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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

#331

Post by raxxorrax »

fzeroracer wrote: post #269
simplehuman wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a start just leaving a paper trail of formal complaints at MIT would help ascertain this has been happenning for a long time. I just find it shocking that there is no formal complaint. Instead, what we have is just random people claiming that other people got harassed. None of this is verifiable and honestly if internet has thought us anything it is that everybody lies in social media just to get a few likes.

You realize that that very well could be the case and reason why Stallman stepped down, correct? MIT could likely get into deep trouble if they chose to publish all of the formal complaints against Stallman for obvious privacy reasons and this incident could've just been the proverbial final straw. And regardless: Apply Occam's Razor here. What is more likely: A group of random people consisting of professors and stu…

Seriously, for a public figure you accept evidence this weak? No, Occam's Razor wouldn't let you make this conclusion at all.

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

#332

Post by solidasparagus »

noobermin wrote: post #321
solidasparagus wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for creativity, it’s important to be able to think and express yourself without always needing to second guess yourself. And I think we’re creating a society where everyone has to always second guess everything they think and say in case they accidentally say something that may bring in the outrage mob It's funny you should say this. This is one of the defining traits of Stallman in my memory. He would go out of hi…

This makes him an annoying true believer. This doesn't make him "harmful" in the sense that they seemed to mean.

I was really only replying to that comment's last paragraph - the outrage culture that Stallman embraced has come back to bite him.

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

#333

Post by mirimir »

strenholme wrote: post #325
mirimir wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was there, and part of it. You may find it hard to believe, but there were lots of young women who were just extremely promiscuous. Just as promiscuous as the young men were. Free sex was a political statement. A form of rebellion against the status quo . And of course, it was enabled by the ready availability of antibiotics and hormonal birth control.

I saw a lot of that movement too, probably not as much as you. My sense is that no one was finding any real satisfaction from having short term strictly sexual relationships, and my sense in this day and age of #MeToo (which I very strongly feel has become a witch hunt) is that some men were hurting some women emotionally by only wanting them for sex.

Right. I was an illegal immigrant from Russia. And an LSD dealer. I was also ~homeless, and living out of a VW bug.

It wasn't about having "meaningful relationships". It was about having fun. And forgetting about dying in a nuclear war. For those who weren't alive in 1962, you really have no clue.

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

#334

Post by kragen »

input_sh wrote: post #326
trhway wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

man, taken seriously most of it does sound awfully wrong of course, no argument here. Yet about taking it seriously - this is the quote that follows yours a bit later : " Necrophilia would be my second choice for what should be done with my corpse, the first being scientific or medical use. Once my dead body is no longer of any use to me, it may as well be of some use to someone. "

Ah, the old "it's just a joke" justification.

That's not a joke. He's serious.

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

#335

Post by dreamcompiler »

curiousgal wrote: post #273
lallysingh wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a bad representative for neuro-atypicals

List one neuro-atypical with as many achievements and as much world-changing added value. To me this whole ordeal is simple to look at: RMS: created software that shaped today's world and hurt some people's feelings. RMS' criticizers: ...?

Just one? Temple Grandin comes immediately to mind. In our field Bill Gates probably qualifies as high-functioning neuro-atypical. And then there's Richard Greenblatt who built the first Lisp machines that eventually became the counter-inspiration for RMS's whole career.

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

#336

Post by kabacha »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #214
zaroth wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But on Twitter all you see is this; https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/1172283772428906496?s=21

Yikes, what an awful group of self-righteous people. Bullying and slander is perfectly fine when the virtuous do it I see.

Funny how much you can tell about these people from their twitter profile. These people are so privilidged that they have so much time to spend on the most trivial of subjects.

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

#337

Post by raxxorrax »

mlevental wrote: post #70
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 -…

>He’s autistic. this is literally the "we need better mental health facilities because of gun violence" argument. the vast majority of autistic people do not behave like stallman. it's not a pass. if he's so fucking smart why didn't he figure out how to comport himself better amongst the normies?

Plainly spoken, he probably underestimated the mental abilities of his listeners and wasn't prepared for his statements to be misinterpreted in this way.

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

#338

Post by strenholme »

kragen wrote: post #322
strenholme wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It normalized the objectification of women [1] and allowed sexual predators [2] to flourish. [1] Objectification: instead of treating a woman like a person, they were reduced to being a body to satisfy a man’s base urges. [2] Sexual predator: Men who do not care about women as human beings but merely see them as potential sexual conquests, and who do dishonest and manipulative stuff to get a woman to have sex with th…

Hmm, I think those are pre-existing pathologies in society that free-love folks have worked really hard both to prevent—by empowering women, by frowning upon non-lesbian couplings, by talking extensively about informed and enthusiastic consent, and by fostering cross-gender friendships the monogs were suspicious of—and to reduce the harm from, for example, with birth control, condoms (and strong norms against not usi…

The “free love” movement of the 1960s and 1970s, as I understand it, did not really have people widely using condoms. It was assumed that women were on the pill or used a diaphragm.

Condoms only really became a thing in the 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic hit the world.

Your post gives me a lot of hope; I really hope that we can reverse the trend of people, particularly young people in their 20s, having sex less and less. [1]

I personally would not partake in such a free love movement, but I really want to see, post-#MeToo, a world where it’s OK for a man to sexually desire a woman, as long as he also sees her as a person with feelings, is not being manipulative to get sex, and fully respects consent.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/well/family/millennials-l...

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

#339

Post by dependenttypes »

fzeroracer wrote: post #269
simplehuman wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a start just leaving a paper trail of formal complaints at MIT would help ascertain this has been happenning for a long time. I just find it shocking that there is no formal complaint. Instead, what we have is just random people claiming that other people got harassed. None of this is verifiable and honestly if internet has thought us anything it is that everybody lies in social media just to get a few likes.

You realize that that very well could be the case and reason why Stallman stepped down, correct? MIT could likely get into deep trouble if they chose to publish all of the formal complaints against Stallman for obvious privacy reasons and this incident could've just been the proverbial final straw. And regardless: Apply Occam's Razor here. What is more likely: A group of random people consisting of professors and stu…

> A group of random people consisting of professors and students

A group of random people with a certain radical ideology, most of which work at google[0][1][2], the military[3], or have personal issues with him due to their history[4][5], etc. I certainly do not believe that it is a conspiracy - ie they are being honest on the fact that they do not like him (not necessarily on why they do not like him though) and that they are not being paid by someone to do it, but they are far from random people.

Also, I personally saw no professors being involved, although I might be mistaken.

[0] https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...

[1] https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1172422966904160257

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20995556

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21090851

[4] see 0 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bushnell#GNU_Hurd

[5] https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/1173981287037751297 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza#Advocacy_of_Mi...

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

#340

Post by asjw »

loeg wrote: post #123
vnth93 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he had the capacity to comprehend any of this he wouldn't be the sort of person who talked about the Knight of Hot Ladies at work. Unless Garrett somehow turned out to be a some kind of medical expert, his opinion on Stallman is about valid as Stallman's on anyone else.

You don't have to be a doctor to diagnose asshole behavior.

It's enough to be Garret, work at Google and complain about Eben Moglen that does pro bono legal counseling
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