A Reflection on the Departure of RMS | Hacker News Reader

A Reflection on the Departure of RMS

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83 pointsrwolf43 comments

For some context, Thomas Bushnell was the chief architect of the HURD from its founding in 1990 until 2003. He understands the FSF and Richard Stallman as well as anyone does.

> Thomas Bushnell was the chief architect of the HURD from its founding in 1990 until 2003. He understands the FSF and Richard Stallman as well as anyone does.

I invited Stallman to speak at my law school, along with other high ranking FSF members. I may have worshiped him at the time, but many of the tight-laced budding lawyers in attendance thought he was weird, mildly anti-social, and did not understand his relevance. Developers "got it", but most law students didn't connect. The traits that endeared him to the software community cut against him when trying to reach a broader audience.

Even though "open source" is everywhere right now, the GPL and true sharing of code is not. The Apache license, which allows you to do what you want and not share any changes, rules the day. I wonder if a more mainstream leader, who was just as committed to copyleft software would have been more effective.

I'm pretty sure RMS exhibits most of all of the symptoms of Asperger's and would immediately get the diagnosis if he walked into a psychiatrists' office.

It's a bit ignorant for Bushnell to be degrading RMS by calling him a "a whiny child who has never reached the emotional maturity to treat people decently" when the man 99.9% likely cannot cognitively do so.

It's really unfortunate that people with Asperger's (potentially like RMS) are at a massive disadvantage when holding positions of any kind of power in a public setting.

It's far more than 'ignorant', Bushnell knows better than that. He's demonstrating a severe lack of empathy - and let's just say, he's not the only person who has shown tell-tale signs of this trait so far (and leave it at that). What I have to wonder is whether the radical activist politics that's becoming all-too-common in academia and elsewhere is making people less empathetic, or simply selecting for the least empathetic of us.

(As an aside, the notion that Aspergers sufferers "cannot cognitively" reach "the emotional maturity to treat people decently" is a deeply, deeply unfair stereotype that reflects a severe misconception as to Aspergers behavior. Autism and Aspergers has nothing, zip, zilch to do with sociopathy! The way sufferers might treat people may be less-than-satisfactory to us, perhaps even socially-impaired in some sense; but to say or to even imply that they they lack decency is simply outrageous. Sorry for the admittedly-pedantic nitpicking.)

From what I can tell, it's Stallman who lacks empathy here. If he had ever thought about the impact of his behavior on the people around him, maybe he wouldn't have driven them all away.

Lacking empathy isn't exclusive; it's possible for multiple parties to the same issue to do that.

I have addressed this in another comment. Yes, one can certainly argue that RMS ought to have been cognizant of his social faults, and perhaps his moral failings as well. But there's at least a colorable argument to be made the other way, given how he was (to quote the article) coddled while at MIT. (Keep in mind that until very recently, MIT did not even have a policy on e.g. employee training wrt. sexually appropriate behavior in the workplace, if we are to believe activists' claims! There's plenty of institutional failure to go around in that place. So, no, I'm not going to blame the guy in the absence of deeper knowledge about the actual facts of the matter.)

Some smart people do have Asperger's, per a professional diagnosis.

It does not help those people to just take anyone who acts weird but seems smart and say "they probably have Asperger's."

Mental disorders should be taken seriously. That means helping and accommodating people who suffer from disorders, including Asperger's. But it also means resisting the temptation to invent pop diagnoses in order to excuse behavior that would otherwise be objectionable.

I have lived most my life with 3 people who have Asperger's and I've worked with many people who have Asperger's.

He's exhibiting 99.9% of the signs that he has Asperger's.

It's not a "pop" diagnosis of any sort.

Unless you are literally a trained doctor, it is a pop diagnosis.

RMS has all the resources he needs to get an Asperger's diagnosis and appropriate therapy.

Why should those that are aspie modify themselves to satisfy those that are neurotypical instead of those that are neurotypical learning how to work with aspies?

Not saying the aspies shouldn't work on themselves, but it should be a two way street, where NTs also learn to recognize and tolerate aspies.

> Why should those that are aspie modify themselves to satisfy those that are neurotypical instead of those that are neurotypical learning how to work with aspies?

This isn't an either-or question. Everyone needs to learn how to work productively with other people, if they wish to succeed at multi-person endeavors. For some people it's harder, sure, but that doesn't change the reality on the ground that you can't just say "The fifty of us have decided that we prefer being antisocial, and therefore we're going to start a community for it" and expect it to work.

Also, this argument does quite a disservice to women with Asperger's who are harassed out of communities because they lack the inherent social confidence to stand up for themselves when a powerful man acts abusive and other people defend him by saying "He probably has Asperger's." Maybe neurotypicals should learn how to recognize those aspies and stand up for them?

since there is no known therapy this comment can easily be construed as wrongly blaming those with autism spectrum disorder for not having solved their autism spectrum disorder simply out of laziness and lack of motivation. I'm not a fan of RMS in general, but we're saying that the apparently untreatable condition he is allegedly affected by is effectively his own choice and own fault, an attitude that at the very best fails to help anyone with untreatable mental conditions and is also not uncommon. It may help those without such condition feel like they're living in a just world, on the other hand.

> It's a bit ignorant for Bushnell to be degrading RMS by calling him a "a whiny child who has never reached the emotional maturity to treat people decently" when the man 99.9% likely cannot cognitively do so.

Have you interacted with RMS? Do you know what his cognitive limitations are?

Bushnell has. (And he doubtless knows plenty of people with Asperger's - it is certainly true that Asperger's is disproportionately common in this industry.)

Matthew Garrett, another person who has worked closely with RMS (in his case, on the board of the FSF), has said that he does, indeed, have the cognitive capacity to understand the impact of his actions, but chooses not to care: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html "I've spent a lot of time working with him to help him understand why various positions he holds are harmful. I've reached the conclusion that it's not that he's unable to understand, he's just unwilling to change his mind."

It seems like it is both unfair to RMS, unfair to people who have worked with him, and unfair to people with Asperger's to make this comparison.

Yeaaaa...how about we don't use "The Autism Spectrum" (pseudoscience's latest pump-my-kids-full-of-drugs excuse for what ails anyone who's a little slow or a full blown snowflake) to levy criticism without having a clue? As someone else mentioned, its not fair to RMS and its not fair to the genuinely mentally affected.

> "a whiny child who has never reached the emotional maturity to treat people decently" when the man 99.9% likely cannot cognitively do so.

This is simply not a black and white situation. I'm familiar with people with Asperger's who can both behave nicely to others and who are aware of their limitations and actively work on thinking through their situation to counteract those limits. Being diagnosed is not a license to be a dick. If someone actually can't handle this, then it is a disadvantage for a public position and they likely shouldn't hold it.

I'm quite willing to entertain the notion that RMS was a problem in some sense (though, if he has been 'coddled' for decades, one has to wonder if that problem was due to any fault of his own that he ought to have been cognizant of!) But pay attention to what this post is actually saying. It's inappropriate to defend Minsky in the wake of the Epstein scandal? (And there are people, considered reliable by others, who have said that when sex was inappropriately offered to Minsky, he turned the offer down! Of course RMS did not say that, and what he did say was rather tone deaf to say the least. But still...) RMS must go because he is fat and ugly, and thus makes women uncomfortable (the horror!) even when he's simply trying to joke around and be charming? Come on.

I suggest you read the articles linked in the posted link, and also this story by Steven Levy:

https://www.wired.com/story/richard-stallman-and-the-fall-of...

Threatening to kill yourself if someone won't go out with you is terrible behavior at a bunch of levels: https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... (search for "When I was a teen freshman").

It's clear that Stallman was not just "trying to joke around and be charming".

Even if that were his actual intent, acceptable intent does not justify bad behavior.

Whenever something like this happens some sort of accusation around this sort of behaviour always seems to emerge, I really have to question the validity of such claims

I guess it wouldn't occur to you that the claims are valid, hence the reason they keep cropping up...

I considered that and dismissed it because it's frequently been proven that these accusations have had no merit.

"The fall of the clueless nerd" indeed. The headline in the wired story linked triggers the hell out of me. I suppose we have come full circle, Nerds suck, then they were cool and now they have been consigned back to uncool again. For the life of me, based on the snippets i've seen regarding his interactions with women, the only advice I can give him and ppl like him if they could have a do-over is stay away from women period. Which causes other problems but I will gladly have those problems than have an icon of an industry/space that I love be exiled in such an ignominious fashion.

> the only advice I can give him and ppl like him if they could have a do-over is stay away from women period

Stallman could have been a quirky, uncompromising, and passionate personality and still treat women like equals. Being a "genius" is not a good (or even sensical) excuse to treat people poorly. If anything, it shows you're not really a genius after all.

> If anything, it shows you're not really a genius after all.

Plenty of geniuses have not treated people well. Newton was a complete asshole. Even Einstein, who was a staunch defender of civil liberties at a time when most of his peers weren't, wrote some rather unpleasant things about the Chinese in his personal journal.

I agree completely that being a genius is no excuse for treating people poorly. But unfortunately history is littered with such people.

> Plenty of geniuses have not treated people well. Newton was a complete asshole. Even Einstein ... wrote some rather unpleasant things about the Chinese in his personal journal. ... being a genius is no excuse for treating people poorly. But unfortunately history is littered with such people.

I suspect that many of these "geniuses" only became difficult personalities after they recieved recognition and had a taste for power. Power corrupts, it allows people to do things without regarding people that may be affected by their actions.

I don't think there's just a simple correlation between people deemed geniuses and them having difficult personalities. Rather, I suspect there's a causal effect between being granted the "genius" title and abusing the accompanying power that leads to a difficult personality.

On a slight tangent to your comment about it being inappropriate to defend Minsky:

Did RMS think that's what he was doing? He accidentally threw Minsky under the bus by a) believing an accusation that hadn't actually been made in court as far as I can tell b) trying to change the word used to describe the act by inventing "plausible" scenarios that make it seem better.

Why RMS thought it plausible that his friend had sex with a 17 year old as long as there was plausible deniability (stretching the word plausible here) that she wasn't an underage sex slave is a question worth asking.

> RMS must go because he is fat and ugly, and thus makes women uncomfortable (the horror!)

That's pretty much the definition of a creep. Women still gushing over Ted Bundy. We forgive pretty people for many sins. Let's not forget that Dolores Umbridges among women. I've had to work with one ... would not let around her a million miles from my dog.

"fat and ugly" is not the definition of a creep. Stallman's "creep" factor comes in part from his way of making inappropriate sexual advances. Here are some examples of people calling him a creep:

"There are many valid criticisms of Richard Stallman: ... he has creeped out some women by making passes at them (or so they tell me). - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2327849 (2011)

There are stories on Twitter like the following from 2018, https://twitter.com/suzanne_hillman/status/99459683376166092.... :

> He flirts with anyone who is female, even if they are underage. He is creepy in person, in a way that I cannot adequately describe. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that he kept women out of open source and free software, and many of his ideas stayed even after he left.

Or https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2019/09/17/rms-resig.... :

> rms was in the whisper network as a creep when I was in undergrad late last millennium, and I wasn’t even at MIT.

If he was not ugly would you consider his behaviour creeping or mild flirtatiousness?

There was a whole Justin Bieber creeping his followers, where no one seemed to complain.

I'm pretty sure if someone said "No" please stop doing then RMS would stop. Are there cases where he didn't? If so .. I take back my words.

Autistic types or Asperger types whatever you want to call it ... take things very literally. They are visual-oriented and big-picture thinkers. This affects both men and women btw. Verbal thinking is not their strong suit. Body language reading is not their strong suit. Sarcasm and mean communication is not their strong suit. They are blunt and straightforward to a fault. Autistic types will be Autistic even in Rome.

This almost seems like Gallelio being house arrested because the feminist popes couldn't comprehend him.

If the average girl expects psychic powers of body language reading and reading the room before you utter a word ... that's just expecting men to behave like women. It's never going to happen.

Why have whisper network, as one of the quotes I mentioned, if being "fat and ugly" is all that's needed to recognize a creep?

I do not think Stallman is ugly, so I don't know why that's even an issue. He's had at least one girlfriend, so it's not like his physical attributes are a universal turn-off. Can you find women writing they don't like him because he's fat and ugly? Because finding accounts of women who dislike his creepy sexual advances is not hard.

Do not use 'Autistic types or Asperger types' as a "boys will be boys" type excuse. I'll quote an autistic person, at https://twitter.com/HickeyWriter/status/1172674056828661764

> I'm autistic. I am not good at social cues. I have, in my time, held quite a few shitty, offensive opinions. But when people have pointed out how awful those opinions are to me, I've thought "Oh shit, they're right," apologised, and changed my opinions.

Or from another autistic person, at https://twitter.com/mykola/status/1172685579424817152 :

> Being autistic doesn't make you an asshole, certainly not a pedophile. It mostly makes you a little weird.

Your argument, if it makes any sense, means that Stallman should have been kicked out long ago because he was being surrounded by enablers and yes-men who didn't provide the feedback he needed for his position.

Which, as you likely know, is one of the comments made by the linked-to page:

> I was around for most of the 90s, and I can confirm the unfortunate reality that RMS’s behavior was a concern at the time, and that this protection [by Minsky and the AI Lab] was itself part of the problem. He was never held to account; he was himself coddled in his own lower-grade misbehavior and mistreatment of women. He made the place uncomfortable for a lot of people, and especially women.

How can you meaningfully write "Justin Bieber creeping his followers" if you think "creeping" means "fat and ugly"?

And, "the feminist popes" ... WTF?!

> Why have whisper network, as one of the quotes I mentioned, if being "fat and ugly" is all that's needed to recognize a creep?

You think people aren't doing it all the time? Gossiping around folks, calling them fat and ugly behind their back? "Creep" is just the next step in the bullying ladder. (Of course, RMS hasn't exactly made things hard for his bullies. But let's not pretend that this sort of dynamic never happens in such cases.)

There was also this "hot inmate" meme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Meeks

Speaks volumes in how pretty people are treated vs how fat and ugly people are treated.

Or, Jethro Tull's "Fat Man":

  Don't want to be a fat man
  People would think that I was just good fun, man
  Would rather be a thin man
  I am so glad to go on being one, man

  Too much to carry around with you
  No chance of finding a woman, who
  Will love you in the morning and all the nighttime too

  Don't want to be a fat man
  Have not the patience to ignore all that
  Hate to admit to myself
  I thought my problems came from being fat

But there's no evidence that "fat and ugly" = "creep".

If '"Creep" is just the next step in the bullying ladder' then there should be far more examples of women calling Stallman 'fat and ugly' than there are of calling him a creep.

What limited examples I found of calling Stallman 'fat' appear to come from males who also use, eg, racial or ethnic slurs against him.

The observed evidence therefore is not that there is a single ladder, but that there are multiple ladders, and "creep" is a different ladder than "fat" is a different ladder than "ugly".

Let's also not pretend that Stallman didn't have a decades long history of behavior which most other people of similar weight and beauty don't have.

> Because finding accounts of women who dislike his creepy sexual advances is not hard.

Sexual advances? I doubt it. Women confuse friendly behaviour with sexual intent all the time. Men do too. Friedly behaviour from ugly people is considered creepy. Most ugly people learn to not do that ... but Autistic people present a problem in this regard.

> Your argument, if it makes any sense, means that Stallman should have been kicked out long ago because he was being surrounded by enablers and yes-men who didn't provide the feedback he needed for his position.

It takes two google searches to find feminist popes who support paedophilia and incest. Let's ruin their entire careers, dreams, ambitions and piss on their graves if they are dead.

Do I take it that you don't want to address any of the other issues I raised?

If you really think that "creep" means 'fat and ugly', then why do you think Stallman is ugly while I don't? A lot of people are fat and ugly. Most aren't considered creeps. You called out Bieber's creeping behavior, so what's your definition of creep that doesn't involve being fat and ugly?

Congratulations on your doubt. What evidence would change your mind?

Are you one of those men who like to leer at attractive women's breasts, give wolf whistles to women walking by, and tell women 'they need to smile more; they are too pretty to be sad", and say it's meant as friendly compliment?

Because if so, you are one of the misogynist problems in this world.

If not, then there's plenty of examples right there of women who do not consider those to be 'friendly behavior' even when the men regard it as such.

Again, "Autistic people" is not an excuse for 30 years of continued behavior in Stallman's position. The vast majority of autistic people are not sexual creeps.

So what? It takes two Google searches to find Nazis living in Antarctica, Flat Earthers, and Moon Landing denialists. As far as I can tell, there have been no pope which advocated for the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes, and especially not at the time of Galileo.

FWIW, I looked and didn't find what you were talking about.

Ah ... you must be on the spectrum. I'm not a misogynist. I don't care about a majority of the men and women. I just don't pretend to be a humanist.

"then there's plenty of examples right there of women who do not consider those to be 'friendly behavior' even when the men regard it as such."

Which undermines your earlier thesis.

It's right there ...

https://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/simone-de-beauvoir-a-n...

My thesis is fairly simple.

1. Autism, Asperger types have a hard time interpreting sarcasm, body language, talking behind people's back while keeping a tactful appearance, reading the emotional atmosphere of the room and verbal communication which is not literal. These are called social skills and women are better at it. It takes a whole lotta time for Autistic types to develop these.

2. Ugly people will be considered creepy if they flirt, the thesis of the OP. It is very uncomfortable to watch Autistic types flirt and they are most likely to not understand body language cues.

3. You don't have to give them a pass at being dicks and lacking manners, but again you have to tell them in their own language ... but expect whole lotta whys. Silencing people, bullying them for their independent thoughts is a pathetic solution to a shitty problem.

There is nothing there about "feminist popes", or Galileo.

Your thesis, as presented here, is internally inconsistent, weakly supported, and depends on overgeneralized extrapolations.

As I wrote earlier, if your #1 is, then it "means that Stallman should have been kicked out long ago because he was being surrounded by enablers and yes-men who didn't provide the feedback he needed for his position."

Which is one of the arguments presented in this link.

Your #2 is unsupported because you haven't shown that most women thought Stallman was ugly. While I've been able to demonstrate places where women thought Stallman was a creep.

Your #3 is irrelevant because Stallman is not being silenced. He can continue to speak as he wishes. He is just not able to use his associations with MIT or the FSF to support his speech.

This is part-and-parcel of the right of free association, which is an essential liberty.

Sure I'll take criticism .... you don't even have a thesis to begin with. You don't even have evidence other than tweets of who are they even? Some two yes-men for women? Haven't we seen that before.

You can research these ... conditions.

And you conveniently ignore pedo feminists for your own political victimhood narrative.

My thesis is that ""fat and ugly" is not the definition of a creep." It was the first sentence of the first comment I made in this thread.

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