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Comment by marble-drink | Hacker News Reader

I'm so relieved to find that at least on hacker news people can still evaluate this situation with reason. Out there it's a witch hunt and Stallman is now a witch.

RMS is a great man but sadly has difficulties communicating with the wider world. This has been true of many great minds throughout history. It's sad to see it happen to one of my own heroes but I believe history will do him justice if we continue to fight for free software.

I wish somebody would have simply advised him not to speak on such matters because nothing good could become of it. Maybe he needed a PR manager. That sounds awful, but apparently this is what the world wants: carefully filtered speech that doesn't stray far from what people already agree with.

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There are a chain of media reports which inaccurately portray what Stallman was saying.

But look past that into what was happening.

Stallman was trying to defend Minsky who had sex with someone, a teenager, nearly 60 years younger than him on a billionaire's private island. There isn't an imaginable circumstance where what happened there was not, even in the best possible light, incredibly creepy.

His intellectual arguments were understandable in a way, but in the context of defending Minsky and in the venue they were wildly inappropriate and indefensible.

It doesn't matter how "great" you are or how socially awkward, any institution should fire you for doing something like that.

It also wasn't in isolation; he made very similar remarks in 2006 on his blog that he got flak for, but people mostly brushed aside as 'oh, Stallman..'

Comments here seem to mostly equate this situation to a Cancel Culture outcry over an isolated remark. That's not what happened here. rms has had decades of inexcusable behavior for any individual, much less someone affiliated with MIT and heading something as large as FSF. He had to answer for this eventually.

I sincerely appreciate his contributions to this world. But I also sincerely feel that we can't give people free passes for their behavior (see: courtesy cards at conferences) just because they've done well in other respects. We need to end the acceptance of Brilliant Jerks.

His Behavior being commenting or having opinions on things we don’t agree with? I think he should be able to say whatever he wants, and further that in this instance his comments have been taken wildly out of context.

I hate this morality police sweeping in saying that he simply can’t talk about this because it is forbidden, wrong, etc. The majority should not decide what is ok speech or thought, we should judge him by what he has actually done, and challenge his thoughts directly with reasoned argument rather than immediately dismiss and denounce anything that isn’t in the moral majority.

Yeah, you can’t excuse pedophilia in decent society because it puts kids at risk. Legally you can say whatever you want, but legally no one has to employ you when you do.

Freedom of association is just as important at freedom of speech.

I agree regarding freedom of association and its importance. But, are you ok then condemning people to homelessness and poverty? It sure seems to me like you are viewing that as a perfectly acceptable punishment for saying something unacceptable.

There is no rule that states that a person should be free to say anything without any consequences.

He made a choice to say some words and based on those words people felt they would be better off without him in their workplace. Seems fair to me, people have been fired for much less.

That is a straw man argument. I don’t have a cushy gig at MIT, but that doesn’t mean I am condemned to homelessness and poverty.

He was in two roles that were largely about PR and put him in positions of power over young women. I certainly am willing to condemn people to no longer holding positions of power they have demonstrated they will abuse, and if your job is as a figurehead a big part of that job is not being so gross people avoid the institution. He got fired because a significant part of his job was ensuring the fsf could raise funds and he was being bad at his job.

> He was in two roles that were largely about PR and put him in positions of power over young women.

1st, you're assuming his relative power based on claims in an article by a young woman who didn't know about him, and still hasn't met him.

2nd, the least old of these claims was written 13 years ago.

3rd, for god's sake... he wasn't defending pedophilia. there's no reason to say that! why on earth do people keep repeating it? it's clearly inaccurate.

I think that's one of the only sane comment around there, not thinking in a vacuum. Thank you :-)

For better or worse, that's how societies work. They're composed of individuals who do things based on their own values.

Suppose you're an employer. Would you want to hire a neo-Nazi who has visible swastika and Hitler tattoos? Would you put this guy in front of your customers? Probably not; your business wouldn't do too well. So when you decline to hire such a person, you're exercising your freedom of association, but also helping to condemn the neo-Nazi to homelessness and poverty. In some countries, he might be able to get some social assistance so he doesn't turn to crime, but it'll probably still be poverty-level.

Societies aren't just a bunch of people all doing and saying whatever the heck they want. There's consequences to your actions and your speech. If people like you more, you get better jobs and do better socially. If people don't like you, then you become an outcast. This can be good or bad: if the overall attitude is something awful, such as the idea that some people should be enslaved, then you get a society where lots of people are horribly oppressed. If the overall attitude however is that oppression is bad, then people who promote oppression (like neo-Nazis) are punished by being ostracized, and ideas like that are made unpopular and kept from spreading too much.

As a society, we should ensure there are processes to ensure nobody is condemned to homelessness and poverty. As individuals, none of us have to interact with people we don't want to. We could, for example, build reasonable welfare systems and pay people to administer them - or any number of other mechanisms.

Except he didn’t excuse it, he said rape transcends age of consent laws which are dependent entirely on jurisdiction. Do you disagree with that? He may have phrased it in an unfortunate way, but that is how I parsed it.

The number of people in this thread defending statutory rape just demonstrates why it is important not to accommodate statements like his.

Can you be a bit more clear about what "defending statutory rape" means to you?

All i'm seeing is people pointing out that statutes are different around the globe, and that it was rms' point that the variety of these rules is the exact reason not to refer to minsky's behavior (whatever it was) as "assault".

When my parents got married, my mom was 17 and my dad was 19.

Is my dad a rapist?

To be somewhat pedantic here (though not really, because this is an important distinction and its important not to mislabel people or their actions in these kinds of matters)... pedophilia is a sexual attraction oriented at pre-pubescent children (think Michael Jackson).

All acts of pedophilia would be statutory rape, but not all statutory rape would be acts of pedophilia. If the minor isn't a pre-pubescent child, it really isn't pedophilia.

There's a difference between holding diverging opinions, and defending someone who had sex with a sex trafficed minor, right? If we don't uphold at least that as a society, what are we?

> There's a difference between holding diverging opinions, and defending someone who had sex with a sex trafficed minor, right? If we don't uphold at least that as a society, what are we?

Is your problem with the person who had the sex, or the person defending them? The former I agree is a huge problem, the latter seems highly dangerous and I very much disagree with you. It would be impossible to get any sort of due process or fair trial if even defending you makes you toxic, unemployable, and evil. What if you are innocent? Imagine trying to find a lawyer...

What about me? I'm not defending RMS' behavior, but I could see how someone would think I was. Do I deserve to be able to work? Do my kids deserve a home and food on the table?

Was rms defending Minsky in court?

> Was rms defending Minsky in court?

In whose mind does this comment even start to make any sense? Are people supposed to only point out facts that contradict what a righteous Twitter mob is inventing if they are in the presence of a judge?

Adversarial justice systems require that people have a right to be defended by a lawyer when tried by the state in a court of law.

This is because court procedures are complicated and idiosyncratic and most people would not be expected to have the skills to defend themselves. The state is trying to take away a person's freedom so part of the social contract is that it has an obligation to provide them with independent help to navigate the process.

As far as I'm aware, Minsky had no legal case to answer and Stallman was not his defence lawyer. So while Stallman certainly has the right to defend him, in doing so he was risking his own reputation in a way that a criminal defence advocate (even when their client is found guilty of the most heinous crime imaginable) does not.

Do you believe that certain people (such as the ones accused of having sex with a sex trafficed person) should not be allowed to have attorneys?

Allegedly? I think it's fine to try to defend people against allegations. Though they are better and worse ways to do it.

Some people like Greg Benford claimed the sex didn't happen. I think that's a better way to go about it. Say you were present at the time and provide counter-claim.

Now, there doesn't seem to be proof either way.

Who was accused of having sex with a sex trafficked minor. Stallman only pointed out that the Minsky may have not known about the trafficking angle, but apparently there's witness testimony saying the act of sex never happened.

I get that the concept of assumption of innocence is something long-forgotten on the Internet, but can we at least discern between correcting the language to ensure that mob accusations are accurate, and wholesale defense of a (presumed) act?

glad to know kids will stop getting fucked when all the bad opinions go away. thank you for all your hard work.

Being fired or pressured to resign from a prominent, public position because of something you say is not a free speech issue. You can say whatever you want as a private citizen, but as an employee of an organization you are held to different standards.

Would you be saying that if an advocate for gay marriage, abortion, trans-gender rights etc were being forced to resign from a leadership position at Chic-Fil-A ?

This is probably the most important message that any of us could be communicating to the Cancel Culture crew.

Thanks for putting it so succintly

The point is taken, but in this case we're not even talking about something that is a partisan issue. We're talking about excusing or justifying sexual predation.

I'm not sure that that's what rms did.

This Guardian article makes me think that he has been unfairly treated. Even though I think that he is completely wrong to assume that an elderly man could reasonably expect that a very young person is having sex with them for any reason other than either direct coercion (violence, mental-abuse/gaslighting) or the indirect violence of capitalism (need to support self or family [1]).

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/sep/17/mit-scient...

I think it is quite clear that he was explicitly NOT claiming that the accusor was willing, but that she was coerced into appearing willing. I think it is quite clear that he also calls for more care and clarity in the language around this and the post on Medium gets it completely wrong, as does your last phrase.

1. This can include drug dependency, can also include the need to pay for "luxuries" like going to college: it's pretty much all the same to me -- these things are withheld due to force in our society. The picture is even clearer in the extreme case of "voluntary" sex work by people in developing countries.

There are a lot of similarly coerced situations in our capitalist societies. You want to eat? Go down the mine.

An advocate for gay marriage, abortion, trans-gender rights etc would never have a leadership position at Chic-Fil-A and would be fired in a heartbeat if they came out with such opinions. A anti-gun advocate would not be allowed to sweep the floors at the NRA. A vegan would never be allowed to do PR for a meat plant.

It’s an innocent typo, but nevertheless I am amused by imagining Chic-Fil-A as a super upscale, urban, on-trend, exclusive version of Chick-Fil-A where models instragram themselves pretending to eat

I think I mostly agree with you, but what should happen to people with "inexcusable behavior?" should they be fired once? Should they be unemployable for all time? Is justice served after decades of living in a gutter? When we react with outrage mob justice we make people toxic to all future employers. It's extremely hard to ever rebuild your life, especially now where everything on the internet lives forever. I agree that we need to turn around acceptance of "brilliant jerks" but the Law of Unintended Consequence here in many cases seems way worse than the original problem we were trying to solve.

Definitely RMS should be unemployable in any position which would involve public prominence, leadership, or significant influence. After a decent amount of time if he makes a believable atonement perhaps some return would be possible.

maybe people think you "should be unemployable in any position which would involve public prominence, leadership, or significant influence."

are you even thinking about what you're writing? it seems like you're just attacking for the sake of it.

you've spammed this conversation with your input... what, 20 different times?

What should happen is that he should either find an employer who will tolerate his inexcusable behavior, go into business for himself, or learn to shut the hell up at work.

We don’t need to worry about his entire life. That’s his job. We can say “this person clearly should not be leading an advocacy group” without figuring out a whole future career path for him.

RMS is not going to have a problem finding employment in six months or so. He's just going to have to spend some time demonstrating he's not a sexist liability before he can take leadership positions again.

That seems reasonable and fair.

> I agree that we need to turn around acceptance of "brilliant jerks" but the Law of Unintended Consequence here in many cases seems way worse than the original problem we were trying to solve.

Which is... what exactly? You're appealing to a slippery slope but from my perspective we climbed UP said slope to get to holding RMS to account for years of bad behavior, and even now reprehensible folks are using awful excuses like, "They're just on the spectrum" as ammo in the "Yes but he's a powerful man" argument they've been winning for a long time.

RMS is unemployable at this point. He is also 66, so he could just retire as an option.

Why is he unemployable?

He was in a leadership position for a long time while also having very poor soft skills. His value was primarily symbolic, and that symbolism has been pretty much destroyed at this point.

He could try to rebuild his career, but he is 66 so unlikely he will try.

RMS hasn’t had a paid job as a programmer for 40 years as far as I know. People say he was homeless and living in his office at MIT while working on GNU in the 80s.

Isn’t he basically a speaker and advocate nowadays? That career is unlikely to be very successful now that all major organizations dumped him and he has fake news headlines saying he defended Epstein following him everywhere (backed up by apparently two decades of known antisocial personal behavior).

He doesn’t exactly sound like the kind of person you’d hire to work as a normal developer nor would that comport with his strange ethics of refusing to use any non-Free software.

Judging from the balance in this thread I'd say he's still extremely employable.

Defending someone’s speech rights (no matter how horrible the speech is) is very different from wanting to work with someone.

There are no applicable speech rights in a legal sense within RMS's personal scope, so I'm skeptical of this intent.

There are speech rights that are not protected legally, rather based on culture, tradition, and so on. I don’t know what these are like at MIT, but they are fairly broad in a lot of western educational institutions.

Those aren't "rights", those are "norms." When you engage in exceptional behavior (like suggesting a child sex slave's docile appearance excuses Minksy'd responsibility to not rape kids) then your norms may find themselves superceded.

But ultimately RMS's positon was one of political, not technical, leadership. With no more supporters, the FSF rejected him. Without the FSF, what purpose could he serve at his job?

His expertise is software development and the open source world. he can make contributions as long as he is able to swing a patch against a git repository.

That doesn't imply any institution of higher learning or software advocacy organization needs to grant him their imprimatur to do it.

This is the sad truth of the times we live in. You garner an audience, and then you exhibit an opinion that is controversial then well, you shall be promptly destroyed. And these things need not happen now. You garner an audience at any point in the future and your online presence will be decompiled, diagnosed for bugs, and all errors will be promptly ostracized by the armchair armada of online experts. This is the age that the internet lurker is now the commentator, the internet commentator is now the journalist, and the journalist is now the lawyer. Your livelihood now at the mercy of any and all denizens, including bots, though they only give 3/5s the upvote.

Of course they should still be able to live a good life, but they should certainly not be able to hold a position of power over the people who their opinions are offensive towards and still be allowed to express those opinions.

> I think I mostly agree with you, but what should happen to people with "inexcusable behavior?"

They certainly _shouldn't_ be in a leadership position... (where that "inexcusable behavior" becomes a barrier to participation for various groups)

Let me guess, you and your friends alone get to decide what "inexcusable behavior", "barrier" and "various groups" means right?

I don't think it's terribly controversial to say that someone who has a history of making inappropriate comments about women would make it less likely that women would be interested in participating in an organization where that person is in leadership. Do you disagree?

> rms has had decades of inexcusable behavior

Then why attack him now and try to force him out of the organisation that he founded over something people misunderstood? They could just call to fire him over actual abusive behaviour instead.

> decades of inexcusable behavior for any individual

That's blowing it way out of proportion. You mention one remark 13 years ago, and refer to it as decades.

Stallman's accomplishments and legacy aren't what they are "in spite of" his personality. They're a direct consequence of it.

You're happy to benefit from the freedoms he fought for, the free GNU, built by GCC, and GPL licensed software that runs on your computer, your car, your phone, and your TV, and all the platforms you use on the internet (including this one). But you won't accept any Brilliant Jerks! I'm sure you'll put your money where your mouth is, and boycott all of these.

And while you're at it, why don't you list your numerous noteworthy accomplishments in life, and pinky-swear that you've never said anything in public that you regretted.

Stallman wasn't defending Minsky, he was explaining why Minsky didn't need any defense with the evidence as presented. That Epstein instructed an underage to have sex does not mean that she did.

RMS points out that she did not ever say that she and Minksy had sex, although the prosecutor implied it, and there was a witness account that Minsky declined and warned someone else about what happened during the event. Pointing this out should not be a problem.

So please look past the media's witch hunt and into what's actually been said.

I read it. I saw RMS defending statutory rape by supposing that the young woman would have appeared willing when the perpetrator, his friend, was more than four times her age.

Doesn't matter if the accused event happened or not. Defending the hypothetical in that manner gets you fired.

Read it again. RMS wasn't defending statutory rape, he only wrote to not use the term "sexual assault" when there was no evidence of violence being involved, because words have actual meanings and using wrong words confuses the issue.

"sexual assault" doesn't require violence.

The problem is with the ambiguity of the term. From a legal perspective, "sexual assault" doesn't require violence but for ordinary people, use of the term implies some sort of attack or aggression. It's only a few years ago that I learned from online discussions that in some jurisdictions the term "assault" has a specific legal meaning that does not imply violence.

He also redefined the legal term sexual assault in the discussion. According to him Minsky was at the very least innocent of sexual assault because having access to a dictionary let him conclude that assault implied violence[1]. There are winning arguments to be had, unless we adopt GNU/law that isn't one.

[1]https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929/091320191...

He did not say Minsky was legally innocent of sexual assault (he in fact gave no opinion of guilt). He said that sexual assault is a poor term, for reasons of broadness and vagueness, and that we should avoid using such terms in order to avoid ambiguity. He brought up the definition of "assault" because, as a component of "sexual assault", it colors the term, shifting connotations towards the side of violence.

He didn't redefine the legal term, he just (tl;dr) said it sucks and we shouldn't use it (and instead should use something more specific).

> He did not say Minsky was legally innocent of sexual assault (he in fact gave no opinion of guilt).

That part of my comment was overly sarcastic. I have to apologize for that.

> He said that sexual assault is a poor term, for reasons of broadness and vagueness, and that we should avoid using such terms in order to avoid ambiguity.

I would say that the term is intentionally broad and vague precisely because violence is only one of many ways to force an unwilling participant and how it was done is mostly irrelevant to the end result.

> he just (tl;dr) said it sucks and we shouldn't use it (and instead should use something more specific).

As far as I can tell he never actually brought up a more specific term and just disagreed in a rather non constructive fashion against the use of both sexual assault and rape, even when someone explicitly referred to laws.

> There are a chain of media reports which inaccurately portray what Stallman was saying.

Here for example https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard...

It went from "defended Minsky", to "Victims Were ‘Entirely Willing’" to "defended Epstein".

> Stallman was trying to defend Minsky who had sex with someone

I think that he was just trying to be rational. But being rational against a lynching mob is not a good idea (and hasn't ever been in human history).

> but in the context of defending Minsky and in the venue they were wildly inappropriate and indefensible

Would you mind expanding on that? Say that someone claimed that Stalin drank the blood of his victims, would it be "inappropriate and indefensible" to try to debunk such a claim (and thus defend Stalin) in the process?

There is a rational thing RMS was doing, supposing that Minsky's accuser would have appeared willing to him with the implication that in there was a defense for Minsky's behavior (hypothetical or not).

The problem is defending a man accused of statutory rape by saying his accuser appeared willing. Everything else is irrelevant.

And it wasn't a situation where there was the slightest bit of ambiguity. 17 and 73. Billionare's private island.

Defending that situation - real or hypothetical - is very problematic. It gets you fired. There might be a very narrow context in which a discussion of that nature would be appropriate. Where it happened was a million miles from there.

> The problem is defending a man accused of statutory rape by saying his accuser appeared willing

How is that a problem exactly?

> 17 and 73

Would her being a 18 prostitute change anything in your eyes? Because I am pretty sure that most 17 year olds can easily be confused with 18 year olds and the reverse.

> Defending that situation - real or hypothetical - is very problematic. It gets you fired.

In our current "cancel culture" society, agree.

>Would her being a 18 prostitute change anything in your eyes?

An 18 year old prostitute is extraordinarily likely to be in that situation as a result of a lifetime of abuse and desperation. Taking advantage of that for sexual pleasure, especially at the age of 73, makes you a terrible person.

An old man taking advantage of a young woman is the issue. One year and tiny permutations of the details which change the legal situation do not change the moral situation that in any similar situation, the old man is a indefensible scumbag.

It doesn't matter if it is a hypothetical or not, defending that old man by saying the victim would have presented herself as willing, is a big issue. Not a witch hunt, not mob rule.

That is a good point.

And it seems that it applies to prostitution at other ages too.

But a lot of sex workers would challenge that.

The defense was on the part of whether it should be (morally) considered rape/sexual assault, not on whether it should have taken place at all.

I'm sorry, but functionally the problem witb that sentence was suggesting that minors can consent to sex with adults. While I think there is a good argument to be made that kids can and should have control of their own sexuality, suggesting a young woman forced into sexual servitude by a monstrous sex slave merchant was "entirely willing."

No one in a position to cause this outcome didn't read the original statements. Suggesting that this is all a big misunderstanding (or that this was an isolated incident of RMS's sexism, for that matter) is not only slanderous, but its profoundly disrespectful to all parties.

> witb that sentence was suggesting that minors can consent to sex with adults

With what sentence?

> was suggesting that minors can consent to sex with adults

Legally in most places they can, legally in the place that this happened I think that they could not. Is there a problem with this statement?

> suggesting a young woman forced into sexual servitude by a monstrous sex slave merchant was "entirely willing."

Appeared entirely willing (to Minsky and to anyone else that Epstein invited in his island) != being entirely willing herself.

> RMS's sexism

Would you mind showing to me where is the sexism in anything that Stallman said regarding Epstein?

No, I am not going to restate widely available and widely read public documents for your pleasure. I do not believe that you are confused about this.

I am confused because I have read said publicly available documents myself and I was unable to find any instance of sexism by Stallman in them.

Perhaps you should use a better search engine. Several people have gone to great lengths to document this adequately and in public.

If you want to argue with someone about the definition of sexism, you should go argue with them and stop wasting my time.

> Perhaps you should use a better search engine

Not sure what search engines have to do with the topic. I have read the two medium posts, the vice article, and the pdf.

> If you want to argue with someone about the definition of sexism

I am not doing that. You claimed that RMS was sexist in this incident. I am asking you what he said specifically to make you believe that.

> you should go argue with them and stop wasting my time

Why post in hackernews if you are not interested in discussion?

I am intrested discussion. Just not with you any further because I don't think that you're engaging in good faith.

Have a nice day.

So wait, I am not engaging in good faith because I read what Stallman posted and did not detect anything that seemed sexist? Is everyone who disagrees with you arguing in bad faith? Isn't the one who "holds forbidden knowledge" on sexists thing that Stallman said regarding the Epstein incident but refuse to say what exactly these are the one engaging in bad faith?

KirinDave's definition of "in good faith" only includes positions/arguments/opinions they agree with.

You can say this, but I'm pretty sure my post history tells another story.

> You can say this, but I'm pretty sure my post history tells another story.

Having read many of your post in threads on similar topics and having replied to a few, I'm sorry to say that I must agree with others that your post history pretty clearly doesn't.

Weird, because at least once we've talked on a feminist subject and I didn't accuse you of this. Musta been a fluke. But just for you, my longtime friend, I'll explain my thought process just this once.

But seriously, firstly dependenttypes pretends not to know "which sentence" we are talking about despite the fact that my post directly references that damning sentence. He then addresses that sentence, then moves on to an outrageous statement that in "most" places children can consent to sex with adults and that it just happens to be RMS was in a place where that's not true? Where does he get that from? A few nations allow for parental permission to override this state of affairs, but in general it's tough to find a nation without laws around child rape.

Then, dependenttypes draws a distinction (on the sentence that they claim wasn't clear from context), between a woman appearing to be willing vs being willing. But this once again centers the actions of the women and suggests Minsky has no responsibility to recognize things might not be right, as I suspect a rational person might in such circumstances. It centers the women's act of presenting herself as opposed to Minsky's responsibility to not rape kids.

Finally, dependenttypes suggests that typing "stallman sexism" in google doesn't show (for me in incognito at last) four articles in the top ten results full of explanations. Similar searches on twitter reveal firsthand accounts of both sexist and profoundly inappropriate behavior.

Upon reading this, it was pretty clear to me that:

0. This person isn't here to talk. They're here to Fisk posts aggressively.

1. This person tried to imply that it was only puritanical legal technicalities that prevented what appears to be a teenage sex slave from consenting is pretty outrageous. Generally, slaves don't have a choice and Epstein was a slaver.

2. This person has a definition of sexism that does not appear to be reasonable, OR they're so completely unwilling to even examine an opposing viewpoint that they can't read the wealth of other sources on this.

3. Given these things, the subsequent claim "I have read these things and found no evidence of sexism" strongly suggests someone who will simply refuse to adopt a reasonable definition or reasonable evidence of sexism as a matter of personal belief.

Note in his posts we don't hear some sort of positive refutation. Rather we hear a negative one: "this is fine what is your problem?" We don't hear, "that isn't sexism because..." we hear, "I don't see any evidence of sexism at all."

We're well past the point where any reasonable actor could come to such a conclusion. So I concluded this person is acting in bad faith. This doesn't mean "they disagree with me." This means, "they're not here to discuss the evidence or what people are saying but rather to refute it by any means necessary."

And looking more closely at their post history, I stand by this assessment.

> firstly dependenttypes pretends not to know "which sentence" we are talking about despite the fact that my post directly references that damning sentence

I can't read your mind, sorry. By "that sentence" I presumed that you meant something that I said in my post.

> He

Nice assumption you got there.

> then addresses that sentence

I guess so. Without my knowledge at least, after all as you said your post "directly references that damning sentence".

> then moves on to an outrageous statement that in "most" places children can consent to sex with adults

I said minors, not children (except if you consider a 17 year old person to be a child). Anyway, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Age_of_Consent_-_Glo... for a "proof" of that "outrageous" statement.

> and that it just happens to be RMS was in a place where that's not true?

Not RMS, Minsky.

> A few nations allow for parental permission to override this state of affairs

A small minority, yes. In most countries to my knowledge you only need the consent of the teenager that is above the age of consent to have sex with them.

> but in general it's tough to find a nation without laws around child rape.

There wouldn't be any point to the age of consent laws if sex with a person under the allowed age wasn't considered at least as bad as statutory rape, so ofc the countries with age of consent laws also have laws around "child rape".

> But this once again centers the actions of the women

If this was the issue with what Stallman said then you should have been clear from the start, rather than attacking a misquoted version of what he said that's easier to criticize on issues that do not apply with his full quote. Anyway, Stallman used the "presented herself to him as entirely willing" in order to argue against the use of "sexual assault" that they accused Minsky of (which Stallman claims that implies force or violence on Minsky's part -- after all you do not need to use force or violence to have sex with someone who "presents themselves as entirely willing").

> Finally, dependenttypes suggests that typing "stallman sexism" in google doesn't show (for me in incognito at last) four articles in the top ten results full of explanations

I never suggested that. I asked about what sexist thing he said in this specific instance. I am not interested on being Stallman's personal defence guardian nor do I follow him blindly on everything that he has ever said.

> This person tried to imply that it was only puritanical legal technicalities that prevented what appears to be a teenage sex slave from consenting

I never tried to imply that. If you are unsure if I am trying to imply something you can just ask me.

> We don't hear, "that isn't sexism because..."

We don't hear "that isn't sexism because..." because I have no idea what you consider as sexist in this specific instance. If you decided to tell me what you consider as sexist I would gladly tell you why I consider or don't consider it as sexist.

And a quote from before:

> Suggesting that this is all a big misunderstanding ... is not only slanderous, but its profoundly disrespectful to all parties.

Since you misunderstood me multiple times during this conversation have you considered the possibility that you might have done the same (unintentionally ofc) with Stallman?

> And looking more closely at their post history, I stand by this assessment.

I would be interested in seeing what you consider as instances of malicious behaviour by me in other threads.

> I am asking you what he said specifically to make you believe that.

Stallman defends a 70 year old man having sex with a coerced child (using the same language he used to defend familial child sexual abuse or other forms of child sexual abuse) because Stallman is a sexist who has never bothered to learn about VAWG.

His "apology" just piles it on - he thinks the problem is not with what he said, but with other people's understanding. He still doesn't get the fact that people know exactly what he said, and they understood what he said.

>> ay that someone claimed that Stalin drank the blood of his victims, would it be "inappropriate and indefensible" to try to debunk such a claim (and thus defend Stalin) in the process?

It's an interesting point given that there actually is a certain strain of Stalin's apologists that reply to any critique of their idol with "yeah, and he also drank blood and ate little children for breakfast".

Someone on Reddit says the deposition states that a bystander saw Minksy turn the 17 year old down.

However I can’t seem to find the original documents to verify that.

And reading too much about Giuffre, my god. The list of powerful people.

Epstein must of had blackmail on everyone.

Almost like a cartel leader in their nation, he made big philanthropic donations for good press and then kept many of the world’s richest and most powerful people under his thumb.

How many of those kinds of things do you think we don't or won't know about?

Feel free to discard the following as "conspiracy" but it is interesting: https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/16/la-danse-mossad-robe...

> There are a chain of media reports which inaccurately portray what Stallman was saying.

Why the hell the Media never puts up links to direct sources is what frustrates me the most. There's been some bad cases of this lately.

The media coverage I found of this was actually very well sourced with references to other articles and ultimately the original email thread in question.

The analysis and statements in the articles were often ridiculous and had little connection to the original material (even the article publishing that material) other than exaggerating someone else's article in a perverse game of telephone.

That's one media outlet of very few one's but there's a lot of other ones that have a lot of "he said she said" thrown around. It becomes harder to form a conclusion without sources.

Statutory rape is not "having sex". Even if you make the girl a year older I am not sure the situation changes very much. The power dynamic is not allowing her a lot of free choices.

Saw your post is recent and noone is debunking this so I should...

Minksy DIDN'T had the sex.

What the court documents said is:

A woman, that at the time was 17, said Epstein told her to OFFER sex to Minsky.

And another person that was present, Greg Benford, said that Minsky refused the offer.

Nowhere was stated that sex happened.

Is it a fact that Minsky had sex with the girl?

When you grow older, do always keep your attraction within your age? Is it only moral for an older 70+ year-old-man to be attracted to an equally aged woman?

Of course not.

Then, where is the line? If not 18, then, 25? 30? I get why it would be creepy from the perspective of the woman wanting to be with an old man, but why exactly is the man himself a creep?

IMO, all adults are attracted to the younger opposite sex. Men have a biological drive to be attracted to women who will give birth to healthy babies, survive the birth, and live long enough lives to ensure that child is supported.

I'm 30 now. I hope people never regard me as a creep for masterbating when I'm 60 to the teen section of PornHub.

Twitter has become a breeding ground for mobs and unjustified moral policing. I started following people based on the technical work they have done and was hoping to learn or get inspired them.

Apart from a very few, every accomplished technologist have started using Twitter and their followers to attack others. This is nothing but the witch hunt from medieval times done differently.

I have interacted with RMS in Emacs developer list, he has a strong opinion and nothing more, nothing less. He is not trying to create a mob and nor is he starting an upraising. If you have an opinion, voice it and leave it. Yes, I agree RMS needed a PR to tread the land mine ridden modern life.

Overall, it is sad to see RMS and his work getting trivialized for totally unrelated reasons.

While I resent most these attacks, the "I'm only here for the tech" stand, many tech-people have, deeply disgusts me.

Edit:

I'm not saying the work of a person can't be good if he did bad things.

I think it's important not to glorify people.

Free software is important for all of us, but so is a stand against sexsim or the likes.

Are you saying it disgusts you when they choose to keep their political opinions private? How come?

Because to them, everything IS political.

Because only certain people are in a position to be able to keep their political opinions private. For many people, the very fact of their life is inherently a political statement. So the "keep political opinions private" crowd is merely the people who can keep their opinions private telling everyone else to clear out.

They don't.

The want of keeping tech and politics appart is a political choice in itself.

Why are you here?

When I started on HN ten years ago, it was only about tech & professional growth. Only in the last few years have the politics and outrage taken over this forum and it “deeply disgusts me.”

It's okay if you want to stick at nothing, but you have to live with the fact that some people resent you fo it.

HN was much smaller and more homogenous 10 years ago.

Just curious, why? For example, if one wants to enjoy Picasso's paintings without getting bothered about how he treated people in his life, it is their choice, isn't it? If someone wants to concentrate only on the tech and ignore the rest, that is also their choice, isn't it?

Not saying one view is better or worse than the other. Simply pointing out people choose to get involved at different levels...

I personally try to avoid art from pedophiles and murderer and rapists.

I argue that art always happens in context and one context is who did it. Appreating art from someone who is clearly hurting others can't have done something so important to me to still enjoy it.

If a case is made which has some very rare and difficult scenario I'm not sure what I would do.

You should never come to Rome then...

Probably Greece too, or any other ancient place.

> I personally try to avoid art from pedophiles and murderer

Guess you avoid Caravaggio too, then.

Sooo you mean Michelangelo right?

At least on Wikipedia there it is stated that there is no proper source.

Also I try to. If it is very significant part of history I would try to be aware of it and still have a look.

I'm also very unsure about Alice in wonderland for the same reason.

But at least it's not someone still alive which would benefit from his/her art and being pedo right?

I hope you're also avoiding any sort of medical treatment pioneered by people with questionable histories. Or any medical treatment derived from research pioneered by people with questionable histories.

That would be problematic.

This decision was made by others. I'm not in a position to research the history of alledical procedures.

It is much easier for me to avoid art though.

"It is much easier for me to avoid art though."

Pretty much sums it up doesn't it.

What about non-art?

Do yo actively avoid using technology invented or heavily influenced by problematic people?

Do you have a proper relevant example?

I don't have a proper example.

I don't have the same reservations about using the work of problematic people, so I don't typically check for that info.

Off the top of my head, an example might be accepting opiods to manage pain, despite the tons of damage pushing the drugs has caused Americans as a whole.

But why you decided to put a line on a person? The surroundings, the social situation, the political situation, the nature, whole universe is a context of everything.

What are your thoughts on the philosophy of Ghandi? A man who tested his devoutness by sleeping next to a 12 year old girl.

I know not much about him and would need to read up on him to make a proper thought.

Not sure why I would do that. Ghandi doesn't really affect s my life

Is art necessarily about enjoyment? Should we not try to understand, if only to try an prevent it in the future?

I think theres a debate to be had over whether they should profit from those actions though.

Also keep in mind that Homosexuality was put in the same box as paedophilia and rape ( probably worse than rape). Social mores change, and are different from country to country. The girl involved was 17 as I understand it, which would be over the age of consent in my country.

Sex trafficking was involved, so the age of consent is legally higher.

Again in my country (UK) the age of consent doesn't vary, sex trafficking is illegal in its own right. So this still wouldn't be paedophilia, rather it would be rape.

My point is I could have consensual sex with a 17 year old, paint a picture and the GP would be happy to view it(?). You could have sex with a 17 year old, get arrested for paedophilia, paint a picture, and the GP would not be happy viewing it. Theres a legal line and a moral line both can change so its weird getting absolutist about it.

To be clear I wasn't aware of the sex trafficking element, I thought this was a question of statutory rape, which would seem to yield very different legal answers based on location.

Edit: 'Interestingly' I seemed to have circled around to making the same point RMS made. Except I'm not denying the rape, and I'm not a representative for another organisation.

The same is true in the USA, sex trafficking is always illegal, but the additional charge of rape will be added if the provider is under 18. Think of it as an add-on that makes the crime worse.

This whole thread has gotten side tracked on statutory rape, when in reality the criminal charges hinge on sex trafficking with age only as a modifier.

I think it's pretty disingenuous to equate how political paintings are to how political technology is.

Have a look at your local paper's political cartoon, and tell me how apolitical art is.

The you don’t understand art nor technology :(

We are still enjoying Stallman’s software, right? I cant imagine we’re going to eradicate gcc and Emacs from mainstream development.

Sorry, but I do strongly believe in this. The work stands apart from the man.

As a kid, I loved Lord Byron's poetry. Later, disgusted at his personality, I stopped reading his works. Still later, now I realise that flawed human beings can create beautiful works. Such is life.

It's okay to acknowledge good work but it's also important to see when brilliant people do wrong and not go all "but look at his good work".

Yea buuuut that's not even what's happening here. People are wildly misrepresenting stallman's position. To me it just seems like a certain subset of neurotypical people discriminating against people who don't see the world through 15 layers of social obfuscation/are actually honest about what they are thinking.

Did they really?

My interpretation:

You think people are criticizing Stallman because you think they misread his statement (She wanted it anyway)

I think people are criticizing Stallman because he believed Minsky was tricked (She didn't want but people made here act like it), which sounds dubious to me.

Firstly, I'm not sure how to parse your grammar,

secondly, it's hilarious that it seems you are now assuming that I am claiming that "she wanted it". This just goes to show you are here for blood and not justice.

thirdly, what stallman said: The word ‘assaulting’ presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way,” Stallman wrote in the email, “but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.” and to paraphrase "It seems probable that she presented herself as entirely willing and that minsky did not know she was underage"

lastly, as far as I can tell, in the deposition it's not clear that they did have sex, only that she went to the island for the purpose of having sex with minsky under orders from epstein, presumably as part of his blackmail/entrapment scheme

Similar thing happened with me and Michael Jackson's music. I was on an irc channel when someone mentioned one of his songs and I agreed. One of my closer friends said, "you know he's a pedo, right?"

And I started thinking of the kids Michael had sharing his bed and realized that, until then, I had had sympathy for them only in an abstract. Now I think about those kids whenever one of his songs comes on, and you know, I no longer enjoy listening to it.

A bit of a difference here, Minsky was accused of having sex with a what he thought was a 17 year old prostitute. If you go to a brothel and things seem legit, how much are you going to question what's going on. That's like going to a restaurant and demanding to know if they've illegally hired staff before you sit down for dinner.

If you have reason to believe that, why not?

For one, if a person of sufficient status in silicon valley inquired as to the immigration status of the kitchen staff helping to serve their $1000 meal, and it became public, they would likely be open to the very same type of media slander / twitter mob whirlwind that we are seeing in this RMS situation.

In the 1980s so many films stared teens, as a generation was growing up. We were barraged with moral panics that decried sex. The same is happening again, with another young generation growing up. They haven't grown up yet to realize that some people sell sex, that others steal without repent, and that everyone is complex. They haven't realized that not everyone holds their ideals.

"that others steal (sex) without repent" do you mean rape?

Oh the horrors if people growing up think that rape is reprehensible.

I think it is a reaction to the politicization of society. A lot of people recognize that there is a polarization of society, but they don't want to become involved in a culture war or war of words, so they try to maintain their hobby as a neutral zone. That is a good thing. It is trying to find a way to work together with others who have differing views without letting it get in the way of "being friends" with them in furthering a good cause. You don't have to support the red team, or the blue team, you can just support the tech team and work with very different people without letting that get in the way.

"Child sex trafficking: good or bad?" isn't political, or really an opinion.

Did you read the original email Stallman sent? Please enlighten me as to how he in any way insinuates child sex trafficking is good.

Can you please share the link to original email?

https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21...

From the article:

"The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky: “deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims [2])” The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X. The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem. (See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jef...) Let’s presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it). The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex. 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. I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation. Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism."

Is it bad enough to ensure all encryption has a backdoor so that government can combat it?

I say yes and that it isn't even an opinion. If you disagree with me, you are helping defend such abhorrent behavior. You wouldn't do that, would you?

Did RMS did anything like that? From my quick search it seems he just defended by email a dead professor that had sex with a 17 year old. Forced or not, that's hardly what could be called a child, as it's a few years older than the age of consent in most of the Western world.

Society IS political by its very definition. When you live and act in a society, you're taking a political part, because politics is just how society decides its rules.

What I find deeply ironic is that you probably only have a frame of belief that finds a politically neutral frame of engagement with tech 'deeply disgusting' precisely because of the tech that was created under that neutral rubric - tech that probably would never have been created under a more politically engaged rubric...

Why? Because such neutrality allowed the creation of a space where people could express anything to everyone at a cost that was practically free. If the creators had been more politically engaged - that never would have happened. It would have been locked down from the start.

Now - if you go looking for it - you'll find studies that observe what happens when human group sizes increase. More "punisher" type personalities emerge, applying greater social costs on expression in an attempt to enforce hegemony. I would cite - but feeling lazy.

In response to the ever increasing social costs imposed by such punishers - the ones who created the free for all in the first place, turn more desperately to their stated neutrality... largely as a means to avoid punishment.

The punisher types won't accept this - because they want to root out dissenters hiding in their neutrality... so begin punishing those who don't proactively state their right minded political stances in every space. They apply such punishment for example - by statements of "deep disgust"... as though this hyperbolic reaction is not hyperbole at all; as though the mere act of not engaging is the worst of moral failings.

I would be terrified of such people... I would be terrified of you - if it weren't for the aforementioned irony with which I opened. You just do it cause game theoretically you are predicted to do so - because of the system brought into being by exactly the sort of people you hate.

We deserve you.

Kinda like how the AI in the Matrix deserve the mathematical anomaly called Neo. They can't get rid of it. But they created it... This thing that wars against them, under the heroic illusion of its own agency and righteous purpose.

I don't know if you're right or wrong.

I have the feeling the state of mind wasn't really neutral in the past, so there wasn't a neutral time that created all this.

There was much more gate-keeping going on in the past. I think this cost us much more innovation and new technology.

My impression is as following:

I don't think we move from non-political to political and from "free for all" to "only the good are allowed".

We are moving from one political strucuture that prevented some kind of people to cobtribute to another.

I'm not sure if this will yield better results, but I certainly hope so.

Also, I think the good tech/ideas of the past shoudn't be thrown away, because if we throw them away the people who created them did bad stuff to other people, the victims did suffer in vain.

But we should strife for creating things in the future with less suffering.

Free software is a political movement. It is impossible for it, or Stallman’s active alienation of women and decent people over a period of decades, to be apolitical. He was a purposefully political actor.

Especially because if you really believe in just here for the tech and also believe that ideas should stand alone all of this shit should be penned by a pusedonym.

>While I resent most these attacks, the "I'm only here for the tech" stand, many tech-people have, deeply disgusts me.

Is it surprising? How many people here work for horrible companies, and justify it to themselves by simply following directions? In a similar discussion the other day, a user literally wrote that they would have to be paid substantially well to report wrong-doings their company is involved with so as not to interrupt their lifestyle.

Disgusting, yes.

>In a similar discussion the other day, a user literally wrote that they would have to be paid substantially well to report wrong-doings their company is involved with so as not to interrupt their lifestyle.

There's nothing disgusting about this, assuming that the wrong-doings are really bad and this would all go public. Society does not treat whistleblowers well. They generally lose their livelihoods when they go public with what they know. So yes, they should be paid substantially well to report wrong-doings, because they're usually ending their careers when they do this. If society isn't willing to stop ruining their careers when they "do the right thing", then society has no standing to call them "disgusting" for not willingly sacrificing their lives for the sake of truth.

I'll never understand how an individual can be so weak as to commit crimes because they were "told" to.

>then society has no standing to call them "disgusting" for not willingly sacrificing their lives for the sake of truth.

A tad over dramatic. We aren't talking about Snowden here; hundreds of HN users work for the major companies doing morally ambiguous things. They aren't going to be blacklisted for spilling the beans on Facebook. In fact, in this political climate they might even benefit greatly.

If you're willing to harm other people in order to avoid potential harm to yourself, it's disgusting, and no amount of "but what about me?" will convince me otherwise.

I never said anything about committing crimes. I'm just talking about people working at these companies. You really think that every single person working at Facebook is a criminal? You have issues.

Do you also think every single person working at an oil company is a criminal too, or should quit or else be morally wrong in your view?

>hundreds of HN users work for the major companies doing morally ambiguous things.

Just about every company in America does morally ambiguous things.

One of the problems of cancel culture is #everyonedoesit. At some point, all of us have niche issues where we feel powerless in our individual lives, yet feel empowered when the mob goes up against individual X for something we care about. I'm convinced at this point everyone indeed does it, from the right to the left and so on. People treat it as a weapon reserved for those they hate and unfairness when applied to themselves or people they like. I'm not sure what the answer is, more empathy might help, but part of me feels like with everything else going on all of it stems from a deeper disintegration in US society where people feel like they've lost control of their own lives. These are just symptoms of that.

To further your point, Trump and Brexit are also symptoms of the same issue. I do not think 48:52 was a coincidence at all, the entire western world has been cut in half it feels. Worrying times.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted, but I too feel like they are symptoms, and the longer people take to pick up on that the longer it will take to fix things, if at all.

He was defending his friend who, at the age of 74, is accused of having sex with a 17 year old girl on a billionaire's private island.

Is that unrelated, trivial behavior that should be ignored?

This isn't a witch hunt, what he did was wildly inappropriate and the number of people defending his behavior because he's quirky and did great things is a little disgusting.

Yes, there have never been cases where young women have sought the company of older men in exchange for power and money. Never. The terms "gold digger" and "sugar daddy" were never invented for these kinds of exchanges.

As for 17, as someone in my 40's, I couldn't tell you the difference between someone who is 17, and someone who is 18, without them telling me or asking to look at their (hopefully non-forged) ID. If she lied (under coersion from Epstein), how could anyone have been able to tell?

You are describing sex work. Both of those are other terms for sex work. Which is fine once the sex workers are of age and haven’t been coerced, but neither of those was true here.

Not just sex workers - some women marry just for access to the money and power (and I'm sure some men do as well).

But the coercion is very true, and hence my explicit callout. The question becomes did Minsky know that? Did he have any reason to suspect it?

How would you know whether someone was coerced?

Would they tell you?

These women were sex trafficked.

You're absolutely correct. Hence my comment about coercion. Did Minsky know that? Did he have any reason to suspect it?

Come on now. What other plausible reason, besides being someone's daughter, would a girl that young have for being on that island with these old men? It doesn't take an MIT-calibre mind to ask this question.

Money. The same reason a girl that young (let's say 18) might work for a strip club. Or in Nevada as a prostitute. Or as an escort.

If money was involved, even if the clients were willing, it is considered a form of coercion under US law if the girls were under 18. The coercion label only seems to go away when they turn 18.

and Stallman argued that morally, this is nonsense -- the moral aspect does not care for country and jurisdiction.

Morality isn’t universal, in space or time. What was moral 2000 or 100 years ago is not today, same between the USA and Chad Africa.

If morality is relative, only the legal framework is something that we can evaluate. Laws are crafted from the relative morality in that jurisdiction.

Laws also have two components - the spirit and the letter of the law. You can violate the letter of the law (for example sodomy) without violating the spirit of the law (preventing a sex act the recipient views as degrading). And as a result, you aren't prosecuted. The flip side is also true - you can also violate the spirit of the law, and not the letter of the law, and be prosecuted.

Sodomy laws aren’t prosecuted because they are all considered unconstitutional, not because some spirit of the law isn’t being violated. In an ideal world, they would have been cleaned up along with other archaic laws still on the books.

Where moral comes from is dependent on a time and space. Where it is applied generally does not.

Ignoring those morals which are dependent on location, today's american applies the same set of morals against those on american soil as well as those on chinese soil.

They also apply those morals across time, such judgment on Ancient Greek behavior.

In the same fashion, we do not alter our moral judgement based on the jurisdiction the event takes place in. At least, we do not do so naturally, without additional effort. If this occurred in the open seas, would we hold our tongue? In a country where no such laws exist?

Legality is also hardly a strict mapping of morals to rules, with complete coverage of what we're trying to express -- if it were, there would be no need for judges; we could simply feed the evidence into an algorithm and spit out the result. And the arbitrary flip from legal to illegal, by virtue of a day, is hardly the concept we're trying to morally express through the law. But for practicality, a strict deadline was given.

Hell, what's your argument? That because morals are relative, there cannot be any discussion of it? Morality precedes the law; You don't make a moral judgement by referring to the law.

My point is that morality actually has a jurisdiction. It isn’t as well defined as legal jurisdiction, but it does exist.

China is a great example where the morals are very different. Barring a few extra territorial laws (corruption, child prostitution for Americans), the jurisdictions are disjoint.

Again, the provenance of a particular morality is bounded by space and time, but the application of it is not; the american judges the chinese with the american morality, irrespective of what chinese society might say.

It is valid, and normal, to discuss morality of actions occurring in different places, without including the morality of that place itself; in this case, stallman isn’t talking about the remote island’s morals, but the morals of where he is and how it applies to events elsewhere

as someone in my 40's, I couldn't tell you the difference between someone who is 17, and someone who is 18

I suggest you turn down any offers from billionaire convicted sex traffickers to go to their private island and meet young women then.

To be honest, you should probably turn down that sort of offer even if you're really good at telling how old people are.

If I'm invited to a private island by a billionaire and offered a prostitute, and she confirms that she's 18 or older and here of her own free will, well, I imagine most unattached people would have trouble saying no in those circumstances.

For me, it would be too much like romancing my nieces, so I doubt I would take up the offer. In 30 years, who knows.

she confirms that she's 18 or older and here of her own free will

The crux of Stallman's argument is that in that case you would be unable to tell if the woman was lying because Epstein would have coerced her. You can't trust what she says.

However, where you and Stallman differ is that you're suggesting is that Minsky probably said yes and did sleep with the woman, and therefore broke the law.

And probably shouldn't/wouldn't be charged since he was criminally mislead in the process of doing due diligence.

And he shouldn't even be held morally wrong in this case either, if we assume that he did his due diligence and had what he viewed to be legal and consensual sex.

It would help a lot of you stopped projecting your own feelings on the subject onto Minsky.

I'm human. I can't be unbiased. This witch hunt of Stallman for rationally exploring "what if" scenarios makes me upset.

I don't know Minsky, I don't care about Minsky. All I'm really trying to do is re-inforce how and why Stallman's exploration is reasonable and rational. And, since it's brought up repeatedly in this exploration, why even the courts consider the spirit of the law alongside the letter of the law.

Stallman made a huge mistake: he forgot that he too is biased. Just like Lessig's defense of Ito damaged Ito and Lessig more than if Lessig had just STFU Stallman did the same for Minsky.

And Stallman being his usual amicable self he managed to do so in a way that a reaction was inevitable. If he wanted to do right by his friend he should have pointed out the flaws in the accusation, not to try to find some contorted way to argue that assuming it was true his friend should have walked without consequences.

Lessig falls into exactly the same trap, the fact that it is your friend who does something stupid or despicable does not make it any less so and in cases like that your friends would be better friends if they pointed this out to you. Preferably at a time that it would still make a difference.

Minsky may not be guilty of anything, and Stallman has shifted the debate over whether what he assumes Minsky has done should be legal or not (it shouldn't, let's be 100% clear on that) over whether or not it happened in the first place. And that is not helping at all.

It being smarter for him to STFU doesn't make the witch hunt any more justified.

Stallman has pissed off enough people and has been misogynist and creepy to too many people to get away with such stuff, he only has himself to blame. As for Minsky, if you have to rely on your creepy friends to come to your posthumous aid then it would be better if those friends kept to themselves. Minsky does not need this kind of defense. Stallman's misguided crappy little piece got tons more airtime than the statement by AN EYEWITNESS that the whole thing did not happen. As a result Minsky is now forever tainted as though this is an established fact when in fact it is anything but.

And probably shouldn't/wouldn't be charged since he was criminally mislead in the process of doing due diligence.

Rape is a crime that carries strict liability (under US law); ignorance is not a valid defence.

There’s a significant difference between willful ignorance and being mislead. The law accounts for this is most cases.

Here's some free life advice. If you're 40, and wish to retain the respect of your peers, both are off-limits.

I appreciate the wholly subjective and wholly unasked for advice. I'll be sure to give it the same weight as advice given by Hugh Heffner.

I've stated elsewhere I wouldn't be interested, but (not speaking of the Epstein/Minsky debate for a moment) who am I to judge someone for their consensual activities?

>As for 17, as someone in my 40's, I couldn't tell you the difference between someone who is 17, and someone who is 18, without them telling me or asking to look at their (hopefully non-forged) ID. If she lied (under coersion from Epstein), how could anyone have been able to tell?

I've seen this same argument like 4-5 times now in this thread.

I agree, being able to tell the difference between 17 and 18 is difficult, however a line must be drawn and it seems that 18 is that line.

If a girl is 18 years and 1 day old, vs a girl who is 17 and 364, is there a big difference? No, however that is where society has drawn this line.

If you use the argument 18 looks like 17, then eventually people may say 17 looks like 16, 16 looks like 15 etc and is a slippery slope.

Also chances are the girls in question were most likely sex trafficked (Modern day slave trade by another name).

As I've replied to peer comments, if Minsky couldn't rely on his eyes to judge her age, and she says she's 18 (and let's assume a scumlord billionare had the ability to provide falsified documentation backing it up, if he was really there to get leverage over his peers), how is someone to know differently?

It's quite rare that someone who did due dilligance and were criminally mislead to are charged for the crime.

> Also chances are the girls in question were most likely sex trafficked (Modern day slave trade by another name).

The women in question (those in contact with Epstein) were, in no way, a representation of chattel slavery, which is (i presume) what you mean by "modern day slave trade". They were neither 'owned' nor 'inheritable', they were also (by all reports) paid. Slaves are not paid.

The phrase "Modern Day Slave Trade" as it refers to sex work denigrates those who were forced into slavery by men with guns, as well as the subset of women and men who chose to participate in the sex work economy willingly, whether full-time or on-the-side.

Not really tech related, but... is there an age limit now on men and women having sex? Just trying to gauge the lines being drawn in this age of moral relativity.

There is a standard creepiness rule of thumb of half the older parties age plus 7 being the minimum:

https://xkcd.com/314/

I think there are 3 main rules in society:

1. As long as women or men are adult deemed by society (for example: 18 years old), anything is fine, even if 18 year old woman paired with 74 year old man. Age of consent rule.

2. A man should not date a woman younger than his age / 2 + 7. So a 74 year old can only date the youngest woman with 44 years age. Creepiness rule.

3. A man should not date a woman younger than 25 year old because the brain is not fully formed until 25 years age. Unless the man is more or less 25 year old himself. So a 74 year old man can only date the youngest woman with 25 years age. Brain fully formed rule.

Of course there are edgy case rule. We call it Romeo-Juliet rule (no more than 4 years difference). 16 year old woman should not pair with 74 year old man but if the man is 18 year old, that should be fine.

Welp, I guess I got raped (or maybe "creeped"?) a lot when I was younger? As a guy in my 20-21 I had sex with a lady in her early 60s.

If someone had told me that we'd be violating this ridiculous American "creepiness" rules of yours, I'd have missed out on a lot of fun.

And why on earth can you not defend a friend whom you think is wrongfully accused of a crime? Since when is that wrong?

I've seen many patently stupid things coming from the US lately, but this is certainly the most idiotic US witch hunt I've ever witnessed in my life.

I'm far from certain RMS's only offense was difficulty communicating, but the "evolution" of his statements as they traveled through the media was terrifying to witness.

Stallman:

> the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.

Selam G.

> [Stallman] says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”.

VICE:

> Stallman insists that the “most plausible scenario” is that Epstein’s underage victims were “entirely willing” while being trafficked.

New York Post:

> MIT scientist says Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre was ‘entirely willing’

There's something we have to accept here, that he could be right.

It could be true.

I'm not saying I agree with him or that I would have said the same things (I'm no Stallman, nobody cares about what I say anyway) but what he said was just the result of logical reasoning

For example if you look at the titles it's easy to dismiss RMS as someone who favours rapists, but in the article he's always quoted in full and the things he said are a bit different

For example quoting the VICE article

> RMS: “it is morally absurd to define ‘rape’ in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.”

And he's not entirely wrong.

Rape in rape even in space at the age of 93.

Well, no, rape is not just a forceful rape, because the law says that minors up to some age are not capable of making decisions on who they have sex with willingly, and thus it's up to adults to be responsible and avoid such encounters. Legally minors can't have a willing sex with an adult. So it's a rape and not alright even if both parties were fully willing, if nothing else then because the law says so. Somewhere else it might not be, but they were not somewhere else. Different cultures have different ideas on what is the appropriate age of consent, and the age is sort of "arbitrary" chosen, but it comes from the tradition and America is very puritan in pretty much everything else compared to Europe, so the same applies to this too. That's just the well established moral norm in the US society, so breaking it is obviously deeply anti-social and evil behavior, regardless of what age of consent is in my country or France or Brazil. Everyone involved was American, so even if you argue against the laws, still American moral and culture norms apply.

> Well, no, rape is not just rape because the law says that minors up to some age are not capable of making decisions on who they have sex with willingly

And that's absurd.

Do we all agree on this?

for different reasons

- 17 years 364 days is any different from 18 years old 0 days?

- Stallman was talking (at the time) about consensual sex, not rape

- Stallman said he found absurd that rape was defined in terms of `minor details` not that rape does not exists. He's not wrong.

> still American moral and culture norms apply.

In USA people should be horrified by Facebook spying kids[1], not about what Stallman thinks

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/

It is, because one is illegal, the other is not. Just like drinking with 21 and 20.99 years is not the same, because you have to draw the line somewhere and it is drawn there. In my country the age of consent is extremely low, just 14. So by applying your logic to that, 13 and 364 days would be OK too? How do you feel about that, not entirely comfortable right? Because you're used mentally to 18 years being the line, and then breaking the law "a little" seems like no big deal. Moving it down to 13 feels crazy. But all the laws are like that, some red lines that it's not OK to cross, little or not. If 18 is the legal age, you just don't mess with minors, how complicated is that really?

> It is, because one is illegal, the other is not

Rape is always illegal.

Sex is not.

> Just like drinking with 21 and 20.99 years is not the same, because

they're American.

We start at 18, no problems here, no mass shootings, no one selling out to older people to buy alcohol for them.

> So by applying your logic to that, 13 and 364 days would be OK too?

So by your logic 14 and 1 days is ok?

Or, as Stallman said, rape cannot be defined by minor things such as the place where it happened or the age when it happened?

> How do you feel about that, not entirely comfortable right?

Completely.

It's your country that allows older people have sex with baby girls, not mine.

> Because you're used mentally to 18 years being the line,

Don't assume we are all like you.

I'm mentally used to being normal at 15-16...

Because that's the age when people around me started, when I was their age.

> But all the laws are like that

Not even those about rape are all black and white.

Even statutory rape is usually treated differently if the minor is just around the age of consent or not.

> If 18 is the legal age, you just don't mess with minors, how complicated is that really?

That's exactly what Stallman did.

He never messed with minors.

What upset you so much?

> Rape is always illegal.

- If person is 18 and sex is consensual it's not a rape. - If person is 17y 354 days old it doesn't matter what the minor person acted like, because law treats it as a non-consensual sex, so it's statutory rape.

> So by your logic 14 and 1 days is ok?

If both persons involved are living in Serbia it is OK. Unusual thing nowadays and to many here (me included) not seen as something morally positive, but some minorities have a different customs than mainstream Serbian culture, so it's fully legal. Most of Europe has the age of consent at 16, which in my own eyes makes more appropriate age than 14, but law is what matters.

> That's exactly what Stallman did. He never messed with minors.

No one said he did. But he, completely uncalled for, defended someone who did - who broke the law in a very obvious way - and he did it by trying to put the blame on a victim, although her being a minor makes her behavior completely irrelevant from the legal point of view. And that sucks.

> If person is 17y 354 days old it doesn't matter what the minor person acted like, because law treats it as a non-consensual sex, so it's statutory rape

That's why USA are the motherland of mass shootings then...

I'm 18 today, my girlfriend is one day younger than me, it's rape.

What a lovely country.

> If both persons involved are living in Serbia it is OK

But is it OK for you?

Because you implied that I was ok with it...

I'm curious now.

> No one said he did. But he, completely uncalled fo

Like he always did?

Did someone called him to invent the GPL?

> defended someone who did

But he did not.

That's utterly false.

> and he did it by trying to put the blame on a victim

He was arguing that it wasn't not pedophilia but statutory rape.

I don't know why you people love so much to put words in the mouth of RMS, he's perfectly capable of shooting himself in the foot.

It won't be the last time.

It still does not make him someone who argues in favour of rape.

I think a window system makes sense. If you’re 19 and your sweetheart you’ve been dating is 17, that’s a lot different than a 25 year old and a 17 year old I think.

I guess it’d make sense to base it on brain development.

I have no idea what the best windows would be to promote the greatest reduction in false positive rape cases.

The biggest thing we as a society really need is a culture where the raped feel more comfortable speaking up. It’d probably be a decent thing to fund testing the massive backlog of rape kits piling up at the nation’s police forces as well.

No solution will ever be perfect so you can only attempt to do the least harm and help the most people in these awful situations.

Improving sexual education across some of our more religiously oriented states would be a positive as well.

Hopefully we keep moving forward. And what would be really nice is if some of these awful people Epstein trafficked these girls to went to prison.

It’s high time the rich and powerful started being held accountable for their absolutely atrocious behavior, whether it’s selling enough oxycontin to hook huge swathes of the population on heroin (the Sacklers certainly seem to be getting a better treatment than your average crack dealer), raping underage sex slaves, or leaking hundreds of millions of Americans social security numbers the rich and powerful seem to laugh and shrug it off.

That’s gotta stop.

Canada, for example, has "close in age exception"s. Specifically, age of consent is 16, but "a 14 or 15 year old can consent to sexual activity as long as the partner is less than five years older and there is no relationship of trust, authority or dependency or any other exploitation of the young person."

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/clp/faq.html

There are two things going on here. (Well, more, I'll focus on two.)

Legal drafting always leads to absurdities. It is not possible to draft laws that don't; the practical need for unambiguous rules combined with complex reality means there are always edge cases.

Illustrating this general fact with the highly specific case of old rich men screwing young, powerless kids is going to cause other people to wonder about why it seems like you're only interested arguing about legal absurdities in this specific context. After all, you could illustrate your point with, say, the catch 22s inherent in the modern debt peonage systems in the US, or how pro-bono plaintiffs are regularly abused for not following rules they have no access to see, or a nearly endless parade of other examples.

Let's just say that if defending rich old men screwing young kids is apparently your hill to die on, a lot of folks are going to be less focused on your nuanced legal argumentation.

> Legal drafting always leads to absurdities

Agree, and that's exactly the kind of absurd RMS was talking about.

That's it, just that.

He can't concive that something is illogical.

Does he deserve the blame for it?

> let's just say that if defending rich old men screwing young kids is apparently your hill to die on

It never happened though.

That's the point: in court you could be charged for saying it.

No, it is not just that. You are apparently intent on ignoring the point of my post, so let me rephrase:

If someone has a history of complaining about absurd legal results, it would not be surprising to hear them use this situation as an example while beating that drum. (It may be a tacky example to use, but that's a different question.)

On the other hand, if someone has a history of doing and saying things that other people take indicative of treating women as less than fully equal, and, having never before shown any interest in a particular legal argument, trots it out to defend (and yes, that exactly what it was) abhorrent behavior, people are going to take it differently.

> That's the point: in court you could be charged for saying it.

You lost me here. Do you mean to say someone could claim I libeled them? Well sure. In the US, people can sue over anything they like. But if that's what you meant, I still have no idea what "charges" you're talking about.

> if someone has a history of complaining about absurd legal results, it would not be surprising to hear them use this situation as an example while beating that drum

that's a big IF

and BTW Stallman notoriously complained about absurd legal result, that's his real life achievement: a legal framework for free software!

that's his bread and butter.

> if someone has a history of doing and saying things that other people take indicative of treating women as less than fully equal,

that's false premise

> You lost me here. Do you mean to say someone could claim I libeled them?

Yes.

Because "defending rich old men screwing young kids" never happened.

It's a fabricated lie.

I think the poster you are replying to is saying that rape is rape not because of laws, but because of the nature of the act. A 17 year old who has sex with their 18 year old partner, willingly, will most likely not refer to that act as "rape", even though by law the 18 year old has committed that crime. Had they waited a month, it wouldn't be a crime, even though it is doubtful how much more "able to consent" the 17 year old would have been in that scenario.

perhaps I misunderstood, but to me it sounded like the reasoning that it's not rape if it was a willing interaction. But it is the rape, because the law says that minors can't willingly get into it. It's like getting a little kid drunk and saying: well, I didn't force him to drink, he did it willingly. It's not acceptable. You as adult are required to know better.

> but to me it sounded like the reasoning that it's not rape if it was a willing interaction

My reasoning is: rape victims are victims regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, time and space.

But it's not Twitter crowd that decides if it is rape or not.

> But it's not Twitter crowd that decides if it is rape or not.

Well, it's not Richard Stallman who decides either, but he tried to do exactly that... and that's why people are pissed at him

No, he didn't.

He expressed an opinion as single individual person, he didn't ask for support or rioting against someone or something.

And he didn't ask for nobody to be fired in the first place.

> and that's why people are pissed at him

No, they are pissed because people suck.

They've been also pissed at Terry Davis, another troubled man (more troubled than RMS for sure), that didn't harm anybody in his life, except himself.

Americans have discarded "Mens rea", guilty mind. If you go to a brothel and the owners tells you everyone is 17, and everyone looks 17, I think your do diligence is done.

I don't have the context of the original quote, but from what you wrote, none of those are inaccurate. The most common problem with human trafficking is that the trafficcer places the victim in a position where they are or appear to be willing. Normally, they would not be trying to escape every moment they have. The misunderstanding of this is why people don't like the comment.

So what you're saying is that the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing but that she was coerced into doing so?

I tend to agree, and I suspect most people would, including Stallman.

    > the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing but that she was coerced into doing so?

What's missing here is some consideration about the judgement of Minsky. He was a smart and powerful person with a long life of experience. He has absolutely no excuse for what he did and he knew what he was doing.

Nor does RMS have an excuse for what he said and now we're finally seeing that the aloof misanthrope schtick only goes so far. Good riddance.

Agreed 100% regarding Minsky, but RMS wasn't defending Minsky's (alleged) creepery in an absolute sense, he was arguing against escalating one allegation against Minsky into another.

VICE is literally a vice, it's a bad company giving moral drugs to self entitled people that see themselves as superior to anyone that thinks differently.

you don’t need to follow the chain, his first comment is bad enough:

> the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.

stop. stop and think about this. you’re telling me that some random person on the internet can sit there and claim, with a straight face, decades removed from the event, and completely unaware of what went down in that room, that “the most plausible scenario” is that she was willing? are you kidding me? how do you know? he wasn’t there. he doesn’t know this person. and why is this so plausible? on what actual basis here is he making this statement? oh, that’s right, nothing except his own prejudices.

he doesn’t know a damned thing about what happened in that room, and for him to jump to the conclusion that, well obviously, she wanted it, is freaking absurd.

he entirely deserves to get pilloried for this statement alone. he had no business jumping into this discussion, he has absolutely no basis on which to make his judgements except his high opinion of himself, and to go out of his way to engage in a public debate about such a highly sensitive subject when he knows jack squat about it shows an incredible lack of judgement.

the media didn’t do this to RMS, he did.

> you’re telling me that some random person on the internet can sit there and claim, with a straight face, decades removed from the event, and completely unaware of what went down in that room, that “the most plausible scenario” is that she was willing?

No, Stallman did not say that. Selam G and the media said he said it, but he did not say it. Not in spirit, not in words.

I understood this as "the most plausible [given what I know of Minsky]".

Also, he doesn't say that she wanted it, but that she might have lied about whether or not she was there willingly (possibly being coerced into lying).

Paraphrasing "The most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing": "I have a hard time imagining my late friend willingly raping someone."

Not that I think that, even in that scenario, Minsky would have displayed sound judgement by having sex with her (especially given Epstein's reputation and past conviction).

You've missed the words 'she presented herself'. You can't separate them from 'entirely willing' without radically changing the meaning.

He claimed that she was unwilling, but was coerced by Epstein into pretending otherwise, and that Minsky was deceived.

That is also, technically speaking, the most plausible scenario. Epstine wouldn't have girls going up to people and reading a script like "I don't give consent, I hate you, you have to rape me now" without knowing anything about the prospect. There would have been an element of acting.

Tech Chrunch:

> Computer scientist Richard Stallmann, who defended Jeffrey Epstein...

It's disappointing to read many of the comments on HN today.

As we know, rms is a very dear person to most of the Computer Science and programmer community.

Through the years, he's said many shocking things. We've often disagreed with him. He's been extremely stubborn.

At some points it's been comical.

Yet we still see him as a technology treasure, and we should keep this in mind before judging him harshly based on a single e-mail.

rms is actually reacting logically here, yet also emotionally as he's wanting to protect his friend - the late Marvin Minsky. Seemingly by letting go of common sense, and sure enough this is just cause for harsh criticism.

But by simply removing a living legend from his position because he's not able to be politically correct, is far worse in my opinion. (I assume he was asked to leave).

This same lack of political correctness also happens to be one of his strengths. It built his character. It's not perfect.

I don't know what more to write at this point. It's ridiculous and turning into a witch hunt against someone we actually owe a great deal of gratitude.

It is completely stupid standard to only support people that think exactly like you. That's not how communities are run, that's how communities are ruined. So sad that young people completely ignorant about society and social interaction became so unreasonable that they want to punish every single living person.

He was defending his friend who, at the age of 74, is accused of having sex with a 17 year old girl on a billionaire's private island.

Is that a matter of diverse thinking?

If you think so, I'm interested to know your reasoning.

He was defending his friend who, at the age of 74, is accused of having sex with a 17 year old girl on a billionaire's private island.

That is what he was defending. The intellectual quibbles about this and that he was bringing up are irrelevant when faced with the above fact.

That isn't about political correctness, it isn't a "witch hunt". RMS did something incredibly inappropriate in an incredibly inappropriate place and was fired. He deserved it.

Minsky is accused, with no hard evidence. RMS is likely correct that Minsky did not know the girl's age or that she had been coerced. So, assuming Minsky did have sex with the girl, he had no way of knowing that what he was doing was illegal, since it was made to appear to him that this was not the case. That would make Minsky somewhat creepy for sleeping with someone so much younger than him, but not culpable morally. If Minsky didn't actually have sex with the girl, than he did nothing wrong at all.

Stallman's defence of Minsky wasn't in his capacity as the FSF President, and his resignation isn't the result of a thoughtful and considered process. This resignation is the result of a witch hunt.

The thing about accusations is that being accused of something doesn't mean the thing happened. There is a pretty plausible line of evidence that Minsky kept his hands to himself when confronted by a 17 year old on a private island. It is an excellent time to try and defend a dead friend when such doubts are present.

And as a particularly important point - there are no charges so horrible that people shouldn't be defended against them. That is one of the best principles we have in the Western intellectual tradition. "He's defending someone from something serious" is not a respectable counter; you should rethink your arguments.

The issue wasn't him defending a man, not really.

The issue was him defending statutory rape by saying the victim would have seemed willing.

The cirumstances around that hypothetical (17, 73, billionare's island) solidify the problem.

It isn't intellectual disagreement. It's defending rape, real or imagined, by saying the victim seemed willing.

If someone honestly thought, and had reason to think, that they were having sex with a willing 18 year old and it turned out days later that they had sex with an unwilling 17 year old then:

(1) They have committed statutory rape

(2) Their position is morally defensible, although a bit creepy for an old man.

He probably didn't know she was 17. Why on earth would Minsky be risking the law by sleeping with a 17 year old girl when he could just sleep with an 18 or 19 year old? Presumably Epstein had all sorts on tap. It is very likely he wasn't told she was 17 and quite likely that if asked she had been coerced into lying. Stallman has a point here.

And to top it off even if he is wrong it is not such a critical fact that he needs to resign over it. Even if I accept tomorrow that everything I typed today so far was wrong; this is still not an important enough point to resign over anything. It is a moral hypothetical. It is no relevant to my, or Stallman's, daily personal or professional life.

That's not what happened, no matter how often you repeat your mantra. First of all, Minsky didn't agree to the offer, as evidenced by eye-witnesses. So there was probably no rape in any case, although there could have been one at another time and another party. For all that RMS and you can know, there was none. Second, nobody of the invited people had credible reasons to believe that the girl was underage - Epstein did not tell that to people he invited, for obvious reasons. For all that they could know, she was a young prostitute or a billionaire's "groupy." This is not uncommon at parties of insanely rich people, and Epstein was known for it. Whether you personally like that or not is irrelevant. Read some AMA's by sex workers to understand how this works in reality, you can find plenty of them on Reddit.

RMS also defended the view that declaring every sexual act of an adult with a 17 year old as statutory rape is morally questionable. That's a legitimate viewpoint that has been discussed extensively by lawmakers and legal scholars. Again, whether you like his opinion or not is not important. What's important is that it is ridiculous to insinuate in any way that discussing these matters is somehow morally reprehensible, especially when they concern accusations of a good friend who - for all you know and believe - is innocent.

You are being very dishonest in your posts by distorting the actual situation and what actually happened. I've personally met a guy who lost his job and all of his reputation for a similar matter - every single accusation was ruled out and disproved in court, even with direct video evidence contradicting the accuser's testimony, yet his life remains in shambles.

You can only hope that you will never become the victim of such a witch hunt yourself.

He didn't defend rape. He objected to the use of the term "sexual assault", because the "assault" part connotes the use of violence. He doesn't believe any violence was used by his friend. Based on his understanding of the situation, the girl probably acted willing to his friend, and his friend likely didn't know her true age (can you tell a 17yo from an 18yo??). So he objects to his friend being called a violent rapist when he's really likely only guilty of having sex with a legal minor, while believing she was there of her own free will and probably of legal age.

Finally, your use of the word "rape" is wrong anyway. Having sex with a minor isn't "rape", it's "statutory rape", and that's only in the US. US laws do not apply worldwide. The age of consent varies from place to place, and according to UK residents on this forum, it's only 15 or 16 there. So are you going to tell me that everyone in the UK that has sex with someone that young is a "rapist"? Sorry, no.

> Finally, your use of the word "rape" is wrong anyway. Having sex with a minor isn't "rape", it's "statutory rape", and that's only in the US.

“Statutory rape” isn't usually the term in the law, it's a common-language hedge to indicate that it was (at the time the term was coined) literally rape under a particular set of criminal statutes, but not what some people consider “real” rape.

In some statutory schemes it is exactly rape still, in others it has different formal names (“unlawful sexual intercourse” [Penal Code 261.5] in California law, for instance.)

If it is legally called "rape" somewhere, then those laws are wrong and should be changed. "Rape" is a word that carries a particular meaning (i.e., violent unwanted sexual activity), and conflating it with things that are not violent is minimizing real rape.

"Unlawful sexual intercourse" like in your California example is fine: that's a good way to word sexual activity that's illegal without conflating it with violence.

> If it is legally called "rape" somewhere, then those laws are wrong and should be changed. "Rape" is a word that carries a particular meaning

Generally, that meaning is sex without legal consent. Most state rape laws include sex with adults lacking capability for consent (due to intoxication, disability, etc.), even if they happen to carve out lack of legal capacity to consent due to age to a separate section of law, and do not require violence beyond the violence inherent in sex without consent, though they certainly include nonconsentual sex acheived through violence.

So, while it may or may not be carved out for organizational or other reasons in particular criminal codes, there is no reason that “statutory rape” does not fit conceptually within the space of “rape”. (The phrase “forcible rape” already exists for the subset you seem to want to limit “rape” to identify.)

Part of being in a leadership role is not offending carelessly speaking on topics that will bring bad might onto your organization.

RMS has been a force that has driven people away for a long time. He may be good as a thinker and coder, but he is fucking awful at being in a leadership position.

He's defending his friend who went to a brothel, there is nothing wrong with sex for money. Maybe if the USA didn't make it so hard to run a brothel less craziness would happen.

He was not defending Minsky, he argued that the crime (which he states he had no reason to deny) as described was not "assault".

His statement was that we should use proper names for crimes.

If I were to accuse Epstein of genocide and you reply "That is not genocide, he was a sex-trafficking pedophile that used minors as blackmailing pawns and more" would that be a defense? It does not look like a defense to me.

> He was not defending Minsky, he argued that the crime (which he states he had no reason to deny) as described was not "assault".

But he was wrong about English usage and about legal usage of the word "assault".

When we're talking about a child who has been trafficked and coerced into sex it's weird to "well actually, is it really assault?" into the conversation, especially if that's based on his misunderstanding of what the word means.

And the effect of his interject was to defend Minsky. When hundreds of people misinterpret him the blame lies with his poor communication, not their lack of comprehension.

Then I apologize on my understanding of the English language.

According to the quote I read of RMS (I did not read the original email fully) the salient part is his discussion where he claims that "sexual assault" as an expression (at least colloquially) implies the use of force/violence/aggression/intimidation/coercion/etc. by Minsky.

He claims that given the official report as true and taking the the claim of the victim as correct none of those (force/violence/aggression/intimidation/coercion/etc.) were likely.

This is independent on whether Minsky committed a crime or not. This is simply trying to properly understand what the accusations are. I honestly have no idea whether this would constitute rape/statutory rape/assault or any other crime, taking in goodwill what I have read it is likely that whatever happened (other witnesses claim to have seen Minsky decline the advances and the report does not claim any sexual encounter, "just" that Epstein instructed her to) Minsky did not use violence.

I actually believe I misrepresented RMS words here, as he truly only said that the violence implied by the word assault was unlikely.

(Also given that by other reports one of Epstein tactics was to lure guests into having sex with minors to blackmail them)

(I hope this is not entirely off topic) Since I first commented in this thread I saw a regular fluctuation in upvotes/downvtes (which is totally reasonable since the topic is divisive). I wonder how much that is due to a geographical distribution.

In this case the dataset would not be big enough to draw statistical conclusions, but this site (like most forums) slightly suffer from the duality of US-based and international, as it cannot be truly both at the same time.

I can see many reason to never implement something like a geographical indication of which countries upvoted/downvoted (especially as it would contradict the spirit of this site), but in contentious topics it would allow some useful insights.

If this is indeed the case then I mostly agree it sounds like he's arguing why it's called assault.

For example, people will call it "rape" when it's someone underage no matter the circumstance. Having willful sex with someone underage vs. physical forcing them to have sex with you are two very different things. Yet in (most?) people's minds they just call it rape, under the context that someone underage can't properly consent. Ok, but physical forcing yourself on someone vs willingly are still different things. I don't know what to call them, but calling them the same thing is completely disingenuous to the crime.

I'm guessing this is what he was going after? Maybe because when we think of "assault" we generally think it's the physical act of assault, not an emotional or control one...

According to the quote I read yes. He was pointing out that assault (at least colloquially) implies a form of aggression, which he believed to be unlikely given official reports.

> He was defending his friend who, at the age of 74, is accused of having sex with a 17 year old girl on a billionaire's private island.

Where I live (the UK), that is perfectly legal and I believe any man would jump at the chance to do the same with a willing 17 year old.

Your repetitive statements of fact in this thread look like nothing more than jealousy to me.

Why is it wrong to defend someone that is accused of something ? Does an accusation equate to culpability ? Should we ban lawyers and move all court cases directly to sentencing without defense arguments ? This total abdication of reason and emotionally led behavior in the face of certain words put on someone is quite frightening.

I don't see it as a witch hunt so much as an intervention. He has done great things in the free software movement, history will thank him for it, but he shouldn't be working as a front-man while launching foot-seeking missiles.

I have a soft spot for RMS like other people do but I don't want to donate to the FSF while he is talking this way as its president.

Maybe he is also a victim of his success. Free software has come so far in the past few decades that it's not as important as other social issues in computing at this point in time.

He is not acting logically, at all. Had he actually apologised he probably could have kept his job. Had he stopped being an asshole any of the times people tried to help him be less of an asshole he could have kept his job and maybe people would have defended him. Instead, he had been so awful for so long that when people came forward with his latest bullshit defending his friend over the child his friend committed statutory rape with, we all knew that it was in character for him.

Imagining his (incorrect, head canon-fueled) pedanticism is “logical” is an insult to logic.

That's not what happened. And I doubt that any amount of apology, even if RMS was sincere, would have been sufficient--contrition is not punishment enough in today's Salem.

Please note that Minksy is alleged to have had sex with the girl, and there is an eyewitness account stating that he declined to have sex. It's important to be as truthful as possible when speaking about this issue.

For what it's worth, lots of us have been trying to have him be removed for being a sexist dirtbag for a long time.

No one really needed media sensationalism to draw a pattern of behavior unbefitting the leadership of the FSF. That some random people overstated some aspects of his Epstein thoughts isn't really why this happened.

It's also a bit ironic you've decided to call it a witch hunt. Witch hunts happened when folks decided to start blaming women for everything without even a veneer of logic or civility. And here we are with a man, having possessed a long history of specific behaviors, being called to account for exactly those behaviors. It's ironic simply because the privileges RMS was exercising are so ingrained in your worldview that demanding he stop treating women like lesser beings is–to you, at least fundamentally irrational and unfair demand.

RMS had hundreds of other controversial opinions. Uttering them did not result in this. In fact, no single act of sexism got him here either. So suggesting that this is merely society punishing a misunderstood outsider on a whim is itself pretty uncalled for.

So... sexism in and of itself ought to be a punishable offense?

Oh, stop it. The GP clearly did not say that. If you need to scroll up and read it again, do so.

Are we talking about RMS? If so, RMS wasn't "punished." Folks were tired of his bad leadership and demanded he leave, because he was consistently bad at his leadership job.

You can decide this is punishment and it might feel that way to RMS, but I think we can all agree sexism is a bad trait to have in the most senior leadership position of an organization founded around principles of liberty in expression and action. RMS was bad for that cause, and he couldn't keep his position on pure tenure and prestige anymore.

"...principles of liberty in expression and action." It amuses me that you fail to see the irony in your use of that phrase when it comes to RMS being forced to resign for what he said.

Oh yes, in this case liberty would be allowing a man to stay in a leadership position with power over others despite their defiance of his legitimacy.

As we all know, real liberty is when one person has power over others who object to it.

Other people exercising their rights to speech and freedom of association in response to someone's speech is not an attack on freedom of expression.

Yes, of course, how is this even a question?

I wouldn't want a person in my team voicing sexists opinions, I would want that person removed from the team. Let alone as a figurehead and leadership figure.

It's a question because I'm trying to assess where the line is drawn, eg. if a person is sexist in their private life, but keeps things professional on the job, should they be punished for being sexist? You've helped draw that line, but where does the line really lay?

Sorry, But I've been around the block enough times here to know that your actual goal is to label this action as "punishment."

That's a position with enormous rhetorical value to you. You can use that framing to turn a conversation about a man's actions over time into a philosophical question.

That way you can avoid any inconvenient particular facts.

What could it be other than punishment? RMS committed no crime. What he did was offend certain people by having the audacity to speak up on behalf of his dead friend. That was his 'act.' Inconvenient enough?

What, indeed?

It's not punishment. The "most plausible scenario" is that he resigned "fully willingly".

There's often not a clear line separating the professional and the personal, and people in a job can feel uncomfortable with a person who has expressed troubling opinions outside the job.

But this is presuming that Stallman's behavior was only personal in the first place. He has a history of poor behavior at MIT and in his roles for the FSF, which definitely bleeds into the professional.

um...Yes? Don't we already have laws regarding sexism? Isn't there a whole history of sexism law, going as far back as the Romans? Maybe I don't understand the question...

> I wish somebody would have simply advised him not to speak on such matters because nothing good could become of it. Maybe he needed a PR manager. That sounds awful, but apparently this is what the world wants: carefully filtered speech that doesn't stray far from what people already agree with.

The world needs everyone to speak about every topic. If we all self censor then only the extremists will be speaking.

And everybody can speak about anything. As long as they don't care being hounded by the neo-puritan prudes and lose job, career, social standing.

> but apparently this is what the world wants: carefully filtered speech that doesn't stray far from what people already agree with.

Let's never forget that famous G.B. Shaw quotation, always appropriate in such situations. http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/692.html

I don't want to live in a world where everyone has to take great care all the time to fulfil the FotM expectations of certain noisy people who believe they're a majority.

> The world needs everyone to speak about every topic. If we all self censor then only the extremists will be speaking.

actually stallman was one of the extremists and he wasn't happy if somebody with the middle ground spoke about free software/open source software.

Stallman was extreme, but practically speaking he has never had any power and never tried to gather any. His extremism is characterised by pedantically talking about the logical conclusions of actions and working strictly within and through the legal system to accomplish his goals.

That is a type of extremism that is very uncomfortable when it is used against something held personally important, but it is exactly the type of extremism that we want more of.

Organisers of extra-legal justice mobs are the sort of extremists we can generally do without.

I think that's fine though. Extremists exist to help the rest of us work out which shade of grey looks right to us.

While I don't agree with everything RMS said I'm not bothered by it either. However, I tend to have the same effect on people when I think I'm just being honest but it comes off as offensive.

It's a hard balancing act, on the one hand people need to be able to deal with facts and reality, even if it's offensive to them. On the other hand we don't want our speech to act as sand in the machinery of communication.

Yeah, I want to live in a world where people are afraid to speak what they truly believe even if it's controversial. They should be so afraid of losing everything they just keep their heads down and their mouths shut. Nothing bad ever happens in societies that operate like that.

Wise worlds, extremism is rising because of Cancel Culture. People might not speak but they will certainly act.

Perhaps the President of the FSF, an organization which has a huge influence on the technical community, should be someone who doesn't have difficulty communicating with the wider world. Strong communication skills being important to that sort of job.

It is not “difficulties communicating with the wider world” when he only hit on women, he only gave women pleasure cards, he only sexualised women in his talks, and he not only refused to take feedback on that behavior, he actively corcumvented any clear rules he was given. He was not acting in good faith.

If he had cared about his political movement more than his dick we wouldn’t be here, but here we are.

>Out there it's a witch hunt and Stallman is now a witch.

There is a new religion forming among those who have largely rejected religions of the past and Stallman is guilty of blasphemy. If he only loses his job he will be far luckier than others who are guilty of similar blasphemy.

He was defending his friend who, at the age of 74, is accused of having sex with a 17 year old girl on a billionaire's private island.

I think that's blasphemy to anyone with an once of reason and compassion in this world.

It is not zealotry of some new paranoid movement that drove RMS failure. It was reason and good judgement.

> That sounds awful, but apparently this is what the world wants: carefully filtered speech that doesn't stray far from what people already agree with.

No, it is sufficient already to not blurt out controversial things at bat-shit-insanely-bad timings. Similar to how people would be mad at Einstein if he pulled a non-ironic "Yeah, but to be honest he wasn't THAT great" a friends funeral.

I don't like mobs and I lament the fact that one such important figure in computing has such difficulties making himself understood. But that does not mean that the world has a problem somehow. It just happens to be a world that is not fine-tuned to Stallman-communication and that values reducing sexism higher than technical accuracy. Some people don't work that way, some people get therapy to allign themselves, some withdraw from society, some manage to get by. Stallman happened to fall on the friction side of things this time.

The world doesn’t need to be one of two extremes, either filtered everything or say whatever you want.

Words have consequences, and while you are free to say whatever, others are free to react to it too. You don’t get a free pass for saying ridiculous things just because free speech | difficulties communicating | you’ve done great things or whatever.

I don’t want a world where everything is filtered but I do want people to think about the impact of what they say before they say it.

I prefer applying compassion to people who say stupid shit.

I also prefer weirdos to Pearl Clutchers. A segment of the world may want homogeneity, but I don’t. I don’t particularly like Stallman, but I also appreciate his weirdness.

>I prefer applying compassion to people who say stupid shit.

I very much prefer this, too, so long as they show they know what they did wrong and are clear that they'll work to do better in the future.

In the present day and age you can only evaluate it with reason as long as you are anonymous. If you use your real name and give any comment that can be remotely construed as supporting sex offenders or racists, your political enemies will send the angry mob your way. Your counter-arguments won't be heard, you won't be given a chance to explain or defend yourself in a mutually respectful discussion, instead you political weight will be voided overnight and someone much more flexible in their beliefs will take your place.

"Maybe he needed a PR manager."

No... he needed a PR manager desperately and I'm very surprised that the FSF or MIT never even considered nor assigned one to him. I know he's a grown man and is responsible for what he says, but he is, was, whatever, a figure to the CS community and as such should have had his public comments vetted more.

> I'm very surprised that the FSF or MIT never even considered nor assigned one to him

You think he would have cooperated? I can't imagine Stallman being happy with having a filter for the things he wants to say or being told to not say something.

"I can't imagine Stallman being happy with having a filter"

Yeah... How happy do you think he is now??? I can guarantee he is sitting at home right now replaying the last week over in his head wishing he would have kept his mouth shut. What is next for this dude? He will NEVER be able to get a job ANYWHERE cause no one will want to be associated with him. I HIGHLY doubt he made enough money to just retire... So really... What's next for him?

Everyone thinks filters are control and evil, however, sometimes they are there for your protection.

> How happy do you think he is now

“I’m always happy when I’m protesting.”

— Richard Stallman

> How happy do you think he is now??

You underestimate the level RMS operates at. Somebody who dedicates his life to an ideal is not going to cry about the occasional setback.

> He will NEVER be able to get a job ANYWHERE

You really underestimate RMS. There is a world beyond the US, that doesn't really care that much about PC culture. Roman Polanski never stopped working, and he actually did have sex with a minor.

Nor would that be of interest for the people he inspired. The assertion is basically that PR is needed to tranquilize or distract people now out for his head. A sad state of affairs really.

I wonder if the terminus "public relations" should be renamed to "press relations", since I doubt milking the click money is representing public opinion anymore, just the most judgmental individuals instead.

PR messages by definition are as always devoid of significant meaning. I cannot really relate to people that crave more of this.

> The assertion is basically that PR is needed to tranquilize or distract people now out for his head

No, I think the suggestion was that he should have had a PR screen in front of him long ago to avoid the current situation.

I totally agree, this could have all been avoided if someone pulled him aside and told him to sit on his hands. RMS is brilliant, but he does seem to be tone deaf. Now is not the time for old white men of privilege to be commenting on the sexuality of young women. (not that it ever was appropriate)

This isn't the first time, I'd bet plenty of people have tried to advise him and he ignored them.

He's been speaking on these topics for long enough to have heard thousands of people consoling him to stop.

>Stallman is now a witch

Funny that you evoke misogyny at this point, given how RMS is primarily a godawful human being to women, the vast majority of which your comment is ignorant of, willfully or otherwise.

This has been his godawful personality and behaviour at MIT for decades. It hasn't gone unreported. It hasn't gone unnoticed. But few appear to have ever acted on it appropriately, and the appropriate action here is removing him from any and all communities where he can do damage. It's occurring years too late, but at least it's occurring. It's sad that it took his association with a worldwide pedophilia/human trafficking ring to accomplish this, given his decades of ghastly abuse of peers/colleagues/students.

Even more sad that after this association has been revealed, communities like this one are significantly in self-defense mode.

If your response to this story is to get defensive, or to use keywords like "free speech," you have questions you need to ask yourself. Very serious questions. Questions that I guarantee your various communities want answers to before you engage with them further.

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/d59r46/richard...

How can we help him? Does joining the FSF (or donating) serve any purpose for that?

Do you think he would have listened? Something tells me he would have spoken about it on principle, in that he believes in freedom of speech.

The world wants fewer people justifying pedophiles.

I find it ridiculous that he has trouble communicating ideas as an engineer.

You, sir, made my day!

My point was that good engineers can write.

You must be an engineer.

I feel out of loop here. Can someone fill me in as to what happened.

Basically this:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman...

Anyone have a link to the actual text of chain letter? I don't want others' interpretation, that link is to an incomplete summary with links to other incomplete summaries. Cursory search leads to pages of other "summaries", and yet searching 'site:motherboard.com stallman chain letter' nets ZERO results? WTF?

This source was provided by Vice in their article.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929/091320191...

Thank you much, Sacho. I would never have clicked on the Vice article link. For those who may be confused, &/or on mobile, the PDF is in order from last post to first.

Very unfortunate RS decided to be pedantic here. While he never excused the behavior(AFAIR), it is a poor & insensitive time to argue legal minutiae, IMO. I am disappointed by his callousness. However, I am not ready to join the partially informed lynch mob.

I hope those who make policies in media & enforce the laws do not let side-shows & obfuscations get in the way of bringing every last monster who visited Epstein's island to justice.

PS: Google captcha to post on HN now? No thanks, henceforth.

I'm hoping it's just lost in the noise for now, and not an attempt to keep people from seeing the source. Which would be ironic.

That article is an exaggeration that doesn't reflect the truth.

This article explains the real events factually (letting for you to decide what you think is right or wrong) and without hyperbole: https://itsfoss.com/richard-stallman-controversy/?fbclid=IwA...

> I wish somebody would have simply advised him not to speak on such matters because nothing good could become of it

Everything good that came out of RMS is exactly because he didn't listen to those advising him to stay quiet.

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