71–80 of 580 posts
It’s awful to see people come out of the woodwork to try and defend him. Who is Sylvia Paull? I wonder if her major clients would like to know that she is a supporter of someone who condones rape? In one breath she says she disagrees with it and the next she’s defending him. Crazy!
The response of course is that "bad behavior should never be excused, regardless of ability!" which leads to a losing argument in which we try to say what kind of good excuses what kind of bad. But this presupposes the conformist stance: that fitting in with the norms is the default behavior, and violations of it must be explained.
The Hacker culture from which everything we have today in tech arose. Which is the culture that Stallman arguably helped create. The culture which makes this site "Hacker" news, is one in which doing something interesting is more important than anything else. The presupposition from this more iconoclastic view is: why aren't you doing something interesting? Adhering to norms because it's the "safe" thing to do is the true aberrant behavior.
It's a shame too since now of all points in human history we need more radical thinkers and people who are willing to question the status quo, which btw is inherently unsustainable. But maybe it's this fear that leads us rushing back to deep moral systems likes religious fantastics when their faith is questioned.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
there's a large contingent of people on hn (in tech, in the world) that fetishize "logic" and believe it always trumps "feelings". i put both in quotes because to this contingent both of those concepts have absolutely zero relation to their actual form. i too used to be quite fond of making completely dispassionate arguments about controversial things (race, gender, class, etc.) because i believed that the entire con…
The only progress you seem to have made is allow your feelings of abhorrent-ness to disregard all logical arguments that come your way which you decide are abusing their logical authority. Pretty self-reinforcing thought pattern you've built there.
Also, I realize this is an unpopular opinion here because of the lack of awareness that most outside this community don't even know who Stallman is nor care and can't accept they're wasting their time on this topic. The more he's talked about with regards to this controversy, the more he will be known for this issue and less about the things he fought over the decades for the free software movement. Good job everyone.
> He takes everything literally and doesn’t necessarily take feelings and the reactions of others into account when making statements that are outside the bounds of his expertise in free software. Whelp, then no one should be that surprised when people stop taking his feelings into account and decide they no longer want to be associated with him. Not being an asshole is a two-way street.
He’s autistic. Suddenly the people who were annoyingly vocal about being “inclusive” are forgetting Stallman’s disability. He says “creepy” things because he doesn’t understand social cues or casual communication at a certain level. Everyone in this thread demonizing RMS should be ashamed of themselves. This is the same reason why he can’t hold a relationship, or why he sleeps in his office. He’s just far out there -…
That's quite bleak.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
there's a large contingent of people on hn (in tech, in the world) that fetishize "logic" and believe it always trumps "feelings". i put both in quotes because to this contingent both of those concepts have absolutely zero relation to their actual form. i too used to be quite fond of making completely dispassionate arguments about controversial things (race, gender, class, etc.) because i believed that the entire con…
The only progress you seem to have made is allow your feelings of abhorrent-ness to disregard all logical arguments that come your way which you decide are abusing their logical authority. Pretty self-reinforcing thought pattern you've built there.
You ought to inspect why you yourself are getting defensive over that statement.
The fact that one is neuro-atypical doesn't mean one cannot also be an asshole. RMS was both, and people finally got fed up with the latter bit.
> He takes everything literally and doesn’t necessarily take feelings and the reactions of others into account when making statements that are outside the bounds of his expertise in free software. Whelp, then no one should be that surprised when people stop taking his feelings into account and decide they no longer want to be associated with him. Not being an asshole is a two-way street.
He’s autistic. Suddenly the people who were annoyingly vocal about being “inclusive” are forgetting Stallman’s disability. He says “creepy” things because he doesn’t understand social cues or casual communication at a certain level. Everyone in this thread demonizing RMS should be ashamed of themselves. This is the same reason why he can’t hold a relationship, or why he sleeps in his office. He’s just far out there -…
Umm.... absolutely not. These quotes (directly from his site) beg to differ: > “I am sceptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.” > “There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing par…
When were those posted? That they (and other similar comments) suddenly appearing out of nowhere makes me question their veracity. They represent a broader point of view - a set of values - that are quite distinct from the views that have been presented before.
[0] https://stallman.org/cgi-bin/showpage.cgi?path=/archives/201...
Here[0] is a post by someone else who (by his own account) "worked for RMS longer than any other programmer." While he obviously has had a long relationship with Stallman, one of his key takeaways was: "RMS’s loss of MIT privileges and leadership of the FSF are the appropriate responses to a pattern of decades of poor behavior. It does not matter if they are appropriate responses to a single email thread, because the…
Totally. I get that the OP is from Stallman's publicist. But I think a good publicist shouldn't at worse be selective about the truth, not say outright false things like this. Plenty of people who know Stallman have made it clear that Stallman's behavior is consistent, harmful, and willful. E.g.: https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1172422966904160257