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Comment by CathedralBorrow | Hacker News Reader

I'll speak up: I'm happy that Stallman resigned from his positions, but the final straw for me was the surfacing of Stallman's pedophilic musings over the years. You left that part out.

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Actually, no, he didn't - he lead with it.

> Diversity -- but no diversity of opinion...

Is there any sort of evidence of action? Him having had sex with children?

If anything, it's you who left out the part where Stallman already said, before this incindent, that he was wrong. I.e. he said it because he actually changed his mind and believes he was wrong, not in order to "save face" or clear his image or avoid scandal or whatnot.

If someone tells me they think that it's sometimes fine to have sex with children, I don't need any evidence of action to want to distance myself from that person.

> If anything, it's you who left out the part where Stallman already said, before this incindent, that he was wrong. I.e. he said it because he actually changed his mind and believes he was wrong, not in order to "save face" or clear his image or avoid scandal or whatnot.

He posted that after the storm had started, three days before his resignation. A few days after the "Remove Richard Stallman" Medium post was written.

Do you think that's a complete coincidence? Has nothing to do with saving face and only his desire to explain that he had changed his mind?

>they think that it's sometimes fine to have sex with children

From what I can tell from the snippets posted here, he isn't saying it's fine, he's saying he's seen insufficient evidence to form an opinion - and in such a state, he resists those who would force one on him with faulty reasoning. Or, to put it another way, he views morality with three responses [yes, no, I don't know], which causes friction with people who view it with two:

"Is involuntary pedophilia bad?" [yes] "Is all pedophilia bad?" [idk - insufficient evidence on voluntary or its inherent lack of existence] "Do you think that all pedophilia is bad?" [no - position held is idk, not yes] "Therefore, you think all pedophilia is good." [no - position held is idk, not yes]

A similar comparison might be being asked if you enjoyed an unreleased book, then using "no[, I haven't read it and formed an opinion]" to justify "you think the book is bad."

ETA: also, if he hasn't said more on the subject in recent years, it's silly to assume that he necessarily still hold these views or lack thereof.

I don't think there's anything I can say to reply to this, since the strawman you've raised is not at all similar to what my views are. And I generally think it's a cheap trick to assume that other people disagree because their minds are too simple to comprehend.

> Do you think that's a complete coincidence?

You are right - I was under the impression that was posted earlier, but he posted that immediately after the email thread was "leaked" to Vice. It's no coincidence; I still think that, given his previous as well as ulterior behavior, as well as the timing, that it's a clarification he felt he needed to make (given the public accusations that started pouring). I.e. it still doesn't look to me like a dishonest attempt to save face by hiding his controversial opinions... he reacted too quick with that, while ignoring everything else.

What you call "pedophilic musings", I call natural thinking process that probably every critical thinker went through in their life. It even reaches standard socially-acceptable conclusion - it just took him way longer than usual (which frankly is hardly surprising).

Yeah, took him until a few days after the whole storm had started. Good timing to have such a profound reversal in your view on pedophilia.

So? Stallman is the last person on earth I'd suspect of opportunistic opinion changing. The whole life of this person revolves around being stubborn in his point of view regardless of what others think about it. I've seen many people suggesting that that last note is a kind of "damage control", but that's probably the least believable accusation when it comes to rms.

That's fine, I'm just skeptical. I'm sure he'd understand.

Because he probably forgot about it until then. He comments on half a dozen things a day, out of tens of thousands of comments over 2 decades only 2 were about this issue so it's not as if it was a firmly held personal conviction.

I don't know about you, but I don't think forgetting that you believe sex with children can be fine is any better really.

So is musing illegal now or what?

Can people still have controversial opinions without getting their lives destroyed?

Stallman wasn't convicted of any crime, so please drop the "illegal" thing. He can have whatever controversial opinions he wants.

He can have whatever controversial opinions he wants.

Not without losing his job, apparently.

Yes? Is it surprising to you that words can have consequences up to and including your employers no longer wanting to employ you?

The problem with your line of thinking is that it discourages people from expressing their opinions if they deviate from the opinion of the majority.

If people need to be concerned about having their lives ruined over what they write in an email, or an online forum, can’t you see what kind of chilling effect this has?

I mean of course words have consequences. Denying it is just absurd. If an employee of yours regularly expresses his opinion that your children are sexy and he'd like to have sex with them, what would you do about it that does not in any way discourage him from expressing his opinion? Surely you can't reprimand him or fire him.

Or an employee that regularly talks publicly about how horrible your company is and that no one should work there. Can't discourage any expression of opinion, so what can you do?

How about "looks". Is it surprising to you that physical aspect can have consequences up to and including your employers no longer wanting to employ you?

Because what you said is such a broad generalization, that it feels "obviously true". But if you object to a person not being hired because she's black (although that's personally reasonable in some very limited circumstances) - then maybe you should object too for a person being dismissed on words completely unrelated to the work he was supposed to perform.

If you ran a company, would you make sure that none of your employees ever face consequences for expressing their opinions outside of work?

I would try. It would be almost impossible in the current climate though, so I would be unlikely to succeed given that I myself could be removed over my position as soon as someone says something distasteful and I'm accused of either supporting it or creating a hostile environment for other employees. But the world I want to live in is one where employers take no action whatsoever for opinions expressed off the clock.

So ideally you'd have no qualms with a preschool teacher who blogs about how sex with children is perfectly fine in their spare time?

Or an employee who regularly publishes manifestos on why people of certain skin colors should be murdered and exterminated?

These are extreme examples of course, but you are saying that ideally no one should experience any consequences for expressing any opinion outside of work.

Ideally, yes.

It's not that they should face no consequences - they should face consequences in the circles in which they express those views, ideally in the form of people disagreeing with them, but possibly also wanting to dissociate with them. If they try to keep those views out of the classroom, I don't have a problem with it.

In the classroom, you are the instrument of a consensus view. You must do your job. If you do it well, that's great. Your views outside the classroom should be irrelevant, and I can't help but notice that a lot of the time when people get in trouble for their views outside of work, it's because someone de-anonymised them.

We cannot have a world where people's actual opinions are forced to be equal to those their employers would be comfortable with. Your extreme examples are extreme indeed, but there are many examples, particularly in authoritarian regimes, where the extreme view is the correct one. So extreme-ness is not a good metric for whether views should be allowed or not.

I think the solution for everyone is to stay silent, and to discuss their views anonymously online. Their views will still have force at the ballot box - as they did at the last election (as much as I did not like the outcome, it was evidence that social shaming has limited power at changing how people vote). We should be suspicious of attempts to de-anonymise the internet.

Basically, dissent is important. So important that it is worth tolerating bad views to ensure dissent is not suppressed when it is needed.

Everyone who pictures the cancel-culture norms resulting in some sort of paradise where everyone believes nice things are delusional, they are simply ceding power to those who will use it for personal gain, and giving the currently powerful the tools to to cement that power.

That's fair, and thanks for the explanation. I couldn't disagree more but that's normal.

In this extreme example of mine, would you be happy as a parent to have your children in this teacher's classroom? Would you be taking part in a free speech suppressing pitchfork mob if you were to call the school and express your opinion that you don't want your child to be taught by a pedophile?

It's completely inappropriate that you use such extreme examples in a thread about RMS. Implicitly you link him to this. I would fire you...

The link is entirely of your making, I even explicitly stated that I'm using an extreme example.

That's true but something always sticks.

So would you agree if your employer fires you because of this chain of posts?

No, but I'd understand if I had been publicly saying that sometimes there's nothing wrong with having sex with children. When I say that words can have consequences, it matters which words you use.

One could argue that in the "court of public opinion" he very much was.

Yes, his actions and words had consequences. Is this a new idea to you?

Please provide a link. I’ve seen this repeated, but no source. I don’t necessarily doubt it, but if you don’t provide a link your basically committing slander.

“I am sceptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.”

“There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.“

I can give you the links but it's quite easy to Google.

Edit since I dug them up for another comment:

https://stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20June%20...

https://stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2...

It's well-known he's since recanted his thoughts in those posts:

https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...

Are people allowed to change their mind after having conversations that convince them that their position is wrong?

Of course people are allowed to change their minds. But forgive me if I take a skeptical view of someone in their sixties suddenly saying "Contrary to my writings on the subject, I've recently learned that having sex with children is wrong"

Especially if that recanting happens to take place right as the shitstorm about his writings and behavior has started.

Sure, but it's not like he was actively defending his position until the point of his public persecution. They've been the only 2 comments that I'm aware of his thoughts on the subject. Granted they were very controversial thoughts to be ever be trying to question in a public statement. Which makes me think he has no fear/reservations of openly saying what he believes at any time and is not socially-aware of the consequences of his statements, either because he's eccentric, socially awkward, or just lacking in empathy.

> Which makes me think he has no fear/reservations of openly saying what he believes at any time and is not socially-aware of the consequences of his statements, either because he's eccentric, socially awkward, or just lacking in empathy.

I pretty much fully agree with this. I don't think he's evil or anything. The consequences of his statements just finally caught up with him, and in a big way since he seems to have had a strong "It's just how RMS is, he's such a great leader, just ignore him or steer clear of him or whatever" shield around him for all those years.

I saw it, posted on a mailing list. Old stuff that he according to some distanced himself from lately.

He was merely voicing the opinion "if all is consensual what's the problem"... An opinion he changed from later.

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