How the cancel culture was leveraged against RMS
blog.dachary.org
blog.dachary.org
In no way did he ever say that "an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”", just that she could have presented herself as being willing... The thing is there's no denying that Marvin Minsky was extraordinarily stupid to associate with someone who had a prior conviction as a sex offender and furthermore to have sex with anyone when invited by that person but that doesn't change the fact that RMS argument was mischaracterized and should not have resulted in him resigning...
This kind of mischaracterization and excessive outrage destroys rational discussion between people. It just creates a culture of fear and forces people to hide behind anonymity when engaging in any discourse over this.
Cancel culture has existed in one form or another since the dawn of time, and it seems that nobody is above this behavior; not even the HN crowd.
We are all lucky that you have the power of divination. Thank you for keeping us all safe.
Unhinged hyperbole. Nothing about RMS is remotely terrifying.
It is the unchecked power and intolerance of your movement, that is truly terrifying.
And, just for the record, mr unhinged hyperbole, I've been sexually assaulted myself. By a drunk, male coworker that had about 100lbs on me. I was groped, pushed down and pinned to the ground, screamed out that I knew I wanted it and that I was a ft. And I couldn't get up. Finally two people got the guy off of me. It was "terrifying." I couldn't get away and when he had me down I couldn't get up. And when I tried to get him fired for what he did (he worked for me) my HR team said that it couldn't be done since it was at a work-sponsored event and that I was actually responsible for how much he had to drink.
While I don't wish the experience on anyone, I do wonder what would be different in our world if more men had first had understanding of what it means to be vulnerable and assaulted.
Now, really do go back under the rock. You're boring and you're wrong.
He was an unstoppable monster who could only be brought down by lying about him, and everyone in on the conspiracy should be hailed as heroes.
That’s the heart of the problem, and I see no solution at all. Every successful offensive operation makes them more powerful.
If this happened again, exactly the same arguments would be made as to why the woman should not have reported it and why nothing should happen to the perpetrators.
It's actually the opposite, far too many people get easily influenced by propaganda, hence why the man lost his job.
On top of that the man lost his job is a fact, but a claim of an underage woman who was supposedly coerced is not and is not verifiable, it's just white propaganda. If people weren't so naive and accepting of propagandistic authoritative claims, this wouldn't have happened.
Here is the bulk of the email that got RMS rightfully roasted:
>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.
https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...
You don't know why MIT fired RMS. What is known is they didn't have to go to tabloids or blogs to find people complaining about him, people in his group, and many historical reasons.
https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-appendi...
I fail to see how being so easily offended is good either for an individual or society. Quick to outrage doesn’t strike me as particularly mindful or consistent with best namaste practices.
Caring about some persons opinion isn't the same thing as being offended.
So, yes, his opinions are pretty important.
And this says nothing about his behaviour at conferences.
Surely, the FSF can do better.
That's my concern too. Cancel culture is children throwing tantrums (instead of having a rational discourse) and getting their way, therefore never growing up, as a result of weak parenting. That's the way society is headed unless more educated, libertarian people make an effort to stop it.
We're on an evil path here.
I am not saying there can't be pitfalls and dangers, but if you care to know what the perspective of those of us who are in favor of repercussions for people who promote dehumanizing views, that's what we're talking about.
I had written it that way because journalists can choose how carefully to fact-check what they write, and how much energy and timeliness they apply into corrections. This gives journalists an ability to “optimistically” publish errors and give misunderstandings narrative momentum. I believe Gruber wielded those tool in his Stallman piece and the correction, and I thought the proof was that he did not to try to correct the perception resulting from his original story. But, as dang said, I don’t have a mind-reader, so I had broken the site guidelines by writing as if I knew that for sure.
If even a third of those people had something resembling my two experiences with RMS than the anti-Stallman effort as you describe it is a tiny thing compared to the thousands of people in the industry that have come to know RMS personally well enough to look at the reports and find them more than plausible. Or, in my case and seemingly in many others, look at the reports and say to themselves, "I saw him do this, I know that he does this, I should have done something about it at the time."
In summary: I think that it goes a long way to explain MIT's decisions and what you may be perceiving as a general lack of support in the community to point out that thousands of people had first hand experiences with RMS that fit with the picture being painted. The reports were not isolated. They were many. The fact that they were not acted on earlier is criminal. The fact that they were finally acted upon is just.
https://mobile.twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/11739031026231...
This is my red flag for someone who's being intellectually dishonest about RMS. It's also the signature move of cancel culture -- aggressively reducing someone's opinion to one that can be easily canned as intolerable.
Well documented, yes. Within the realm of reasonable discourse, no. Or more accurately, only reasonable among the circle of advocates who consider everything Richard Stallman says to be reasonable, by definition.
This[0] is a list of items from RMS' blog which speaks to his opinions more clearly. For further context, here[1] is the HN thread discussing it, and here[2] is my own comment therein which points out in each item, in RMS' own words, explaining why his opinion on the matter falls far outside what would be considered reasonable by most people.
It is not merely the case that RMS stated as simple mathematical fact that ages of consent differ from place to place, rather he has stated on multiple occasions his belief that children are capable of consenting to sexual relations that that sex between an adult and a child is not only normal, but healthy and should be encouraged by society.
[0]https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2019-10/msg00...
I've seem RMS at work first hand and my experiences fit right in with the experiences being reported. I get that people don't want him to be the person that is being described: this is a natural response. But I am using my voice to say that just the small bit of RMS that I experienced first had is enough to justify his loss of position and status. And from the look of it my story is just one of a very large number of similar and worse stories.
That's the thing: most of the oft-repeated threads are unconvincing at best and plain dishonest at worst. If there better examples of RMS's inappropriate behavior we should be focusing on those.
If you work for MIT and you grab ONE ASS or corner one woman so that she locks herself in a room and calls for help you are likely to be fired. The reports are consistent and may vary in details by tell a remarkably similar story over and over. The real story here is the people that do not believe them.