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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

#271

Post by blagie »

jdub wrote: post #262
blagie wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think claiming one can extrapolate from one particular autistic person to all autistic people is "unfairly generalising about autistic people." Autism is a broad spectrum (and far from unidimensional) which manifests in a broad diversity of ways. I'll generally excuse people who are trying to do the right thing. Richard is trying to do the right thing. If you don't, you'll do very badly in other cultures. By US…

He doesn't do the right thing. He becomes agitated and sometimes aggressive when anyone points out that they're uncomfortable with his behaviour. He is not interested in their perspective or comfort.

You're even more confused. Please reread: "I'll generally excuse people who are trying to do the right thing. Richard is trying to do the right thing."

I understand within your cultural frame and value system, ethical behavior is defined with regards to other people's comfort. That's not true for Richard (not for the culture I was born in, for that matter; I don't much care if people around me feel comfortable, nor if they make me feel comfortable, although I do know how to code switch, and do so in professional settings so as to be successful in the US).

Cross-cultural fluency involves being able to interact with people with different value systems. People in the Middle East, China, or Russia will have very different views of what the right thing is from yourself.

I've almost never met a person who tried as hard to do what *they* (not you, not me) believed was right as Richard.

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

#272

Post by lawnchair_larry »

mjg59 wrote: post #96
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real problem with the culture today. People willfully, blatantly lying about other people to smear them and trying to convince everyone else to shun them as well.

I don't think it's unreasonable to interpret "I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children" as a suggestion that there are circumstances under which paedophilia is OK. Suggesting that someone doing so is willfully, blatantly lying seems like an unsupported claim.

Except that it’s literally not a suggestion that there are circumstances under which it is ok. You’re not stupid. You know what he meant. And you know what he meant wasn’t what he is being smeared as.

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

#273

Post by seba_dos1 »

jolux wrote: post #211
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encourage you to read what he actually said rather than digest it through hit pieces, because it’s not even controversial. He said that, hypothetically, if someone had sex with a victim of sex trafficking unkowingly - that is, the sex part was knowingly, but the victim of sex trafficking part was unknown, then it would not be fair to charge the man with rape. If I kidnap a woman, sell her has a sex slave, and threa…

I read them this in light of his past statements here, which seem to cast the statements he made around Minsky differently. In particular, "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/…

And what's wrong with that take, exactly? It's a natural conclusion any critical thinker who strongly values individualism will come into before they start to consider the differences of power at play that make giving and recognizing actual consent very tricky (even for adults, let alone children); which actually isn't that obvious to notice at all if you have never been in such situation yourself before. This is a take that is logically coherent and honest - and naturally progresses once you learn new information. Which seems to be exactly what happened in case of Stallman, who retracted his earlier opinion in a logically coherent way.

Honestly, I'm amazed at how many bad ideas people can come into just because they don't understand that other people may think with different processes than they do. I'm honestly not sure whether it's intellectual laziness or pure malice (or both).

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

#274

Post by adolph »

nicklecompte wrote: post #111
subjectsigma wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its strange to me that you think RMS has to "prove" that he's autistic (and therefore deserving of sympathy) - but decades of activism and writing about progressive topics (workers rights, trans rights, ending discrimination, improving IP laws, etc) can get undone in a matter of days by anonymous and uncorroborated accusations, and that's totally fine. You want him to get onstage with his therapist or something? Look…

Stallman himself said he wasn’t autistic[1], so this is really a case of his fans inventing a diagnosis to protect someone who doesn’t deserve it, smearing millions of innocent people in the process. It’s really indefensible. And one of the most frustrating things about bullshit like “RMS can’t help himself because of his autism” is that bullshit never goes away no matter how definitively it is debunked. I also never…

"For instance, one of those characteristics is having trouble with rhythm. I love the most complicated, fascinating rhythms."

Somehow I can't shake the feeling that his example supporting his confident self-diagnosis paradoxically undercuts it instead.

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

#275

Post by DiggyJohnson »

gizmo686 wrote: post #260
Avshalom wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As I said, I can pass. My point is that other people making me put in the work to pass are being assholes. The irony of them doing so in the name of diversity and inclusion is not lost on me. > that your emotional intelligence was learned rather than instinctual does not make it less real. That is a rather technical statement, that would be dependent on exactly what you mean by "emotional intelligence". Relying on ge…

Word for word, what you said here is extremely valuable to me. I hope that this isn’t seen as the typical guideline-breaking +1.

Sometimes I resent the patchy compensation mechanisms I’ve built up. It’s almost impossible to explain the frustration, the exhaustion, of choosing to be kind in a fashion that differs from my own understanding of kindness.

I am inherently kind, and I don’t have to choose that. I am confident in that statement. What I do have to force is mapping my default expression of kindness to the norms that friends, family, and acquaintances will understand. This is so important, because failing to do so means pushing all those people away. I feel like I can never let my guard down.

Then I remember to stop talking about myself; cue flash of (rational) anxiety; catch myself from a mental break; go and take a 50 minute long shower.

I’m so thankful for the people that give me a chance to reset, learn, and grow from these iterations.

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

#276

Post by jolux »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #273
jolux wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read them this in light of his past statements here, which seem to cast the statements he made around Minsky differently. In particular, "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/…

And what's wrong with that take, exactly? It's a natural conclusion any critical thinker who strongly values individualism will come into before they start to consider the differences of power at play that make giving and recognizing actual consent very tricky (even for adults, let alone children); which actually isn't that obvious to notice at all if you have never been in such situation yourself before. This is a t…

>And what's wrong with that take, exactly?

You know what's wrong with it and you described what's wrong with it over the next several sentences. Somebody who doesn't understand that is not fit to be a leader. If you don't understand those power imbalances, you are bound to do harm.

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

#277

Post by arp242 »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #250
arp242 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anymo…

> 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

Well, yes, but everyone is talking about this, including your comment.

Was Stallman treated unfairly? Sure. It is what it is; the world is an unfair place. I can't change that either. It's been a few years: let's move on and talk about effective leadership for the movement instead.

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

#278

Post by hntrader »

patmcc wrote: post #264
hntrader wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Not so different to the deceased, though.

You're extending the analogy beyond its usefulness.

In the case of subjective offense, it should be and usually is different.

If you're called a racial slur by someone who just started learning English and genuinely doesn't know the true meaning of the word, you should take less offense to it than if you were called the slur by someone with obvious malicious intent.

Intent and context matters both in terms of how the "accused" should be viewed as well as how the "victim" should feel.

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

#279

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

adamrezich wrote: post #238
yakaccount4 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are a lot of people out there that enjoy being an ass. You can even be rich by being an ass, like the Fox News anchors.

or the CNN anchors

CNN is not comparable to Fox News like that.

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

#280

Post by colechristensen »

mdoms wrote: post #135
konjin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can embrace acceptance that people are different and realize that differences make some people better and worse for certain things. I find it astonishing that blatant abelism like yours is acceptable in polite society. >You can embrace acceptance that genders are different and realize that differences make some genders better and worse for certain things. >You can embrace acceptance that races are different and…

Is it ableist to suggest that blind people don't make good air traffic controllers, that paralysed people don't make the best bicycle couriers or that a deaf person is perhaps not a suitable music critic? Everyone works within the limitations of our abilities, and some people are dealt difficult hands - but reality doesn't care about your feelings.

The key to not discriminating based on ability is to be sure you are endeavoring to enable a person to do something to the best of their abilities and not insisting that the only people allowed to do something are those who are best suited for it. But there is a separation between "not an ideal candidate for this job" and "not reasonably able to do this job".

Indeed, sometimes the person with the disability can be better at the job because of what they have learned in an effort to overcome - this is why you don't just slap a label on a person and declare them unfit because they match a description.

Being tolerant, respecting differences, however you want to put it does not mean being blind to outcomes.

People sometimes don't get this.

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