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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

#431

Post by jamesrcole »

glangdale wrote: post #430
jamesrcole wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principle I'm arguing for does not involve any specific view of what "better" is. A norm of shutting down someone whenever a number of people consider that person's views or actions to be offensive or harmful will stifle change. It will stifle all change and evolution of norms and beliefs. It's an authoritarian impulse that will only ratchet up restrictions on what can be said and done. If such a norm had been in…

I think you've 100% missed the point here, but it's late, and I can't channel any more of Stanley Fish's "The Trouble with Principle" (very recommended, and readable) at this hour.

I'd remind you that this subthread is all under my response to a comment which said "there is a benefit to radical thinking and nonconformity, but "do it without hurting others" is a reasonable line to draw. ... I still believe ... that it's possible to maintain not-normal opinions without causing pain to the people around you.".

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

#432

Post by DanBC »

ng12 wrote: post #425
input_sh wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was also one that I can't be bothered to find that goes something along the lines of "teens sext each other, therefore child pornography should be legal".

> There was also one that I can't be bothered to find Then please don't post it. Lazy citation of original material is how we got here.

There are lots of them, and they're easy to find. They're all on his website. Here are a few.

RMS has made a few comments saying that images of child sexual abuse should not be illegal.

https://stallman.org/archives/2012-jul-oct.html#15_September...

> Rick Falkvinge joins me in demanding an end to the censorship of "child pornography", and points out that if in the US you observe the rape of a child, making a video or photo to use as evidence would subject you to a greater penalty than the rapist.

> The article does not mention that it's common practice for teenagers to exchange nude photos with their lovers, and they all potentially could be imprisoned for this. A substantial fraction of them are actually prosecuted.

https://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html

> The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.

> Some rules might be called for when these acts directly affect other people's interests. For incest, contraception could be mandatory to avoid risk of inbreeding. For prostitution, a license should be required to ensure prostitutes get regular medical check-ups, and they should have training and support in insisting on use of condoms. This will be an advance in public health, compared with the situation today.

https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...

> Dutch pedophiles have formed a political party to campaign for legalization. [Reference updated on 2018-04-25 because the old link was broken.]

> I am skeptical 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.

https://stallman.org/archives/2017-mar-jun.html

> In the US, people convicted for having copies of child pornography tend to get longer prison sentences than those convicted of having sex with children.

> Mere possession of child pornography should not be a crime at all. To prosecute people for possessing something published, no matter what it may be, is a big threat to human rights.

https://stallman.org/archives/2011-may-aug.html

> "Child" pornography is being used as an excuse to threaten all American internet users' privacy.

> The term "child pornography" is dishonest. The censorship of it puts young lovers in direct danger of prosecution.

> Many published works are disgusting, but censorship is more so. In the Internet, enforcement of censorship puts other rights in danger.

> Please support demandprogress.org's campaign against this bill.

There are loads of these. Stallman takes a hardline anti-Censorship view, and he sees any prohibition on possession or distribution of images of child sexual abuse as censorship.

His argument about criminalising children who share images of themselves with other children has a simple fix: stop prosecuting children for doing stupid shit.

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

#433

Post by sp332 »

asveikau wrote: post #146
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.

> Autism might hypothetically lead to doing that until someone pulled him aside and told him it was creepy and made others uncomfortable. It's not with autism, but I have first hand experience telling a mentally ill person (diagnosis was schizoaffective) that certain behavior is creepy and made women uncomfortable. They didn't listen. They argued it with me very intensely instead. In some cases part of the illness is…

Was the argument about whether the behavior made people uncomfortable? Because I'm thinking that after 10, 20, 50 people told him that it did, it might sink in.

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

#434

Post by steveeq1 »

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…

But the judgment was not appropriate punishment for what he said. He said something you disagree with, so what? You should judge people more by their actions than any particular belief they have.

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

#435

Post by gfodor »

DSingularity wrote: post #153
gfodor wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

What a confusing sentence. Are you saying the people who at mischaracterizing observations as claims are doing so because they are projecting their own positions?

No, I'm saying that they themselves use questions as a way to direct or claim, and so, when they encounter a person asking a question that could be interpreted in that way, they project their own behavior onto that person even if the person has no ulterior purpose to the question.

For example, "Do you think we should fix this bug?" can be a directive from your boss to fix the bug if they are this kind of person. If you respond "I'm not sure, is it related to work I did?" could be interpreted as a claim that it's not related to work you did, vs an actual question. The best way to deal with this kind of thing if you are the questioner is to try to craft questions in a way that they are not able to be re-framed as non-questions, but its challenging to do so on the fly.

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

#436

Post by DanBC »

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…

> RMS had that skepticism resolved with knowledge by those who actually discussed the point,

Except he keeps making the same point. He has not changed his mind about images of child sexual abuse. He now knows that these cause harm to the people shown in them, but he thinks censorship is worse than that harm.

And you're entirely missing the point. It doesn't matter if he has changed his mind.

He must know that child abuse is an emotive topic. He must understand that the emotion imposes an extra responsibility to be careful with the way he says things.

His point - that he isn't sure if child abuse is harmful or not - was very easy to find information about. There's a wide range of reputable sources that discuss the harms caused by images of child sexual abuse and by child abuse. Mostly, we have testimony from the abuse people themselves. This stuff is not hidden away, and it appears to have been persuasive to him. So he just didn't bother looking before he made his comments.

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

#437

Post by dirtybird04 »

ng12 wrote: post #426
_skel wrote: post #122

His job, as the head of the FSF and GNU, was to represent those organizations to the public, which includes many people who don't know him. Being judged and vilified by people who don't know you is what happens to public figures. If your behavior brings disrepute on the organizations you represent, you should let those organizations find different representatives. RMS was right to step down. He is still free to say w…

The issue is that Stallman has been this way for decades -- he's always been outspoken, nitpicky, and aggressively libertarian -- and FSF has flourished under his sole leadership. It's only in 2019 that internet culture and clickbait media have made it a "problem". To me, that is significantly more harmful than any of the wonky things RMS sometimes says.

I don't know or care much about Stallman and the situation, don't really have a dog in this fight. What I do know is that "It's been like this for decades" is never an appropriate defense.

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

#439

Post by coleifer »

aonsager wrote: post #101
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, w…

> our society

Whose? Isn't that exactly the issue?

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

#440

Post by ng12 »

dirtybird04 wrote: post #437
ng12 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that Stallman has been this way for decades -- he's always been outspoken, nitpicky, and aggressively libertarian -- and FSF has flourished under his sole leadership. It's only in 2019 that internet culture and clickbait media have made it a "problem". To me, that is significantly more harmful than any of the wonky things RMS sometimes says.

I don't know or care much about Stallman and the situation, don't really have a dog in this fight. What I do know is that "It's been like this for decades" is never an appropriate defense.

Not "it's been like this" -- he, a human person, has been like this. In fact he's been voluntarily blogging his political thoughts for decades (which, again, in 2019 is an incredibly dangerous thing to do).

So the question is this: if he's had his outspoken opinions on controversial topics for decades, there's no evidence of his opinions actually causing any real tangible harm, and under his tenure the FSF has been a runaway success -- why is it an issue now?

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