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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

#181

Post by amp108 »

megous wrote: post #112
aspaceman wrote: post #62

I think what this comes down to is pretty simple. Does Richard Stallman make women at MIT uncomfortable? If yes, then Richard Stallman shouldn't be a leader at MIT.

Why just women?

> Why just women?

Because they are the people who have been made uncomfortable by his behavior. If it were men, or also men, I'm sure the parent post would have read "men or women". This is not an abstract case, so implying that somehow men are underrepresented when dealing with a person whose (alleged) behavior has been targeted at women sounds a little petty.

Imagine someone is accused of abusing children, and the local prosecutor says "if we find that any children have been harmed, we will press charges". Do you really think you need to correct them by saying "but what about adults?" It's unnecessary, and distracts from the actual case.

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

#182

Post by glangdale »

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…

The problem with your argument is that it implies that the people who were chased away from CSAIL, MIT or CS in general by people like Stallman were all planning to pile into a giant ineffective committee with each other and thus can be assumed to be No Great Loss, which is... a rather peculiar leap of logic.

There's no reason to suppose this. Even accepting your logic, the people he discouraged from CS might have wound up being highly effective solo contributors or worked in small teams.

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

#183

Post by JabavuAdams »

least wrote: post #130
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…

There are many third person pronouns that people have suggested that are not widely in use today, including singular they. Ze, zhe, per, zer, e, etc. [1] have all been proposed at various points in time (and some have resurfaced in the past several years) and there are people who identify by these pronouns. If singular 'they' is valid, then so are they (plural, referring to the alternative third person gender neutral…

So ... I probably shouldn't write anything here. Anyway, in the spirit of learning and communication and respectful dialogue ...

I think one of the tensions here is between people who think that providing one non-gendered pronoun is a sufficient individual vs. societal customization setting versus those who think that every(-ish) stated individual pronoun choice being mandatory is the appropriate and respectful customization setting.

I first started thinking about these issues not from a trans / non-binary / fluid direction, but from the point of view of removing unnecessary gendering when it was irrelevant to the situation under discussion. So, from that perspective a single unambiguous non-gendered pronoun seemed sufficient.

I wasn't looking at things in terms of providing people with fine-grained customization to express themselves.

I find the desire for fine-grained gender-expression customization in tension with the desire to de-emphasize gender. But I can also see how he/she/they sounds suspiciously like he/she/other(not normal) and could be interpreted as alienating or insulting.

I still don't really understand, but frankly I don't have much skin in the game.

I'm half and half white/black so I've never really felt the urge to identify with either. I identify as a tennis player or scientist or programmer.

We live in a society where these days lefties are not disadvantaged, although they were brutalized in the past, and I see no intense desire among lefties to identify as lefties. It makes me wonder whether, if we did not brutalize non cis-gender conforming people, would we see such intense desire for recognition and affirmation of fine-grained gender identity? But obviously we don't live in that world yet.

I may have offended someone here, but I hope it's clear from my care and tone that it's not from a place of disrespect, but one of unfamiliarity and desire to understand.

EDIT> By "lefties", I mean left-handed people.

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

#184

Post by newnewpdro »

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 -…

Autism has become the junk drawer of disorders everyone seems to think they're somehow qualified to diagnose.

Could you provide some actual evidence of RMS being formally diagnosed as autistic?

Because otherwise you're basically spreading a rumor that RMS has a mental disorder, which is not right.

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

#185

Post by josteink »

journalctl wrote: post #125
marmada wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because one basic way of showing any respect at all for someone is calling them by their preferred name and pronouns. Refusing to do so suggests that you somehow know someone else better than they know themselves. If someone is that upset about it they can seethe elsewhere on their own time, but when interacting with someone, just use their preferred name/pronouns.

> Because one basic way of showing any respect at all for someone is calling them by their preferred name and pronouns

This argument makes no sense as before knowing you, I cannot know neither your name nor “preffered pronoun”.

I’m going to call you by the default pronouns defined for the default genders as established by millennia of biological and linguistic evolution.

Anyone demanding everyone else to deviate from those established norms for the sake of pleasing their “personal” pronouns, are simply holding unrealistic expectations, only serving to bring themselves down.

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

#186

Post by bitL »

panzagl wrote: post #145
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…

Hell is sitting in a meeting where a consensus decision is reached that is demonstrably wrong, and everybody treats you like the asshole because your very real and verifiable reasons are making everyone else feel bad or stupid.

The worst thing when that inevitably fails, sometimes with loss of innocent life if stakes are high, you can't even feel good you were right. Being right is completely useless and pointless there.

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

#187

Post by throwaway877cf9 »

sp332 wrote: post #78
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 -…

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.

Funny how autism isn't a valid excuse but being transgender is. Because there are plenty of trans "woman" engineers at large companies like Google, Twitter, GitHub etc. that are fucking creepy and spend all day posting nudes and talking about "girl dick" on social media and yet they're immune from criticism or losing their jobs. Why is it okay to call out Stallman for being a disgusting fuck but the moment you call out these other freaks you're considered a bigot? Why is autism not a valid excuse to be a pervert but being trans is?

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

#188

Post by breuleux »

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…

> i put both in quotes because to this contingent both of those concepts have absolutely zero relation to their actual form.

Indeed, and that deserves some emphasis, I think. Applying "logic" to complex issues in real life is fraught with difficulties, because there aren't really any obviously and fully true premises to base logical arguments on in the first place, and a lot of common sense or "self-evident" inferences are either false or only weakly or unreliably true.

Experience and feelings encode a lot of implicit knowledge about how the world works. When someone makes a dispassionate "logical" argument, they essentially throw these heuristics away and instead work their way up from axioms. Which sounds good in theory, until you realize these axioms are simplistic assumptions that often fail. For example, you might base an economic theory upon the axiom that economic actors are rational. In reality, though, that's not true, and you'd be better off incorporating some of your personal experiences and feelings because they may give you an intuitive grasp of when to trust the axiom, and when not to.

Logical, dispassionate arguments are (not always, but often) like arguments about spherical cows. Sure, they are technically valid, but they rely on simplifying assumptions, sometimes to the point of uselessness. The people who do that have undue confidence in a lot of platitudes, which makes them blind to the fact they are building their arguments on sand.

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

#189

Post by vnth93 »

toofy wrote: post #109
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 -…

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…

Sorry but I'm going to have to ask for the basis of your claim here. It is wellknown that autistic people's lack of selfawareness is varying and inconsistent and how much they can overcome this depends heavily on how much help they received. Normal people misread the intentions of each other on a regular basis yet are somehow experts on the autistic mind?

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

#190

Post by dragonwriter »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #183
least wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many third person pronouns that people have suggested that are not widely in use today, including singular they. Ze, zhe, per, zer, e, etc. [1] have all been proposed at various points in time (and some have resurfaced in the past several years) and there are people who identify by these pronouns. If singular 'they' is valid, then so are they (plural, referring to the alternative third person gender neutral…

So ... I probably shouldn't write anything here. Anyway, in the spirit of learning and communication and respectful dialogue ... I think one of the tensions here is between people who think that providing one non-gendered pronoun is a sufficient individual vs. societal customization setting versus those who think that every(-ish) stated individual pronoun choice being mandatory is the appropriate and respectful custo…

> I find the desire for fine-grained gender-expression customization in tension with the desire to de-emphasize gender.

I think a problem is the failure to distinguish between gender identity and externally imposed gender and gender stereotypes. Increasing range of expression and social recognition of gender identity is aligned with reducing and eliminating socially-imposed gender and gender stereotypes.

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