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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

#391

Post by orthoxerox »

spiritplumber wrote: post #290
ethbr0 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"Does wearing this thing make me look fat?" "A bit. If your goal is to look thinner I'd try that other thing instead." Is this a neurotypical person being a butt, or an autistic person trying to be helpful? Answer: yes.

It could be a neurotypical Dutch being themselves. Societal norms vary from culture to culture, even within what we call the western world.

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

#392

Post by Noos »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #321
ethbr0 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you’re honestly asking, it’s a rude question as stated. But if you’re sincerely admitting you don’t understand the difference, the difference is this: Many people (including myself) have difficulty with certain social cues and expectations. Many of us can be offputting or come off as overly direct or disrespectful. Where we diverge is when and how we address that fact. Do we (only) lash out and expect the world to…

To be blunt, I think a lot of people here misuse autism. The autistic person I had to deal with a lot of times had "difficulty" with social cues in that he was an adult that had no idea of not standing by others when they were working, would endlessly repeat things, was more or less impossible to hold a conversation with, etc. We more or less had to babysit him as impromptu caretakers.

It isn't "oh, I don't know how to read a room." Even granting high function, I feel people use autism in the same way as they do OCD; it's not something you use "neurodivergent" with seriously.

Like generally there's a lot of disability chic or identity these days; but moderate autism makes it incredibly hard to act in daily life in the same way moderate OCD does. If it's significant enough, it's not just someone being brisk or unempathetic in the same way OCD doesn't mean being a neat freak.

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

#393

Post by winter_blue »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #224
winter_blue wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people actually support all software being free? Note that I said above: > but I don’t support all software being “free of cost” Does anyone really support all software being free ? That means developers would have to live like saints / monks, with donations to support themselves (and forgo the the 250k income that's become the standard/median in Silicon Valley today...).

Well, there are other ways to get income while producing software than selling the software. You can be a university professor. You can be funded by grants. You can have a job working for a non-software company that lets you produce free software for that company's use that you can also give away, while they keep paying your salary. Things like that were how open source software has been historically produced mostly,…

> You can be a university professor. You can be funded by grants.

I actually have a bunch of friends that I went to college with, who all have PhDs now. Getting a tenure track position is nearly impossible. Also, grants are extremely hard to get. They’re all working either: (1) as postdocs (where there is a grant funding it), or worse (2) looking for a postdoctoral or tenure-track position (or have lost a postdoc position because the grant ran out). These things are incredibly hard to do.

> You can have a job working for a non-software company that lets you produce free software for that company's use that you can also give away, while they keep paying your salary.

If the plan is abolish proprietary software, there’s not gonna be a lot of companies making money selling software, ie making software. So do you mean some hardware company that needs to write some specific software for its needs?

I suppose there could be a world where most/all software is free (in GNU terms), but you’d end up with almost everything becoming web-based SaaS, and that would be the commercial model. (I mean, we’re already pretty close to that.)

Universal basic income requires a tax base of highly productive, and high earning taxpayers. Just look at the economic contribution of software and technology companies. If the government were to take a wrecking ball to that literal economic powerhouse, how significantly would the tax base shrink by?

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

#394

Post by kelnos »

microtherion wrote: post #181
ruined wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

plenty of autistic people manage to be decent. making excuses like this simply dodges responsibility and assigns bad credit to millions of autistic people who don't deserve it, and amounts to concern trolling.

It's very difficult to generalize over autistic people, because autism encompasses such a wide range of behaviors and abilities. But many people on the autism spectrum seem to have in common that they have (a) below average ability in picking up subtle social cues and (b) above average ability in memorizing and following rules. In consequence, if RMS is truly on the autism spectrum (I have no idea whether he is), nev…

Based on much of what I read the last time around with this mess, it seems to me, though, that RMS just doesn't care. It's one thing to be genuinely confused what's appropriate and what's not, but it's another to just not care. It seems like people tried many, many times to set clear boundaries for him, but he continued to blow right through them.

Was that a fault of his, or a fault of his neuroatypical brain? I don't know enough about him or his situation to know. But does it matter? I do think that intent and context matters, but often the bad outcome is the same regardless of intent. The consequences should be different between intentional and unintentional harm, but there still should be consequences either way.

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

#395

Post by greatartiste »

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?

There can be a very fine line. A few years ago I worked with someone who was a bullying objectionable arse especially to younger staff. Eventually it all caught up with him and with HR breathing down his neck he managed to acquire a Asperger's diagnosis which was his get out of jail free card. A colleague of mine called it 'medicalising c*ntishness'.

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

#396

Post by kelnos »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #332
ruined wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

show me where i said that. autistic people are not uniquely malevolent, and it is not offensive to suggest autistic people are not uniquely malevolent. the premise at the root of the thread was that autistic people can't tell bad ideas from good ideas, and should thus go forever uncriticized. both in that it's wrong, and in that it casts autistic people as corruptible and dangerous, when we know very well most "norma…

> was that autistic people can't tell bad ideas from good ideas They can tell that. Sometimes maybe even better than others. What they can't do well is navigate across social clues that others pick up instinctively. That aren't explicitly spoken. It's not about considering them harmful or not, it's not whether they should be forgiven or not. It's about understanding . An autistic person behaves in a way that you inte…

> An autistic person behaves in a way that you interpret as "being an asshole" not because they can't tell whether they're being an asshole - it's because they think in a different way and their reasoning makes perfect sense for them and doesn't make them seem like an asshole.

Aren't you basically doing the same thing as the parent is accused of doing, though? Painting all autistic people with the same brush?

Just like non-autistic people, autistic people can also be assholes. Some recognize that they can't pick up on social cues, but just don't care. Many do! But some don't. RMS may be one of the uncaring kind, and it seems a lot of what people have said about him may support that. And do we really want someone like that running advocacy for Free Software?

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

#397

Post by choeger »

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…

There is no objectivity in this. RMS was attacked by a specific subgroup of the identity culture. He could well be defended by another. Sometimes identity politics just seems to be the continuation of european leftist splinter group infighting with other means.

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

#398

Post by dgellow »

novok wrote: post #368
exikyut wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wh...a. Transitioning fixed your social cue perception?! That is incredibly fascinating. I'm not even sure how to classify that... pragmatic psychological function (oookay that's probably not a thing), neurobiology, or what else. IMO this is a gigantic breadcrumb for Something™. The question is what the axis point was, and what got fixed as a result. Cooool. I am very curious what else shifted that you'd be happy to…

Autistic MtF programmers is something that happens enough to be a trope, joke or meme.

What is an MtF programmer? I read it as Microsoft programmer but that doesn't really make that much sense in the context.

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

#399

Post by cpach »

dgellow wrote: post #398
novok wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autistic MtF programmers is something that happens enough to be a trope, joke or meme.

What is an MtF programmer? I read it as Microsoft programmer but that doesn't really make that much sense in the context.

MtF = Male to Female

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

#400

Post by _v7gu »

pfortuny wrote: post #380
gruez wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

No but justice comes before kindness.

Justice without kindness is just violence while somehow getting to feel good about it
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