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Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

I agree. Being different isn't any easier or harder. We've just moved some things from the "socially accepted weird" list to the "socially unacceptable weird" list and vice versa.

(yes I know my comment is a massive generalization)

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What do you think it means to become nicer to weirdos, other than whatever counted as weird becoming more socially acceptable?

Not having laws against being weird, not reaching to therapy for weirdness, not considering weirdness pathological, not assigning moral values to being weird or not weird.

Moving "who is weird" around doesn't do anything. If you keep me locked up in your basement and torture me and, by some luck, I overpower you and in turn lock you up and torture you, there isn't really any less locking-up-and-torturing, it's just that somebody else is receiving it.

> Not having laws against being weird

Well, being gay is legally much more accepted now. Does that count as progress? Or does it not count, because most people don't consider being gay "weird" anymore, as it's become more acceptable?

That's what I'm saying: whether you still call being gay "weird" and we've become more accepting, or it's just more accepted because it's no longer considered weird, that's still the same progress.

It does for gay people, absolutely. Much like it would be progress for me to be released from your cellar. But if we just replace me with you or somebody else, there's still somebody going to be locked in the cellar.

At the margins (the actual margins, not the "I'm marginalized mimimi") of society where the weird people are. And I don't think those margins are getting smaller, or the people inhabiting them are treated better. It's just different people that are the outsiders now, and being gay doesn't necessarily put you there (depends on your location, though).

Hmm, I'm not so sure, though honestly I have zero clue how one would objectively check for tolerance of weirdness in general.

RMS was the only one punished for the Jeffrey Epstein scandal at MIT. He never even went on any of those trips! He was just weird, and a mob formed to shame him for it.

All the people with good social skills, who went to the Epstein island? Totally fine, no consequences.

The people with good social skills got (and are still getting) plenty of outrage directed at them - the problem is they also had people defending them on the basis of having good social skills. It's ridiculous that many, many people believe that someone being nice to them means they cannot be awful to others.

None of them got fired, though.

Revealed preference is a mother.

That's revealed preference of their employers.

What this shows us is not that being weird gets you fired, but that being outwardly "normal" and "nice" saves you from being fired when you go to private rape islands. Try fixing that one.

Also revealed preference of the angry mob!

I saw zero medium posts saying "hey, forget about RMS's posts, let's go get mad at the people who actually did this stuff". I'm sure they existed, but in general the mob wanted a 'creepy' scapegoat and they got one.

Why forget about RMS's posts? You know people can be angry about multiple people at once. And many people will be angry at people in their own communities more than others - so if you're following a bunch of tech folk, yes, they're going to focus on the tech folk. And if you follow a bunch of British people with an interest in the royalty, they're going to focus on Prince Andrew and largely ignore RMS - which many did.

> RMS was the only one punished for the Jeffrey Epstein scandal at MIT.

It was way too little too late but Joi Ito, Peter Cohen and Seth Lloyd got punished. The MIT Media Lab's reputation was tarnished forever from this. Saying RMS was the only one is disingenuous.

> banged underage girls?

What a vile way to describe the rape of children.

Edited. But, really, you're proving my point here with who you get outraged at. I didn't go on that island either.

People can be outraged at more than one person at a time.

Or for more than one reason.

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