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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

#401

Post by herbstein »

gameman144 wrote: post #371
wozer wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work either, because there are some neurotypical people who have mastered the art to say technically correct things but implying different, often awful things.

But isn't that a core part of the problem? If I make a statement and you infer something about my intentions, how are you to know if I actually meant to imply that or not? It seems like a constant game of walking on eggshells if you're trying to pre-emptively prevent anyone from concluding that you were trying to imply something bad. It also seems like this is a largely solved problem in candid one-on-one conversatio…

> If I make a statement and you infer something about my intentions, how are you to know if I actually meant to imply that or not?

If the mafia boss says "I think he is going to get a visit tonight", the person in question is probably not long for this world. Did the mafia boss order the killing of said person?

I agree that every little sentence, in isolation, shouldn't be scrutinized, and meaning inferred in a vacuum. However, surely patterns of behavior and the larger context of the words being said should play a role in our interpretation of the words said?

Otherwise you end up with things that, read hyper-literally, are innocuous while being completely heinous in context. "Exterminate the Vermin" said by an exterminator is very different to it being said by a German in 1944.

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

#402

Post by veltas »

phreack wrote: post #327

This is a controversial opinion, but I believe someone who turns any space he's in into an unsafe place for women should not be leading the FSF. No matter who or their accomplishments. I never saw him being kicked out as unfounded, there were years and years of people being solicited sexually even after explicit non-consent by this man. He just seems to be unwilling to be professional towards women.

Can you explain how he is a threat to women's safety?

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

#403

Post by denton-scratch »

Avshalom wrote: post #172
etrabroline wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>thoughtless / mean / an ass This is precisely what people with autism tend to be like because of the difficulty people with autism have empathizing with others and seeing things from other people's points of view.

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.

Ah. I did that (self-diagnosing as an aspie). I'm not.

It's not a special preoperty of spectrum people that they have to learn what neuro-whatsit folks know "instinctively"; we all have to learn these things. Socialisation is learned, not instinctive. You don't have to have a disorder to have poor social skills.

It could be that your poor social skills are the result of inadequate experience or training; it might be that you don't care much (not because you don't care about others, but just because the approval of others doesn't matter much to you, and expending energy on gaining that approval is wasted energy).

Not needing the approval of others isn't a disease; it's a mark of psychological health.

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

#404

Post by seba_dos1 »

kelnos wrote: post #396
seba_dos1 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 li…

> Just like non-autistic people, autistic people can also be assholes.

I figured that it goes without saying, since that case doesn't need additional explanations ;]

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

#405

Post by the-dude »

orthoxerox wrote: post #391
spiritplumber wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Could you please leave us out of this?

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

#406

Post by buisi »

konjin wrote: post #82
bigtones wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they.... here is a direct quote from him on a pro-pedophilia political party in 2006 that many that people took offence with: “I am sceptical 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://thenextweb.com/dd/2019…

Odd that none of the teens Epstein slept with would be illegal to sleep with in Germany. Pedophilia is starting to mean 'sex I find icky' in the US.

German Law is a bit more complicated than people give it credit for. While the police might not proactively go after cases involving some older minors, they will if the person files a complaint.

If a situation involves "exploitation" under the law, as most of Epstein's crimes would be considered to, then it is also automatically illegal.

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

#407

Post by throw6119088 »

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…

I just wanna leave here some classic papers on sexism and harassment in tech, which are relevant even now:

[1] Why are There so Few Female Computer Scientists (Ellen Spertus, 1991)

https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7040

[2] How to Encourage Women in Linux (Val Henson, 2002)

https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/

[3] What Happens to Us Does Not Happen to Most of You (Kathryn S. McKinley, 2018)

https://www.sigarch.org/what-happens-to-us-does-not-happen-t...

[4] Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing (Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, 2001)

https://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Clubhouse-Women-Computing-P...

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

#408

Post by kelnos »

snvzz wrote: post #112
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…

Slander, pretty much. Fortunately, there's this review of the facts[0]. [0]: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/

It's not a great review. First, it focuses on the email exchange about Minksy. I absolutely agree that RMS's words there were blatantly lied about to make him look bad. RMS absolutely should have shut up sooner in that thread, but he didn't say anything terribly objectionable.

But I stopped reading your link once the author did exactly what he railed on everyone else for doing: misquoting and taking quotes out of context to support their view.

The author tries to defend RMS's views on pedophilia by pointing out that the Dutch article that RMS links to only talks about reducing the age of consent from 16 to 12, and that wouldn't constitute pedophilia. (A conclusion I'm not sure I agree with, but let's pretend I do.) But, nope, shoulda kept on quoting, because two sentences later there's: "The party said it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether." Nope, not ok.

Your linked article also repeatedly says things like, "All those questionable quotes seem very reasonable when put in context." Well, I disagree. After reading the full quotes, I still find most of them unreasonable.

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

#409

Post by jariel »

Here is the 10 page lists of Stallman's 'demands' for people hosting him [1].

This is considerably longer and more detailed than any heretofore described pop singer 'diva' or CEO. I can't think of anyone but heads of state with such requirements.

Stop defending Stallman's 'neurodivergence' as some kind of excuse for his behaviour - this is straight up egocentric narcissism.

[1] https://groups.google.com/a/mysociety.org/g/mysociety-commun...

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

#410

Post by roflc0ptic »

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.

No citation in this, but being trans correlates with being autistic
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