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Anyone have a background summary? Last I heard he kept a mattress in his office and asked people to lay on it, and he had a stupid neutral pronoun idea he was very insistent on using. Has something stranger come up?
He objected to the word "assault" being used to describe Marvin Minsky (allegedly) having sex with one of Jeffrey Epstein's underage victims.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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There are many factually accurate statements that are, nevertheless, inappropriate to wildly inappropriate under the circumstances. I have personally interacted with rms decades ago and have a generally positive impression of his entire body of contributions to computing. Nevertheless, reading the controversies section on the wikipedia page induces a combination of cringing and face-palming. Someone researching the s…
RMS simply kept faith on someone he knew and respected personally (not Epstein!), in the face of accusations he did not believe to be true[0].
0. https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-agai...
Did Stallman do anything new that offended certain political persuasions, or is this cancellation only due to previous controversies/peculiarities? Edit: the level of downvotes/flag-kills of comments just asking "why" and "what happened" is pretty depressing.
Stallman made some remarks defending Marvin Minsky (very poorly) from victims' allegations that he abused young girls on Epstein's island. Meanwhile, Reid Hoffman is now known to have visited the island and has not seen any firestorm of cancellations, as far as I'm aware.
He basically said that the victims were harmed, that they were forced to have sex, but that probably Epstein also forced them to make sure it's not known, otherwise who would agree to such a relationship, that would be basically rape? Taking into account how easy is to accuse people and that Minsky had died 3 years earlier, Stallman just said what he thought of the situation and witch-hunting. Not to mention that the victim just said that Epstein asked her to have sex with Minsky but there is no mention that it actually happened - at least his wife denies this happened.
But this was misrepresented in the media and even in headlines of major papers so I don't think the harm can be ever repaired.
For anyone denying that the "cancel culture" (a big misnomer btw) actually exists - this is a perfect example. At least they could say what the reason is, then this could be addressed somehow - but as it is now it's just mud-smearing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many factually accurate statements that are, nevertheless, inappropriate to wildly inappropriate under the circumstances. I have personally interacted with rms decades ago and have a generally positive impression of his entire body of contributions to computing. Nevertheless, reading the controversies section on the wikipedia page induces a combination of cringing and face-palming. Someone researching the s…
>Someone commenting in apparent defense of a convicted sex offender should not make that exact same claim, whether factually correct or not. RMS simply kept faith on someone he knew and respected personally (not Epstein!), in the face of accusations he did not believe to be true[0]. 0. https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-agai...
We live in a new age, where we can know a lot more about the personal lives of famous people. Decades ago, the problematic personalities of famous people were hidden by the gate keepers. JKF benefited from this. It would be nice if there was a more uniform way to handle situations like this. RMS isn't alone, in being accused of unsavory things. Should we shun Bill Gates because of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstei…
> Should we shun Bill Gates because of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein? In my opinion, yes, absolutely.
To those asking, last I heard from Stallman were his comments in the MIT CSAIL mailing list after the Epstein fallout basically of the theme: “some of them surely liked it”. As far as I’m aware he was ousted from MIT soon after, though the folks who actually signed the checks to/from Epstein faced no such consequences. This is America. https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman...
The arguments in the character assassination campaign were found baseless[0][1][2]. But the cancelation crowd's witch hunt continues even today. [0] https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-agai... [1] https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/09/30/in-defense-of-richard-stal... [2] https://itsfoss.com/richard-stallman-controversy/