself could be removed over my position as soon as someone says something distasteful and I'm accused of either supporting it or creating a hostile environment for other employees. But the world I want to live in is one where employers take no action whatsoever for opinions expressed off the clock…

So ideally you'd have no qualms with a preschool teacher who blogs about how sex with children is perfectly fine in their spare time? Or an employee who regularly publishes manifestos on why people of certain skin colors should be murdered and exterminated? These are extreme examples of course, but you are saying that ideally no one should experience any consequences for expressing any opinion outside of work.

Ideally, yes.

It's not that they should face no consequences - they should face consequences in the circles in which they express those views, ideally in the form of people disagreeing with them, but possibly also wanting to dissociate with them. If they try to keep those views out of the classroom, I don't have a problem with it.

In the classroom, you are the instrument of a consensus view. You must do your job. If you do it well, that's great. Your views outside the classroom should be irrelevant, and I can't help but notice that a lot of the time when people get in trouble for their views outside of work, it's because someone de-anonymised them.

We cannot have a world where people's actual opinions are forced to be equal to those their employers would be comfortable with. Your extreme examples are extreme indeed, but there are many examples, particularly in authoritarian regimes, where the extreme view is the correct one. So extreme-ness is not a good metric for whether views should be allowed or not.

I think the solution for everyone is to stay silent, and to discuss their views anonymously online. Their views will still have force at the ballot box - as they did at the last election (as much as I did not like the outcome, it was evidence that social shaming has limited power at changing how people vote). We should be suspicious of attempts to de-anonymise the internet.

Basically, dissent is important. So important that it is worth tolerating bad views to ensure dissent is not suppressed when it is needed.

Everyone who pictures the cancel-culture norms resulting in some sort of paradise where everyone believes nice things are delusional, they are simply ceding power to those who will use it for personal gain, and giving the currently powerful the tools to to cement that power.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#574

Post by dredmorbius »

throw0101a wrote: post #114
sergiosgc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It wasn't just awkward demeanor. He actively made women feel unwelcome in the workplace and behaved unprofessionally over and over again. Every episode I read about fell into the category of "socially awkward adult male". If we can't, as a group, tolerate awkwardness, we are very much down the rabbit hole of mandatory social conformity. By all means, point me to a real abuse scenario by Stallman. I like being prove…

> Every episode I read about fell into the category of "socially awkward adult male". If we can't, as a group, tolerate awkwardness, we are very much down the rabbit hole of mandatory social conformity. Perhaps you need to read about more episodes: > I worked 10 years ago at VA Linux which had Richard Stallman on its board of directors. You might have heard that Stallman applied his open source ideas to his publicly…

The VA Linux claim is to the best of my knowledge false. It's also second-hand information relayed by Gruber.

Eric S. Raymond ("ESR") was an author of the Open Source Definition and a member of the VA Linux board:

https://www.linux.com/news/eric-raymond-responds-changes-va-...

I find no current links indicating Stallman was ever on the VA Linux, or any other corporate board. Neither his personal bio nor Wikipedia bio mention any.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#575

Post by quickthrower2 »

klingonopera wrote: post #184
throw0101a wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While life is short, it is long enough that people can learn not to be assholes / jerks IMHO: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule * https://hbr.org/2007/03/why-i-wrote-the-no-asshole-rule * https://www.td.org/insights/dont-tolerate-brilliant-jerks * https://www.inc.com/jim-schleckser/why-netflix-doesn-t-toler...

1) There's a reason drill sergeants aren't exactly known to be friendly... 2) Not all people have an easy time learning not to be an asshole (and some literally can't). Thus, the resource-cost varies. 3) If one is just blunt, people can often misinterpret that as being an asshole. But factually, the blunt person is just blunt, and the "victim" is just disgruntled, which, at least in my opinion, makes the "victim" the…

It’s a fine line between blunt and asshole. To pull off being blunt you need some additional empathy and social grace. The other person has to feel that your blunt but they respect it. Otherwise you’ll be seen as an asshole. Assholery really is in the eyes and ears of the beholder.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#576

Post by sergioj97 »

shademaan wrote: post #208
barry-cotter wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s autistic. He probably gives almost everyone he comes into contact with the creeps. Neurotypical people don’t like autistic people, and would prefer to avoid them to the greatest extent possible. I doubt Stallman was any more unpleasant to women than to men, or showed any greater or lesser social graces. He has never, ever held back about any of his opinions or actions. I’m sure you could get him to admit to thin…

>Neurotypical people don’t like autistic people, Oh this is hilarious. Do you realize how many people -- not just men -- in CS, physics, mathematics are autistic, especially in places like MIT? Places like that are teeming with autistic people who somehow manage not to make their students and colleagues uncomfortable. I'll even be so bold as to claim neurotypicals are actually a minority in some of those subjects. Th…

> Do you realize how many people -- not just men -- in CS, physics, mathematics are autistic, especially in places like MIT?

Do you have any citations for that (for the fact that there's a significant proportion of autistic people who study/work at the MIT)? It's come up a few times in the comment section of this article, and I can't find sources for that claim.

Honestly the first time I read it I dismissed it as an exaggeration, but you (and others) seem convinced enough to use it to back some of your opinions on this topic. Before this, I would've thought that thoughts like that were merely stereotypes result of ignorance.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#577

Post by doubleunplussed »

foldr wrote: post #141
goatinaboat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

women at MIT going to great lengths to avoid him is well documented Genuine question: where is this documented? I have been using GNU stuff for 25 years and until now have never heard about this. Do you have links to reputable sources?

https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/2vkeze...

So are weird polyamorous people who are into "cuddle puddles" committing sexual assault or something similar by advertising that fact?

It seems to me that Stallman advertising that he likes cuddles is automatically considered creepy, beyond the pale, whereas if a properly woke community of appropriately diverse individuals did the same, it would be just considered part of that culture and accepted.

What's more, Stallman used to be part of what that community used to be. He is a hippie. I bet people not up to speed on him reading about this incident assume he's an alt-righter who voted for Trump, but he supports Bernie Sanders, says that Australians should vote for the Greens, and advocates for weird gender-neutral pronouns.

And he likes cuddles and dared to advertise that fact!

I acknowledge that putting that on a business card is out of line in today's culture, but god I wish it wasn't. If you are creeped out by an old man wanting cuddles, but you wouldn't if it were someone else, then you are a bigot. And if you're creeped out any people at all advertising that they like cuddles, then that is stifling and the future is going to be bland and full of lonely people.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#578

Post by benreesman »

doubleunplussed wrote: post #571
benreesman wrote: post #454

https://stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%20... Done. You go on record that it’s sometimes ok to fuck children you’re gonna have a bad time. Full stop. Who gives a shit that the Minsky comment got misquoted or whatever, he has worse shit on his website. Why is this a conversation?

So a while ago people would have said the same about homosexual sex. Luckily, people questioned it anyway, despite being vilified for doing so. How do you know which supposedly unconscionable things are actually bad and which are not, if we are not allowed to question them? Whilst I'm not defending this particular point, on the meta level we need to be able to question things, however settled they might seem, or else…

My point isn’t about the substance of his remarks (though I’m firmly in the “adults shouldn’t fuck children” camp if my position were somehow relevant).

My point is that there are a bunch of people nitpicking that the Minsky remarks aren’t a tacit endorsement of pedophilia, and maybe they’re not. But RMS has a tacit endorsement of pedophilia on his website, so if that’s a bad enough thing to fire someone over then that ship sailed a long time ago.

If tacitly endorsing pedophilia is something MIT is cool with, that’s a different conversation. I very much doubt they’re cool with it, but I’m not affiliated with MIT, so you’d have to ask them.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#579

Post by tokai »

praptak wrote: post #284
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"…

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

The post has been widely disseminated on 4chan's /g/ for many years. So it wasn't totally forgotten.

Re: In Defense of Richard Stallman

#580

Post by doubleunplussed »

benreesman wrote: post #578
doubleunplussed wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a while ago people would have said the same about homosexual sex. Luckily, people questioned it anyway, despite being vilified for doing so. How do you know which supposedly unconscionable things are actually bad and which are not, if we are not allowed to question them? Whilst I'm not defending this particular point, on the meta level we need to be able to question things, however settled they might seem, or else…

My point isn’t about the substance of his remarks (though I’m firmly in the “adults shouldn’t fuck children” camp if my position were somehow relevant). My point is that there are a bunch of people nitpicking that the Minsky remarks aren’t a tacit endorsement of pedophilia, and maybe they’re not. But RMS has a tacit endorsement of pedophilia on his website, so if that’s a bad enough thing to fire someone over then th…

No. Your comment did not read as "my opponents are nitpicking by denying that he questioned the badness of sex with children", you just stated your belief in the badness of sex with children and how nothing more needs to be said. "Full stop". "Why is this a conversation".

And you are now backpedalling.

Stop with this crap, I'm sick of the emotional rhetoric and lies in everything.

I wish we were in a world where en employee saying something just isn't considered endorsement, tacit or otherwise, by the employer. Then we wouldn't be in this mess. And I can't help but notice that activists who want to punish certain views are the ones encouraging the interpretation of employees' speech as endorsement by the employer in order to be more effectively able to punish speech they don't like.

I'm sure they would be less happy if the shoe were on the other foot and authoritarian rightists were in charge, but they are not looking that far ahead apparently.

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