Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts

For two reasons:

1) Because it's totally irrelevant. A life is a life. Your life isn't worth more (or less) just because you were killed intentionally (or accidentally). All else being equal, would you rather prevent 100 accidental deaths or 10 intentional murders? Anyone with a shred of morality would save the 100. This isn't "cold analysis". It's prioritizing basic human decency over knee-jerk emotional reactions to sensational events.

2) Because it's inconsistent. If what you really care about is the intent to kill, then you'll focus on run-of-the-mill murders just as much as you focus on sensational bombings. But you don't. So when I try to imagine why you and millions of others care so disproportionately much about the events in Boston, I must eliminate the false reason that "it's because they're intentional." What's left is that you are simply drawn to exciting, sensational, unique events. I can't blame you for that. It's only human. What I can blame you for is having the gall to claim you have the moral high ground. The audacity to condemn people who think rationally about saving lives. It's disgusting to read.

> He's bringing forth a dispassionate, disturbingly cold analysis of an event that should be emotional by any psychological norm before the day has even closed out. It's so outside of social norms as to only be classifiable as an emotional disconnect so extreme it has to be the result of a severe psychological disturbance.

Yes, and 300 years ago it was likely "outside of social norms" to mourn the death of a slave. You're arguing as if behavior being socially normal makes it morally justifiable. That has never been true in the history of the world, and it isn't true today. And one's conformance (or lack thereof) to arbitrary societal norms is certainly not a reflection of psychological disturbance.

You are, quite literally, advocating a herd mentality. Gross.

Look, if you know someone that was killed or injured, then it obviously affects you more personally than it would other people, and there's nothing in RMS's statement that says otherwise. And if you were effected, you obviously weren't the intended audience (he was replying to a message to stay inside during Boston's pseudo-curfew). However, if your only connection to the event is your geographical proximity, then that does not grant you some sort of higher-level of emotional standing that the rest of us could not make. Every death of an innocent person is a sad, tragic thing; we don't need to be in Boston to understand that.

"The change of wording wasn't relevant to my point, I was simply trying to summarize his view. Insert "let's make an effort not to get... as an excuse for tyranny" (his actual quote) for the paraphrased quote that I used, and the point still stands: the government's supposed tendency towards tyranny should cause us to resist tyranny, not to temper our emotional reactions to the deaths of community members."

No, you're still taking what he said out of context. And your summarization of this comments is not correct. He did not say "temper", that's your word. He said "[...]let these few upset us disproportionally more than the others." Keyword is 'disproportionally'.

I'm, statistically speaking, more likely to die in a car accident than a terrorist attack. I could die in a car accident tomorrow. My family would be very sad and traumatized. However, I doubt they would stop using cars to get around. In fact, I'd bet they would take a car to the hospital to come get my body. With the Boston attack though, the authorities said everyone should stay inside in the entire city, because of the violence that happened in a few public places. That's the disproportionality that RMS was trying to point out in his statement.

In that you took that he was said you should 'temper' your emotions is no fault of Stallman. You're attempting to parse out an argument that just isn't there.

Note also that the general public should also know better - there is in fact, no confusion. You're simply disagreeing - part of the people I criticize, in fact, then.