151–160 of 376 posts
"The original Remove Richard Stallman post contained leaked communications from a private mailing list. In it, the author quotes an email from Stallman where he explains that Marvin Minsky likely wouldn’t have known that the woman on Jeffrey Epstein’s island was coerced: …the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had…
Bill Gates had bonds with Epstein. His multi decade marriage fell after the fact became public. He didn't get 1% the flak that Stallman had for commenting about a word to describe Marvin Minsky.
Bill Gates didn't say much about it, except he didn't know about any of the "bad stuff" and was deceived. Stallman said a bunch of to try to either claim that the victims weren't victims. Or to try to downplay what happened. Those are huge differences.
What he said was that the girl who was ordered to offer sex to Minsky would have been ordered to present it as if it was a willing offer.
This should not have been controversial.
One of the first things covered in Evil Villain School is that when you are using your slaves (sex or otherwise) to try to curry favor with someone who doesn't know you are an evil villain you provide a cover story so that person won't know they are dealing with slaves.
What I gather is he has some very unpleasant opinions, but is very open to discussion and correction. I don’t know or care a whole lot. He isn’t exactly active on issues outside open source. All I need to hear from him is “I may very well be wrong about this, but I just don’t care enough to argue” and he’s off my mental sh*t list.
Bill Gates had bonds with Epstein. His multi decade marriage fell after the fact became public. He didn't get 1% the flak that Stallman had for commenting about a word to describe Marvin Minsky.
Bill Gates didn't say much about it, except he didn't know about any of the "bad stuff" and was deceived. Stallman said a bunch of to try to either claim that the victims weren't victims. Or to try to downplay what happened. Those are huge differences.
No, Stallman said that the people involved didn't necessarily know that the women and girls were trafficked - that Minsky was unaware that these people were victims as Epstein probably ordered them to present themselves as willing participants. This is a vastly different thing than claiming "the victims weren't victims". This comment just reinforces my belief that people's perception of Stallman are based in misinformation.
There are good reasons to distance oneself from Stallman - among others his assertion that being paid to write closed-source software is unethical, which I think is too radial to be productive - but I worry people are distancing themselves on account of mistruths.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN was deeply divided on RMS when I joined back in 2009. Every thread on him was full of this. :/
He convinces many people that some business models are unethical. People who benefit from those business models feel like he's taking money out of their pockets.
"The original Remove Richard Stallman post contained leaked communications from a private mailing list. In it, the author quotes an email from Stallman where he explains that Marvin Minsky likely wouldn’t have known that the woman on Jeffrey Epstein’s island was coerced: …the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had…
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"The original Remove Richard Stallman post contained leaked communications from a private mailing list. In it, the author quotes an email from Stallman where he explains that Marvin Minsky likely wouldn’t have known that the woman on Jeffrey Epstein’s island was coerced: …the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had…
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This all so so grates on me because it means we are wasting all this time and energy on things that don't matter all the while the real monsters of society go unchecked because with their psychopathic streak they know how to play a convincing PC game on the outside while committing real atrocities.
The thought-leader of the FSF might be socially awkward, but no, people, he is not the great Public Enemy No. 1 some people are making him out to be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> advocating guilt by association? You using the word "guilt" suggests you're venturing into the strawman of "innocent until proven guilty", or that public opinion must follow the same rules as the judicial system. Even if he didn't do anything illegal, Jeffrey Epstein is gross and awful. It's totally fine for society to not want people "guilty" of associating frequently and voluntarily to be powerful and influential…
Maybe it's that I'm not rested right now but I find it hard to follow this train of thought because your reasoning is kinda wide, lofty and out there but I think OP means that it's irrational to throw Bill Gates entirely to the side based only on -another person- he associated with. Like how picky and fussy people refuse to touch something clean and unspoiled just because it sat next to something else that happened t…
Why is that irrational?
> Epstein's lawyers and his realtor, his tailor and his golf partners also associated with him
Surely we as reasonable people can acknowledge the societal difference between Bill Gates and his tailor, no?
> It's not just OK but maybe even preferential and encouraged by you to take a dump on certain people when a tiny vague chance presents itself only because the person is powerful.
Powerful people's decisions deserve to be scrutinized at a higher level than societally irrelevant people, yes.
> I found this earlier comment from you on this topic which is a bit funny given your statement. To me youre kinda describing yourself.
That comment is in response to a person saying they simply asked "Why" and were downvoted. The answer is because rational thought is thrown away in favor of binary thinking with regards to people like RMS.
To be direct, my comment is almost not about RMS at all. Simply, every human is allowed to decide what they are or are not okay with. If you think what RMS did was wrong, you're welcome to hate him for it. This is not the same as a jury deeming a person guilty of a crime, and relating the two is a strawman.
"The original Remove Richard Stallman post contained leaked communications from a private mailing list. In it, the author quotes an email from Stallman where he explains that Marvin Minsky likely wouldn’t have known that the woman on Jeffrey Epstein’s island was coerced: …the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had…
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bill Gates didn't say much about it, except he didn't know about any of the "bad stuff" and was deceived. Stallman said a bunch of to try to either claim that the victims weren't victims. Or to try to downplay what happened. Those are huge differences.
I doubt anyone who spent a lot of time with Epstein didn’t know. I’m sure many didn’t participate, but everything I’ve read suggests Epstein was practically radiating his obsession with young girls.