Comment by bscphil | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bscphil | Hacker News Reader

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> Somehow we should conclude from that that RMS is guilty because somebody thinks he's a "creep", because apparently being called a "creep" by a bluecheck twitter user automatically makes you guilty of... well, whatever it is, it's clearly your fault.

Please re-read my comment. You're reacting emotionally and claiming that I said things I did not say. I used that particular claim as an example of the negative reactions people in the community seem to have to him, not as proof of anything he did or didn't do.

> No he didn't say that. It's easy to find the actual email and read it. Do it. No, really, please do it now. Once you have done it and came back - now you see what I meant when I said he didn't talk about Minsky not committing sexual assault because of this and that reason, and you can easily see why he couldn't have said that.

He did say that. Find the actual email and read it. No, really, please do it. I'll even link a copy of it for you. https://itsfoss.com/richard-stallman-controversy/ He literally did say it.

> I used that particular claim as an example of the negative reactions people in the community seem to have to him

It's not "people in the community", it's one person calling him what people usually call socially maladjusted males who dared to exist in their vicinity. It is a bad word, demeaning, devoid of content and only expressing hate and revulsion.

> He did say that.

Nope, he did not. And I say it because not only I read the email, I actually understood it. You didn't. Not RMSs fault.

> He literally did say it.

He literally did not. As I explained below, it makes as much sense as saying something who objects to the use of the term "piracy" thinks intellectual property laws should not exist. And the word "literally" does not mean what you think it means.

You're going to have to do better than that. It really just comes across as trolling since you're making the claim that he didn't say something he very clearly seems to say, without any evidence. Abbreviated, for anyone else who can't be bothered to go read it:

>The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky:

>The injustice is in the word “assaulting”.

>The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing.

>We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.

So the claim is that (assuming Minsky had sex with an underage sex trafficking victim), we shouldn't say he assaulted her. Why shouldn't we say he assaulted her? Because it "presumes that he applied force". Why is it the case that he didn't apply force? Because ("plausibly") "she presented herself to him as entirely willing."

So if an underage trafficking victim presents herself as entirely willing to a man she has sex with, that man did not commit sexual assault. Because sexual assault "presumes that he applied force".

That is exactly what I've said this entire thread. My original claim, which apparently was inciting enough to cause this furor:

> He said that an underage sex trafficking victim's "plausible" apparent consent means that the people who raped her did not commit sexual assault.

So let me see if I get your definition of assault right:

It doesn't depend at all on alleged attacker's intentions or actions, it doesn't depend on alleged victim's actions, only thing that matters is if the alleged victim did it for one motivation (wanted it) or other (didn't want it, was forced to do it by some external factor).

I would say that any reasonable person disagrees with such definition.

Where, in this entire thread, do you see me define assault? I don't understand what you're responding to. My claim, through the entire mess this thread has become, was and remains that Stallman said something.

Man, I read your entire thread of comments. You are all over the place. Your insistence made me repeat my reading of the RMS email and I think you should just drop this.

The email is extremely clear, and in fact I'm not all over the place. I keep repeating myself so much precisely because no one is bothering to respond to the same, repeated point, which has never changed since my first post in this thread.

Do you have any dispute with my characterization of RMS's comments? Can you defend any alternative reading to the plain meaning of his statements, as I set them out above?

> So if an underage trafficking victim presents herself as entirely willing to a man she has sex with, that man did not commit sexual assault. Because sexual assault "presumes that he applied force".

And here is where you make the switch. The first part is where you repeat RMS argument why he thinks what Minsky presumably did should not be called by the word "assault".

The second part is where you attribute to Stallman that he said Minsky didn't do what we call "sexual assault". That's not what he said. What he said is that we shouldn't call what he did "sexual assault" because of reasons, not that he didn't commit the deed. That's different things - just as saying "if I copy Microsoft Word without paying the license this shouldn't be called piracy" is different from "if I copy Microsoft Word without paying the license it's not a crime". You start with the first one and then try to make it looks like the second one. That's where the problem is.

If we take "she presented herself to him as entirely willing" as a fact then we can deduce that Minsky did not rape her.

I didn't know this fact until you exposed this article to me: that the person who posted their opinion about RMS threatened to "burn it [MIT] to the ground."

RMS uttered some awful opinion, and this person threatened to burn MIT to the ground as a result. If true, this person, who is identified as "Salem, Robotics student who started Remove Stallman campaign" needs to be removed from MIT immediately for making this threat. Is that something that we can all agree on?

Shouldn't we be making phone calls to the Robotics department at MIT about this threat? Why has this received no media attention? "MIT student threatens to burn MIT to the ground" is certainly a headline that would capture attention.

* This person is a graduate of MIT.

* I have no immediate reason to think they are at MIT, so I don't think it's likely that they can be removed.

* "Burn it to the ground" is obviously metaphorical language, which means (as the person themselves said), that anyone and everyone at MIT who stands in the way of firing Stallman should be fired too. (Note that they didn't "threaten" to burn it to the ground, as you say, because then it wouldn't make sense as a metaphor.)

Note that I'm not defending the language or the expressed wish, so don't attack me over that. I'm only clarifying the circumstances in which that statement was made for you.

Burn it to the ground" is obviously metaphorical language

In that case everything RMS is alleged to have said was obviously metaphorical too.

Words ... have ... meanings. You can't just say something was a metaphor because you want it to be.

You literally just did do that! My point is that either everything is or nothing is. You can’t say your friends controversial statements are metaphorical while damning your enemies for the same things.

> My point is that either everything is or nothing is.

Come on, you can't seriously believe that either everything is metaphorical or nothing is. You have to be trolling me.

And these people aren't my friends.

For the record, "burn it to the ground" is a very common figure of speech on the left. For example, look at this editorial from only a month ago: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/24/austra... It's right in the subtitle!

Do you think this person wants to literally go get a torch and burn "the gender binary" to the ground? It doesn't even make sense. There's also no way you can interpret RMS as using a metaphor. He gave a defense of Minsky. How are metaphors even relevant? Are you trying to say he was joking?

For the record, "burn it to the ground" is a very common figure of speech on the left

But if a right winger says exactly the same words they are to be taken literally? Are centrists allowed to say it?

There is no reason not to take it as a threat of arson, or hate speech if you prefer. Words have meanings. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, that’s another very common figure of speech.

> But if a right winger says exactly the same words they are to be taken literally?

No. Everyone is allowed to say it, unless it's clear from the context that they are literally threatening violence. In this case, quite the opposite is true. The author of that statement says in the next paragraph that they want the powerful people at MIT turned out if necessary to get rid of Stallman.

> Remove everyone, if we must, and let something much better be built from the ashes.

I mean, come on, the person who said this was a real threat against MIT wasn't serious. Surely you can admit that.

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