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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

#301

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

gruez wrote: post #197
wmf wrote: post #108

For those who do not know RMS personally: "I worked for RMS longer than any other programmer. ... This was an own-goal for RMS. He has had plenty of opportunities to learn how to stfu when that’s necessary. ... I can confirm the unfortunate reality that RMS’s behavior was a concern [in the 1990s], and that [Marvin Minsky's] protection was itself part of the problem. He was never held to account; he was himself coddle…

>and that [Marvin Minsky's] protection was itself part of the problem So if your friend was accused of heinous crime, the right thing to do is to distance yourself as far as possible?

If they actually did what they are accused of then, yes, you should probably rethink that friendship. There’s some value in loyalty, but I don’t see a reason why that should include culpable behavior.

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

#302

Post by r3856283 »

r3856283 wrote: post #133
armchairhacker wrote: post #106

Some context I got from https://www.wired.com/story/richard-stallman-and-the-fall-of... : Stallman was pressured to resign from the board and MIT because of some of these controversies: - Jeffrey Epstein coerced one of his victims to have sex with Marvin Minsky. In an online thread, Stallman argued that this might not be sexual assault if Minsky didn't realize she was coerced. - 10 years ago, Stallman claimed that 14…

Not quite. Someone vandalized his name card adding the hot ladies part and took a picture. That was never him. And you turned the quote "pranced around the tables" to "pranced around on the tables." ... why?

The parent was edited. Thanks.

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

#304

Post by linspace »

patmcc wrote: post #268
serf wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not really. 'boys will be boys' doesn't assert that 'boys' get away with whatever they want because they are neuro-divergent, it asserts that gender allows for additional privilege. >Just because somebody is different doesn't mean they can be a creep For the sake of argument : what if that person has neurological quirks which disallow 'non-creep' , to use your parlance, behavior? To take the example even further , it…

Take it to the extreme - murder is illegal; if you kill someone because you're a bad bad person, we jail you. If you kill someone because you're "insane"...we still remove you from society, but you just get treatment instead of punishment. We still consider the act of killing someone unacceptable. If swearing at the beach is unacceptable, full stop, then it's unacceptable for a person with or without TS. (Personally,…

I think there is a clear distinction. People have a right to live above insane persons freedom. TS people have a right to freedom above people's inconvenience to hear curse words. Law balances these kind of things all the time, that's why we don't slave people when they own money anymore, to put one of many examples.

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

#305

Post by sellyme »

patmcc wrote: post #268
serf wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not really. 'boys will be boys' doesn't assert that 'boys' get away with whatever they want because they are neuro-divergent, it asserts that gender allows for additional privilege. >Just because somebody is different doesn't mean they can be a creep For the sake of argument : what if that person has neurological quirks which disallow 'non-creep' , to use your parlance, behavior? To take the example even further , it…

Take it to the extreme - murder is illegal; if you kill someone because you're a bad bad person, we jail you. If you kill someone because you're "insane"...we still remove you from society, but you just get treatment instead of punishment. We still consider the act of killing someone unacceptable. If swearing at the beach is unacceptable, full stop, then it's unacceptable for a person with or without TS. (Personally,…

Weirdly I think taking it to the extreme made your point somewhat worse. Something like theft versus kleptomania is just a punishment versus treatment scenario, but I would definitely perceive someone who commits an unprovoked murder to inherently require psychological treatment, even if they don't meet the requirements of an insanity defence.

But I do agree with the idea that letting someone off the hook for all consequences on account of a mental illness isn't viable. That makes things a lot harder for neurodivergent individuals, but that's why we should have extensive support programs and provide resources to help them cope with the expectations of general society.

It's a tricky problem, because to meaningfully distinguish between someone who is mentally incapable of following a law and someone who is capable of doing so but systematically elects not to, you are functionally deciding which humans do and do not have free will on an individual basis. I think most people would believe that either all humans have free will, or no humans have free will, not somewhere in between, so this is a scenario that is uncomfortable to pretty much everyone.

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

#306

Post by esja »

ethbr0 wrote: post #98
nostrademons wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ribbonfarm called this a couple years ago: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/03/06/a-quick-battle-field-g... Specifically battlefront #8. He calls it consequential because the the neurodivergent/PC conflict highlights an inherent paradox in the PC worldview. Most applications of political correctness focus (at least on the surface) on defending a marginalized group against the verbal attacks of a privileged one. When a…

Honestly asking, what's the difference between someone being neurodivergent and just thoughtless / mean / an ass?

Intent.

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

#307

Post by gigatexal »

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…

So being “neurodivergent” gives him a pass to dismiss statutory rape and pubescent teens having sex or being chill with the viewing or collecting depictions of kiddie porn? [1]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/richard-stallman...

(Posting the amp link because haha)

I think we should thank Stallman for all the work he’s done in advocating for free software but then let him go and be the crazy old man yelling at the clouds and fade into irrelevancy.

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

#308

Post by skissane »

karaterobot wrote: post #130
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…

Just wondering what the source is for Stallman being autistic? I see people saying he's autistic, and I even see people saying he has called himself "borderline autistic", but that's not quite the same thing as a diagnosis. I don't see a reliable source making that claim; even Wikipedia says nothing about it (except a backstage talk item about there not being any source on the claim). I admit, the circumstantial evid…

> Just wondering what the source is for Stallman being autistic? I see people saying he's autistic, and I even see people saying he has called himself "borderline autistic", but that's not quite the same thing as a diagnosis

If you understand the concept of the broad autism phenotype (BAP), it is hard not to see it in his behaviour. He obviously has autistic traits.

Now, is it BAP (sub-clinical ASD) or is it clinical ASD? Nobody can answer that unless they are actually a qualified diagnostician (psychiatrist/psychologist/etc) personally evaluating him.

But I'm not sure how much that matters. The boundary between BAP and ASD is vague, it varies from clinician to clinician and is changing over time.

If you choose to view things dimensionally [0] rather than categorically, you have "super-neurotypical" people at one extreme, you have "severe ASD" at the other [1]. And somewhere in between the two, you draw a line (the diagnostic cutoff), and say people on one side of the line have "mild ASD" and people on the other side of the line don't have ASD. And the people who are on the "neurotypical" side of the line, but still close to it rather than far away, that's BAP.

And I think the point is that RMS obviously is somewhere near that line, whichever side of it he may belong on. (And as I said, the line doesn't have a single fixed location anyway, he might be on one side given some clinicians' ways of drawing it and on the other given others'.)

[0] I've drawn an oversimplified one-dimensional model here. In reality ASD is a multidimensional construct. But, treating it one-dimensionally is a simplification which aids in explanation

[1] I know some people don't like phrases like "mild ASD" or "severe ASD" (or their close relatives "low functioning" and "high functioning"), but how else do you explain the difference between someone diagnosed with "ASD Level 1 / Level 1 without intellectual or language impairment" and someone else who is diagnosed with "ASD Level 3 / Level 3 with intellectual impairment and language impairment"?

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

#309

Post by danielheath »

sellyme wrote: post #293
nostrademons wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Or they care more about being right than being diplomatic. This doesn't seem like particularly assholeish behaviour. Caring more about being perceived as right (even when erroneously), sure, but if the person is actually right of course they should care more about that than diplomacy. Surely we have enough examples demonstrating the pitfalls of fostering a culture where the truth can be ignored if you don't like it…

In the extreme, it totally is. It's important to be right about the important things; it's nice to be right about irrelevant details too, but it's not nearly as important as maintaining a strong network of collaborators.

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

#310

Post by cma »

sjansen wrote: post #127
creamytaco wrote: post #34

Stallman is a bastion of software freedom in a world turning progressively dark. The fact that he never ever compromised his ideals and principles, never sold out and has been repeatedly proven prescient and absolutely on the money on countless issues, makes him someone that we should strive to protect. There are many invididuals in the Free Software world that backstabbed RMS and tried to destroy him with malicious…

> Stallman is a bastion of software freedom In my judgement, he has done marginally more good than harm. Under his leadership the FSF has had only limited impact. Mirroring his own behavior, it has instead often wasted money and good will tilting at windmills instead of of effecting change. I support the ideals of software freedom, but I do not support the FSF or Richard Stallman. He was key to getting the ball rolli…

Wikipedia was tied up in a code documentation license (GFDL) that didn't really make sense for it. Stallman allowed it to be relicensed into creative commons, someone else's baby.

Many people in the same position would have let their ego take control and keep it under the license they created or were most associated with out of pride.

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