Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him • Hacker News Board

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#101

Post by aonsager » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 3:10 AM UTC

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #72

We are, sadly, entering a new age of conformity. Aligning yourself with what main stream society thinks is correct is now more important than anything else. 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…

Yes there is a benefit to radical thinking and nonconformity, but "do it without hurting others" is a reasonable line to draw. Stallman was viewed as a toxic individual who caused harm, and this is what our society is trying to weed out.

I still believe, perhaps naively, that it's possible to maintain not-normal opinions without causing pain to the people around you. And this is something that everyone needs to do, whether you're in the majority or the minority.

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#102

Post by JamisonM » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 3:10 AM UTC

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #72

We are, sadly, entering a new age of conformity. Aligning yourself with what main stream society thinks is correct is now more important than anything else. 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…

> The Hacker culture from which everything we have today in tech arose. Which is the culture that Stallman arguably helped create. The culture whic h makes this site "Hacker" news, is one in which doing something interesting is more important than anything else.

Doing something interesting has never been more important than doing "anything else" in hacker culture as I have understood it, RMS's own motivation has always been grounded in a moral and ethical roots.

One should honour his commitment to freedom above all else.

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#103

Post by pfooti » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 3:10 AM UTC

qzx_pierri wrote: post #65

chasing wrote: post #39

> 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 -…

There's a lot of neuroatypical people who don't defend pedophilia or harass people. Don't make it an excuse, it ends up making you sound like you're saying all autistic people are harassing assholes who can't help being assholes. Which is patently untrue.

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#104

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 3:10 AM UTC

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #87

mjevans wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the nuance of the language as selected. "I am skeptical" clearly prefaces a desire to be made aware of actual scientific evidence, to have the citations (references to the evidence) provided. Further, you, and others who keep beating this dead horse, do not realize that it is part of a larger, ongoing, discussion in which (IIRC from prior HN threads), RMS had that skepticism resolved with knowledge by…

The facts are that these days you just can't discuss some topics "logically" in a public setting. There are forbidden topics that only have one acceptable position. For example, it's not acceptable for anyone to discuss why blackface is offensive and clowns/mimes are not.

[deleted]

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#105

Post by Pfhreak » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 3:11 AM UTC

marmada wrote: post #63

Pfhreak wrote: post #43

Dude has gone out of his way to make other people uncomfortable. I use singular they for my pronouns. He's so bothered by this that he goes out of his way to not only tell me I'm wrong for doing so, but to invent his own language for referring to folks who use gender neutral pronouns (which no one will understand, because it's not widely used). I would certainly question whether I was welcome at an event where he was…

I don't understand why his pronoun scheme is antagonistic. He still respects that you want gender neutral pronouns, he just won't use they because he thinks they has a standard plural meaning. I don't understand why people have an obligation to use "they" specifically as long as they respect the gender neutral concept.

> I don't understand why people have an obligation to use "they" specifically as long as they respect the gender neutral concept.

The same reason we use people's names. Or their nicknames. Or their middle names sometimes. Or their stage names, noms de plume, or noms de guerre. When you are introduced to someone you expect to be spending some time around, you might ask them, "Do you prefer Henry or Hank? Charles or Chuck? William or Bill?" And if they say, "Actually, I use my middle name, David." you wouldn't immediately say, "I'll go ahead and use your full first name because it's an equally equivalent name for you, because I'm respecting the concept of you.

Culturally, we already accept a wide variety of markers for people in a host of different situations, and have generally settled on "it's polite to try and refer to people in the way they prefer."

To me, it's as if RMS had posted a blog post that said, "I propose we use only people's full and legal names when referring to them, because I believe that system works better."

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#106

Post by gfodor » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 3:12 AM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #34

menotyou43 wrote: post #3

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…

You're missing the nuance of the language as selected. "I am skeptical" clearly prefaces a desire to be made aware of actual scientific evidence, to have the citations (references to the evidence) provided. Further, you, and others who keep beating this dead horse, do not realize that it is part of a larger, ongoing, discussion in which (IIRC from prior HN threads), RMS had that skepticism resolved with knowledge by…

I’ve known people like this, and people who assume that those people are making claims when they are in fact, asking questions, are projecting. Specifically, people who are unable to take questions at face value are often people who are good at using language that is in the form of a question to give commands or state claims (typical in politics for example.)

(For anyone that reading, no, my observation here is not making a claim about the justness of the treatment of RMS, if you can’t see that upon a re-read you too may be projecting.)

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#107

Post by floatingatoll » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 3:14 AM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #98

floatingatoll wrote: post #8

Richard Stallman has been vilified by those who experienced him. His actions are reported to repeatedly exceed what is permissible without societal censure, regardless of the logic and/or reasoning behind them. Knowing him is not necessary to react to him, and to tell stories of his actions to others.

Imagine the world if Stallman had been excommunicated from tech after the first awkward/offensive interaction he had with someone. I sure wouldn’t. Tangentially: I better not see anyone here lionize Steve Jobs ever again, because he inflicted actual physical trauma on people. He didn’t just piss them off with his failure to recognize social cues.

“The first” is neither what has happened with Stallman, nor is it what I describe in my comment.

Many incidents have occurred, enough to demonstrate that they’re a trend rather than “the first” one-off.

Many folks have noted that most people in Stallman’s position would have chose to learn to be better people to those around them.

He did not make that choice, and the result is that many stories told about him paint him in a severely negative light.

Please don’t use threats here; “I better not see anyone here [any action here]” has no place in this forum’s conversations.

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#108

Post by stuart78 » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 3:15 AM UTC

matz1 wrote: post #40

menotyou43 wrote: post #3

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…

Looks like healthy scepticism to me, which I consider a good thing.

One of those comments was in response to an article about Jimmy Savile[0]. Savile is estimated to have raped 589 children, including some as young as 8.

I am "healthily skeptical" about the moral compass of people who use serial child rapists as a springboard to questions about consent on the part of minors.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile_sexual_abuse_scan...

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#109

Post by toofy » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 3:16 AM UTC

qzx_pierri wrote: post #65

chasing wrote: post #39

> 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 -…

I don’t mean to sound snarky, but this really discounts so many factors in how autism is dealt with and even worse it makes it sound as if autistic people are unable to learn how their actions impact people around them, which is of course completely untrue. Autistic people may have difficulty interpreting things such as social cues, but they are absolutely not incapable.

We have indications from many of those closest to RMS that he was willfully dismissive of others feelings. It wasn’t that he was unaware, he was both aware of his difficulties reading others, and made a choice to be dismissive.

It’s painful, I get it. I met RMS many times and still consider him to be one of our era’s great minds and one who’s actions have had nothing short of an incredible impact on society. However, he has–despite this article from his publicist–a long history of bad actions.

I believe there should always be a path forward if people wish to remain a public figure. But this path can’t start with easily disprovable excuses.

Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him

#110

Post by Pfhreak » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 3:21 AM UTC

lone_haxx0r wrote: post #86

mlevental wrote: post #53

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…

I'm rather young, so I might be exactly the kind of person that you were. I think it's right to shut up when "logic" hurts people's feelings AND there's nothing to gain from saying it, but when there's an injustice and we can at least try to fight back, I think the right thing to do is just saying the "logical" truth, even if people's feelings get hurt. I don't mean to say that my view is always the correct one, but…

You may find, as you age, that this viewpoint takes on nuance. Yes, we should root our world in scientific thinking. We should approach problems logically. We should make our decisions rationally. We should be efficient in how we allocate our resources.

But there are times when being human outweighs those interests. There are times when we should be deliberately inefficient because too much efficiency can cause harm. There are times when we need not investigate rigorously, because by picking apart someone we might do them harm. There are times when we should accept that there might not be a logical underpinning to a behavior, because we will never be capable of operating free from emotions.

And most importantly, there are times where you need not pursue a truth. That sometimes the quest to understand can be much more harmful than simply being present and accepting.

I used to be a hardline 'logic only, logic always, efficiency above all' person. I'd plan my routes to optimize path efficiency. My relationships left me scrutinizing every interaction, guessing at double meanings and challenging assertions by people. It was unbearable to be around me. I've had to learn that sometimes people want to engage with me in diving deep, sometimes people really hate doing that, and rarely it's for everyone's best interest to override those interests.