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

#511

Post by widowlark » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 11:18 PM UTC

seba_dos1 wrote: post #348

kelnos wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that's correct, and that the "hot ladies" thing happened as she describes, how do you excuse away all the other inappropriate and harassing behavior he's displayed over the years?

Such as? Most of "examples" that were in circulation for past days were usually misunderstood jokes that others made at his expense. Seriously - how can one treat somebody mentioning "if he ever hits on you, just tell him you use vim" as an example of what's wrong with rms seriously? Stories about plants being kept by female professors just to scare him away? Please. You need to be completely missing the context to i…

If you haven't seen the actual quotes from him by now, theres no chance you will pay attention to them going forward.

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

#512

Post by yocheckitdawg » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 11:18 PM UTC

glangdale wrote: post #428

thatcat wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no future Jobs or Stallman who is going to change the status quo of technology, but be agreeable and not neurotic.

First of all, this is bullshit. There are plenty of perfectly agreeable people in computing who have had massive impact. I've met Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, for example, and both were kind and pleasant people. I don't recall hearing that Berners-Lee is anything but pleasant. While there are plenty of disagreeable sorts (I hear Dijkstra was a bit of a Djick) there is by no means a hard and fast rule that those w…

Few differences here though.

Thompson and Ritchie were technical pioneers but weren't philosophical pioneers. Their work was entirely about implementing technical solutions, it had nothing to do with the philosophical structure within which those solutions were made.

Jobs and Stallman were different. They had strong and assertive views about how technology "should" be, not just how things would get done.

Jobs was all about accessible, easy to use, and sexy being important to technology.

Stallman is all about resisting the influence on corporate and governmental interests on the development of software.

I mean look at this list of suggestions Stallman made to Microsoft. https://mspoweruser.com/richard-stallmans-10-suggestions-to-... This is entirely about the philosophy of how computer software development should occur, not really anything to do with the technical aspects of it.

Richard Stallman sounds like a bit of a paranoid nutter. Is it safe to assume that his paranoia and personal idiosyncrasies can be separated from his philosophical views of the world (many of which are fundamentally about empowering the individual technology user against corporate and governmental interests which many of us agree with)? The jury is out on that one imo. He has seeded his ideas successfully and now they permeate the culture so perhaps he as an individual is no longer necessary to the movement.

But what about the next Stallman? A man or woman with a vision of how the world should or could be that is informed by their personal flaws? Will they be determined as to problematic to be involved in the industry and we will lose out on a unique way of looking at the world that would leave as all better off? I don't know. None of us do. It's an open question.

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

#513

Post by meruru » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 11:31 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #481

ng12 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He thinks people should be punished for selling proprietary software correct? No? I'm not really sure what you mean by "punish" here. He advocates for Free Software -- to my knowledge he's never advocated for punishing anybody. > He appears to support actions that harm others by some of his statement. How? Where's the harm? What's harmful about questioning the age of consent being 18 (which, may I remind you, varie…

> Why are some aspects of US law declared beyond the scope of acceptable discourse? They're not, it's fine to talk about these things, and there are plenty of places where people discuss all aspects of law around sexual offending. The wrong time and place to talk about them is when your organisation is discussing potential problems because a high profile person linked to your organisation has been accused of raping a…

Wouldn't it better for MIT's reputation if people weren't jumping to the conclusion that one of their professors would willingly rape people? Did anyone actually believe Marvin Minsky of all people would do that? I wonder what he will have to say about this when he gets unfrozen.

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

#514

Post by dang » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 11:44 PM UTC

throwiay789 wrote: post #458

DanBC wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was an era when it was still an open question whether the Wikipedia should have pro-pedophilia advocacy in their entries. NAMBLA and similar will take every opportunity to push pro-paedophile[1] and pro-abuse positions. Your example just speaks to the nativity of Wikipedia (and a bunch of other US tech companies) around people who commit contact offences against children. But we need to be clear: this was not in…

>I guess we need to say that some people with a sexual interest in children will not commit offences against children, and so some pro-paedophile commentary is acceptable. this is just incredibly stupid to believe, pro-paedophile commentary is acceptable? why in the ever living fk would that be aceptable? because a pedo might not actually commit those acts? are you stupid?

We've banned this account. Posting like this will get your main account banned as well, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#515

Post by seba_dos1 » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 12:30 AM UTC

widowlark wrote: post #511

seba_dos1 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as? Most of "examples" that were in circulation for past days were usually misunderstood jokes that others made at his expense. Seriously - how can one treat somebody mentioning "if he ever hits on you, just tell him you use vim" as an example of what's wrong with rms seriously? Stories about plants being kept by female professors just to scare him away? Please. You need to be completely missing the context to i…

If you haven't seen the actual quotes from him by now, theres no chance you will pay attention to them going forward.

The point is - I've seen plenty thrown around, most very clearly manipulated. What's more - some small amount of them made me doubt in Stallman a bit, like the "knight for ladies" thing, but after a while it turned out it was manipulated as well, so... it feels like standing on rms side here might be a pretty safe bet after all.

If you're too lazy to do the research yourself, I've even found a page that collects it and does proper justice to objectively present them in full context: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ (although this text could do just as well with a few less "paid to write, not to read" repetitions...)

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

#516

Post by lilyball » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:48 AM UTC

emiliobumachar wrote: post #216

lilyball wrote: post #143

> As an active feminist and one who has witnessed much bad behavior among tech CEOs over the past 30 years, I think that accusing Richard Stallman of not supporting women, gays, or any other minority group is false. Look at his real history — […] — but his record in helping to give everyone in the world access to free software. What kind of bullshit is this? Stallman's advocacy for open source in no way whatsoever ma…

She has reasonably solid feminist credentials, which she presented up front, probably to preempt accusations of sexism. No True Scotsman would ever support Stallman?

"Feminist credentials" aren't really a thing. It's not like there's an organization you can carry a card for.

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

#517

Post by overgard » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:13 AM UTC

mlevental wrote: post #118

overgard wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure. Agreed. But the entire point of the "you can't possibly know" is that they're saying the exact opposite. That it's a waste of time for them to explain anything to you because you are apparently incapable of human empathy.

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

#518

Post by overgard » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:16 AM UTC

JabavuAdams wrote: post #141

overgard wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People are excellent rationalizers -- smart people especially. Basically smart people can use reason as a cudgel to win any debate -- not because they've actually constructed a good proof or considered all relevant evidence.

Ok, but you can also "win" a debate by beating people to death with strong feelings. Ever watch a toddler throw a temper tantrum?

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

#519

Post by overgard » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:23 AM UTC

pgcj_poster wrote: post #372

overgard wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> its only purpose is to end discussion. Yeah, and that would necessarily be a bad thing if your only priority was pwning people with facts and logic. However, some people care more about things like being kind and getting along with others. Such people have to be willing to stop doing things that hurt others, even if they can't understand why those things are bad. Eg. It's very hard to explain what gender dysphoria…

> Yeah, and that would necessarily be a bad thing if your only priority was pwning people with facts and logic.

I'm not interested in "pwning" anyone. But if someone says "this guy needs to be fired/resign" (which actually, in the rms case I kinda agree with), then they need to be able to articulate things in a manner that's not just "you're not from [some group] so you don't get it". It's just lazy and disrespectful to other people.

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

#520

Post by overgard » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 2:27 AM UTC

throwawayjava wrote: post #155

overgard wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Logic is great if you want to shoot a canon at the right target or design a circuit. But our current logical tools -- and especially that extremely simple set of 2000+ year old syllogisms designed by Aristotle to help him classify bugs that you're probably referring to when you say logic -- are not even a remotely good tool for analyzing anything that involves humans or society. Maybe logic can be useful in the way y…

I believe in human empathy so much that I think I'm capable of understanding a persons struggle even if I haven't directly been through what they've been through. Indeed I think almost all of us are capable of this, even if we don't practice it. I think the argument that you can only talk about things you have personal experience in is essentially a pessimistic view about human empathy.