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

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

#111

Post by chroma »

vvanders wrote: post #81
qzx_pierri wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 -…

What about all the women he made feel unsafe, should we not be inclusive of them too? If someone cannot handle social situations without making people feel unsafe they should not be in a leadership position.

So by that logic, if there was a group of mostly autistic/aspie men and they felt unsafe around one neurotypical woman, she should be the one to lose her position at a university, lose her position at a nonprofit that she founded, and be kicked out on the street, right?

"Feeling unsafe" is an absurd metric to use. Lots of things feel unsafe but are actually extremely safe. Many people feel unsafe flying on airplanes. Though they may not admit it publicly, lots of people feel unsafe around black men. Also, since one can't introspect another person's feelings, the metric of "feeling unsafe" is ripe for abuse. If you don't like someone, simply claim you feel unsafe around them. You can't reliably tell the difference between a liar and a fragile soul.

There is only one thing that generalizes: objective rules and encouraging people to be more understanding. And part of becoming more understanding involves growing a thicker skin. That's the only way that you can have a functioning community that includes communists, libertarians, young earth creationists, Muslims, Mormons, Quakers, atheists, pro-lifers, pro-choicers, Trump supporters, and Bernie supporters. We may not be able to converge on beliefs, but we can get along and work towards common causes. That is, provided that people in the group aren't catastrophizing and looking for any possible reason to be upset at one another.

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

#113

Post by overgard »

mlevental wrote: post #53
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.

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 whole point of rational dispassionate discussion is exactly because everyone has their own subjective feelings and experiences and biases. You have to put them aside to have a useful discussion. Prioritizing personal experience and saying “you cant know what its like if youre not X” is a bad bad social meme. I mean lets pretend its true. So what? It doesn’t advance the discussion at all, its only purpose is to end discussion. If a persons feelings trump logic and they cant have a level headed discussion because of that, then frankly they shouldn’t be treated as an adult, they should be treated like a child.

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

#114

Post by danbolt »

thanatropism wrote: post #99
sp332 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bull. He had decades to learn not to make women uncomfortable by doing one single thing - calling his business card his "pleasure" card when he handed it to a woman - and he still does that. That's not autism. Autism might hypothetically lead to doing that until someone pulled him aside and told him it was creepy and made others uncomfortable. After that it's just being an asshole.

I'm copy-pasting a comment from earlier on because I got late to that discussion and it's doubly relevant when the standard here has gone down from "hindered the work of MIT/FSF" to "made XX-class people uncomfortable". -- I think the most interesting part of this gotterdamerung is the claim in “Remove Stallman appendix A” that if the work of a Great Genius hinders The work of some number of talented skilled folk, th…

Probably a general society awakening, my gut says to be honest with you. I think quality of life, progress, and stable economies/societies are ones that efficiently organize themselves into groups or orders.

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

#115

Post by tkel »

nepeckman wrote: post #97
d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The blackface discussion isn't taboo, it's just been discussed to death and there's only one reasonable position. Google minstrel shows. The history of blackface is one of mocking black people. There is no way to "logically" argue that it isn't offensive because there are no facts to back up that claim.

Yeah, and often it comes from a place of skepticism, not from a place of trying to understand. And also from a place of laziness, where the skeptic expects the marginalized person to explain why the behavior or speech is harmful, and explain it in a way that is acceptable to the skeptic. All the while the understanding is a short Google search away.

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

#116

Post by etchalon »

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.

It's less that it's not acceptable and more so that it's a plainly stupid argument.

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

#117

Post by ppsreejith »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #94
codr7 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who, if I may ask, is this person who is so eagerly ventilating his opinions to feed the wolves? To me it sounds more like he's upset because RMS didn't agree with him, which would be his problem in a sane world.

> And who, if I may ask, is this person "This person" is Thomas Bushnell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bushnell > who is so eagerly ventilating his opinions to feed the wolves? To me it sounds more like he's upset This is just my reading, but "A reflection on the departure of RMS" does not have the tone of someone who is upset nor someone who is eager. It has the tone of someone who feels like they have a uni…

To be fair, he may have motive for being "upset" since he was dismissed from being GNU Hurd's official maintainer by Stallman.

From the Wikipedia link shared:

"Bushnell was Hurd's official maintainer from its instigation until November 2003, when he posted to the GNU project's discussion mailing list saying that he had been dismissed by Stallman for criticizing the GNU Free Documentation License.[5] Stallman said the dismissal was because Bushnell had been inactive since 2001 and wasn't responding to mail."

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

#118

Post by mlevental »

overgard wrote: post #113
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…

The whole point of rational dispassionate discussion is exactly because everyone has their own subjective feelings and experiences and biases. You have to put them aside to have a useful discussion. Prioritizing personal experience and saying “you cant know what its like if youre not X” is a bad bad social meme. I mean lets pretend its true. So what? It doesn’t advance the discussion at all, its only purpose is to en…

>I mean lets pretend its true. So what?

there are things you don't know that you can find out by listening to people.

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

#119

Post by journalctl »

chroma wrote: post #111
vvanders wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about all the women he made feel unsafe, should we not be inclusive of them too? If someone cannot handle social situations without making people feel unsafe they should not be in a leadership position.

So by that logic, if there was a group of mostly autistic/aspie men and they felt unsafe around one neurotypical woman, she should be the one to lose her position at a university, lose her position at a nonprofit that she founded, and be kicked out on the street, right? "Feeling unsafe" is an absurd metric to use. Lots of things feel unsafe but are actually extremely safe. Many people feel unsafe flying on airplanes.…

Well, if she had a decades-long pattern of abusive and tasteless behavior towards people with less power than her, such that people went out of their way to avoid interacting with her at all, then yeah, I’d say hit the bricks.

You’re tilting at strawmen to get around the fact that Stallman can’t seem to control his inappropriate behavior. This isn’t a hypothetical, perfectly spherical, frictionless situation, this is documented patterns of behavior. Not that it should be necessary for understanding, but would you want to explain to your wife/daughter/sister/mother/aunt/any other woman in your life how a sign reading “Knight of Hot Ladies” is at all an appropriate thing to display in an office at MIT? Imagine being gay and Stallman had a sign that read “Knight of Bashing Homos”. Try to imagine how that would make you feel if you were gay.

People feel unsafe because he says the same things abusers say, and act the same way they act. Abusers don’t treat women like people or colleagues or equals, they treat them like objects. And, if I take the gold medal in mental gymnastics I can imagine years of Stallman not realizing that all of the stuff he says and does is harmful, but that doesn’t make it any less inappropriate.

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

#120

Post by oliyoung »

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.

Imagine the world where that person that didn't do the thing in tech because of an "awkward/offensive interaction" with Stallman did that thing.

Imagine that multiplied by all the someones that didn't do any of the things that had an awkward/offensive interaction with Stallman did those things.

These behaviours, ESPECIALLY by someone in such a influential position in our industry, have a chilling effect on every person they affected.

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