Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, the old "it's just a joke" justification.
That's not a joke. He's serious.
You may be responding to the wrong comment, because that was the point of mine.
Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
371–380 of 580 posts
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
there's a large contingent of people on hn (in tech, in the world) that fetishize "logic" and believe it always trumps "feelings". i put both in quotes because to this contingent both of those concepts have absolutely zero relation to their actual form. i too used to be quite fond of making completely dispassionate arguments about controversial things (race, gender, class, etc.) because i believed that the entire con…
The whole point of rational dispassionate discussion is exactly because everyone has their own subjective feelings and experiences and biases. You have to put them aside to have a useful discussion. Prioritizing personal experience and saying “you cant know what its like if youre not X” is a bad bad social meme. I mean lets pretend its true. So what? It doesn’t advance the discussion at all, its only purpose is to en…
> its only purpose is to end discussion.
Yeah, and that would necessarily be a bad thing if your only priority was pwning people with facts and logic. However, some people care more about things like being kind and getting along with others. Such people have to be willing to stop doing things that hurt others, even if they can't understand why those things are bad.
Eg. It's very hard to explain what gender dysphoria feels like. If a trans person isn't able to do this to your satisfaction, that doesn't mean that you can just go on misgendering them. It means you just have to take their word for it.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
> [P]rostitution, 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 narrowmindedness. June 28th 2003: http://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html > I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based…
Damn, he actually wrote that under his real name? That was unwise. I wouldn't even say that as Mirimir. Except about prostitution and adultery, of course.
There was also one that I can't be bothered to find that goes something along the lines of "teens sext each other, therefore child pornography should be legal".
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#374We are, sadly, entering a new age of conformity. Aligning yourself with what main stream society thinks is correct is now more important than anything else. The response of course is that "bad behavior should never be excused, regardless of ability!" which leads to a losing argument in which we try to say what kind of good excuses what kind of bad. But this presupposes the conformist stance: that fitting in with the…
It's the age of auto-censure. Now everybody should go around the office, the school and life wearing nice people masks, avoiding to express anything that's near controversial.
The punishment? Public embarrassment and shaming, in the present or the possible future for things said in the past.
Who are the winners? Workplace owners. They are tired of dealing with HR issues and project instabilities for the gossip and drama derived from a controversial opinion or act.
Of course, there are serious incidents (like physical violence or other) but now the level was brought so low that simply saying a bad word can give you a life sentence.
Unfortunately, there is no room for radical thinkers.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well... He updated the link 12 years later (last year) because the original one was broken. So it's pretty much clear he still holds these beliefs. If he made a statement that he changed his mind, I'd be happy to see it.
https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_Septe... and for 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Biograp...
Good to know! I stand corrected.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bushnell* writes a very reasonable piece. It deals with a number of issues with Stallman as a leader of the FSF and MIT and suggests Stallman is unlikely to come back to either of those institutions. But he doesn't deal with what the big problem here is - the way this was done is concerning. Stallman wasn't forced to resign by people like him - who are quite happy to say "Look, Stallman, you've dedicated your life to…
Stallman resigned in the face of people who had always known who he was being faced with the reality that the rest of the world also knew. The motivation wasn't the misquotes of his already abhorrent argument. (source: former FSF board member)
Why do you consider his argument abhorrent before it was misquoted?
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#377We are, sadly, entering a new age of conformity. Aligning yourself with what main stream society thinks is correct is now more important than anything else. The response of course is that "bad behavior should never be excused, regardless of ability!" which leads to a losing argument in which we try to say what kind of good excuses what kind of bad. But this presupposes the conformist stance: that fitting in with the…
Yes there is a benefit to radical thinking and nonconformity, but "do it without hurting others" is a reasonable line to draw. Stallman was viewed as a toxic individual who caused harm, and this is what our society is trying to weed out. I still believe, perhaps naively, that it's possible to maintain not-normal opinions without causing pain to the people around you. And this is something that everyone needs to do, w…
> I still believe, perhaps naively, that it's possible to maintain not-normal opinions without causing pain to the people around you. And this is something that everyone needs to do, whether you're in the majority or the minority.
It sure is. By shutting up and never speaking your opinions or thoughts to anyone. That's what you and half the people on this thread are advocating for. That people should only share opinions that the rest of society agrees with lest someone somewhere be offended. As if to be offended is to be physically harmed. Otherwise, should one dare to speak, one should be fired and ostracized. Frankly, that's one sick and boring society that's will produce little to nothing of value. Who knows what other voices will be silenced by this kind of censorship? No one will know because in this society of self censorship, people will be too afraid to voice any kind of opinion. That's the type of place America is becoming and the type of society it is trying to export to the rest of the world. Having lived in a society where the vast majority were afraid of speaking anything against the norms, I can tell you it was a horrible place, full of fear with little room for creativity or advancement of any sort. Yet here in America, where one is protected from the government, this growing movement of censorship is created by the people themselves, as if in the absence of government censorship, many Americans take it upon themselves to create an institution of censorship to prevent any and all discourse, creative thought, and advancement. They do the censorship for the government the government can't do for itself.
Ironic and ugly this society that has been created. So much for freedom. Whatever little freedom the government has left to the people, the people here are choosing to take it away from themselves. All so someone somewhere doesn't get offended. Of course, someone will always be offended. That's what great writers and thinkers and inventors and creators do: they offend. When you lose that, you lose all innovation and even the ability to think critically about anything. You end up with a conformist monoculture that cannot fathom of anything different. So much for diversity.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
> [P]rostitution, 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 narrowmindedness. June 28th 2003: http://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html > I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based…
These are obvious examples of «things you can’t say», e.g. opinions that are considered normal in some societies and times, and anathema in others. (For reference, in case someone hasn’t read it: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html ) Without saying anything about my own stance on these opinions, it’s intellectualy weak to consider it a firable offense to have uttered them thirteen years ago. People should be stronger…
Those words didn't disappear and resurfaced from some secret tape or whatever. They're on his own blog, first-party information quoted all over the place, and recent email scandal just proves that he never really changed.
Also, here's a quote of his about people with Down syndrome:
> If you'd like to love and care for a pet that doesn't have normal human mental capacity, don't create a handicapped human being to be your pet. Get a dog or a parrot...
https://twitter.com/popey/status/793384010718248960?lang=en
Seriously, everyone's better off with him gone, including free software as a whole. He's not worth defending. It was about damn time he actually faced some consequences for his shitty behavior.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#379We are, sadly, entering a new age of conformity. Aligning yourself with what main stream society thinks is correct is now more important than anything else. The response of course is that "bad behavior should never be excused, regardless of ability!" which leads to a losing argument in which we try to say what kind of good excuses what kind of bad. But this presupposes the conformist stance: that fitting in with the…
Yes there is a benefit to radical thinking and nonconformity, but "do it without hurting others" is a reasonable line to draw. Stallman was viewed as a toxic individual who caused harm, and this is what our society is trying to weed out. I still believe, perhaps naively, that it's possible to maintain not-normal opinions without causing pain to the people around you. And this is something that everyone needs to do, w…
And offense has now turned into harm.
Re: Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, and often it comes from a place of skepticism, not from a place of trying to understand. And also from a place of laziness, where the skeptic expects the marginalized person to explain why the behavior or speech is harmful, and explain it in a way that is acceptable to the skeptic. All the while the understanding is a short Google search away.
The problem is it's selectively applied. I can just as easily argue that rap music as "harmful" and what they said were "terrible" things, and yet there is no public outrage over that. In western society, it seems, thugs are exempt from all the politically correct standards that the rest of us are expected to abide by.
> I can just as easily argue that rap music as "harmful" and what they said were "terrible" things, and yet there is no public outrage over that.
Are you serious? "Sistah Souljah moment" was the epitome of "cancel culture" in the Clinton years.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/13/bill-clinton-s...
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/17/us/the-1992-campaign-raci...