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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

#231

Post by randombits0 »

mardifoufs wrote: post #54
seydor wrote: post #12

We ll never know what "the situation" is and whatever "statements that do not correspond to any of our values" are. Good job smearing mud without saying anything i guess. Did stallman say something since he was invited that was particularly noticeable? if not then these organizers don't know what they 're doing and this reflects bad on them

I mean, his statements regarding pedophilia are enough. It's not exactly a hidden secret. Saying stuff like >I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. Is very controversial, even if he backpedalled (only…

Who cares what his thoughts and opinions are! As long as he doesn’t harm anyone I couldn’t give a damn! We don’t shun people for abhorrent thought, only abhorrent behavior!

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

#232

Post by [deleted] »

seized wrote: post #218
skissane wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is very controversial, even if he backpedalled (only after it resurfaced and created a lot of controversy). He said he didn’t understand the issue and talking to abuse survivors helped him understand it better, and that led to him changing his view. To me, that sounds like a person simply updating their views in response to new evidence-new to them even if much older to many others. Labelling it as “back-pedalling”…

> To me, that sounds like a person simply updating their views in response to new evidence-new to them even if much older to many others. Labelling it as “back-pedalling” seems to me to be needlessly uncharitable to him > It might be hard to understand why it took him so long to realise this-but I think you have to understand he occupies a very different position in society from most people, with the result he is oft…

[deleted]

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

#233

Post by minerva23 »

rayiner wrote: post #207
asdfman123 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. “Much better” in what sense? I think Minsky is guilty because using sex workers is categorically immoral. But most on HN don’t agree with me, and think that it would’ve been no problem had Virginia Giuffre been 18 and willing. In that case, doesn’t Minsky’s moral culpability turn on whether he knew Giuffre was 17 and unwi…

That's not the dichotomy. It's whether or not she was coerced, and there's a presumption of coercion with minors. It's still wrong if she's 18 and being trafficked.

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

#234

Post by pyuser583 »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #213
pyuser583 wrote: post #144

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.

> He isn’t exactly active on issues outside open source. Have you not visited his personal website?

Yeah, it’s full of drivel about random subjects.

Basically, a private twitter feed (but using free software!)

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

#235

Post by drewcoo »

rayiner wrote: post #207
asdfman123 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. “Much better” in what sense? I think Minsky is guilty because using sex workers is categorically immoral. But most on HN don’t agree with me, and think that it would’ve been no problem had Virginia Giuffre been 18 and willing. In that case, doesn’t Minsky’s moral culpability turn on whether he knew Giuffre was 17 and unwi…

> because using sex workers is categorically immoral

Disagree, but voted up.

Unless using any workers is immoral, in which case I may agree . . .

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

#237

Post by anonymouskimmer »

randombits0 wrote: post #231
mardifoufs wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, his statements regarding pedophilia are enough. It's not exactly a hidden secret. Saying stuff like >I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. Is very controversial, even if he backpedalled (only…

Who cares what his thoughts and opinions are! As long as he doesn’t harm anyone I couldn’t give a damn! We don’t shun people for abhorrent thought, only abhorrent behavior!

I can't read French (shoot, scroll down to the English), but I believe he was originally invited to share his thoughts and opinions. So the audience of EPFL cared. Now, EPFL doesn't want to risk giving a platform to, or otherwise being associated with, potentially problematic speech that they do not control. I'm sure he can still be a member of the audience at EPFL, so I don't know that this is shunning, per se.

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

#238

Post by mardifoufs »

bitwize wrote: post #136
irthomasthomas wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is skeptical of the basis of the laws and is requesting more information. And this was decades ago. Maybe he changed his mind after people responded to his enquiry? Anyway, it doesn't seem relevent to this recent cancellation.

Somebody had to sit down with him and walk him through why pedophilia is bad and is rape, irrespective of whether the victim gave consent. It is, as they say, "not a good look, my dude". It's germane to his current persona because of his statements that what Minsky supposedly did does not constitute assault because he was deceived about the victim's age. It was taken as "here we go again, Stallman is defending chomos…

Exactly! I think this is why "he changed his mind" does not really sit right with me. This isn't rocket science or even some culture war contentious issue. Having sex with kids is bad, and was considered bad when he said those things and put the blame on parents for being mad that their kids got abused. If there's one thing that communists, liberals, conservatives, fascists, anarchomonarchists (lol) can all agree on is that pedophilia is bad. It's a bi/tri/partisan issue. It's not some status quo position that he just happened to defend by force of habit.

Maybe it was ok on the internet back then, but 2006 isn't that far away. So we can't even say that the cultural context was different. I'm not saying he lied when he said that it just took someone to talk him through it... But it sure is weird that a grown 40yo+ educated man didn't understand that having sex with children was bad.

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

#239

Post by kenjackson »

sieongioetnio wrote: post #220
kenjackson wrote: post #100

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.

>Stallman said a bunch of to try to either claim that the victims weren't victims. This is a lie. I don't believe you are lying, just repeating something you have read, but it's a lie all the same. You can read his comments yourself. He was entirely consistent that the victims were victims and that Epstein was a sex trafficker. His remarks were probably inappropriate but nothing like what people accused him of. Stall…

I’ve read the mailing list comments. The problem is that he is trying to excuse something potentially horrible without sufficient data. A far better statement IMO would be to say that I hope Minsky didn’t know of the coercion or age. Because he doesn’t know what Minsky did or didn’t know.

If you’re around criminals enough, most of them try to simultaneously deny involvement while at the same time trying to excuse the crime. I’m not saying Stallman has this criminal mentality. I don’t know. But the types of statements are similar to those we all run into. And I think this also causes people to raise red flags.

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

#240

Post by anonymouskimmer »

matt-attack wrote: post #197
mardifoufs wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wr…

I'm not the person you're responding to.

The "age rule" [1] about dating is that the younger person is at least half the age of the older person plus 7 years. This implies that it's okay for a 20 year old to date a 17 year old, but not a 21 year old (unless the 17 year old is 17 and a half).

It's a kind of silly rule, but has some purpose in terms of "ickyness" (edit: and equivalent maturity) when applied to people in the first decade after puberty.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/meet-catch-and-keep/...

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