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Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

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Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#321

Post by DanBC »

m000 wrote: post #319
melling wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t follow the story. Was Stallman taken out of context? Anyway, he probably should have know better than to weigh in. One’s well thought out response and subtle points can often turn out to have a few holes. In fact... “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged”

> Anyway, he probably should have know better than to weigh in. That's the problem with the internet today. It's too toxic to hold any meaningful public discussion. I'd bet that RMS was open to discussing the point he expressed. Because that's what you do on an old-fashioned mailing list. But apparently he got no response to his email. Instead Selam jumped the gun and started, essentially, a shaming campaign on mediu…

He wasn't attempting to have a meaningful discussion though, was he?

He was defending a 70 year old who had sex with a coerced child by trying to say that the word "assault" shouldn't carry either its everyday English meaning or its more specific legal meaning, but should instead have some other meaning that he created.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#322

Post by ceejayoz »

tw20190916jobdg wrote: post #315
ceejayoz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between "unpopular but everyone knows I'm quirky" and "this might be an existential threat to my ability to keep running the FSF etc.".

Two things: 1. Stallman already has a lifetime of of examples of somewhat poor leadership within the GNU project, resulting in decisions that have compromised GNU and FSF's trajectory (compared to their potential), so once again, these are not new circumstances 2. How is Stallman doing FSF under threat here?

> How is Stallman doing FSF under threat here?

He resigned from the FSF presidency and board yesterday a few hours after my comment, which should answer that question.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#323

Post by marcinzm »

cannonedhamster wrote: post #195
marcinzm wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 requir…

>Morals only concern religion.

Morality is much broader than religion. A non-religious culture would have a moral guideline based on it's view on what is wrong and right. Likewise a non-religious philosophies have systems of morality. Religion is one driver of a societies morality although there's some chicken and egg questions in there (ie: is religion merely parroting a cultures pre-existing moral views). Laws, as I see it, are mostly attempts to codify a societies morality so that it can be enforced centrally and systematically instead of piece meal and locally.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#324

Post by nathan_long »

tzs wrote: post #129
melling wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t follow the story. Was Stallman taken out of context? Anyway, he probably should have know better than to weigh in. One’s well thought out response and subtle points can often turn out to have a few holes. In fact... “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged”

> I didn’t follow the story. Was Stallman taken out of context? Yes. This statement of Stallman's: > 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. has been reported in several places as Stallman saying Epstein's gi…

> Stallman was arguing that from Minsky's point of view, he probably had no reason to suspect that he was not dealing with a consenting girl.

"Consenting girl" is a contradiction. A child cannot legally give consent for sex. If he knew she was underage and if he had sex with her anyway, that was criminal.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#325

Post by seba_dos1 »

querulous wrote: post #111
partialrecall wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you believe Stallman's statements indicate he's a pedophile, not merely somebody with a long and established history of being tactless? Because I'd say there is a hell of a lot more evidence that he's tactless due to being neuroatypical. Maybe that makes him a bad leader, but it surely doesn't make him evil.

i believe stallman's statements indicate he thinks sex with a consenting child is okay. why does he have to have committed a crime to condemn that view?

"Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it.

Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why."

- Richard M. Stallman, 14 September 2019

https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#326

Post by kelnos »

darawk wrote: post #286
kelnos wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the idea that Minsky was unaware (or at least had no suspicions of) coercion is highly suspect, and a bit naive. Powerful billionaire brings you to his private island and presents a beautiful young woman to you who appears ready and willing to have sex with you, a 75-year-old man. Is that ever credible, even in a porno? For Stallman to push this "Minsky didn't know" narrative now, with no horse in the ra…

So, I could certainly be convinced of that argument. But there is a middle ground between coercion and porno-plot that makes sense here: Minsky thought she was a prostitute of legal age, there by her own free choice in exchange for compensation. If that were the case, I don't think we should be calling what Minsky did assault, and I do think that that is a pretty reasonable and likely scenario.

More reasonable, perhaps, but still a bit out there. Age is often hard to tell at a glance, but just going along with the situation without asking any questions would seem to be ridiculously irresponsible.

Then again, an account from someone else at the gathering claims he saw what happened, and that Minsky rejected the girl's advances. If true, that kind makes the whole thing moot.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#327

Post by m000 »

DanBC wrote: post #321
m000 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway, he probably should have know better than to weigh in. That's the problem with the internet today. It's too toxic to hold any meaningful public discussion. I'd bet that RMS was open to discussing the point he expressed. Because that's what you do on an old-fashioned mailing list. But apparently he got no response to his email. Instead Selam jumped the gun and started, essentially, a shaming campaign on mediu…

He wasn't attempting to have a meaningful discussion though, was he? He was defending a 70 year old who had sex with a coerced child by trying to say that the word "assault" shouldn't carry either its everyday English meaning or its more specific legal meaning, but should instead have some other meaning that he created.

I sense a generation gap here. csail-related is a closed mailing list. If you disagree with a point, you are expected to come back with some arguments. Not to leak emails out with zero effort in making a discussion. That's the established mailing list netiquette for almost 30 years.

It's also funny that you complain about RMS twisting the "everyday English" meaning of "assault" while at the same time you call "child" someone who you'd most definitely call a "teenager" or "youngster" if you met in person.

This urge to abuse words in order to sensationalize an already perfectly valid argument is what RMS was pointing out in the first place.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#328

Post by fortran77 »

thrower123 wrote: post #251
simulacrumparty wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The whole world is going to unravel like Mr Oogie Boogie in the Nightmare Before Christmas by the time all the strings back to Epstein get pulled.

I don't really think all these "strings" mean too much.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#329

Post by lazylizard »

pryce wrote: post #263
gruez wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you are in a position of leadership however, you incur responsibilities. [...] >A person in a leadership or representational role doesn't get to publicly speculate about "clothing and sexual assault" in the abstract [...] How is this applicable to Stallman? What was Stallman doing at MIT? It doesn't seem like he's in any sort of leadership position.

1) President of the FSF is a leadership position. 2) It would take a staggering feat of mental gymnastics to suggest Dr. Stallman's idiosyncratic role at CSAIL -described variously as "visiting scientist"- absolves him of having leadership responsiblities to students. 3) Though I did not go into details at the time, the argument above applies more widely than leaders per se - it applies to people who affiliate with a…

President of the fsf. Free as in speech.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#330

Post by tzs »

nathan_long wrote: post #324
tzs wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I didn’t follow the story. Was Stallman taken out of context? Yes. This statement of Stallman's: > 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. has been reported in several places as Stallman saying Epstein's gi…

> Stallman was arguing that from Minsky's point of view, he probably had no reason to suspect that he was not dealing with a consenting girl. "Consenting girl" is a contradiction. A child cannot legally give consent for sex. If he knew she was underage and if he had sex with her anyway, that was criminal.

She wasn't underage. The age of consent was 16 at the time there. It was raised to 18 later, in the Child Protection Act of 2002.

If you are traveling, and there is any possibility you will engage in any sexual activities outside your home area, it is a good idea to check the destination's laws. If you forget this and just assume they are the same, you can get screwed (no pun intended), regardless of if the age of consent is higher or lower at your destination.

If it is higher, you might inadvertently commit statutory rape with someone who is clearly old enough back home and so doesn't trigger your "do an age check" alarm.

If it is lower, you might run afoul of laws back home against against sex tourism.

(Pay attention to recreational drug laws, too. Sex and drugs are both things that are taken vary seriously. Most other things tourists might do aren't nearly as risky--nobody except maybe Singapore is going to make a big deal of it if you, say, improperly dispose of a food wrapper or something like that. Oh, and also be careful with religion).

The age of consent is 16 in 31 US states and the DC (including Massachusetts). It s 17 in 8 states. It is 18 in the remaining 11 states.

It's 18 in Mexico, 16 in Canada, ranges all over the place from 14 to 18 in South America, 13 to 21 in Asia, 14 to 18 in Europe, and 11 to 18 in Africa.

It also varies widely whether or not places have close-in-age exceptions (also known as Romeo and Juliet laws). Such an exception might, for example, might say that in a place with an age of consent of 18, a 16 or 17 year old can consent to sex if the other participants are under 21. Don't assume that because you are young that you don't have to worry about other young people's age.

Finally, it also varies widely by what kind of sex. There are places where they have close-in-age exceptions, but only for heterosexual acts, and so a 17 year old girl with a 17 year old boy is fine, given an age of consent of 18, but a 17 year old boy with another 17 year old boy is statutory rape by both of them because the close-in-age exception doesn't apply.

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