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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

#441
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Are you familiar with the concept of broad autism phenotype (BAP)? A person who has more autistic traits than the average person, but not enough traits (or are not sufficiently impaired by those traits) for an ASD diagnosis, has BAP. Someone who…

I'm not sure you can reduce it to traits in the method you mean. I think mostly it severity. I do think stress can have something to do with it.

I mean, there is no "neat freak" trait; that's something people who don't have OCD use because they think that's part of what it is. It's more intrusive thoughts about contamination, and there isn't a spectrum of those traits. Like you can't really "train" yourself to not be contaminated, in the way autism people talk about training to deal with social conditions. Trying to argue against it reinforces the behavior. It happens despite you knowing its totally irrational

I think I get BAP if you mean "the condition isn't severe enough to significantly impair your life," but I can see similarities between my checking behavior and people suffering the same but worse; I'm just fortunate enough that it doens't occur frequently. The talk about autism though is a different kind of talk; the moderate or severe sufferers are different.

Like the person I mention never got better or could use coping stuff; he would if anything just end up unable to talk possibly because he was medicated sometimes. I understand I'm not a clinician, but there's a lot of "spectrum" behavior in things now; you have gender spectrums, sexual spectrums (asexual, demisexual, sapiosexual), and I'm not sure the concepts aren't just medicalizing normal variation or individual temperament. I wish i could be doing this for me, if anything.

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

#442
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

moderate OCD

People who claim to have "moderate OCD" are just people who like things being tidy, and describe it as OCD because they have no understanding of the real, debilitating condition. Describing yourself as "moderately obsessive" makes no sense, and being able to live with the untidiness means you are not compulsively tidying.

A huge part of the problem with mental health problems is people using the terminology as some sort of 'badge of honor', as if it's something cool and trendy to have rather than an illness that can ruin your life. People really need to stop saying they have OCD unless they've been diagnosed by a professional.

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

#443
post #409

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.o…

Stallman routinely goes to foreign countries and stays with people who he does not know. It is much more sensible just to write everything down and save time.

    I like cats if they are friendly, but they are not good for me; I am
    somewhat allergic to them. This allergy makes my face itch and my
    eyes water. So the bed, and the room I will usually be staying in,
    need to be clean of cat hair. However, it is no problem if there is a
    cat elsewhere in the house--I might even enjoy it if the cat is
    friendly.
It'd be a bit weird to throw these out in the middle of a casual chat, but these details are extremely relevant to someone who owns a cat and is about to host Stallman. The easy way to get that information to them is to just send them the document.

CEOs and pop singers stay at hotels, where there is a pretty well defined culture of what is to be expected. It is a much stabler environment than some random free-software style hippie's house. Heaven help the hotel that routinely has cat hair in the rooms, it will not get CEOs and pop stars staying there. And I expect Heads of State travel with chefs and butlers to sort these details out in person from a similarly detailed list. Or stay at a hotel.

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

#444

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…

That’s such a ridiculous viewpoint. Someone should be disqualified from being a “public figure” for making bad off-the-cuff remarks? There goes half of Congress, half of Hollywood, many historic figures, and a fair share of executives. How can someone be “disqualified” from being a “public figure” anyway!???!

"Half" is one heck of an understatement.

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

#445
post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like this, I've spent a lifetime learning a rulebook by trial and error that everyone else just seems to know . It's absolutely maddening when the rules suddenly change for no discernible reason, often with little warning and grave consequences with no second chances for screwing it up. I see people clamoring for a safe spaces and I wonder where I can find such a thing? (To an extent I can find one at sci-fi, an…

I don't think there can be a real safe space. Toxic things for some might not be for others, reassuring things for some might be violent for others. It does not mean we should not try to improve how we behave, but it's important to understand it's impossible to have a generic rulebook we can apply everywhere to be safe with everyone. As an example, some swearwords might really violent to hear for some people, but dis…

Do the rich swear more in France, or the poor?

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

#446

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…

It’s been going on for a while already. Some years ago there was a case where a woman in Melbourne called out a man for harassing her on public transport. Turns out he was autistic and was outgoing to everyone. His friend had to post on Facebook to stop people sharing a video of the autistic man. Helen Pluckrose also posted on Twitter a similar story. A man she would help checkin on because he was autistic would get…

Not that long ago there was that Twitter thing where a woman posted a picture of a guy brazenly checking out her top.

Turned out he had a lazy eye and is daughter had to step up to defend him. Quick to judge and make a scene unfortunately.

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

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

also a Dane I think, frankly it seemed polite.

Also Scandinavian and I agree with you. Also Americans lying about these things are often seen as being fake and thus rude.

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

#448
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew the maintainer of GNU libtool and I remember him getting randomly fired by Stallman one day because he was a macOS user, and therefore not motivated enough to support free software OS uses.

Pretty shitty to do this to an actual maintainer, but on the other hand I wish the Linux Foundation started doing this.

Pretty shitty to do this to anyone. The only scenario where firing someone for (legally) using a certain software should be allowed to happen is where it was communicated clearly in advance that using that software is not allowed in that particular job position.

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

#449
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Are you familiar with the concept of broad autism phenotype (BAP)? A person who has more autistic traits than the average person, but not enough traits (or are not sufficiently impaired by those traits) for an ASD diagnosis, has BAP. Someone who…

I'm not sure you can reduce it to traits in the method you mean. I think mostly it severity. I do think stress can have something to do with it. I mean, there is no "neat freak" trait; that's something people who don't have OCD use because they think that's part of what it is. It's more intrusive thoughts about contamination, and there isn't a spectrum of those traits. Like you can't really "train" yourself to not be…

> It's more intrusive thoughts about contamination, and there isn't a spectrum of those traits.

There is a continuum of intrusive thoughts – the continuum of frequency and intensity of those thoughts, the continuum of how easy it is to move on from them, etc. And a single individual can move back and forward along that continuum over time, in response to life events, development/maturity/ageing, and other factors. We say they have OCD if (a) they have enough frequency/intensity/etc of those intrusive thoughts, (b) the intrusive thoughts are sufficiently impairing in their everyday life, (c) there isn't some other disorder which better explains those intrusive thoughts. We draw a line on the continuum, and say this side is "OCD" (or maybe some other disorder), and the other side isn't, but that line is inevitably a subjective clinical judgement call

> The talk about autism though is a different kind of talk; the moderate or severe sufferers are different.

You mention "moderate" and "severe" – what about "mild ASD"? I guess what used to be called Aspergers syndrome?

> Like the person I mention never got better or could use coping stuff

You can't draw a lot of conclusions from a single person. You can't say that people with milder, less noticeable symptoms don't exist.

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

#450
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I have never in my life seen so much hostility generated by good intentions as we are seeing now during this woke revolution. The "woke" don't actually have good intentions. There are several motivations, but good intent just seems to be an excuse for the hostility you mention.

The vast majority of people you would write off as ""woke"" do have good intentions. There's just a very loud minority just as there are in any political movement.

I actually can see where the person you are replying to is coming from. That loud minority can be viewed as leadership, and they seem to fall into three categories- grifters, bullies, and burn the world types
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