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Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

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Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#241

Post by [deleted] »

hntrader wrote: post #77
toiletfuneral wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah thats me, I don't care about 'intent' as much as 'outcome' All the well meaning in the world doesn't mean shit if you're creating hostility or demeaning others (that is not commentary on RMS, just in general)

"I don't care about 'intent' as much as 'outcome'" Accidentaly killing someone with your car is very different to negligent driving which causes death which is also very different to intentionally killing someone with your car. Clearly intent and context matters a lot.

[deleted]

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#242

Post by sumeno »

konjin wrote: post #75
colechristensen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not. Being unusual does not free you from the burdens of being a decent person, especially while in a public leadership position, especially when your violations are a repeated trend over a very long period. With the right diagnostic criteria just about everybody who is an asshole could be diagnosed with some mental disorder or another and that is more or less the present state of psychology, that kind of reason…

So you want no one autistic to ever be in a position of leadership?

Not every autistic person is an asshole

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#243

Post by fuzxi »

bobsled wrote: post #194
zeruch wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just neurodivergence, but its that he recognizes where he jabs people and pretty much admits he doesn't care. I once had this conversation about with with ESR and I remember him saying "RMS doesn't care about the 'social overhead' of most person to person interactions" and so he kind of does his own normative preferences, thinking that because he finds them ideal, that others shouldn't be offended....but the…

I would recommend looking into the less pleasant facts about others you consider philosophically brilliant, especially those further removed from us in time, before you denounce Richard Stallman as irredeemable to history.

Karl Marx and his letter to Engels regarding Lasalle comes to mind, as an example.

http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1862/letters/62_07_30a.html

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#244

Post by gizmo686 »

sumeno wrote: post #240
phkahler wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another sentence after the one you quote which takes the edge off it. Dropping that part could be construed as willfully taking his words out of context to makes them sound worse. IMHO taken as a whole I think it says more about his lack of understanding than him endorsing anything. But as you say, that's not blatant lying.

> 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. This doesn't take the edge off, it makes it sound worse

How does it make it sound worse?

As I read it, he is saying:

Original quote: "I am skeptical about Added context: "because "

The added context moves him even further away from saying anything about pedophilia itself, and further into saying stuff about other people who are saying something about pedophilia.

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#245

Post by Avshalom »

gizmo686 wrote: post #206
Avshalom wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a lot of autistic people and they're all scrupulously kind and emotionally intelligent. The idea that autistic people are assholes is an artifact of every other gamer on the internet self diagnosing themselves with aspergers in the 00s and then using that as an excuse to be un-introspectively cruel to each other.

Diagnosed asperg here; would probably be autistic if I got diagnosed today. If I appear scrupulously kind to you, it is because I am compensating. If I appear emotionally intelligent to you, it is because I had to learn what is literally instinct to most people. At least for me, I am able to compensate effectively and pass in most social situations, but it is exhausting. When I read RMS's writing that lead to the con…

Not to be like a patronizing son of a bitch here but:

that you choose to be kind does not make you less kind. that your emotional intelligence was learned rather than instinctual does not make it less real. that you willingly exhaust yourself exercising those skills is absolutely the opposite of being an asshole.

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#246

Post by [deleted] »

nostrademons wrote: post #143
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why would someone choose to be an ass - or generally choose to be unlikable?

It's usually a matter of priorities. Neurodivergent/autistic people are usually unaware that what they say could cause offense: they lack either the emotional capacity to feel those emotions themselves, or the ability to empathize and predict that other people will feel them. Assholes know, they just care about other things more. They might throw their coworker under the bus for a promotion. Or they'll sexually haras…

[deleted]

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#247

Post by zajio1am »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #199
etrabroline wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great quote. I think a large fraction of male programmers would disagree with Selam Jie Gano's characterization of RMS's statements. These kinds of "culture war" battles should not be happening in GNU. Free Software should be happening and people should be willing to leave these disagreements at the door. If you aren't, I am significantly less interested in working with you and I suspect many GNU contributors are as…

I don't get this. "You should abandon any other ideals you have when working for our ideological project."

Basic compartmentalization. If i have ideological goals A, B, C, then i can work on goal A with people who are indifferent or against B, C, and also work on goal B with people who are indifferent or against A, C, instead of trying to find people in intersection of A, B, C.

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#248

Post by sumeno »

gizmo686 wrote: post #244
sumeno wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This doesn't take the edge off, it makes it sound worse

How does it make it sound worse? As I read it, he is saying: Original quote: "I am skeptical about Added context: "because " The added context moves him even further away from saying anything about pedophilia itself, and further into saying stuff about other people who are saying something about pedophilia.

He's saying parents are just blowing pedophilia out of proportion. How is that an improvement?

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#249

Post by blagie »

astrange wrote: post #153
dralley wrote: post #65

IMO, Stallman is a good philosophical leader, but a terrible organizational leader. "On the board" is a decent compromise. But he has been a huge contributor to GNU's decent into irrelevance in recent years. As an organization, they're perpetually stuck in the 1990s.

FSFLA is actually pretty productive as I understand it. FSF US seems to spend all their time starting irrelevant political campaigns with terrible pun-based slogans.

FSF US is pretty much a one-man show, and does pretty well for a one-man show for impact. It's basically RMS and a few people to support him, as far as I can tell.

A one-man show with the one man missing made no sense to me.

Re: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF

#250

Post by seba_dos1 »

arp242 wrote: post #137
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #8

I think it is strange that, on the one hand, the tech world has been advocating for the rights of neurodivergent people – society should accept that people on the autism spectrum are different and that’s OK. But at the same time RMS has been attacked for some statements very probably stemming from his autism that, while they may seem a bit shocking and at odds with the mainstream, were not illegal or intentionally of…

Neurodiversity – up to some point anyway, some people take it a tad too far – is great, but that also means that different people are, well, different, and are good at different things. Stallman is good at many different things and he doesn't seem like e bad bloke overall. But he is not good at being a leader. At all. It's just not where his aptitudes lie. As a leader he is not only ineffective, but even counter-prod…

You can have a conversation whether Stallman is the best person to be a leader, but let's keep false accusations and blatant misinterpretations of his words out of that please. Especially if those words are part of perfectly reasonable thought chain that lots of people on the spectrum would easily agree with (at least when being at the same point in the chain). When I read those attacks, it's not about Stallman anymore to me - it's about me and all the people like me (a group that just happens to include Stallman).

If someone lacks enough empathy and social skills to be able to put his words into appropriate context, then maybe they should refrain from interpreting those words (and yet they say that those are qualities that autistic people lack...)

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