631–640 of 681 posts
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Then he wouldn't be seen as an awkward guy who doesn't know any better but instead as an arrogant dick.
Exactly. The conversation should be framed around what he did (or didn't) do, rather than how others felt around him.
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Well, yeah. Stallman didn't talk about this sort of thing publicly. His talks were on software licensing. This latest conversation, for example, was leaked because originally it was private. > Can you link to the Australian law that shows the age of consent for coerced prostitutes is 16? Here you go. http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/nsw/cons...
So that law clearly isn't relevant. How about this? http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/nsw/cons...
Obviously sexual slavery is illegal. Everyone agrees that that is a bad thing, and nobody I've heard of has ever tried to argue there is a nuance there.
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> it sounds like it wasn’t far enough outside the acceptable conduct to warrant anything. That's not how things work. Workplace "justice" is quite dependent on things like internal politics and personal affiliations. You can't rely tell how bad something was by the disciplinary response.
Stallman is such an annoyance that if there were a credible harassment allegation against him, the MIT administration would have almost certainly made use of it before this.
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That's correct. They're admirable to me. Conversely the idea of adults fucking children is not admirable to MIT. So they fired him. Nobody's talking about censorship, or politicians. We're talking about an organization saying hey we can't have a guy that seems to think adults fucking children is OK being our leader or representative. That's definitely within their rights. You can try to die on some hill of principle…
> So you're saying that the only people qualified to be "a leader" are the ones who subscribe to your particular flavour of groupthink and no other? Nice thought policing there. > Yes, I believe publicly advocating for certain things can severely break cultural norms and make it impossible for you to effectively hold a leadership role in an educational or advocacy setting. I'd characterize your general approach to th…
Pol Pot advocated genocide. That was bad because genocide is bad.
Richard Stallman argued that pedophila was OK.
Pedophilia is not OK. It’s really far from OK. Hence the problem.
Perhaps you think it’s actually OK as well. Then the two of you agree. If you also advocate for pedophilia in public you may find people don’t want to hire you as well.
All this talk of formerly unpopular opinions and leadership only makes sense if you think that the underlying problematic opinion will be vindicated by history, like the other examples cited.
I think it won’t.
You’re saying this:
> We don't need to debate the morality of a leader because speaking against norms is already disqualifying
Nope. Didn’t say that. I said this specific norm is well founded and valid.
You can’t debate the morality of a leader’s statements in the abstract. There’s no generic class of “norms” there’s just the facts in question.
Some statements are morally defensible, some aren’t.
Saying it’s OK for adults to have sex with children is a problem, it’s gong to upset people and make them not trust you and be leery of having you represent them.
As literally everyone knows.
Glad to see these updates.
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…
There's also a perverse incentive in this age of outrage to incite public lynching and write posts to spark maximum hate where you're rewarded with reach, followers and self-reinforcing Internet points on social media and more clicks on link bait articles of which it appears to be all upside, there doesn't appear to be any downside for mischaracterizing or falsely accusing someone on social media, with enough hate-fu…
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It's a public post from 2003. Funny how nobody has dug it up for 16 years.
I don't really have a side here, I am not surprised in the slightest that people say things that others can find offensive (what a shocker). However since we're in the era of unerasable past, its kind of expected for people to do dig up the past. I do wonder if "society" will start applying a consistency stick to what people say. I.e. if they have had a consistent view on say pedophilia in this instance. On that note…
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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…
> I’m not sure if this is just more grandstanding of the “SJWs run amok” variety 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"…
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Presumably that was his actual views back then. People have relied heavily on that second quote to prove that he still holds those views though.
If he hasn't very publicly retracted that view and apologized (and: he hasn't), then he shouldn't be surprised that people aren't willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when he talks about sex crimes.
Except he has (https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html):
> 14 September 2019 (Sex between an adult and a child is wrong) 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.
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What you call "pedophilic musings", I call natural thinking process that probably every critical thinker went through in their life. It even reaches standard socially-acceptable conclusion - it just took him way longer than usual (which frankly is hardly surprising).
Yeah, took him until a few days after the whole storm had started. Good timing to have such a profound reversal in your view on pedophilia.