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Richard M. Stallman resigns

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Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#411

Post by bubblethink »

nabla9 wrote: post #343

RMS has called himself "borderline autistic". His socially clueless black and white thinking makes it look like he is far in the spectrum. RMS is anal about meanings of terms and their use. That's not working well in the current climate where words carry perceived intent. I find myself agreeing with RMS with most of the terminology and its use in this case. Women who tell stories about him paint a picture of lonely s…

>But RMS is de facto leader and public figure in movement that is also political

What does this mean ? He is a leader of an organisation related to software freedom (or more pedantically, the choice of licences used for software). How is it relevant ? All you are saying is, "Famous people can't talk like that".

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#412

Post by gojomo »

csb6 wrote: post #378
naringas wrote: post #114

it's rather interesting how all the information technology (social media, etc...) is slowly moving our culture towards increasing self-censorship. One has to have the right opinion or stay quiet. Having the wrong opinion about certain topics is getting more expensive. Stay away from taboos or else... never mind the fact that what we regard as wrong changes across different societies over time. Weirdly all the informa…

The wrong opinion? Stallman questions whether the victim, who he admits was coerced into sex, was actually sexually assaulted. This is an incredibly shameful take on the situation. If any politician or public figure said this statement in the past 70 years, they would have ended their career. There are no Internet vigilantes hunting down dissenters. There are people trying to downplay sexual assault. As the internet…

I didn't read RMS's "take" as in any way excusing what happened to Giuffre, but rather disputing whether it was accurate to accuse Marvin Minsky of "sexual assault", if from Minsky's perspective at the time nothing seemed wrong. (Sensationalist reporting and selective paraphrasing, like you've done here, has conflated the two issues.)

Suppose there's a boxer, "Joe", and he has a scheduled fight against a named opponent. It's set in a legitimate venue, is freely advertised as if the promoters have nothing to hide, includes a normal ref & audience, and then proceeds like any other boxing match, including the traditional cordialities between opponents before and after. To "Joe", nothing's wrong. But then, years later, it's discovered that the opposing boxer was coerced into fighting, perhaps with threats of violence or blackmail.

Is "Joe" now guilty of physical assault, for repeatedly punching the other boxer, even if to "Joe" at the time it seemed like a normal voluntary encounter, no seedier than any other boxing match?

Maybe RMS's take was dumb. Maybe my analogy is dumb! But it's not "shameful" to try to work out the reasonable characterizations, given Minksy's possible mental state, the law, or common-sense. It might even be possible, under formal legal definitions, for Giuffre to have been "assaulted" while at the same time Minsky's actions don't rise to the level of "assault".

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#414

Post by kjeetgill »

csb6 wrote: post #378
naringas wrote: post #114

it's rather interesting how all the information technology (social media, etc...) is slowly moving our culture towards increasing self-censorship. One has to have the right opinion or stay quiet. Having the wrong opinion about certain topics is getting more expensive. Stay away from taboos or else... never mind the fact that what we regard as wrong changes across different societies over time. Weirdly all the informa…

The wrong opinion? Stallman questions whether the victim, who he admits was coerced into sex, was actually sexually assaulted. This is an incredibly shameful take on the situation. If any politician or public figure said this statement in the past 70 years, they would have ended their career. There are no Internet vigilantes hunting down dissenters. There are people trying to downplay sexual assault. As the internet…

> If any politician or public figure said this statement in the past 70 years, they would have ended their career.

I mean, given everything in the news these days, this is blatantly untrue. I suspect it wasn't ever quite that true before either. Maybe it should be but I don't think it's quite that easy.

> The wrong opinion? Stallman questions whether the victim, who he admits was coerced into sex, was actually sexually assaulted. This is an incredibly shameful take on the situation. [...] There are people trying to downplay sexual assault.

I'm hesitating to respond to this (self-censorship and all) but I'm not a public figure so I can risk being wrong, right? Right?!?

This isn't exactly what RMS was getting it and you're kinda missing the point in the same way RMS kinda missed the point. He didn't get why we use the term "sexual assault" as broadly (and reasonably so) as we do, and it doesn't sound like you get why he decided to argue the semantics of it.

His point was that he felt calling what Misnky had done "sexual assault" seemed to imply that Misky hadviolently attacked and raped her in a physically restraining sorta way instead of, to his best knowledge, in a "she was coerced by a third party without his knowledge" sort of way.

He missed the point that regardless of those details she was sexual assaulted. Further, he seems oblivious to the fact that splitting hairs defending his friend distracts from the real issue: that this isn't about any of them, it's about what happened to the victims. I think that take is fair enough but I agree making that case is bone headed. Not because he shouldn't speak his mind, but that it's just besides the point.

I think you're missing the fact that at all RMS was about was just clearing up the record of what Minsky did and didn't do. Not even that he was fully innocent. I agree it was in poor taste but I think if he was any less a public figure it would have been read more charitably with an awkward sigh instead.

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#415

Post by friendlybus »

anilakar wrote: post #305
friendlybus wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the internet is getting locked down, it'll end up like daytime tv if we're not careful. But I'm two clicks away from access to Nazi and extremist content right now. The internet still is the wild wild west version of a library, in terms of access to content, but now there's laws and archiving of everything typed and read applied on top of that too. This Stallman case is edge-case fallout from a massive politi…

> He could have probably discussed the age of consent in public pre-2013 and maybe get a few disgusted reactions but generally be fine. He did. People don't remember, but his home page used to have articles regarding age of consent, which he later took down.

I hope my post didn't look like a defense of stallman, because it isn't meant to be. Yeah people don't remember right? The stories about him seem troubling.

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#416

Post by freetime2 »

csb6 wrote: post #378
naringas wrote: post #114

it's rather interesting how all the information technology (social media, etc...) is slowly moving our culture towards increasing self-censorship. One has to have the right opinion or stay quiet. Having the wrong opinion about certain topics is getting more expensive. Stay away from taboos or else... never mind the fact that what we regard as wrong changes across different societies over time. Weirdly all the informa…

The wrong opinion? Stallman questions whether the victim, who he admits was coerced into sex, was actually sexually assaulted. This is an incredibly shameful take on the situation. If any politician or public figure said this statement in the past 70 years, they would have ended their career. There are no Internet vigilantes hunting down dissenters. There are people trying to downplay sexual assault. As the internet…

Essentially Stallman takes issue with accusing Marvin Minsky of sexual assault because:

> The word "assaulting" presumes he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way.

And then Stallman goes on to point out there is no evidence to suggest that Minksy acted violently toward the victim, and may have been unaware that the victim had been coerced by Epstein.

Given that the definition of "assault" is "a physical attack", I can't really disagree with him from a purely semantic perspective. And I would agree that there are other terms terms such as "statutory rape" and "soliciting prostitution" that may better describe what Minsky is accused of.

Is it "shameful" for me to see some merit in his argument?

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#417

Post by csb6 »

kjeetgill wrote: post #414
csb6 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wrong opinion? Stallman questions whether the victim, who he admits was coerced into sex, was actually sexually assaulted. This is an incredibly shameful take on the situation. If any politician or public figure said this statement in the past 70 years, they would have ended their career. There are no Internet vigilantes hunting down dissenters. There are people trying to downplay sexual assault. As the internet…

> If any politician or public figure said this statement in the past 70 years, they would have ended their career. I mean, given everything in the news these days, this is blatantly untrue. I suspect it wasn't ever quite that true before either. Maybe it should be but I don't think it's quite that easy. > The wrong opinion? Stallman questions whether the victim, who he admits was coerced into sex, was actually sexual…

I think it’s wrong to absolve Minsky of responsibility, though. He would have had to be pretty clueless to not at least wonder why all of these teenaged girls were hanging around Epstein’s place. Whether he knew doesn’t mean he did not still have sex with an underage girl. Claiming that he didn’t know she was underage seems shaky to me. At the very least he was taking advantage of a woman in the employ of Epstein who seduced/tried to seduce him. At the very least Minsky was involved in indirect, coerced sexual assault as the one having sex with her (if ended up doing so), even if Epstein is the mastermind. I think Minsky was smart enough to know what was happening. So that is why I disagree with RMS. I think calling it sexual assault done, perhaps unknowingly, by Minsky is an accurate description.

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#418

Post by friendlybus »

smsm42 wrote: post #315
friendlybus wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the internet is getting locked down, it'll end up like daytime tv if we're not careful. But I'm two clicks away from access to Nazi and extremist content right now. The internet still is the wild wild west version of a library, in terms of access to content, but now there's laws and archiving of everything typed and read applied on top of that too. This Stallman case is edge-case fallout from a massive politi…

> But I'm two clicks away from access to Nazi and extremist content right now So? Don't make these clicks and you'd never see them. > The political control of internet arguments is more obvious than ever, and the quest for advertising money Advertising money has nothing to do with it - FSF doesn't need advertising money. They're just live in deathly fear of the woke Red Guards, as many before them (e.g. Mozilla) - an…

Just saying that the crazy content is still available so assessing the idea that speech is being limited and we are reaching a monoculture is testable against that yardstick. I'm not here to defend the quality or content of those extreme websites.

Advertising money has something to do with YouTube deplatforming people which is part of evaluating the idea that we are becoming a monoculture.

I think only the daily stormer is an example if you go anywhere you will be pulled down, including for. Controlling that stuff is the government's job, I would expect radical political sects to lose the fight to host a website. But if your idea is non political you're basically in the clear.

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#419

Post by jacquesm »

bitwize wrote: post #176

Something about Minsky that seems to have gotten lost: Minsky appears to have turned Epstein's girl down, according to Gregory Benford: https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/

The deposition is rather ambiguous about this, it says she was sent there but not whether she did or did not have sex with Minsky.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14ZOEKwoBnDKUFI1hLbFJH5nsUFx...

RMS did a very stupid thing here, by attempting to defend his friend as though he had had sex with her he cemented that picture in the minds of whoever reads his (RMS's) screed without questioning whether or not the event took place in the first place. It is a pity that the deposition does not allow one to resolve this once and for all.

It speaks of her being directed to have sex with but fails to ask the follow up question (which I would think is very much material) of whether it actually happened in each of those cases. Pretty bad questioning.

Re: Richard M. Stallman resigns

#420

Post by michaelmrose »

nabla9 wrote: post #343

RMS has called himself "borderline autistic". His socially clueless black and white thinking makes it look like he is far in the spectrum. RMS is anal about meanings of terms and their use. That's not working well in the current climate where words carry perceived intent. I find myself agreeing with RMS with most of the terminology and its use in this case. Women who tell stories about him paint a picture of lonely s…

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