hack'n views. edit: mods go flag yourselves.
Users flag things on HN. Mods also do, but it's a tiny percentage of the total, and almost never on submissions. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
user mods: go flag yourselves.
In Support of Richard Stallman
91–100 of 110 posts
Re: In Support of Richard Stallman
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm being downvoted into oblivion by people who believe children should be able to choose to have sex with adults. I have to guess because the downvoters won't leave comments defending their position of support for sex between children and adults. I am surprised that they exist on Hacker News, not by their cowardice.
The people who downvote you do not believe what you claim they do. That's the true reason you are downvoted. Also, you are twisting the facts by trying to present a discussion about a certain topic as a call to engage in sexual activity.
As I said, I had to guess at why people were downvoting me because they weren't saying. A couple of people have since left comments. I am aware that children have complicated sexual feelings based on my own experience as a child. I think there's a time and a place to discuss this topic, such as between parents, doctors and educators. When RMS and other older males want to discuss childhood sexuality in broad terms it raises suspicions for many people. I think most people accept this reality, except perhaps the authors of this website. That was my point.
Re: In Support of Richard Stallman
#93So I went to their "Debunking False Accusations" page, then clicked through and read the email ("Email #2"), then returned to the page. It feels like they set up a bunch of straw-men which they then went on to debunk. They don't actually defend the content of "Email #2" but instead claimed that people said untrue things about it and then said those were "lies." But without citing the untrue claims they're debunking,…
Yes, it is good form to link to the claims you are debunking, but these claims are not strawmen. If you want an example of people making untrue claims about "Email #2", here's one very popular Medium post doing just that: > ... and then says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be "entirely willing". https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... The dead comment next to mine has more examples. Tha…
I happen to suspect that RMS is wrong on the pedophilia point, but if all you can say about it is that you find it disgusting, alarm bells should be going off in your head that there may be something here which You Can't Say (in the http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html sense).
This all reminds me of the sexuality portrayed among children in Brave New World, or the supposed homosexuality of Ancient Greece. What I suspect is happening here is that even voluntary pedophilia is harmful for children relative to our current society, but who knows what the case would be in a very differently structured society. Sexuality by definition is largely about how we relate with other people, so what is our isn't harmful in sexual development almost certainly depends at least in part on the society we live in.
Which means that forces that want to conserve the relevant aspects of our society have an incentive to censor RMS on any thoughts along those lines.
Re: In Support of Richard Stallman
#94So I went to their "Debunking False Accusations" page, then clicked through and read the email ("Email #2"), then returned to the page. It feels like they set up a bunch of straw-men which they then went on to debunk. They don't actually defend the content of "Email #2" but instead claimed that people said untrue things about it and then said those were "lies." But without citing the untrue claims they're debunking,…
Yes, it is good form to link to the claims you are debunking, but these claims are not strawmen. If you want an example of people making untrue claims about "Email #2", here's one very popular Medium post doing just that: > ... and then says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be "entirely willing". https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... The dead comment next to mine has more examples. Tha…
I'm not a huge fan of RMS as a person, he's an incredibly difficult individual and ideological to the point that he refuses to take even reasonable arguments into account.
On that topic though, I understood it to be an academic exercise, just a case of internal inquiry, and not a statement of personal motivation of any kind. I don't believe it is disgusting to objectively consider any concept without bias, even if I disagree with the consideration itself. Consideration of any ideas being off limits is indistinguishable from heresy.
Re: In Support of Richard Stallman
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
The people who downvote you do not believe what you claim they do. That's the true reason you are downvoted. Also, you are twisting the facts by trying to present a discussion about a certain topic as a call to engage in sexual activity.
As I said, I had to guess at why people were downvoting me because they weren't saying. A couple of people have since left comments. I am aware that children have complicated sexual feelings based on my own experience as a child. I think there's a time and a place to discuss this topic, such as between parents, doctors and educators. When RMS and other older males want to discuss childhood sexuality in broad terms it…
> I had to guess at why people were downvoting me because they weren't saying.
And you guessed "they're downvoting me because they're pedophiles?"
Maybe people aren't responding to you because they feel that from your initial frame on the topic and your decision to frame opponents on it as bad people, no fruitful discussion with you can be had.
Re: In Support of Richard Stallman
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it is good form to link to the claims you are debunking, but these claims are not strawmen. If you want an example of people making untrue claims about "Email #2", here's one very popular Medium post doing just that: > ... and then says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be "entirely willing". https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21... The dead comment next to mine has more examples. Tha…
I happen to suspect that RMS is wrong on the pedophilia point, but if all you can say about it is that you find it disgusting , alarm bells should be going off in your head that there may be something here which You Can't Say (in the http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html sense). This all reminds me of the sexuality portrayed among children in Brave New World, or the supposed homosexuality of Ancient Greece. What I suspe…
It occurs to me (but I can no longer edit) that I wrote the above comment while only thinking about children after puberty. The Epstein connection of the larger story primed me into that frame, and the comment would have looked differently if I'd also considered sex with, say, 6 year olds.
I still don't think "disgusting" is the right category for RMS's "thinking out loud on the internet", but the remark was definitely dangerously naive of the developmental stages of children.
It's also sobering to see how easy it is for myself to write something that can be interpreted to sound much more nefarious than what was really in my head when I wrote it.
Re: In Support of Richard Stallman
#97For people who understand french (or can use translation tool)
this is the only account back in 2019 of the events:
https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2019/09/17/richard-sta...
It scores much higher to me on journalism than whatever came in US press.
It seems people in US don't value defending free speech, and tend to get offended easily due to taking things only on first degree.
In that frame, they should care more about defending the first amendment of their constitution, and try to get other degree when interpreting words they have negative reaction to.
I don't know how to solve the issue, but I've started trying tackling some of this in context of code of conducts affecting many sofware communities:
https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant/...
Re: In Support of Richard Stallman
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
This would make intuitive sense as there are two different crowds watching two movies here. The older, more male-skewed crowd is familiar with rms from his pioneering work in Free Software, and is willing to cut him leniency on past indiscretions, cringey jokes, and off-the-cuff political rants. The younger, more gender mixed crowd sees little to no value in the FS movement; GPL is a nuisance to the Silicon Valley co…
I don't think your description of the second group is very charitable.
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Re: In Support of Richard Stallman
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
This would make intuitive sense as there are two different crowds watching two movies here. The older, more male-skewed crowd is familiar with rms from his pioneering work in Free Software, and is willing to cut him leniency on past indiscretions, cringey jokes, and off-the-cuff political rants. The younger, more gender mixed crowd sees little to no value in the FS movement; GPL is a nuisance to the Silicon Valley co…
I don't think your description of the second group is very charitable.
Charitable or no, it seems to be accurate in a day and age where large corporations "heart" "open source" while simultaneously hindering software freedom, digital privacy, and the like on never-before-seen scales. It seems mighty convenient that public outrage happens to be aiming at one of the most vocal opponents of things like DRM and online surveillance, and happens to be of at least some benefit to those peddling said DRM and online surveillance.
And it doesn't seem like that second group has much of an intention to be "charitable" to those in the first group or the sympathizers thereof. That doesn't necessarily mean there's free reign to be as uncharitable as possible, but it does encourage that feeling to be mutual.
Re: In Support of Richard Stallman
#100So this is literally a website dedicated to defending the character of a major figure in the open-source world, and it gets flagged. This is HN - people should be able to make their own judgement on the content of the site and discuss it here.
How do you see that it was flagged? This looks like a normal post to me, but I see this "flagged" comment frequently, but don't understand what people are seeing. Thx.
It might be triggered at a certain karma level but when I look at those threads directly I see the title prefixed with “[flagged]”.