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EPFL cancels Stallman's lecture citing “the situation regarding” his persona

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Re: EPFL cancels Stallman's lecture citing “the situation regarding” his persona

#191

Post by lostmsu »

brookst wrote: post #68
lostmsu wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Straw man. Nobody is saying he’s not allowed to have that opinion. What people are saying is that organizations have a right to choose whether to associate, or not, with people based on their opinions. It would be a grim world if we took freedom of thought to the extreme of mandating that people who disagree must not object.

I did not mean "allowed" in a sense of permitted legally or otherwise.

EPFL is not a person. It does not have a set opinion on the subject. And its individual members likely disagree on the matter.

I am also not denying EPFL right to associate, I am questioning their judgement here.

Re: EPFL cancels Stallman's lecture citing “the situation regarding” his persona

#192

Post by KerrAvon »

arp242 wrote: post #176
ianburrell wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates met with Epstein repeatedly, in-person. He visited Epstein's home, he flew on Epstein's jet, they about Gates Foundation deal. Gates knew Epstein from earlier so likely would have known about the conviction. Also, it sounds like relationship soured in 2014.

That's all very superficial though; "flew on Epstein's jet" can mean anything from "let's discuss my donations to your foundation while we're travelling from A to B" to less savoury things.

His wife warned him not to go on the jet. When it become public that he had done that, she divorced him. She clearly didn’t think it was superficial!

Re: EPFL cancels Stallman's lecture citing “the situation regarding” his persona

#193

Post by Manuel_D »

tedivm wrote: post #189
tzs wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stallman said a bunch of to try to either claim that the victims weren't victims. Or to try to downplay what happened. 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…

She was 17, and it happened in Florida where the age of consent was 18 at the time. So it really doesn't matter how "willingly" she may have presented herself. Also, come on, I'm 37 and I wouldn't have sex with a teenager. Even beyond legality (which isn't really an issue, the dude is dead) there are the ethical considerations. This dude was sketchy and RMS is sketchy for defending him.

> She was 17, and it happened in Florida where the age of consent was 18 at the time. So it really doesn't matter how "willingly" she may have presented herself.

Stallman's whole point is that Epstein almost certainly concealed these facts from his associates. Stallman does not in any way argue that these women's and girls aren't victims, only that Minsky was likely unaware of this.

I don't see anything sketchy about defending one's dead friend: Minsky isn't alive to say "I had no idea these women were underage and being trafficked" and it seems natural Stallman wants to point this out to people calling his friend a pedophile and a rapist.

Re: EPFL cancels Stallman's lecture citing “the situation regarding” his persona

#194

Post by JumpCrisscross »

asdfman123 wrote: post #185
myshpa wrote: post #145

"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…

You’re right, that is a misquote. But what he actually wrote honestly wasn’t that much better. The problem with a lot of these sorts things is intentionally making yourself blind to the emotional impact, pretending not to know, when some part of you does understand what you’re doing. It’s all just plausible deniability. We get it quite clearly, we don’t need it explained to us. You might say this is tone policing but…

> You’re right, that is a misquote. But what he actually wrote honestly wasn’t that much better

Agree. Broadly speaking, if someone is accused of a moral crime about which you have no privileged information, publicly hypothesizing about how they might be innocent is tantamount to a defence.

It's a limit on free speech. And in private circles, it could be debated responsibly. But when stated publicly, the argument's components of character defense and appeal to rationality are confusingly (possibly inextricably) balanced, which should be obvious ex ante.

Re: EPFL cancels Stallman's lecture citing “the situation regarding” his persona

#195

Post by amiga386 »

lockhouse wrote: post #117
thraway3837 wrote: post #74

[flagged]

> Correct move. Holding an opinion that is unethical, immoral and destructive to society is unacceptable. And nobody wants to be associated with that. I wish this was not up for debate, but unfortunately, we seem to want to debate the same things repeatedly no matter how many times we know that certain things are problematic. Who gets to decide what opinions are correct and therefore allowed? Sounds very thought-poli…

> Should a decades long career be destroyed completely by 1 second of indiscretion?

It really depends on what happened during that 1 second. The answer could certainly be "yes" depending on how heinous it was. Your rhetorical question bears an unfortunate resemblance to the father of rapist Brock Turner arguing his son shouldn't go to prison for "20 minutes of action".

In Stallman's case, his crime appears to have been white knighting for his dead friend on a mailing list, and during the ongoing discussion, Stallman was his usual Socratic self. He wasn't entirely "cancelled", but there was a huge fallout because he didn't consider his audience properly.

There's nothing wrong with having a debate on the age of consent, it's clearly an arbitrary dividing line that varies between jurisdictions and cultures, there is no right answer other than "at some point near the end of adolescence" but the absolutely worst place you could have that debate is during a discussion of whether a 80-something man had sex with a 16-year old girl being coerced by a child sex trafficker.

Pathos is as important as logos.

Re: EPFL cancels Stallman's lecture citing “the situation regarding” his persona

#196

Post by tzs »

tedivm wrote: post #189
tzs wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stallman said a bunch of to try to either claim that the victims weren't victims. Or to try to downplay what happened. 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…

She was 17, and it happened in Florida where the age of consent was 18 at the time. So it really doesn't matter how "willingly" she may have presented herself. Also, come on, I'm 37 and I wouldn't have sex with a teenager. Even beyond legality (which isn't really an issue, the dude is dead) there are the ethical considerations. This dude was sketchy and RMS is sketchy for defending him.

> She was 17, and it happened in Florida where the age of consent was 18 at the time.

It was in the US Virgin Islands where the age of consent was 16 at the time.

Re: EPFL cancels Stallman's lecture citing “the situation regarding” his persona

#197

Post by matt-attack »

mardifoufs wrote: post #101
pfannkuchen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he talking about pre or post puberty? The term pedophilia sometimes lumps both together. Pre seems quite unnatural, or at least there is no obvious natural mechanism that would make it normal or beneficial. Post is a cultural matter, since age of marriage has fluctuated a lot over time. Discussing post seems reasonably defensible, discussing pre immensely less so.

Personally I don't think the distinction matters (both are bad), but even then he also doesn't seem to make the distinction. Here is another quote [to be clear, I don't disagree with the first two lol]: Prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowm…

Both are bad? So it just so happens that the current threshold for post-pubescents (18 years old) happens to align with what you believe to be the only moral value? So all those other states, countries and provinces throughout history which have adopted slightly different cutoffs (and therefor state-sanctioned pedophilia by your definition) were just morally bankrupt and evil? So 17 is wrong? So 16 is wrong? 15 is wrong? Which would you say is wrong if you were born in a time or state when 17 was the legal limit? Would you have seen through the poor legislation and advocated for raising it to you magic number of 18?

Would you be advocating that anything other than 17 is wrong? It reminds me of people who are born into a random country with a random god, and insist that only that god is correct. What luck!

Re: EPFL cancels Stallman's lecture citing “the situation regarding” his persona

#198

Post by alex_lav »

8note wrote: post #188
alex_lav wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think OP means that it's irrational to throw Bill Gates entirely to the side based only on -another person- he associated with. 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 encourag…

> Powerful people's decisions deserve to be scrutinized at a higher level than societally irrelevant people, yes. I think the opposite, at least as far as this is concerned. To Epstein's tailor, Epstein is very replaceable, whereas to Gates, the tradeoff for ditching Epstein would be something like millions fewer people getting vaccinations

I do not buy this narrative you're selling.

Re: EPFL cancels Stallman's lecture citing “the situation regarding” his persona

#199

Post by tzs »

jonstewart wrote: post #180
tzs wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stallman said a bunch of to try to either claim that the victims weren't victims. Or to try to downplay what happened. 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…

I think it's reasonably controversial for RMS (or anyone) to make up such hypothetical excuses for Minsky. It's far simpler and easier to think, "wait, Minsky did what? that's awful, there's no excuse for that."

Epstein was very evil, but he was not an idiot. The null hypothesis should be that he ran his sex trafficking operation the way pretty much everyone else who has successfully gotten away with running a sex trafficking operation as long as he did has run theirs.

That includes instructing the people you have enslaved to not act like they are enslaved when they are around people who don't know you are a sex trafficker. You provide them with plausible cover stories that explain why they are around and why they are offering services to your guests.

Also, note that Minsky was not accused of having sex with the girl. His name came up in a deposition where she was asked to list some of the famous people she was told to offer sex to. The deposition did not cover which of those people accepted the offer. Greg Benford was there when she approached Minsky and says that Minsky declined.

Re: EPFL cancels Stallman's lecture citing “the situation regarding” his persona

#200

Post by ianburrell »

arp242 wrote: post #176
ianburrell wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates met with Epstein repeatedly, in-person. He visited Epstein's home, he flew on Epstein's jet, they about Gates Foundation deal. Gates knew Epstein from earlier so likely would have known about the conviction. Also, it sounds like relationship soured in 2014.

That's all very superficial though; "flew on Epstein's jet" can mean anything from "let's discuss my donations to your foundation while we're travelling from A to B" to less savoury things.

I guess the flight was Gates by himself. But weird he would be flying Epstein's plane and not his own. They did do "plenty discuss foundation", including making charitable fund that would make Epstein money.

The issue is that hanging out or doing business with someone as unsavory as Epstein is gia

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