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Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

stallman.org

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Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#71

Post by whymauri »

geofft wrote: post #47
gumby wrote: post #5

I am surprised he was being paid by the Institute at all. For decades he was not AFAIK.

I don't believe he was. He's listed as a "visiting scientist": https://www.csail.mit.edu/person/richard-stallman I think that just means that some faculty member is sponsoring you to have building access and a login account, more or less. (And the implications of affiliation of course.)

There's some less direct symbiotic benefits too, like the LibrePlanet has been at the MIT Stata Center for a couple years (at least). These sorts of things are facilitated by his role, for sure. I hope well-meaning conferences like that don't get disrupted by his resignation.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#72

Post by [deleted] »

vkou wrote: post #29
esotericn wrote: post #16

Is anyone else baffled by the idea that discussing something on an intellectual level, even related to a person, has to somehow be a 'defense' or an 'offense'? I've spent basically my entire life discussing things in the abstract. I'm not a politician, I don't make laws, and frankly I wouldn't want that power. To me it makes absolute sense that someone would attempt to "defend" even the most heinous person. It's weir…

It has been my experience that the people who most loudly defend rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of reprehensible ideas are often not interested in rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of how, say, their right to speech or, say, liberty should be restricted. It's an odd twist of irony. Everyone seems to be able to be rational, intellectual, and level-headed, when the issue they are debating…

[deleted]

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#73

Post by taneq »

esotericn wrote: post #16

Is anyone else baffled by the idea that discussing something on an intellectual level, even related to a person, has to somehow be a 'defense' or an 'offense'? I've spent basically my entire life discussing things in the abstract. I'm not a politician, I don't make laws, and frankly I wouldn't want that power. To me it makes absolute sense that someone would attempt to "defend" even the most heinous person. It's weir…

It’s a natural consequence of thinking ideologically rather than rationally. You don’t care about objectivity, only about what supports or attacks your ideology.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#74

Post by untog »

zinclozenge wrote: post #67
esotericn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never came up. If you're after my personal opinion - I think that the whole debate about gay marriage gets muddled because there's basically this interplay between the state and religion. So you end up in this weird place where - those who really believe in the religious aspects of marriage have to be against gay marriage because it's literally "against the rules", it doesn't compile. But then in the real world, we h…

Marriage has, since time immemorial, always been a contractual relationship. What you described is exactly what marriage is, there's no need to come up with another word or term when a perfectly good one already exists.

In an ideal world, sure. But it's silly to pretend that a marriage is not also full of religious meaning and significance to many.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#75

Post by vivekd »

ceejayoz wrote: post #18
geekone wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ones were troubling? I don't see anything that stands out on the page linked.

2006: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun... > I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. 2013: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_Janua... > There is little ev…

To be fair to Stallman though, he later recanted on those positions. I can't remember the exact post but he said something along the lines of how someone explained to him how much pedophilia harms children and so he has since recanted his position and now believes pedophilia is wrong and harmful.

Also he was making the statements in the context of having read this article from the Guardian which says petty much the same thing:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jan/03/paedophilia-...

From a scientific perspective, the level of harm caused by sex with minors and even the classification of pedophilia is something we are still gathering evidence on. Does that mean it doesn't harm children - absolutely not, of course it's harmful. However, it's still fair to make the point that we don't have a scientific case for it yet.

There's a lot I don't agree with about Stallman, but I do appreciate his contributions to computing and freedom - and I certainly don't approve of this new trend towards social media mob justice.

That injustice of this social media mob justice can be seen in the fact that all Stallman's historical statements from many years, even ones that he has recanted, can be taken out of context and used against him.

Worse, it's completely without reason. I mean there were a group of US prosecutors that characterized Epstein's child victims as prostitutes to justify releasing him so that he could continue raping children. Why are we going after MIT scientists instead of those prosecutors and Epstien's associates. I think the reason is because there was a popular NY Times article that focused on MIT rather than the US prosecution service and Epstein's rich powerful friends like Trump and Clinton. These mob events aren't based on reflection, they're based on whim and whatever the media (consisting of companies some of which are owned by Epstein cohorts) and some random influencers on twitter are saying.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#76

Post by marcinzm »

esotericn wrote: post #54
75dvtwin wrote: post #43

> Amongst my real-life friendship groups this sort of "hate mob" type stuff just doesn't exist You have great friendship groups. Do you remember, by any chance how this topic was handled in your discussions (I am genuinely curios) "... Brendan Eich is gone. The creator of JavaScript and co-founder of mozilla.org has quit as Mozilla’s CEO, forced out by the uproar over a donation he made six years ago to a ballot meas…

Never came up. If you're after my personal opinion - I think that the whole debate about gay marriage gets muddled because there's basically this interplay between the state and religion. So you end up in this weird place where - those who really believe in the religious aspects of marriage have to be against gay marriage because it's literally "against the rules", it doesn't compile. But then in the real world, we h…

The way I see it, the fight for gay marriage cannot be looked at without historical context. In many countries for a long time gay relationships were illegal. Punishable by jail or worse. Gay marriage is simply a step on a long road towards legalizing gay relationships. It doesn't matter what it would be called, historically gay people would not have been allowed to participate.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#77

Post by jonnycomputer »

zinclozenge wrote: post #67
esotericn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never came up. If you're after my personal opinion - I think that the whole debate about gay marriage gets muddled because there's basically this interplay between the state and religion. So you end up in this weird place where - those who really believe in the religious aspects of marriage have to be against gay marriage because it's literally "against the rules", it doesn't compile. But then in the real world, we h…

Marriage has, since time immemorial, always been a contractual relationship. What you described is exactly what marriage is, there's no need to come up with another word or term when a perfectly good one already exists.

"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.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#78

Post by codesushi42 »

esotericn wrote: post #16

Is anyone else baffled by the idea that discussing something on an intellectual level, even related to a person, has to somehow be a 'defense' or an 'offense'? I've spent basically my entire life discussing things in the abstract. I'm not a politician, I don't make laws, and frankly I wouldn't want that power. To me it makes absolute sense that someone would attempt to "defend" even the most heinous person. It's weir…

What the hell are you talking about? What intellectual level? Stallman is quoted to have said:

Stallman wrote that “the most plausible scenario” for Giuffre’s accusations was that she was, in actuality, “entirely willing.”

How is that a rational, defensible statement in any terms?

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#79

Post by _v7gu »

marcinzm wrote: post #55
ceejayoz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2006: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun... > I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. 2013: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_Janua... > There is little ev…

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.

Re: Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

#80

Post by geofft »

esotericn wrote: post #16

Is anyone else baffled by the idea that discussing something on an intellectual level, even related to a person, has to somehow be a 'defense' or an 'offense'? I've spent basically my entire life discussing things in the abstract. I'm not a politician, I don't make laws, and frankly I wouldn't want that power. To me it makes absolute sense that someone would attempt to "defend" even the most heinous person. It's weir…

> It's weird to me that being considered a "defender of X" could even be a bad thing. That's the process by which we collectively make decisions, it's the basis behind stuff like fair trials for example; the lawyer acting for a defendant is not a bad person.

Except that in fair trials we have the concept of stare decisis, that once something has been decided, it's been decided. We very intentionally do not have the courtroom try to reason something out from first principles every time. We do not defend each person who runs a red light by saying, is it actually bad to run a red light. The cases which do overturn existing legal or social precedent are rare, carefully picked by the lawyers to be as sympathetic as possible (cf. Rosa Parks), and carefully timed to line up with sufficient hope of social consensus having changed around the law.

While it is absolutely your right to say "What if this bad thing is not actually bad," to do so without presenting a novel argument about it, and especially to do so for the sake of being contrarian, is not how we make decisions. You should look at the strongest arguments on both sides. You should privately take the opposing side and then see if you can knock it down.

The arguments Stallman presented were hardly arguments and were not novel at all. They're arguments that have occurred to the people he's arguing against, already. If he wants to seek the truth and not just advocate a side, he could have and should have figured that out. I still believe in his right to free speech (in the sense that I would defend his freedom to speak without government coercion), but I don't think he made a contribution to the discourse that's worth defending at a social level.

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