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Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

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Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#191

Post by darawk »

AndrewBissell wrote: post #173
darawk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The arguments Stallman presented were hardly arguments and were not novel at all. You think that Minsky being unaware of the coercion would not be a mitigating factor in accusing him of sexual assault? When was that decided?

"Honestly officer, I had no idea the new-in-box MacBook that guy to sold me for $300 out of his unmarked van was stolen."

Certainly that would be a reasonable counter-argument, that the circumstances were such that he ought to have known. But that then invites a discussion about the exact nature of the circumstances Minsky was in. Personally I don't know what they were.

If those circumstances were unfavorable to him (as in your analogy), i'd be convinced that Minsky was at fault. If not, then I wouldn't be. But all that is to say that it seems to me that Stallman's abstract argument was fine to bring up - it just then puts the question back to his counterparts in the discussion to articulate a view on those circumstances to justify their position.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#192

Post by mixologic »

partialrecall wrote: post #149
selfawareposter wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. His sin was what he said. His sin was having a history of pretty disturbing comments about child porn and sex with children and animals. Sorry but you don’t get to weasel out by saying you have poor social skills.

If you'd ever met the man, you would know that Stallman being social oblivious with no tact or decorum is not merely some idle claim.

Tact and decorum are how ideas are presented. No amount of tact or decorum would make it possible to defend somebody for sleeping with an underage girl.

He's attempting to find some remotely plausible scenario where the actions of his friend are morally acceptable.

No amount of tact makes that okay, and complete lack of tact just makes it worse.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#193

Post by Cogito »

stevenwoo wrote: post #61
teh_klev wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have, with the best most charitable reading of your post, no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps some context would be useful with regards to Stallman. Edit: in my defence, is op defending Stallman, or Epstein? Honestly, I don't know how Epstein and Stallman are related. I don't follow Stallman's every statement he makes. I simply asked for some context and enlightenment in this headline and esotericn's comment…

It came out this weekend that Stallman wrote that it was most plausible that the Epstein sexual partners were willing participants and the semantics of the word rape when used to refer to the children with whom Epstein had sexual relations in an email thread defending Epstein, Stallman also argued about the age of consent varying between different territories so not all the partners were below the age of consent wher…

Just in case you haven't read the rest of the discussion here, this statement

> Stallman wrote that it was most plausible that the Epstein sexual partners were willing participants

is one of the misquotations of what Stallman actually wrote that change the meaning significantly.

He wrote

> We can imagine many scenarios, but 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 every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.

"presented ... as entirely willing" is very different to "were willing"

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#194

Post by mantap »

_v7gu wrote: post #79
marcinzm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people down voting this? ceejayoz cited specific quotes with references. Seems sort of hypocritical to me that people who seem to be arguing for the freedom of intellectual debate do the exact opposite if facts don't line up in their favor.

He changed his opinions regarding this, just because he keeps all of his posts online forever shouldn't mean he should be represented by those when people need to write a hit piece for clicks.

If you have a comment on your personal website expressing a certain view, then people will reasonably expect that you stand by it.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#195

Post by cannonedhamster »

marcinzm wrote: post #104
jonnycomputer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"since time immemorial" irrelevant. not all contracts are sanctioned or defined by the state. the problem is that christians see the state as sanctioning their religious institution, and now, perverting it. the solution is to have the state get out of the business of sanctioning it.

>the solution is to have the state get out of the business of sanctioning it. Legality is tied to morality and morality is tied to religion (in those who believe in religion). You cannot separate them out in a society with high regard for religion. Even if you remove religion you still have the cultural views on morality which become tied to the state's laws.

Legality has nothing to do with morality. What morality is there in saying that you cannot pass a vehicle in a tight lane? None. It's a safety concern. Morals only concern religion. Ethics concern right or wrong. Law concerns a group of defined social agreements between people within a defined region. While the basis of some of our laws has a history of Christian influence, our laws in and of themselves do not require morality. An atheist is no more likely to go on a murderous rampage than a Christian, ethically it would be wrong. That kind of timing is built into humanity as a whole because it's required for civilization and predates religion. You see it in animal species as well. Heck a dog sees the benefit in not murdering their master.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#196

Post by pvaldes »

ceejayoz wrote: post #23
partialrecall wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know he's also recanted that shit, right? > and more like he's got a horse in the race. Has the mob now progressed to insinuating that he's a pedophile himself? Is that what the 'horse in the race' idiom means in this context?

Sure. He recanted those comments two days ago (after espousing them on his website at least between 2006 and 2013), and after his comments on the Epstein case started getting attention, which makes it look more like damage control than a genuine change in opinion. https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...

I assume that if he was a pedophile we all would knew it yet. If there was anything remotely naughty in the computer stolen from him in Argentina the thief would have reassured that even Santa Claus will hear about that, for a reasonable sum of money.

Absence of of evidence is not evidence of absence, but philosophizing about murder does not make you a murderer

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#197

Post by geofft »

fortran77 wrote: post #158
geofft wrote: post #56

Worth noting that (as far as I know) Stallman was not a paid employee of MIT, certainly not a professor or anything. He had an office because, I believe, Gerry Sussman (and probably others) thought he should have an office. He's listed as a "visiting scientist" on CSAIL's page: https://www.csail.mit.edu/person/richard-stallman He's around on the mailing list (mostly to reply to every mention of software with a questi…

Well, then, I guess Gerry Sussmann will have to go next!

He's got tenure, but I think CSAIL really ought to have a conversation about whether Sussman's sponsorship of Stallman was a benefit to the lab or not. I don't think there's much to be gained by kicking Sussman out (as far as I've heard, Sussman himself is not the problem, and as a former student I can say he taught classes just fine), but I think there's very much to be gained with a "blameless postmortem," so to speak, of what happened and how we can prevent it from happening again. In particular, given the stories coming out about both students and faculty going out of their way to ward off RMS, could the lab have picked up on him being a problem earlier and gone through some well-defined process? (Consensus is that he was an annoyance 10+ years ago when I was there, was he more than that / could we have established consensus that he was an actual problem?) What should the procedure / norms be to review sponsorship of a lab visitor? How did he get an office when the lab was pressed for space for actual paid researchers, and why was he allowed to have a mattress there?

(If you're applying standard SRE philosophy, someone resigning after a media firestorm is absolutely the sort of atypical and unwanted event that merits an unconditional postmortem. Whether or not you agree with them leaving, it's clearly not the right outcome: either they should have stayed or they should have left before the firestorm.)

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#198

Post by mindslight »

simulacrumparty wrote: post #180
fortran77 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, then, I guess Gerry Sussmann will have to go next!

https://web.archive.org/web/20101112051649/http://www.jeffre... "Jeffrey Epstein is one of the most amazing, interesting, and brilliant people that I know.” – Gerald Sussman, Panasonic Professor of Engineering, MIT

"'Jeffrey Epstein is one of the most amazing, interesting, and brilliant child sex traffickers that I know.' – Gerald Sussman" as quoted by Vice Media.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#199

Post by partialrecall »

javagram wrote: post #169
eoxenford wrote: post #122

Throughout this whole brouhaha, I’ve been astonished at how nobody in the mainstream press, nor any of those in tech calling for Stallman’s head, ever challenged the statement that Stallman said Epstein’s victims were “entirely willing.” Indeed, quite the opposite. From the Medium post that kicked the whole thing off [1]: …and then he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”. And from Vice [2…

Online media outlets are well known to lie and often do in cases such as these. They are the yellow press of our day. Unlike 20th century newspapers, they don’t have ombudsmen or public editors who care more about truth than headlines (A traditional newspaper might make mistakes such as these, but they’d at least be embarrassed enough to issue a correction the day later). And since they publish in the USA, about US p…

You're viewing the history of journalism through rose-tinted glasses. In the late 19th century, American newspapers conspired to start a war for no good reason. That dwarfs anything they've done recently (although the NYTime's role in starting the so called "war on terror" might come close.)

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#200

Post by geofft »

simulacrumparty wrote: post #180
fortran77 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, then, I guess Gerry Sussmann will have to go next!

https://web.archive.org/web/20101112051649/http://www.jeffre... "Jeffrey Epstein is one of the most amazing, interesting, and brilliant people that I know.” – Gerald Sussman, Panasonic Professor of Engineering, MIT

... yikes.
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