Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
techrights.org
techrights.org
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535224&p=2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535224&p=3
(Posts like this will go away once we turn off pagination.)
I think this is spot on, because people stopped caring about someone's intention before judging them. Maybe people got so good at lying about their intention, that we don't believe them when they say "it wasn't my intention" when someone says something bad. The end result is the same, it doesn't matter what your intention was, you say something bad, you deserve bad back.
All the well meaning in the world doesn't mean shit if you're creating hostility or demeaning others (that is not commentary on RMS, just in general)
"I don't care about 'intent' as much as 'outcome'"
Clearly intent and context matters a lot.
When a cause is systemic it maybe with some natural variance and within what realistically deem acceptable, depending on where we set the bounds. While others maybe special cases and require detailed study to understand.
Blindly setting outcome goals without understanding the system is folly.
"But that's not an argument for doing nothing in response to someone who habitually offends people by accident."
If I say that your posts are constantly offending me, what do you propose we do about that?
There isn't a universally applicable rule here.
This is also where the driving analogy breaks down. It's an easy trade-off to revoke someone's license if it means we can prevent death. But taking action to prevent subjective offense enters into a much more tenuous and debatable cost-benefit trade-off. What makes sense would come down to the details of the case.
In the case of subjective offense, it should be and usually is different.
If you're called a racial slur by someone who just started learning English and genuinely doesn't know the true meaning of the word, you should take less offense to it than if you were called the slur by someone with obvious malicious intent.
Intent and context matters both in terms of how the "accused" should be viewed as well as how the "victim" should feel.
The parent comment was short, said "as much as", and yet people downvote it, misinterpret it.
On the other hand, if a driver consistently has accidents and people end up dead, it could be that they are a bad driver and shouldn't be in a position to, you know, drive.
The "woke" don't actually have good intentions. There are several motivations, but good intent just seems to be an excuse for the hostility you mention.
Maybe you should limit that to "The 'woke' people I know."
Even used to be called the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Awakes
It’s not the case that all people need to be aware of and sensitive to every possible person’s misinterpretation of their message. The inverse is closer to true, and the only viable option.
How do you expect someone to know what they don’t know?
But he didn't, he was falsely accused.
So maybe the people that accused him deserve something bad back too.
You do rightly point out the reason intent does tend to matter in reality: it's that the response to RMS' actions are punitive ("you deserve bad back"). And ideally people shouldn't be punished for unintended mistakes; they should instead be helped (sorry if that comes across condescending to the offender, but it's true).
Focusing on intent instead of outcomes is still regressive or reductive in either case though.
---
Aside: this is somewhat off-topic and probably a debate for a separate comment/thread here, but I do want to note I use the term "harm" above very intentionally; I don't believe "offensive" is the correct term here at all. Being offended is not harmful. I think a lot of aspects of PC/cancel-culture focus on protecting those who are "offended", which is nonsense. If you're not offending people in this world, you're not living. But doing actual harm goes beyond that, and should be addressed. And I do believe RMS' actions were harmful.
A few final statements did bring him down, but he had been chipping at the foundation for years.
I also don't really know all that much about Richard Stallman I just don't like the idea that if you accept someone for themselves all the difficulties of social cohesion magically disappear because it's untrue.
'boys will be boys' doesn't assert that 'boys' get away with whatever they want because they are neuro-divergent, it asserts that gender allows for additional privilege.
>Just because somebody is different doesn't mean they can be a creep
For the sake of argument : what if that person has neurological quirks which disallow 'non-creep' , to use your parlance, behavior?
To take the example even further , it's illegal with fine attached to say curse words on certain beaches in the United States. Is it reasonable to fine an individual with Tourette Syndrome when they scream expletives on such a beach?
If swearing at the beach is unacceptable, full stop, then it's unacceptable for a person with or without TS. (Personally, that sounds like a dumb law, but what do I know)
But I do agree with the idea that letting someone off the hook for all consequences on account of a mental illness isn't viable. That makes things a lot harder for neurodivergent individuals, but that's why we should have extensive support programs and provide resources to help them cope with the expectations of general society.
It's a tricky problem, because to meaningfully distinguish between someone who is mentally incapable of following a law and someone who is capable of doing so but systematically elects not to, you are functionally deciding which humans do and do not have free will on an individual basis. I think most people would believe that either all humans have free will, or no humans have free will, not somewhere in between, so this is a scenario that is uncomfortable to pretty much everyone.
A TS individual for instance may be annoying, however they aren't causing actual physical harm to other people, in the same sense that a murderer might be.
A lot of the internal-to-the-free-software-community frustration with RMS was how he had basically stopped contributing code to GNU but still felt entitled to overrule maintainers. He is a talented coder! He could have continued to use his skills to write free software and delegated the work of being the face of the movement to others. He could have listened when people suggested to him that he'd be of greater service to the movement that way. He didn't do any of that.
Not everyone is ideally suited for every role. That's part of being understanding of neurodivergence.
In my experience, the same sort of people who crusade against the Richard Stallmans of the world are the creepiest and by far most unpleasant to work with, yet they themselves are constantly being celebrated, uplifted, and raised into positions of real power and real harm.
Unfortunately, when someone is in a position of power, often the only recourse is the sword of Damocles. This is especially difficult for people who become relevant by leading a movement rather than rising through the ranks. But that means that there is a natural tension between social mobility and a culture of accountability, which is likely the source of a lot of dissatisfaction in society.
Do I now suddenly get to punish you? Do I get to go to your boss and try to get him to fire you?
See the problem?
If you personally are in a position to punish someone who you believe is a jerk, then yeah, you'll probably punish them, because that's just how social interaction works.
No, to assume that forgiveness or empathy to one autistic individual denigrates an entire spectrum of autistic individuals is the same as assuming that from the actions of one we can confer some sort of collective responsibility. This assumption is the root of all prejudice.
If you believe that some autistic people can be decent, though, it's no longer an excuse for Stallman that he's autistic. I'm on the spectrum myself, it's not a free pass for being offensive.
This is not clear to me. Many people are assholes but that’s by choice, not because they’re incapable of not being assholes.
autistic people are not uniquely malevolent, and it is not offensive to suggest autistic people are not uniquely malevolent.
the premise at the root of the thread was that autistic people can't tell bad ideas from good ideas, and should thus go forever uncriticized. both in that it's wrong, and in that it casts autistic people as corruptible and dangerous, when we know very well most "normal" allistic people are perfectly capable of great evils.
advocating that it should be acceptable for autistic people to cause harm is not helpful. it promotes the stereotype that autistic people are harmful, resulting in further social rejection and discrimination, and allows abusive people to hide behind the label.
It should be acceptable to empathize and forgive. People who exhibit “atypical” personality traits need this the most of all. Judging all people through the lens of a neurotypical morality construct is inherently harmful.
They can tell that. Sometimes maybe even better than others.
What they can't do well is navigate across social clues that others pick up instinctively. That aren't explicitly spoken.
It's not about considering them harmful or not, it's not whether they should be forgiven or not. It's about understanding. An autistic person behaves in a way that you interpret as "being an asshole" not because they can't tell whether they're being an asshole - it's because they think in a different way and their reasoning makes perfect sense for them and doesn't make them seem like an asshole. You lack that reasoning, so you misinterpret their intentions.
The point is to understand why someone may act in the way they do, instead of assuming that they would act in the same way you would.
For instance, something that you would say just out of politeness can be interpreted by an autistic person very literally. When you ask "would you like to make me a tea?", expect "no" to be a totally polite and honest answer. That's literally what you asked about.
Aren't you basically doing the same thing as the parent is accused of doing, though? Painting all autistic people with the same brush?
Just like non-autistic people, autistic people can also be assholes. Some recognize that they can't pick up on social cues, but just don't care. Many do! But some don't. RMS may be one of the uncaring kind, and it seems a lot of what people have said about him may support that. And do we really want someone like that running advocacy for Free Software?
I figured that it goes without saying, since that case doesn't need additional explanations ;]
In consequence, if RMS is truly on the autism spectrum (I have no idea whether he is), never setting clear boundaries for him may have left him genuinely confused as to what constitutes appropriate behavior, and ultimately did neither him nor his cause any favors.
Was that a fault of his, or a fault of his neuroatypical brain? I don't know enough about him or his situation to know. But does it matter? I do think that intent and context matters, but often the bad outcome is the same regardless of intent. The consequences should be different between intentional and unintentional harm, but there still should be consequences either way.
With the right diagnostic criteria just about everybody who is an asshole could be diagnosed with some mental disorder or another and that is more or less the present state of psychology, that kind of reasoning is asking for a consequence free society.
The kind of person RMS has shown himself to be, regardless of diagnosis, disqualifies him from being a public figure and leader.
Sure it was a very risky and emotionally charged email thread but RMS still very much seems like a decent person.
No, it went much further than that:
https://www.wired.com/story/richard-stallman-and-the-fall-of...
He said that, hypothetically, if someone had sex with a victim of sex trafficking unkowingly - that is, the sex part was knowingly, but the victim of sex trafficking part was unknown, then it would not be fair to charge the man with rape.
If I kidnap a woman, sell her has a sex slave, and threaten her and her family that if she doesn’t walk up to you in a bar and act interested, and you mistake her for a willing participant, this obviously does not make you a rapist.
I don’t know if this is a willful distortion of what he said or what would motivate such a smear campaign, or if every is just shockingly bad at reading comprehension. But what he said was correct, and we all know it.
"I am skeptical 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."
Honestly, I'm amazed at how many bad ideas people can come into just because they don't understand that other people may think with different processes than they do. I'm honestly not sure whether it's intellectual laziness or pure malice (or both).
You know what's wrong with it and you described what's wrong with it over the next several sentences. Somebody who doesn't understand that is not fit to be a leader. If you don't understand those power imbalances, you are bound to do harm.
That's not a bad point. But then it turns out that it's not really connected to the statements about Minsky, is it?
> Somebody who doesn't understand that is not fit to be a leader.
This is stretching it way too far, since this assumes that understanding of power in hypothetical scenario that doesn't connect to yourself somehow translates to ones ability to assess their own power. This may be true for some, but doesn't have to be. I won't be convinced that someone is unfit to be a leader because they didn't recognize the issues of power in a hypothetical scenario they have never been in. Heck, I myself constantly learn and start to see them in cases I never considered before. Different perspective changes everything, and there are perspectives I simply never witnessed until someone told me about them!
The statements about Minsky are harmful. What reason is there to be coming to somebody’s defense when they are credibly accused of something like that? Frankly I don’t want friends who would react like Stallman did if I were to be accused as seriously as Minsky has been.
People who are going to do harm because they don’t understand power imbalances should not be leaders. Yes, we’re all bad at something, but if that’s the thing you’re bad at, it’s probably not the place for you in our society. On this I will be firm. It is incumbent on leaders to understand power and take the potential for abuse in situations of power differential seriously. They must be scrupulous. These comments would not be made by someone who is scrupulous about power imbalances.
Accused of what exactly? See, the whole point of Stallman's statements was to clarify what exactly Minsky was being accused of, no more no less. He didn't even doubt those accusations in any way. It's plainly written there in his e-mail. You're being dishonest.
Accused of having sex with one of Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking victims.
>See, the whole point of Stallman's statements was to clarify what exactly Minsky was being accused of, no more no less.
It's quite plain what Stallman was responding to. Stallman himself even says he sees no reason to disbelieve it. Unfortunately, "I didn't know she was a 17-year-old sex trafficking victim when I raped her" is not much of a defense, to me, ethically. Stallman imagines a situation in which Minsky was duped into having sex with this person without knowing her situation or her age. Why does Minsky get the benefit of the doubt here? This is not a court of law, and he was not a stupid man, to say the least. He even organized an academic symposium on Little St. James with Epstein in 2011, after he was already registered as a sex offender.
So what? It's not a defense, obviously, but it's enough to ask not to use the word "assault" when talking about those accusations because it's clearly misleading. It makes you imagine different things when you hear it than what is actually being talked about. You don't even have to give Minsky any benefit of doubt to ask for that.
Whether that changes the moral or ethical outcome is completely irrelevant (and of course, I don't think it does).
We're talking about a person who refuses to use singular they because... it's grammatically ambiguous so he comes up with and consistently uses perse/per/pers instead[0]. Like, c'mon, showing up in that thread to argue about used words is the most on-brand thing he could do.
Is it though? If the victim was coerced, and he’s complicit in causing a great deal of harm, why wouldn’t we call it assault? Not all sexual assault involves battery, and pretending that it does is silly.
>Like, c'mon, showing up in that thread to argue about used words is the most on-brand thing he could do.
I don’t think I ever argued this was atypical behavior for him. The fact that it’s expected is the part I find unacceptable.
> The fact that it’s expected is the part I find unacceptable.
Thanks for explicitly spelling this out then. This is a pretty standard way of thinking for many neurodivergents. You're just saying "people of your kind cannot be public figures, and if they are they have to be taken down".
That’s not how sexual assault is defined though. Quoting Wikipedia: “Sexual assault is an act in which a person intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will.” Avoiding this, like Stallman did, is a way of playing with semantics to reduce the seriousness of an accusation. He may be doing this because he’s autistic and rigid. I’ve done similar in the past because I’m similarly rigid, but it absolutely comes from a place of defensiveness too.
>This is a pretty standard way of thinking for many neurodivergents. You're just saying "people of your kind cannot be public figures, and if they are they have to be taken down".
I’m autistic, dude. This shit makes no sense to me. Saying it’s a “standard way of thinking” is doing us a disservice. Public figures cannot express opinions like this about rape! Autistic men who don’t seem to understand consent like this, or think they have figured out an inconsistency in society’s rules around sex, freak me the hell out. I expect other autistic people to have a hard time complying with social rules, but the fact that the rules are difficult for us is not an excuse for not following them, particularly if you want to lead a diverse group of people.
Stallman is certainly not the best the autistic community has to offer, and I really wish you would stop implying he is.
Well, yes, since the point was to speak against what he called "accusation inflation" - which, I believe, wasn't even directed as much to Minksy's case as into general usage of that term in English:
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 word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing...
And guess what? I don't actually agree with his opinion about the term "sexual assault". I mean, I see his reasoning and I agree with it on its own, but to me that ship has sailed - it's not enough for me to challenge the already existing usage of that term; especially when it does actually make some sense to "inflate" its meaning, because the harm done by non-consensual sexual acts often greatly exceeds the physical attack aspect itself (which may not even be there). So I can accept that term even though I find it somewhat inaccurate, technically. Kinda metaphorical. It clearly is enough for Stallman though, as evidenced by many other language crusades he's been on for his whole life.
That said, the fact that it was "assault" and not "sexual assault" that was used there in the announcement seems to just prove the Stallman's point.
> Stallman is certainly not the best the autistic community has to offer, and I really wish you would stop implying he is.
Where was I implying that? That's very far from what I'd ever be comfortable with suggesting. Stallman doesn't even properly recognize his shortcomings and could really put much greater effort into dealing with them which would help him and his causes (and in turn, my causes, since I share his concerns about software freedom). This particular case is, however, not an example of that.
> Public figures cannot express opinions like this about rape!
Which opinions? What does "like this" mean? I honestly don't follow! My own views on this matter are exactly what some would describe as very "leftist" or "woke", and I do share your concern about men who don't understand consent. People in privileged position (which men that don't have to wear in a specific way every day out of the fear of being assaulted certainly are in) have greater responsibility when it comes to understanding such issues. That said, you don't need to belittle consent to point out that "assault" in "sexual assault" doesn't mean literal "assault" anymore, especially in context of situation where there was no evidence that the act even took place at all in the first place (which might have changed since, I don't know - I really couldn't care less about Minsky himself). Mind you - Stallman didn't even mention that. If his intention was to defend Minsky, he was a very poor defender.
Also,
> Autistic men who don’t seem to understand consent like this, or think they have figured out an inconsistency in society’s rules around sex, freak me the hell out.
That's a real issue, and it leads such people to plenty of suffering and depression. They should be educated, not ostracized. If we don't do it, they may turn somewhere else where they'll get worse - there are some circles that claim to offer them "help" and "answers" already, but those don't make the society a better place.
The context is significant here though, because he has a history of belittling women and being insensitive to concerns about consent. These specific characteristics are red flags. It doesn't really matter whether the person bringing them up thinks they have wholly rational reasons to, or that they're just pointing out something interesting about language.
>Which opinions? What does "like this" mean? I honestly don't follow!
He said that Minsky probably would not have known that he was having sex with a minor who was also being coerced, and thus to him the victim would probably have appeared "entirely willing," as if that would make the act ok, or make it not constitute "sexual assault." He also said that he thought defining age of consent based on the law was ridiculous, which would be a colorable philosophical argument if we had any better way for defining and preventing child sexual abuse in our societies.
>If his intention was to defend Minsky, he was a very poor defender.
I'm sure he was, since he ended up essentially getting fired for what he said. I'm not here to litigate whether his specific example is sound, as you acknowledge that it's not. But the fact that he had to turn an accusation aimed at another MIT colleague with connections to Epstein into an opportunity to further a personal vendetta over the precise use of language used to describe rape — charitably you could say it was said in immensely poor taste. At worst, it does amount to attempting to defend or minimize the accusation.
>That's a real issue, and it leads such people to plenty of suffering and depression. They should be educated, not ostracized. If we don't do it, they may turn somewhere else where they'll get worse - there are some circles that claim to offer them "help" and "answers" already, but those don't make the society a better place.
It's sure led me to a lot of suffering, and depression, and severe anxiety. I don't feel safe around many men I meet in tech-centric spaces. All my friends have horror stories about abuse and harassment in our field.
And I'm sure the abusive men are depressed too. That's, of course, sadly common with autism. But they do need to get educated, and stop using their disability as an excuse for being insensitive. I'm not required to spend time around people who make me feel unsafe, regardless of gender, just so that they don't feel ostracized.
It doesn't appear to me as "making the act ok", I'm not sure where that comes from at all. He didn't even hint that it wasn't a case of "sexual assault". All he said is that it wasn't "assault" (which was the exact term being used in the announcement), and that he dislikes the way the other term - "sexual assault" - leads to people misusing the term "assault" in the first place; and explained why.
Was that a proper way, time and place to do that? Nope! Was it in poor taste and prone to misinterpretation? Absolutely! Does speaking in poor taste (or even questioning the institution of age of consent) make you child abuse apologist? Heck no.
Regarding the context of belittling women and consent insensitivity - I don't have enough information about Stallman to accurately assess that. I've seen some stories that appear credible, but I've also seen some that are so blatantly misinterpreted that reading them makes me feel sick. Therefore I remain cautious, both ways.
I could accuse you right now of touching 5 year olds in the park, and by your own claim, you would want all of your friends to abandon you.
Your whole rationale about power imbalances doesn’t even make sense in this context. He is writing unix tools, not running a daycare.
There goes half of Congress, half of Hollywood, many historic figures, and a fair share of executives. How can someone be “disqualified” from being a “public figure” anyway!???!
I mean, yeah.
Once these are the standards, literally everyone is guilty, and who gets thrown under the bus is a matter of attention rather than guilt.
A lot of people can't do their jobs if they can't be leaders, depending on how you define it. I think that jobs that don't involve interacting with other people are being automated faster on average than jobs that do. So I think it's better not to be quick to disqualify someone from it.
Well, to be honest the 'imaleader' bar is pretty low at this moment. New leaders should try to distance themselves from most previous leader's behavior. Expectations about public figures are really far from reality.
You can embrace acceptance that people are different and realize that differences make some people better and worse for certain things.
I find it astonishing that blatant abelism like yours is acceptable in polite society.
>You can embrace acceptance that genders are different and realize that differences make some genders better and worse for certain things.
>You can embrace acceptance that races are different and realize that differences make some races better and worse for certain things.
Indeed, sometimes the person with the disability can be better at the job because of what they have learned in an effort to overcome - this is why you don't just slap a label on a person and declare them unfit because they match a description.
Being tolerant, respecting differences, however you want to put it does not mean being blind to outcomes.
People sometimes don't get this.
I believe it is a reasonable assumption that someone would have a hard time composing music if he/she were born deaf.
> [...] acceptance that genders are different [...]
Males are going to have a hard time being wet nurses.
> [...] races are different [...]
The San and Inuit people have some very useful adaptations for their respective extreme environments.
It's kind of challenging to take sweeping offense to a statement phrased using an existential quantifier.
Fortunately, there's this review of the facts[0].
But I stopped reading your link once the author did exactly what he railed on everyone else for doing: misquoting and taking quotes out of context to support their view.
The author tries to defend RMS's views on pedophilia by pointing out that the Dutch article that RMS links to only talks about reducing the age of consent from 16 to 12, and that wouldn't constitute pedophilia. (A conclusion I'm not sure I agree with, but let's pretend I do.) But, nope, shoulda kept on quoting, because two sentences later there's: "The party said it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether." Nope, not ok.
Your linked article also repeatedly says things like, "All those questionable quotes seem very reasonable when put in context." Well, I disagree. After reading the full quotes, I still find most of them unreasonable.
A decent person is a flawed, inherently subjective target. Obviously, from the fact that you're disagreeing with GP's sentiment demonstrates the two of you have different criteria for that.
>...The kind of person RMS has shown himself to be, regardless of diagnosis, disqualifies him from being a public figure and leader.
That's kind of funny. RMS has stayed honest to his principles; remained a consistent advocate for the fundamental freedoms of software and computer users; he's taken being made the butt of fantastically, even when i the midst of a highly controversial media circus, advocated for calm, encouraged waiting for the facts to roll in, and stayed true to the tenant of U.S. jurisprudence that someone is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That's pretty decent in my book.
He has odd proclivities. He clashes. He's weird, he doesn't exactly have a mental pole vault down, but he has the courage to challenge what no one else will, and the presence of mind when confronted with new information to change his views, and preserve his earlier errors for posterity. That's also decency.
Frankly, your post strikes me as able-ist. You quite literally made a low-key assertion that the neurodivergent, by virtue of their divergence, don't deserve or should be disqualified from leadership.
As a functioning neurodivergent in a leadership position myself, I find that patently offensive.
Do you understand just how challenging it can be to just different enough where you see a problem that needs to be stood against when no-one else does? How hard it can be to comprehend and keep up a facade that doesn't come to you naturally? To be successful by everyone else's measure, when objectively speaking you're not just excelling in your field or endeavor, but also doing it without everything everyone else takes for granted, difficulty even recognizing encouragement, no guarantee that any normal gesture of endearment or inclusion amongst normal people will find it's mark, or the pain that comes from having to be 100% up front with people, that you may end up saying something they'll take poorly, and knowing you may not even get a good or fair chance to make amends? That when things do hit the fan, you have to work 140% harder to navigate a world completely unnatural and unituitive to you?
I get your message. I reject your assertion, however, that you can measure someone with a disability without taking it into account. I've lived that life. I constantly have to just let things go because "ya just won't get it til you live it." I've fought hard to thrive in a normal world, and with an internal locus of control accepted that more often than not, I'll end up having to be the one to take the high road to maintain the peace. I've had to survive the nights of loved ones being hurt because I just didn't have the energy to take that high road. I've made sacrifices in my personal life to be deemed "appropriate" in everyone else's eyes, and suffered the existential price and inauthenticity, and self-loathing that comes people's poor response to me at my most vulnerable.
Which is why your post strikes such a chord.
I shouldn't have to. Neither should he.
RMS asks. He'll actually ask people whether he can stay, Whether they are comfortable, and when those people say yes, and get exposed to the realities of a neurodivergent unmasked, suddenly change their tune. You can argue he doesn't ask often enough, or that he makes folks uncomfortable by the level of directness required, but that he stays authentic tohimself makes him more worthy of being a leader than even I. He's at least up front about it, and doesn't hide the crazy to the point of being destructive like some tend to. He also doesn't judge others for simply being difficult to understand.
So congratulations. Ya got a rise out of me.
As someone who actually has schizophrenia and struggles with it in the workplace and in society: it honestly makes me sick to see people defend Stallman’s reprehensible behavior with some bullshit about “neurodiversity.”
You are throwing an entire population of people under the bus because you’re too immature to accept that RMS is a bad person. It’s pathetic.
You want him to get onstage with his therapist or something?
Look, I'm not exactly Stallman's biggest fan, but everything I read about his firing made it seem like the FSF had a knee-jerk reaction to bad publicity instead of hearing his side of the story and conducting a fair investigation. His reinstatement to the board seems to support the idea that the people there really did want him there but were scared of the mob.
I also never suggested that if he did have autism that somehow I would be any more sympathetic. What I am frustrated with is ignorant commenters on Hacker News deciding it’s psychologically easier for them to invent lies and insult people with autism than it is to have an honest reckoning with a hero’s ugly legacy.
[1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2551458/asperger-s-oxy...
> "During a 2000 profile for the Toronto Star, Stallman described himself to an interviewer as 'borderline autistic,' a description that goes a long way toward explaining a lifelong tendency toward social and emotional isolation and the equally lifelong effort to overcome it," Williams wrote.
> When I cited that excerpt from the book during the interview, Stallman said that assessment was "exaggerated."
> "I wonder about it, but that's as far as it goes," he said. "Now, it's clear I do not have [Asperger's] -- I don't have most of the characteristics of that. For instance, one of those characteristics is having trouble with rhythm. I love the most complicated, fascinating rhythms." But Stallman did acknowledge that he has "a few of the characteristics" and that he "might have what some people call a 'shadow' version of it."
Somehow I can't shake the feeling that his example supporting his confident self-diagnosis paradoxically undercuts it instead.
One can have no "trouble with rhythm" and yet meet the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for ASD; one can have immense "trouble with rhythm" and yet not meet those criteria – that's because "trouble with rhythm" is not part of the diagnostic criteria, indeed if you read the DSM-5 section on ASD it never even discusses that topic, "trouble with rhythm" simply isn't part of the DSM-5 definition of ASD. At best, it might be seen as an "associated non-diagnostic symptom", something which may occur in some people with ASD (possibly even at a higher rate than in people without ASD); but it is simply a mistake to reason "person X doesn't have symptom Y hence X cannot have ASD" when Y is not a diagnostic symptom.
I don't know whether Stallman has ASD or not, but his conclusion that he doesn't seems to be based on incorrect information. Given that, I don't think we should put much weight on it.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/03/06/a-quick-battle-field-g...
Specifically battlefront #8. He calls it consequential because the the neurodivergent/PC conflict highlights an inherent paradox in the PC worldview. Most applications of political correctness focus (at least on the surface) on defending a marginalized group against the verbal attacks of a privileged one. When applied to autistic or neurodivergent individuals, however, PC norms work to disadvantage an already disadvantaged minority against groups that are both larger and often more economically and culturally free.
Neurodivergent/autistic people are usually unaware that what they say could cause offense: they lack either the emotional capacity to feel those emotions themselves, or the ability to empathize and predict that other people will feel them.
Assholes know, they just care about other things more. They might throw their coworker under the bus for a promotion. Or they'll sexually harass women because 1 out of 10 times, it gets them laid. Or they care more about being right than being diplomatic. Or they stop paying rent because there's an eviction moratorium, even though they could, because it saves them money and their landlord has no way to enforce agreements anyway. Or they sell drugs to children because they want money. Or they cut people down because it makes them feel big in the moment.
"/!\ I do not mean to liken sexual harassment to rent default /!\".
Both examples - really all of the examples other than "selling drugs to children", which is from Breaking Bad - are taken from real-world conversations with people that basically said "What a jerk!" The person complaining about their non-paying tenant basically accepts sexual harassment as how the world works. The person (people really, it's a composite of a half-dozen or so conversations) complaining about the sexual harassers would likely find nothing wrong with a tenant skipping out on rent. Both are women, though a generation apart.
Versus most of the time, people who we don't know well do things for reasons that are inscrutable to us.
And we're left to judge solely on that basis of that information.
If you're not invested in someone enough to understand them, why should you be invested in them enough to try to destroy them?
Truly for my own self-benefit, I often need to make decisions (e.g. with work colleagues, customers, strangers) on whether someone is (a) malicious or (b) misunderstood.
And that's a pretty important distinction.
Some jerk named Twitter is my understanding.
> Truly for my own self-benefit, I often need to make decisions (e.g. with work colleagues, customers, strangers) on whether someone is (a) malicious or (b) misunderstood.
I think you have to give people the benefit of the doubt. This sorts itself out with any kind of long-term relationship because then you get to know them well enough to tell whether or not they're an ass.
But the first time you meet someone, it's prisoner's dilemma. Everybody defaulting to defect because you're afraid the other guy might be doing the same thing is not going to end well.
See also superrationality etc.:
This doesn't seem like particularly assholeish behaviour.
Caring more about being perceived as right (even when erroneously), sure, but if the person is actually right of course they should care more about that than diplomacy. Surely we have enough examples demonstrating the pitfalls of fostering a culture where the truth can be ignored if you don't like it.
It's also possible to be both correct and diplomatic, and to criticize diplomatically. Failure to do so (often from a perspective that being right means one need not worry about diplomacy) is assholery.
Note that this is also somewhat self fulfilling. If you do end up being wrong, you can not admit that, as it would make your behavior inexcusable, so even when incorrect, you feel the need to fight and bully the people correcting you, in hopes that they go away.
Oh absolutely, but those are both totally compatible with someone who "care[s] more about being right than being diplomatic". It's if they didn't care about being diplomatic at all that they'd be an asshole.
I perceived that specific quote as referring explicitly to situations where the two are mutually exclusive, in which case I believe that being right is by far the better option in most scenarios.
I'm particularly partial to being right on the Internet rather than diplomatic, so I'll cop to being an asshole. But I wanted to make the point that different people have vastly different definitions of "asshole". Some people will recognize themselves in the examples; others will recognize the person they can't stand. Sometimes those people are one and the same.
I've been trying to come up with examples where that might happen and the best one I can think of is someone's young child asked you if Santa was real, but even then I'm about 50/50 on whether anyone in my social circles would care. I know at least a few who'd be pretty disgusted if I didn't tell the truth in that situation.
Now I recognise that this almost certainly is not representative of the general populace, but this is also one specific example (and the most egregious one I could come up with), whereas there's entire history courses written on the catastrophes that occur when people choose diplomacy over the right thing.
Playing into the Santa Claus lie with your friend's kid is absolutely inconsequential to you, but it could mean a lot to that kid (and to the parents) to keep that lie alive a bit longer. (And if telling the truth to that kid, against what the parents would wish, is that important to you, I'd suggest you re-examine your priorities.)
Context matters! Sometimes being right is essential to making some important thing work out. But hey, sometimes being diplomatic (and allowing the other person to be wrong) also can be essential to make some important thing work out. The big thing is knowing the difference and acting appropriately, which is sometimes hard to do in the moment.
But if we're talking about a kid believing in Santa Claus, and the parents actually do care that you keep up the fantasy, you actually are an asshole if you tell the truth, no question. If the parents really don't care, sure, go nuts... though if they didn't care, I'd expect the kid to already know the truth anyway.
Why is the desire of the parents more important than the desire of the child? Remember that we're talking about a scenario where the child is explicitly asking. They want you to tell the truth, their parents want you to perpetuate a lie. It's an easy choice for me to make.
You may not see the useful function of the Santa Claus fantasy[0], but it is not your (or my) place to decide that for a child or their parents.
Let's try with something a bit less trivial, something that my young nephew had to deal with not too long ago: death. One day kid realizes that grandpa hasn't visited in a long while, and ask parent what's up. Parents don't think kid is emotionally ready to have the death talk. So they spin a story about grandpa having to move away, and how grandpa loves his grandkid very much, but won't be able to visit anymore. And let's say you're over visiting your friend, and their kid walks up to you and says "my grandpa had to move far away and I miss him... do you know why he can't visit me?" You know that your friend's father died recently. If your answer isn't "well, what did your parents say?" followed by affirming whatever the answer is, you've probably done a bit of harm to that child's emotional well being, and likely have introduced some trust issues between the child and parents. What right do you have to do that? I would not be surprised if your friend stops inviting you over after that.
Don't get me wrong; I think many decisions parents make for their kids probably aren't the best ones. There's no authoritative parenting handbook, and most parents do the best they can. But it is not anyone else's place to "correct" someone's parenting decisions, outside of active harm and neglect. (And no, telling a lie about Santa Claus or death does not clear that bar.)
[0] Personally I'm not a big fan of it myself; while Santa Claus can be a useful tool to help a child's imagination develop, I really dislike how tied Christmas has become to consumer culture and materialism.
I couldn't help but laugh at this.
If you want to avoid trust issues, maybe don't lie to people. Seems like an easier solution than lying to them and calling other people assholes if they don't perpetuate your lies.
> What right do you have to do that?
There is a conversation occurring between two people. One of them asks a question. Both parties in this conversation want the question to be answered truthfully.
You are saying that I don't have the right to do so because someone who is not involved in said conversation wants me to lie instead. This is insane.
I find that very hard to believe. To be correct you not only need to be able to say carefully thought-out, nuanced things; you also need to be able to speculate wildly, to take half-baked ideas where they might lead. But the half-baked version of some important truths probably sounds exactly like the most offensively ignorant notions you could think of.
And good people are the ones who won't punish you for that. I'd agree an entire social group being this open minded seems unlikely in 2021, but GP may just have really effective filter bubble.
It's most clearly visible in griefers in online games, because the social consequences of griefing are minimal. Some people are just plain nasty.
But I don't think that's what's happening here. And I think it's ridiculous that it's been interpreted this way.
on edit: explanatory, not recommending
This is precisely what people with autism tend to be like because of the difficulty people with autism have empathizing with others and seeing things from other people's points of view.
The idea that autistic people are assholes is an artifact of every other gamer on the internet self diagnosing themselves with aspergers in the 00s and then using that as an excuse to be un-introspectively cruel to each other.
>>thoughtless / mean / an ass
>This is precisely what people with autism tend to be
What about all the other people who were excluded from the movement because RMS was an ass? A common human fallacy is to overindex on the contributions of assholes, while ignoring the potential contributions of those who were excluded by their actions.
My subjective evaluation, having met RMS in person and looked at the consistent patterns in his behavior, is that he is "below replacement value" -- he has overall caused far more harm than the average person in his position would have.
In this case, though we actually could, if we wanted to, find some data. We could go around and ask a bunch of people if they wanted to get involved with the FSF but didn't, and see how many of those people were turned off by RMS. Another option could be to look at the demographics of people getting involved in the FSF before and after RMS had been outsted, and compare.
None of that is perfect, and especially the second option would only give you a correlation, not necessarily causation. But, again, our data will always be incomplete, and you just have to go with what your experience tells you will or won't happen.
If I appear scrupulously kind to you, it is because I am compensating. If I appear emotionally intelligent to you, it is because I had to learn what is literally instinct to most people. At least for me, I am able to compensate effectively and pass in most social situations, but it is exhausting.
When I read RMS's writing that lead to the conflict in question, it struck me as an entirely reasonable piece. When I read the responses to it, the message I got, loud and clear, was "my thought patterns are not welcome here"
that you choose to be kind does not make you less kind. that your emotional intelligence was learned rather than instinctual does not make it less real. that you willingly exhaust yourself exercising those skills is absolutely the opposite of being an asshole.
> that your emotional intelligence was learned rather than instinctual does not make it less real.
That is a rather technical statement, that would be dependent on exactly what you mean by "emotional intelligence". Relying on general intelligence to do tasks that most people accomplish with more specialized brain power is certainly different, regardless of if you want to classify it as emotional intelligence or not.
Sometimes I resent the patchy compensation mechanisms I’ve built up. It’s almost impossible to explain the frustration, the exhaustion, of choosing to be kind in a fashion that differs from my own understanding of kindness.
I am inherently kind, and I don’t have to choose that. I am confident in that statement. What I do have to force is mapping my default expression of kindness to the norms that friends, family, and acquaintances will understand. This is so important, because failing to do so means pushing all those people away. I feel like I can never let my guard down.
Then I remember to stop talking about myself; cue flash of (rational) anxiety; catch myself from a mental break; go and take a 50 minute long shower.
I’m so thankful for the people that give me a chance to reset, learn, and grow from these iterations.
I have a generic model and I develop ones for individual people too, what one key find normal another will find distressing - and none of it makes any sense to me at all.
It's not a special preoperty of spectrum people that they have to learn what neuro-whatsit folks know "instinctively"; we all have to learn these things. Socialisation is learned, not instinctive. You don't have to have a disorder to have poor social skills.
It could be that your poor social skills are the result of inadequate experience or training; it might be that you don't care much (not because you don't care about others, but just because the approval of others doesn't matter much to you, and expending energy on gaining that approval is wasted energy).
Not needing the approval of others isn't a disease; it's a mark of psychological health.
The asshole is thoughtless because they believe others to be less important than themselves. The person with autism is (may be) thoughtless because their brain isn't wired to be thoughtful. Or they actually are thoughtful, but don't know how to express it in a way that others can understand.
For example, take the DSM5 criteria for ASD, one type of neurodivergence. Here's just a single factor:
Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction, ranging, for example, from poorly integrated verbal and nonverbal communication; to abnormalities in eye contact and body language or deficits in understanding and use of gestures; to a total lack of facial expressions and nonverbal communication. (From https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html)
A formal diagnosis of ASD would involve a number of these factors. As you might imagine, if you stack enough things like that on a person, it'll tend to be noticed, even when they're trying to hide it.
In the context of being mean, upon being told that they were being a jerk, a person with ASD might think "ah shit, not again" or maybe "wait what, no I wasn't, it doesn't make sense that they'd be offended by that" or something along those lines. The nuances of the behavior and the motivations behind it will tend to be a little different than in a 'neurotypical' perceived as being a jerk.
"A bit. If your goal is to look thinner I'd try that other thing instead."
Is this a neurotypical person being a butt, or an autistic person trying to be helpful?
Answer: yes.
But I'd say suggestion and (to use the southern term) social grace is one of the most nuanced and culture-heavy forms of communication. In that it assumes a lot of shared culture between you and the other party.
As least down here, with > stranger, < intimate partner, you'd get a "No" in all cases, but the words attached to the no would also differ almost 100% of the time in the "No, but..." case.
And I imagine most of those cues completely disappear cross-culturally.
If they simply disappeared, it would be alright. The problem is when they have the exact opposite meaning.
One example is US-ian unnaturally white teeth, that supposedly look OK there, but are somewhat creepy in the rest of the world. I mean, human teeth are not supposed to be white, but a range of very light ivory tones.
Granted! But also when they have no meaning, or are just... odd (e.g. "That's weird, how do they want me to respond to that reply they just made?")
White teeth are totally creepy here too. If you ask any US dentist, they'll tell you to match eye white (varies from individual to individual) to look natural.
But, then, there's a few "beautiful people" states where norms are so out of whack they don't realize how weird it is.
So I would never answer this question to someone who didn't love me. And even then, they get offended, even though they ask.
Instead, my answer is, "Nope, not gonna answer that." And then they get mad anyhow.
So the comment above about the "trap" is correct. That person started the rudeness, but they won't take the heat for it.
A lot of "non-autistic assholes" may have other diagnosable conditions, for example narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) or antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Are NPD or ASPD "neurodiverse" or "neurodivergent"? They are probably partially genetic, just as ASD is probably partially genetic.
What makes those diagnoses "neurodivergent" and the others not? Why aren't other diagnoses "neurodivergent" too? How exactly do we define "neurodivergent"? (And why is that the right definition to use?)
> They don’t have much overlap with personality disorders (which do have a lot of overlap among that category).
There is a lot of overlap between the disruptive behaviour disorders (DBDs) – oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD) – and ADHD; so much so that ADHD is sometimes considered a DBD along with ODD and CD. And there is a clear connection between CD in children and adolescents and ASPD in adults – indeed, a child or adolescent with CD can follow one of two trajectories, either their conduct problems resolve with maturity and they become law-abiding pro-social adults, or else the child/adolescent diagnosis of CD evolves into the adult diagnosis of ASPD. So there is definitely a connection between ASPD and ADHD. A child with ADHD (even without comorbid CD) has an increased risk of developing ASPD as an adult – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24284138/
Some researchers consider ASPD to be a neurodevelopmental disorder – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29401045/ – which is the same category that ASD and ADHD (and sometimes also OCD) are put in.
There is also a lot of overlap between ADHD and BPD (Borderline personality disorder) – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4739390/
There's also overlap between ASD and BPD – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590952/
Many people (including myself) have difficulty with certain social cues and expectations. Many of us can be offputting or come off as overly direct or disrespectful. Where we diverge is when and how we address that fact. Do we (only) lash out and expect the world to accommodate our conclusions, or do we (ever or readily) reflect on that conflict and try to live in some kind of shared world?
Obviously what I’m describing is a spectrum, not an absolute. But if you’re trying to understand whether someone on the spectrum is a jerk, your answer is “how much do they use their social faculties to navigate sharing a world?”
Which is pretty much the same measure as anyone not on the spectrum.
I've spent a lifetime learning a rulebook by trial and error that everyone else just seems to know.
It's absolutely maddening then the rules suddenly change for no discernible reason, often with little warning and grave consequences with no second chances for screwing it up.
It's why what people call 'cancel culture' scares the snot out of me, I'm deathly afraid I'm gonna say or do the wrong thing, and not really have a way to respond to it, and pay some sort of heavy toll. I'm okay with free speech having consequences (its the only way to ensure we can actually have speech mostly free of government regulation). I just wish those consequences were not applied for things deemed ex post facto (often by decades) to be violations of social norms.
But there is a certain amount of mental exhaustion from having to filter everything I say outside of some very very narrow circles, lest I say something that could be deemed in the future to be 'problematic'.
The larger issue I see, is our current focus on peoples actions in the past is it leaves no room for personal growth or to change views, it if anything hardens people views and perspectives - if someone gets no credit for getting better about something (like use of pronouns, or whatever else), there is no incentive to improve.
It isn't "oh, I don't know how to read a room." Even granting high function, I feel people use autism in the same way as they do OCD; it's not something you use "neurodivergent" with seriously.
Like generally there's a lot of disability chic or identity these days; but moderate autism makes it incredibly hard to act in daily life in the same way moderate OCD does. If it's significant enough, it's not just someone being brisk or unempathetic in the same way OCD doesn't mean being a neat freak.
>it's not something you use "neurodivergent" with seriously.
what do you use neurodivergent with seriously. I would think not being able to read a room is a big problem?
>Like generally there's a lot of disability chic or identity these days; but moderate autism makes it incredibly hard to act in daily life in the same way moderate OCD does.
is it incredibly hard to act in daily life with moderate autism, or is having moderate autism and complaining about its difficulties an example of disability chic or identity? It seems like you want to say it is the latter, but phrasing like 'incredibly hard' make it seem like you couldn't possible mean that.
Having moderate forms of autism is incredibly hard, yes. Severe forms you would need a caregiver and medication for the rest of your life. It isn't just socially awkward behavior or insensitivity, and there's a temptation to medicalize or self-diagnose behavior that way.
Disability chic is medicalizing things that more or less are normal behavior. I feel like with autism people try to make an identity or medicalize some normal traits. I keep using OCD, mostly because I do worry I suffer from it. I am aware of the irony, but i do this more because i suffered from signficant abnormal traits like checking compulsions; hitting a pothole and immediately being afraid i ran someone over, etc. Worrying that you didn't lock a door despite tugging on the doorknob 6 times before you left.I have it light because I don't need drugs to manage it and I'm able to function somewhat in life (though as an adult i worry how much of who I am was because of it)
There really isn't overlap with anything else; like people misuse OCD to mean "neat freak" or forgetful or what have you. Autism though people seem to have some of that; I mean, my customer's son has to be told to not get in people's spaces while many non autistic people may stand too close. It's harder to untangle.
First, I relate to your feelings of minimizing your own experiences, and your impulse to minimize others’. That’s not just how I felt before I was ready to get help, it’s something so ingrained in me that it’s a repetitive conversation with my family and loved ones since I have.
Second and more importantly, if you do have those symptoms I sincerely hope you’ll consider talking to a professional. The worst thing that happens is you’ll waste a couple hours. The next worst thing that can happen is you might make some sense of why your brain is the way it is, and it might lead to some peace. It’s all up from there.
It's hard to live with moderate asperger syndrome, because you typically look and act normal, but are actually positioned in uncanny valley of behaviour. You try to act normally, but your responses are off enough to be mistranslated by others. You are expected to behave normally but you are missing those expectations. People who are visibly disadvantaged have lower expectations on them from the start.
Are you familiar with the concept of broad autism phenotype (BAP)? A person who has more autistic traits than the average person, but not enough traits (or are not sufficiently impaired by those traits) for an ASD diagnosis, has BAP. Someone who thinks they–or someone else–has ASD in the absence of a formal diagnosis–if they are wrong about the person having ASD, they probably are actually picking up on the person's BAP traits.
And how does the experience of BAP and ASD differ? Well, they are just different positions on a continuum–people with BAP have similar experiences to people with ASD, albeit with less intensity and/or less impairment. And the line between them is unclear and subjective, different clinicians draw it in different places–whether you end up with the diagnosis can depend on factors that have nothing to do with you personally, such as the diagnostic practices and clinical culture of the clinicians you end up seeing. (And the line is moving – a lot of people diagnosed with ASD today would not have received that diagnosis if they'd presented with the same symptoms 20 or 30 years ago.)
Stressful environments often exacerbate people's autistic traits and interfere with their own strategies for managing them. A series of stressful life events can lead a person to a situation in which they end up being diagnosed, whereas if their life had taken a more leisurely turn they might never have been diagnosed – even if their innate traits are exactly the same in the two scenarios. One of the key criteria for diagnosing ASD (criterion D) is clinically significant dysfunction, and dysfunction is highly environmentally determined (unsupportive environments result in far more dysfunction than supportive ones given the same underlying condition)
> If it's significant enough, it's not just someone being brisk or unempathetic in the same way OCD doesn't mean being a neat freak.
BAP is subclinical ASD. Subclinical OCD is also a subject of study, although unlike BAP it doesn't have a distinctive name. A lot of "neat freak" people may actually have subclinical OCD. And subclinical OCD and clinical OCD are on a continuum with each other, with a subjective and varying dividing line between them, just as subclinical and clinical ASD are.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26537443
I mean, there is no "neat freak" trait; that's something people who don't have OCD use because they think that's part of what it is. It's more intrusive thoughts about contamination, and there isn't a spectrum of those traits. Like you can't really "train" yourself to not be contaminated, in the way autism people talk about training to deal with social conditions. Trying to argue against it reinforces the behavior. It happens despite you knowing its totally irrational
I think I get BAP if you mean "the condition isn't severe enough to significantly impair your life," but I can see similarities between my checking behavior and people suffering the same but worse; I'm just fortunate enough that it doens't occur frequently. The talk about autism though is a different kind of talk; the moderate or severe sufferers are different.
Like the person I mention never got better or could use coping stuff; he would if anything just end up unable to talk possibly because he was medicated sometimes. I understand I'm not a clinician, but there's a lot of "spectrum" behavior in things now; you have gender spectrums, sexual spectrums (asexual, demisexual, sapiosexual), and I'm not sure the concepts aren't just medicalizing normal variation or individual temperament. I wish i could be doing this for me, if anything.
There is a continuum of intrusive thoughts – the continuum of frequency and intensity of those thoughts, the continuum of how easy it is to move on from them, etc. And a single individual can move back and forward along that continuum over time, in response to life events, development/maturity/ageing, and other factors. We say they have OCD if (a) they have enough frequency/intensity/etc of those intrusive thoughts, (b) the intrusive thoughts are sufficiently impairing in their everyday life, (c) there isn't some other disorder which better explains those intrusive thoughts. We draw a line on the continuum, and say this side is "OCD" (or maybe some other disorder), and the other side isn't, but that line is inevitably a subjective clinical judgement call
> The talk about autism though is a different kind of talk; the moderate or severe sufferers are different.
You mention "moderate" and "severe" – what about "mild ASD"? I guess what used to be called Aspergers syndrome?
> Like the person I mention never got better or could use coping stuff
You can't draw a lot of conclusions from a single person. You can't say that people with milder, less noticeable symptoms don't exist.
People who claim to have "moderate OCD" are just people who like things being tidy, and describe it as OCD because they have no understanding of the real, debilitating condition. Describing yourself as "moderately obsessive" makes no sense, and being able to live with the untidiness means you are not compulsively tidying.
A huge part of the problem with mental health problems is people using the terminology as some sort of 'badge of honor', as if it's something cool and trendy to have rather than an illness that can ruin your life. People really need to stop saying they have OCD unless they've been diagnosed by a professional.
Some people are actually diagnosed with "moderate OCD" though. Some psychiatrists like to use descriptors like "mild" or "moderate" or "severe" when they make a diagnosis. The DSM-5 doesn't include those terms as specifiers, but that doesn't stop some clinicians from using them anyway. (Clinicians vary widely in how strictly they adhere to the DSM-5.)
Also, while the DSM-5 doesn't include the concept of "mild"/"moderate"/"severe" OCD, some rating scales used clinically in diagnosing OCD do include such a distinction. Y-BOCS (Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale) scores are divided into four ranges – subclinical, mild, moderate, severe, extreme. A person with an OCD diagnosis who scores in the moderate range of the Y-BOCS will quite possibly be told they have "moderate OCD".
The DSM-5 does include three specifiers of level of insight for OCD: "good or fair insight" ("The individual recognizes that obsessive-compulsive disorder beliefs are definitely or probably not true or that they may or may not be true"), "poor insight" ("The individual thinks obsessive-compulsive disorder beliefs are probably true"), "absent insight/delusional beliefs" ("The individual is completely convinced that obsessive-compulsive disorder beliefs are true"). It is an oversimplification to equate that to "mild"/"moderate"/"severe", but some people will do it anyway.
Clinicians need to convey to patients (and their family members and others) the severity of the individual's condition in terms which lay people will readily understand. Terms such as "mild","moderate","severe", despite their limitations, meet that need.
> People really need to stop saying they have OCD unless they've been diagnosed by a professional.
Self-diagnosis is always a dangerous thing, but I think it includes a big spectrum of behaviours, from "I saw a TV show once about X and now I think I've got it" through to "I've read the DSM-5 and dozens of books and papers on X and I think I've got it". In both cases, the person could well be wrong, but arguably they have a significantly greater chance of being right in the second case than in the first. (And a lot of the time when people who engage in self-diagnosis get it wrong, they actually do end up diagnosed with something, just not the thing they expected.)
Speaking somewhat personally – I've listened to school teachers and psychologists tell me all these things our son does which are "symptoms of autism" and I'm sitting there the whole time thinking to myself "what's 'autistic' about that, I did that too as a child, I even still do that as an adult?" That's not saying that I do or don't have ASD – I've never sought a formal assessment of it for myself, maybe one day I shall, maybe I never will – but my suspicions that I might have ASD probably have somewhat more weight to them than "oh I saw a TV show about it once and now I think I have it".
And as for "moderately obese"... I wouldn't have previously described myself that way, but I fit it. My doctor tells me I'm medically obese. Nobody looking at me would describe me that way, but they would admit that I'm over-weight. They all say I look fine and don't need to lose more weight, though. If that's not "moderately obese", I don't know what would be.
What the world needs are terms to describe compulsive behavior, succinctly, other than "moderate OCD". I definitely have things that bother me immensely if I don't fix them, but it isn't to the point that I need help with it. I clearly don't have "OCD", but what do I have? There's no word for it.
I've stopped using the term OCD for anything about me, because I know it bothers other people. But I don't get mad at those who continue to use it because there's no proper term, and thus no way to actually correct their behavior. Only to stifle them. And I don't do that to other people.
Obesity is divided into 3 classes: class 1 (low-risk, BMI 30.0 to 34.9), class 2 (moderate-risk, 35.0 to 39.9), class 3 (high risk, 40.0 or higher). Using the term "moderate obesity" for class 2 obesity may not be exactly standard, but it has some logic to it.
> I clearly don't have "OCD", but what do I have? There's no word for it.
Is it possible you have subclinical OCD?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18849913/
(Or maybe subclinical OCPD?)
As for the OCD... Even that description sounds worse than what I have. But the existence of "subclinical OCD" makes me even less worried about people claiming to have "moderate OCD" or something. Not only is it a spectrum, but the experts seem to be fine with using the word to describe people that are almost it, with some qualifying words.
> Keys explicitly judged BMI as appropriate for population studies and inappropriate for individual evaluation. Nevertheless, due to its simplicity, it has come to be widely used for preliminary diagnoses. [1]
That said, while I’m not an expert on the topic, some of the way you responded is right in line with what I’ve seen people with diagnoses express as harmful. I’m sure you mean well, but ASD presents in a lot of ways. Many which are not nearly so debilitating as what you describe, or more to the point, not debilitating in the same ways. The fact that it’s such a common misconception that it is so debilitating across the board is stigmatic.
I haven’t experienced this disability chic, what I’ve seen is the opposite: people afraid to find out because it may be socially limiting beyond their natural limits.
It’s possible that what you see here is a reflection of high incidence of what you call “high function” but nevertheless also a high incidence of ASD in tech communities.
I hope you’ll consider the possibility. I hope you’ll also consider that it took me a full day to work up the nerve to address your response, and honestly it’s such a sensitive subject that I’m probably going to have to stop looking at my phone for the night because I can’t bear whatever potential negative reaction might be coming. But I couldn’t bear leaving it unanswered even more.
My suspicion is that the reason she was often complaining about her heart was that she in part knew that there was no need to be worried about it.
Openly choosing to recognize the existence of a dragon in your life require either bravery, desperation, or finding a costume to put your cat.
I am not specifically replying to you, I was just stimulated by the topic, but I find it ironic that given a debilitating condition being outspoken about it could maean being of two very different end of a spectrum of experiences.
I'm sure you also know of times - I know I do for myself - of times you've knowingly and purposively been an arse.
There's the biggest difference.
So even if we suppose that cancel culture somehow has 0 false positives (which I highly doubt), it's likely that many more neurodivergent assholes will be "caught" than neurotypical ones. Which feels functionally very similar to profiling IMO, and practically means we are probably not catching the more "dangerous" assholes. Because it's a lot easier to ignore an asshole view if you're aware of it.
Sometimes people think I'm being awkward or uncomfortable, but mostly I'm tripping over myself trying (and failing) to find the right things to say. People expect that you can read them, and read the situation in real time. I can't (although usually I can gather how it's all gone wrong once the moment has passed -- a double-edged sword.)
I have found the difference to be willingness to reflect or to what extent they are trying.
A lot of my socially clueless friends (can't speak for if they lie on the spectrum) are delighted when I offer them a new set of rules that were previously invisible, instead of insulting them for not 'getting it'. They love being told what the lines between mean&blunt or curt&concise are. They can work around context well too, as long as it is explicitly laid out to them.
Mean people (adults) are usually one of:
1. Neuro-diverse people who don't know they are mean
2. People with insecurities they are trying to work on
3. People with insecurities they refuse to acknowledge
#3 is not worth it. #2 can seek help using traditional means. #1 needs some training wheels and personalized instruction to work their way up to socially well adjusted. Think of it as a person with a learning disability.
Intent is the easier one to understand. Neurodivergent often don't act with the same intent that someone being an asshole does. Two people tell you that you shouldn't be eating that cookie. One is intending to be mean an to hurt you. The other cares about you and means the message in the best interest of your health, not realizing it will hurt.
With time and some prompting they can be led to understand how the message would be interpreted and realize it is hurt and stop, but it happens much slower and is often too little too late.
Justification is the harder to understand or empathize with possibility. Due to the previous issue impacting every area of life, often resulting in a significant decrease in quality of life and a significant increase in emotional pain, some will lower the extent they empathize with others. It is harder to explain because people think of their own times being hurt by others and think how they had the option to just do better than was done to them and rise above, not conceptualizing what qualitative differences occur when a pain goes from a short term event to a life long occurrence.
One further problem is that justification is only sometimes deemed appropriate by society. The differences in what are deemed appropriate differ strongly enough I'm hesitant to list examples because many will consider just making the comparison as a very asshole move. I am not at all clear if this consideration is in good faith or not.
It's absolutely maddening when the rules suddenly change for no discernible reason, often with little warning and grave consequences with no second chances for screwing it up.
I see people clamoring for a safe spaces and I wonder where I can find such a thing? (To an extent I can find one at sci-fi, anime and furry conventions are mostly safe spaces for people like me, it's just jarring when I need to leave)
Transitioning did something to my brain chemistry and let me read social cues nearly overnight, but I got friends by delving into the LGBT community. Maybe furry cons is a good approach?
That is incredibly fascinating. I'm not even sure how to classify that... pragmatic psychological function (oookay that's probably not a thing), neurobiology, or what else.
IMO this is a gigantic breadcrumb for Something™. The question is what the axis point was, and what got fixed as a result. Cooool.
I am very curious what else shifted that you'd be happy to share.
Men and Women experience socialization in fundamentally different ways, because of this I suspect the changing hormonal balance reawakens pathways not used normally, basically. In addition, you basically have a chance while transitioning to relearn socialization from scratch basically, with those new pathways awakened.
In my own experience I've found as that as a majority of my own marbles have figured out "OH, that's which way is up", my own pragmatic learning capacity has transformed from "transmutation ray that turns everything into indecipherable, unmovable rubble" and... what almost feels like a happy grid of FPGAs that bustle about classifying and organizing without me really having to make much effort. After leaving ideas and subjects for long enough (10+ years in some cases) that old broken memories/associations have just about completely died out, yeah, I definitely can look at things with new eyes.
Discovering that HRT can trigger or you might even say accelerate this process is very fascinating, because it sort of maybe points in the direction of the root causes that break everything in the first place.
I was mostly considering the fact that the female hormone, uh, configuration is naturally pro-social, and that dumping that set of hormone balances on the brain promptly elicits the associated responses - ie, that the response (or rather the tendency for those responses to function properly) becomes a partial function of hormone state.
But those sort of general factors (including elevated mood) would definitely be a part of the end result.
It may well be be that some component that's typically more prevalent in females plays a key role in the development of prosocial tendencies. If such a component were identified, it would be interesting to study its involvement in the development of both males and females.
You said:
> You may have issues with specific things that were said (or how they were said), but that isn't clear from your response. Perhaps you could add that, so the author can learn.
I addressed those specifics, as far as I can tell all of the specifics of substance. I was engaging your suggestion in good faith. I did take and accept it as helpful. I’m open to the possibility there’s some nuance I’m missing?
The nuance that I think you are missing is that the OP is talking about how the experience shouldn't be generalised and turned into a rule: The person responded to said that sitting at the girl's table should be an indicator that starts consideration of "maybe this is gender dysphoria". The OP thinks this is dangerous and harmful to children in it's proposed form.
I'm missing a lot of cultural context here (What is a "girl's table"?), but I can definitely see the point OP is trying to make. I'll agree with you it was worded problematically.
This definitely does not happen to every aspie trans woman, but I've heard of it happening to one or two others.
I was worried about losing my intelligence, since I attributed a lot of that to ASD, but actually all my major breakthroughs came after transitioning. My first algorithm that got me noticed was like, 6 months in.
The only real downside was that switching to estrogen unmasked my Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and I've become physically disabled. I'm still able to work and think and feel so it's a good trade for me!
I'm not gonna say I'd like to be normal, because I have no real construct of what normal would be like - but ASD also gives me one more insight, normality is an illusion foisted on people by society - all humans are some measure of weird, its just a question of how much, and in what way.
Ehlers-Danlos may have shown up anyhow, so that doesnt strike me as a downside even, if that makes sense, if anything you got a benefit by finding it sooner.
This is true. However, from a similar (mild form, partially dealt with) ASD observer point of view, I also noticed that the said peculiarities in one's character are like food ingredients. It's about the way one manages to blend them in a recipe and to cook them into something tasteful (for others) that makes or breaks the social connections. Having ASD is like having no smell or taste of your own and you have to rely on the observed reactions in others for measurements. Obviously, it's a challenge to be a cook in such circumstance and the best strategy (if you care) then probably is just to assume damage and operate in damage control mode all the time.
I know many social progressives would argue this is due to socialization...but the effect seems too strong at too early an age to blame solely on socialization to me.
On a related note, I recently read an article about trans men where one noted that they seemed to have become more conversationally impatient, and blamed it on the different hormones: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/07/20/feat...
> "The hormones made me more impatient. I had lots of female friends and one of the qualities they loved about me was that I was a great listener. After being on testosterone, they informed me that my listening skills weren’t what they used to be. Here’s an example: I’m driving with one of my best friends, Beth, and I ask her “Is your sister meeting us for dinner?” Ten minutes later she’s still talking and I still have no idea if her sister is coming. So finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I snapped and said, “IS SHE COMING OR NOT?” And Beth was like, “You know, you used to like hearing all the backstory and how I’d get around to the answer. A lot of us have noticed you’ve become very impatient lately and we think it’s that damn testosterone!” It’s definitely true that some male behavior is governed by hormones. Instead of listening to a woman’s problem and being empathetic and nodding along, I would do the stereotypical guy thing — interrupt and provide a solution to cut the conversation short and move on. I’m trying to be better about this."
To be honest, nobody knows for sure. I call these "Seinfeld moments", as in you could make an entire Seinfeld episode out of talking about it: should I have waived? If yes, I did waive, why didn't the other person waive back? Was it because he/she didn't see me? Was it because he/she did in fact see me but didn't like me? etc.
But maybe Seinfeld could have made an episode about your version too.
Did you mean something else?
But the reason there was a bit of extra hesitancy there is that I straddle the line on socialization to the extent that while half my brain would probably love going to a con, the other half would basically be cognitive-dissonance-BSODing the entire time. And I'm not sure if repeating "surrealism is art, surrealism is art" would be enough to get me through; I'd probably end up deciding those three specific people over there were safe and hiding behind them the entire time, while simultaneously responding mostly neurotypically to all the social-cue whooshes as I watched them happen. (The missed cues would be what I was hiding from.)
As an example, some swearwords might really violent to hear for some people, but disallowing their use will be quite hard for those who lived in an environment where it was important part of communication. And it's often use as a distinction between rich and poor people (at least in France).
I'm beginning to think the swearing thing in the U.S. has to do with a perception of the concept of "innocence". Because I've noticed a lot of people only begin to have a problem with swearing here when it involves children. For sure, there are people who are just generally against swearing for religious or etiquette reasons. However, having kids really seems to change a large number of people into prudes regarding swears.
I'll admit, when I first heard my 4 year old swear it was jarring. But I thought it through and was like, "my wife and I swear all the time, why can't the kid swear? I can either cave to this uncomfortable feeling or extend my kid the same privallege I extend myself."
At one point, my brother came to stay with us. He swears like a sailor yet when my kid swore, he was shocked. Not 10 minutes before he was cursing in front of the kid.
I also have friends who swore often when we were at college together and they started forbidding swears when they didn't like hearing it coming from their 3 year old.
American culture still has a partial obsession with virginity and the concept of innocence and my best guess is that this subconsciously extends to people's expectations for their children.
So for instance, your house is a safe space if you own it and decide who comes and goes, or if your parents are on your side and kick out people that cross your lines.
Is it a safe space when what you say can be video taped and then used against you by all the other areas of life?
however, this is an imperfect world that needs a lot of change, and it's not going to stop changing, so you're going to have to figure this out. I assume you're a technologist, you are already dealing with constant change? How is this any different?
Think about it this way: Would you hire an SDE who told you they coded down to Java 1.4 standards because that's where their comfort zone is? Java 1.4 is not where the world is in 2021, just like being creepy to your colleagues is not where 2021 is.
Things changed -- or at least I changed. I don't use furries as a punchline anymore, and none of my friends do, and I'm like "c'mon please don't do that" if anyone does.
Sure, it makes it harder to tell jokes sometimes, but who cares about that?
Some years ago there was a case where a woman in Melbourne called out a man for harassing her on public transport. Turns out he was autistic and was outgoing to everyone. His friend had to post on Facebook to stop people sharing a video of the autistic man.
Helen Pluckrose also posted on Twitter a similar story. A man she would help checkin on because he was autistic would get complaints from women for harassment. It was a suggestion from his therapist to help him socialise.
Turned out he had a lazy eye and is daughter had to step up to defend him. Quick to judge and make a scene unfortunately.
Harsh truth, but an easy rule for NDs to follow. Anything you say in public will be judged for its potential. If someone can get points for making it sound bad, they will.
I'm pretty sure China cares little about American political correctness wars.
I dispute the idea that PC is mostly defensive in nature; rather it seems to be overwhelmingly offensive, targeting people who frequently aren’t even in advantaged groups themselves. I would also suggest that Jews are treated pretty badly by the PC folks, as are Asians (although #StopAsianHate in the wake of what appears to be a non-hate-crime has been a convenient bludgeon).
> As thoughtless teenagers, we made crude SC/ST jokes. Here’s one: at a urinal in a government recruitment center, there is a line marked on the wall with the note, “if you can pee above this line, you get the job.”
This was unnecessary considering the dalits commiting sucide after joining IIT or other elite colleges due to harrasment from the Brahmins community students. Even if you give the benefit of doubt on this one simply as telling a story, look for the next quote.
> .. but I am enough of a free-speecher to acknowledge that it has a right to
This... This is the mindset of the upper caste Brahmins. They don't want the reservations based on caste but at the same time they don't want it to go away, simply because it provides birth entitlement at the cost of the other castes.
It does not matter he is an atheist. Even the founder of Hindutva philosophy is an atheist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinayak_Damodar_Savarkar whom these modern educated caste supporting intellectuals admire.
That blog post is quite long, If you read the entire post you get the impression that after all caste system is not bad, just the implementation had gone wrong. In fact any one who says caste is not that bad especially in USA, it is very likely they are from upper caste brahmin community.
The social justice advocate's response to that is intersectionality: a defense mechanism of not engaging in advocacy that would benefit one oppressed group at the expense of another. They're not always great at this - some social conflicts are just difficult to actually make judgments on (e.g. Israel/Palestine). The thing is, though - I doubt "drop the autistics" is going to pick up steam in social justice circles. Autism, and neurodivergence in general, tracks very well with queer sexual orientations and gender identities. Social mores intended to enforce rigid gender roles and heteronormativity simply don't work on people who can't parse them. (The contrapositive of this is why there's a huge push for non-gendered children's toys.) Ergo, it's very unlikely that you'd see the social justice left tear itself apart like this, and more likely that you'd see people arguing that "drop the autistics" is bullshit.
I'm also going to point out that, as an autistic person myself, the stricter speech rules of the social justice left aren't terribly difficult to parse. The prior eras of social mores were far stricter because we didn't see them as coercive and thus didn't question their power, and it's somewhat troubling that people don't view it as an improvement from what we had before. It's sort of like how people coming from proprietary software sometimes argue that the GPL is non-free because it has some restrictions that don't conform to the unstated mores of proprietary licensing. Much of the reaction people have to these speech rules comes from two different places:
1. The people reacting to these rules are neurotypical, and used to invisible speech rules enforced by people with a common cultural heritage such that they wouldn't disagree on their unstated rules.
2. Many people in the social justice community are autistic (see above) and also had a hand in writing the rules. Of course, if people who can't parse social cues write the rules of a society, those rules are going to be explicitly stated rather than inferred.
In other words, the problem isn't that the social justice left is going to throw out neurodivergent people, it's that the social justice left is autistic, in cultural control, and writing the new rules of society in a way neurotypicals don't understand.
(Side note: #9 is a conflict that's been brewing in the back of my head for a while now. I love P2P tech but think the entirety of cryptocurrency has been a dead-end full of scams.)
How do you know that everyone who disagrees with the "speech rules" of the "social justice left" is "neurotypical"?
I think "aneurotypical" people (whether ADHD or ASD or whatever) are just as capable of having a wide variety of different political views as "neurotypical" people are. Take any current political or social question, you are going to have a wide diversity of opinion about it, and I don't see why people with ASD/ADHD/etc would have any less viewpoint diversity than society as a whole does. (If anything, people with ASD might have more viewpoint diversity than average, due to putting less value on social conformity leading to a greater willingness to consider and even espouse unpopular opinions.)
> it's that the social justice left is autistic
I really doubt that. Possibly, people with ASD are over-represented on the "social justice left". (I've heard the same claim made about the "alt-right" – although the two claims are not mutually exclusive). But I think the clear majority people on the "social justice left" don't have ASD, and conversely a lot of people with ASD don't identify with the "social justice left".
For example, airlines don't employ pilots with extremely poor vision or flight attendants who are too large to fit through the cabin. Someone who relies on a wheelchair may have difficulty becoming a firefighter or a first responder and someone with Tourette's syndrome might have difficulty getting a job as a spokesperson or announcer.
My understanding is that the above constraints are not illegal discrimination (in the US) because the disability/attribute impacts that person's ability to successfully perform key job functions. Maybe extreme PC-warriors take issue with that, but I think most people would agree that these are reasonable constraints.
With respect to neurodivergence it seems dependent on whether it impacts someone's ability to perform their core job functions. As per above we should ask employers should be as accommodating as possible, so I believe an errant joke or comment shouldn't result in anyone being "canceled". But if someone is chronically incapable of processing social cues and/or has trouble interacting with coworkers or customers without triggering HR complaints then they may need to find a different role that doesn't require as much interpersonal interaction. That's unfortunate for the person in question but it doesn't seem any more discriminatory than an airline reassigning a pilot whose vision is failing.
Gamers aren't a coherent group or right wing in general (think of the ages...) but "their side" (the side trampling on them) is anti-left, so the gamers were lumped together and drawn on the right. The 'Autism Spectrum' is the most "centrist" I've ever seen, but because the left uses them to launch its attacks from they're drawn as 'left territory'.
Specifically, the Neuro-divergent group isn't an active group, kind of by its nature. ND people on the map are more of a victim pool who just get picked on because they're easy to maneuver into mistakes. Like the whole Damore incident was Google saying "Does our HR policy look fat" and only James was tricked into engaging. He was more a convenient scapegoat to hurt to consolidate their power than he was an ideological enemy.
Certain groups have all-or-nothing ideological traps laying around everywhere and I think it's that these groups, like armies using landmines in areas with children, are especially harmful to societal non-combatants.
are you saying that the undergrads that Stallman harassed at MIT are more economically and culturally free than he is? Are you saying that we should give a pass to bad bosses who turn their subordinates lives' into a tower defense game?
Venkatesh Rao is generally contentless and writes long winded tracts that don't actually make any kind of coherent argument for what they're saying.
Do you really think Stallman's long history of sexual harassment is because he was too gosh-darned oblivious to realize he shouldn't be doing that? This isn't exactly "Oh he maintained eye-contact for half a second too long and the thought police are after him" territory jfc.
What's even worse was none of these "WOKE" were even concerned with "the victims of sexual assault" or any other noble cause. This was organized for ideological reasons and their goal was and is to replace everyone in a relevant position with ideologically aligned people. They are the kind of people that believe that any speech or freedoms that run counter to their agenda should be regulated to fit their definition of a common good.
He did nothing wrong. He is a brilliant person.
He basically just said "Minsky may not have known because Epstein most likely forced the girl into acting as if her was willing" (paraphrased from memory) and it got turned into "RMS said the girl was willing".
He also had a very good point about making the distinction between "sexual relations with a minor" and "sexual assault"/"rape" - again, I agree that both should be illegal and punushed harshly, but is having consentual sex with a 17yo really AS BAD as forcing yourself upon a person of any age?
As for his last point about the absurdity of the exact same thing being rape if done today, but perfectly normal if done mere days later: isn't it kinda absurd? Like, yes, there needs to be a boundary, but isn't it insane that there are only two categories: <18 is one of the worst crimes possible and >18 is perfectly legal. I don't know a better system and wouldn't even attempt to propose a better one, but surely this isn't the best we can do?
To be clear: I don't particularly like Stallman and gladly point out his sexist and generally rude remarks and behavior when people glorify him, but this all just seems like a person only looking at the logical side of the story and ending up sounding extremely insensitive. The term "neurodivergent" would usually get thrown in here, although I'm reluctant to use it since it's far too broad and I don't have any specific information about RMS.
Inappropriate and insensitive? Yes! Defending rape, as some media outlets framed it? Not even close!
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lomkCENpPXufPOLUkw6mzlgBljQ=...
If I were in my 60s and a 17 year old child was throwing themselves at me for sex, I would question what was going on. The fact it was on a private island in the middle of the Caribbean makes the feigned ignorance laughable. There's no planet on which the circumstances should have left Minsky with any doubt about what he was getting himself into.
I'll just say this HN: shame on you. The fact there are so many people here willing to defend someone that was participating in sex trafficking is pretty disgusting. I have no time for "cancel culture" or "SJW's" but this isn't even a little bit that. There's no planet on which Minsky didn't know exactly what he was doing. To defend those actions is honestly pretty abhorrent. I hope none of you have daughters, and if you do I hope you think long and hard about how you'd feel if they were in that situation.
But there's a big spectrum of possibilities from "she freely accepted payment for it" to "she was kidnapped, tied up and shipped in a crate, then forced under threat of violence". Before we knew Epstein was a monster, her being a very highly-paid prostitute would've seemed like the more likely explanation.
We need a term for people in between "creep" and "monster" - judging by this specific example, Minsky was in that middle. Maybe he did know exactly what was happening in the background and that would make him a monster, but I don't think that information was available at the time.
there's a reason stores ask for an id when it comes to selling liquor up into women (and men as well!) 30s. I have no idea about legality about prostitution in the carrabean.
In addition to that, many countries have laws that arent as inane as the US when it comes to sex between teenage minors and adults, for most of Europe it's between 14 and sixteen, although rules for a maximum legal partner age may further restrict this.
I'm not saying I think Minsky was unanware, nor do I say I think his actions are right or even non repelling, but I think it's very clear where rms is coming from.
> he fact there are so many people here willing to defend someone that was participating in sex trafficking is pretty disgusting.
Nobody is defending Epstein. If anything, we're arguing that the blame lies squarely with him and that he was an evil, sick man.
I'm not even really arguing on Minsky's behalf, although given the reports I've heard that he didn't actually engage in sex and given what I said above, and the fact that she most definitely was groomed and coerced to act a certain way, its not at all a given that he's guilty. Maybe he is, but we don't know. Also, as f1refly says, age is hard to judge. I personally find it impossible to tell many ages apart. Maybe if you put a 17 year old and a 25 year old side by side I could, but in isolation, many look more or less the same to me. Of course, I'm also not having sex with that age group. Still, telling what age someone is can be very hard and 17 year olds do often look older.
What I'm arguing is that the comments RMS made were not at all bad and taken completely out of context (and outright changed!) to demonize him.
>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.
We'll set aside for a moment that he's trying to argue the only way that sexual assault can occur is if the attacker literally assaults the victim. It wasn't really the time or the place to try defending a friend by arguing semantics given the accusations.
I guess if some billionaire flew me to a private island in the Carribean where young attractive girls started throwing themselves at me, and I was the age and... attractiveness of Minsky, giant alarm bells would have been blaring in my head and I think that of pretty much every sane American male. To not take the entirety of the situation into account and try to paint it as an innocent "I met a girl at the bar who lied about how old she was" is more than a bit disingenuous
As you may or may not know, some women will voluntarily have sex with men in exchange for money, no coercion or assault required. If a billionaire flew you to a private island with attractive woman offering to have sex with you, then the presumption that those women are paid prostitutes is not that far-fetched.
Which is also illegal. And if you're having sex with a teenager for money, she probably has some pretty major life issues going on. Which as a 60-year-old - you should know better. Period.
>If a billionaire flew you to a private island with attractive woman offering to have sex with you, then the presumption that those women are paid prostitutes is not that far-fetched.
So... sex trafficking. By definition. Which is illegal both where it took place and in all party's country of origin.
Where? Even within the US, prostitution laws vary wildly.
> And if you're having sex with a teenager for money, she probably has some pretty major life issues going on.
Did Minsky know that they weren't adults? Do you have a source for that?
> So... sex trafficking. By definition.
Wrong. Not even by definition. If you disagree, show me a valid definition of sex trafficking that includes "flying to an island to have sex with voluntary prostitutes".
I guess it's fortunate we have that information:
Minsky is from Massachusets: illegal. Guifreye and Epstein Florida: illegal. Little St. James: illegal.
>Did Minsky know that they weren't adults? Do you have a source for that?
You entirely missed the point. A 60 year old man sleeping with someone young enough to be his granddaughter is disgusting. Full stop. The fact that AT BEST he knew she was a prostitute being sex trafficked makes it worse.
>Wrong. Not even by definition. If you disagree, show me a valid definition of sex trafficking that includes "flying to an island to have sex with voluntary prostitutes".
It is LITERALLY the definition:
>the illegal business of recruiting, harboring, transporting, obtaining, or providing a person and especially a minor for the purpose of sex
You're moving the goal post. At first your claim was that Minsky should have known the women were coerced because otherwise they wouldn't have had sex with him. Now that I've refuted your claim, you shifted your position to, paraphrased, "he's a criminal because what he did offends my moral compass".
> It is LITERALLY the definition: the illegal business of recruiting, harboring, transporting, obtaining, or providing a person and especially a minor for the purpose of sex
That's not a valid definition of "sex trafficking", which requires an individual to be exploited and/or coerced to perform sexual acts. We don't know whether Minsky had reason to presume that the women were exploited and/or coerced, and we don't know whether Minsky had reason to presume that the women were minors.
I didn't shift my claim in the least, you attempted to imply that prostitution is legal. I pointed out that regardless of the fact you're wrong, and it isn't legal, it's disgusting. No goal post was moved, you just keep doubling down on something that is both morally reprehensible AND illegal.
>That's not a valid definition of "sex trafficking", which requires an individual to be exploited and/or coerced to perform sexual acts. We don't know whether Minsky had reason to presume that the women were exploited and/or coerced, and we don't know whether Minsky had reason to presume that the women were minors.
Except it doesn't. In fact the law states the exact opposite of your claim. You're batting 0 trying to defend sexual predators here.
https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2012/787.06
>(g) For commercial sexual activity in which any child under the age of 18 is involved commits a felony of the first degree, punishable by imprisonment for a term of years not exceeding life, or as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084. In a prosecution under this paragraph in which the defendant had a reasonable opportunity to observe the person who was subject to human trafficking, the state need not prove that the defendant knew that the person had not attained the age of 18 years.
This is what's wrong with public discourse in the current cancel culture climate: One cannot even discuss facts without being accused of defending the worst kinds of criminals. Way to go! What's next, are you going to accuse me of being a potential sexual predator if I don't shut up?
Sure, but from all accounts I've seen, its not even clear that he did sleep with her. It seems likely that he did not.
But its really not uncommon for older guys to be with young (usually 20's) women, look at older male actors. The lady in question was 17 IIRC, its not inconceivable to me that a 17 year old could be mistaken for early 20's.
I mean, I personally still think that's wrong, but my point is that it totally does happen, without any coercion or anything like that, so that it could also happen when someone underage is mistaken for someone slightly older, especially if groomed and coerced by Epstein, doesn't seem inconceivable to me.
Doesn't make it right, but its more nuanced than "he's old therefore he should have known she was coerced" (and again, apparently he didn't actually do anything anyway).
Once in a year I end up in a local strip club (non-US; never had sex or something there, but it’s not uncommon for guests to “continue elsewhere”). Spoke with many of girls, and they are usually not poor or orphaned, it’s just the way of life. “Don’t wanna to sit in office for a mediocre pay”. They are yesterday’s teenagers who sometimes earn as much as local software guys or lawyers in their 30s.
Which as a 60-year-old - you should know better
As such an experienced person you’d know how different people are and how many world niches exist beyond a “normal life”.
So was it figurative assault or do words not have literal meaning anymore?
And, further, there is no evidence that Minsky took any further action relative to her. Quite the contrary - he seemed bemused by the situation.
Some of the discussion in these threads strongly implies that Minsky had a sexual interaction and that Stallman was defending him. This is wrong, in both cases.
https://nypost.com/2019/08/09/jeffrey-epsteins-alleged-sex-s...
You will have to dig out the 2019 emails yourself, I didn’t bookmark them.
Successful authoritarian movements have a clear set of rules that make you safe as a member, and only turn to internal purges once they destroyed any external opposition.
As far as the entire USA or perhaps the entire Western world goes, no.
Many cases could be taken to court, even in the USA with its relaxed defamation laws.
I'm not sure how you can claim to know his intent 18 months after the fact. Do you have an interview or personal relationship to back that claim up? A whole lot of people he directly worked with definitely don't agree with your assessment of his intent.
I don't believe in the time since that he has acknowledged the comments or suggested he didn't mean to offend or that he understands why it was probably a pretty horrible thing to say in light of all the things we know about Epstein.
Accepting someone for their differences: sure. But to imply Stallman is incapable of acknowledging wrongdoing because of autism while simultaneously being qualified to represent the FSF feels like a reach to me.
“There is no single person that is so deserving of praise their comments deprecating others should be allowed to slide. Particularly when those comments are excuses about rape, assault, and child sex trafficking.”
Who used it like that? Stallman's comments happened outside the organization, the tweet was from someone I think unrelated to the project. I can understand keeping other ideals out of the project, but in context you're telling people not to express other ideals.
Seems fine for unrelated Twitter randos to say whatever they want about RMS, but would be distracting and counterproductive for GNU/FSF to permanently ban RMS in support of Twitter randos' unrelated ideals. I never said or implied anything about stopping Twitter randos from expressing or doing whatever they want.
I think you're answering that GNU/FSF used it improperly but am not certain.
And RMS's "pleasure cards" listing his office address and organizational email certainly indicate that his private activities are the organizations activities.
Would Stallman work on implementing a DRM?
And not in this case, but what about someone denying the other’s existence? Actively supporting groups that work on restricting someone’s basic rights? (Mozilla with Eich)
It is a big difference working on A with people i disagree about B, and actively working against one's values. I can work with non-vegetarians on software, but i would not work in slaughterhouse.
> And not in this case, but what about someone denying the other’s existence?
As an LGBT person (and pro same-sex marriage), i think that mixing up 'being against same-sex marriage' and 'denying the other’s existence' is just horrible rhetorical device, fear-mongering about opponent's position.
https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...
The auther (Thomas Bushnell) goes on to say the decision (to remove RMS) was the right one but for the totality of RMSs behavior over the years, not the incidents highlighted by the media.
I've listened to him be rude to former co-workers (one seemingly on the basis that she was a woman in a technical role) and an absolute one man clown rodeo at various trade show events.
His philosophical brilliance has always impressed me, his personal presence is like rotting offal in the sun. He doesn't get the benefit of being remembered for the former when he puts in so much effort to broadcast the latter.
This is illegible and does not seem to follow from the rest of this thread. I'm missing where the GP made a statement about a person's "philosophical brilliance." Did I miss something, or is this meant to infer something else?
>His philosophical brilliance has always impressed me, his personal presence is like rotting offal in the sun. He doesn't get the benefit of being remembered for the former when he puts in so much effort to broadcast the latter.
I do. How the hell do you think I figured it out for RMS? That same critical filtering can happen not just across time, but across various axes of context.
I didn't say that he's "irredeemable" but that the constant hagiographic/endless forgiveness for his chronic boorishness by his acolytes is annoying and serves no benefit.
Most relevant is that it deprives him of useful feedback neurodivergent people can actually use to better communicate with neurotypical colleagues.
This is the thing for me. Being neuroatypical and unable to follow typical social cues, or having trouble expressing thoughtfulness or care is just a fact of life. But not being thoughtful and not caring is a choice.
Not if you’re neurodivergent. I think the challenge is knowing who has different brain chemistry and who has regular chemistry and is choosing.
https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...
It feels wrong to me to squeeze this tiny little "a" in between the words 'neuro' and 'typical' that flips the combined word's meaning around. The "a" usually goes at the front of a word so that you can tell immediately that it is being negated. I know that "a" is at the front of 'typical' but that's precisely the rub since it is actually in hiding instead of at the front of the combined word.
Sounds a bit like Diogenes the Cynic.
Stallman seems to be in a similar vein as many of the 'great philosophers'. In that his ideas are challenging and difficult, much like himself. Making the man not one that you like all that much. The phenomenon reminds me of an often misinterpreted Edmond de Goncourt quote:
"Almost no one loves the genius until he or she is dead. But then we do, because now life is better."
The quote is not talking about how the genius made our lives better through their work/effort. Rather, how they were so insufferable.
As to Stallman, only time will tell if he will join the Great Conversation as a loud voice or not.
Care to back that accusation up with anything?
I also observed him trying to dress people down ad nauseum for a litany of inanities: telling me and several other staff from VA when it changed from VA Research to VA Linus that it should be "VA GNU/Linux" while the rest of us were trying to have a conversation with other people. Or the time he could barely control his irritation at an awards event when Linus Torvalds' toddler daughter upstaged him at an awards presentation. Or when he seemed clueless and/or ambivalent about any number of things that other people felt.
Yes, I have a strong negative opinion about RMS. No, it is not based on tertiary opinions, but direct or near-line observations.
I admit, the circumstantial evidence is, uhh, indicative, but I don't see it being a matter of public record. Then again, I only did six and a half minutes of internet research, though, and I could be wrong, thus the question mark.
There are, at any given time, few people who walk this world rating so highly on these scales.
If you understand the concept of the broad autism phenotype (BAP), it is hard not to see it in his behaviour. He obviously has autistic traits.
Now, is it BAP (sub-clinical ASD) or is it clinical ASD? Nobody can answer that unless they are actually a qualified diagnostician (psychiatrist/psychologist/etc) personally evaluating him.
But I'm not sure how much that matters. The boundary between BAP and ASD is vague, it varies from clinician to clinician and is changing over time.
If you choose to view things dimensionally [0] rather than categorically, you have "super-neurotypical" people at one extreme, you have "severe ASD" at the other [1]. And somewhere in between the two, you draw a line (the diagnostic cutoff), and say people on one side of the line have "mild ASD" and people on the other side of the line don't have ASD. And the people who are on the "neurotypical" side of the line, but still close to it rather than far away, that's BAP.
And I think the point is that RMS obviously is somewhere near that line, whichever side of it he may belong on. (And as I said, the line doesn't have a single fixed location anyway, he might be on one side given some clinicians' ways of drawing it and on the other given others'.)
[0] I've drawn an oversimplified one-dimensional model here. In reality ASD is a multidimensional construct. But, treating it one-dimensionally is a simplification which aids in explanation
[1] I know some people don't like phrases like "mild ASD" or "severe ASD" (or their close relatives "low functioning" and "high functioning"), but how else do you explain the difference between someone diagnosed with "ASD Level 1 / Level 1 without intellectual or language impairment" and someone else who is diagnosed with "ASD Level 3 / Level 3 with intellectual impairment and language impairment"?
But it's okay to treat autistic people as less than human because they are not a politically powerful group. You learn a lot about people from how they treat politically disadvantaged, and we have learned a lot about you.
Stallman is good at many different things and he doesn't seem like e bad bloke overall. But he is not good at being a leader. At all. It's just not where his aptitudes lie. As a leader he is not only ineffective, but even counter-productive and harmful.
I feel the entire conversation about the statements surrounding Minsky are a bit of a distraction; what we should really be talking about is something like "is Stallman the best person to represent us as a community?" I'd argue he's not, and has never really been.
If someone lacks enough empathy and social skills to be able to put his words into appropriate context, then maybe they should refrain from interpreting those words (and yet they say that those are qualities that autistic people lack...)
Well, yes, but everyone is talking about this, including your comment.
Was Stallman treated unfairly? Sure. It is what it is; the world is an unfair place. I can't change that either. It's been a few years: let's move on and talk about effective leadership for the movement instead.
Let's move on and welcome Stallman back, because we need him more than those that slandered him.
Let's also talk about what should change so it won't happen again, to anybody else.
Not everyone is a gentle giant like Stallman is.
Do you remember what happened to poor Aaron Swarz when he was falsely accused and prosecuted for things he hadn't done?
I, speaking for myself, don't want an FSF were people can get thrown out by an internet mob.
I want an FSF that defends its members and judge facts, not opinions.
I think Stallman is one of those persons, but I very much welcome other candidates.
Stallman said things that would get most people "cancelled" nowadays, while his intent might have been to debate the language used, how it was dishonest and how jumping to conclusions might be a disingenuous way to go about things.
His words, from another post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535974
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 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. 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 was merely 10 years old when it was started, so basically FSF is as old as the self conscious me, did only good, never betrayed their ideals, never harmed anyone, but Stallman seems to deserve hatred and disrespect only because he exists and don't care about other people opinions enough to be scared by them or by their mob behaviour.
In the past 35 years the best I could do is convincing less than a hundred people in total to switch to using Linux as their default Operating System at work (of course 99% of them still use proprietary systems at home), Stallman started a visionary movement that changed the way we look at software to its very foundation.
I don't think he gets the credit he deserves for what he did.
Meanwhile you can see people jumping on the BC, NFT, Apple and other bandwagons, praising them, describing them as "the future" despite the pervasive damage to society and environment they are (allegedly or not) producing, only because they own something of that brand.
If only Stallman thought of creating a fashion brand to scam people... how silly of him!
Don't 35 years leading the FSF say otherwise?
Judging from the reactions in the FSF community to his coming back, people were missing him.
- A major fracture in the movement (arguably two, if you count GPL2/3).
- Actively turning people off (Keith Packard, for example, described why they didn't license X under the GPL: "we had met Richard, and found him a challenging individual"; he later admitted that Stallman was right and that he should have listened).
- Sidetracking of pointless issues ("GNU/Linux", "you should not be using hacker", etc.)
- Alienating of many people who are generally keen on most of the Free Software principles.
- Insisting on absolute freedom to the detriment of more freedom than the status quo.
And so forth.
> Alienating of many people who are generally keen on most of the Free Software principles
Did donations went up or down during his leadership?
And what happened when he "left"?
How many people found out that Stallman was right in retrospect?
> Insisting on absolute freedom to the detriment of more freedom than the status quo.
That's the core mission of the FSF.
Our Core Work
The FSF sponsors the GNU Project—the ongoing effort to provide a complete operating system licensed as free software. We also fund and promote important free software development and provide development systems for GNU software maintainers, including full email and shell services and mailing lists. We are committed to furthering the development of the GNU Operating System and enabling volunteers to easily contribute to that work, including sponsoring Savannah the source code repository and center for free software development.
If you want FSF to be some sort of "by hackers, for hackers" thing: sure, go for it. If you want anything more: lolno. The FSF is Free Software's worst enemy.
That's a bold claim, but since I don't have a horse in this race my opinion is that FOSS space is huge and one size fits all is not possible anymore.
They can't make everybody happy and it would be silly to even try.
If you don't like FSF, you can support other entities.
I believe it's perfectly fine to disagree, but I also believe FSF has never forced anybody to do anything they didn't want to do.
I personally would much prefer to see many others trying than changing what the FSF stands for simply because they are not trying to please everybody.
Anyway, I see people treating Stallman like a devil, while working for big corporations or happily using proprietary software, like Github (Microsoft), while accusing Stallman of being enemy of the free software.
it's a weird shift from the times when Microsoft was referred as M$...
Why aren't we using some Free Software platform to develop our software on? No really, if we can't get our own tooling together then what does that say about the movement as a whole? People use GitHub simply because it's the best platform out there; I did a review of many alternatives a while ago, and GitHub was the best by far. It's as simple as that really. The problem with the "RMS mindset" is that "it's Free Software" is enough of a "feature" that will make people use it, and turns out it's not except for quite a small group of people.
Imagine an alternative universe where the FSF had invested significant time an resources in developing a Savannah that actually, you know, worked well. Not only would people use it, and it would have been a great platform to spread the word about Free Software and why it matters. Instead, Stallman writes polemics about how SaaS is evil and you shouldn't be using these "Service as a Software Substitute". Okay, nice... But also missing the point and that's just not how software works today, or will ever work again. The 80s have come and gone.
I don't work for a big corporation btw; I've actually been work full-time on Free Software for the last 2 years, making about €700/month or so. At least I put my money where my mouth is :-)
it works well enough for those who use it I guess
But I also like to imagine a world where projects like Savannah are backed by investors with very deep pockets instead of existing only out of the hard work of volunteers
Anyway, I use a private instance of gitea for my personal projects, it costs me 3 euros/month for the hosting and another couple bucks for the storage
I agree with what Stallman says about SAAS, I am not as radical as he is, not by a long shot, but SaaS platforms pose a big risk in terms of vendor lock in
I also share your frustration about what it could be, but it's not (yet, hopefully)
> I don't work for a big corporation btw; I've actually been work full-time on Free Software for the last 2 years, making about €700/month or so. At least I put my money where my mouth is :-)
you deserve my gratitude then for all the work that you do personally and as a part of the FOSS community
Packard did, but you're still blaming Stallman for Packard being wrong?!?
> - Sidetracking of pointless issues ("GNU/Linux", "you should not be using hacker", etc.)
And here you are, posting on Hacker News. Are you sure you could do that, without becoming a pariah among your peers if it came out, without Stallman's "sidetracking"?
We should just stop using our prejudice to misinterpret statements, and we should stop putting words in other people's mouths.
Autistic people (who usually talk in a very literal way) would be benefited by this change as a byproduct, but this principle should apply to everyone, not only to neurodivergent people.
Is what the person said technically correct? Yes or no. That's all that matters.
It also seems like this is a largely solved problem in candid one-on-one conversations and interviews: if the other party thinks you're implying something, they can follow-up and ask whether you are indeed intending to. Without two-way discourse, taking someone's statements in good faith seems like the lesser of two evils.
If the mafia boss says "I think he is going to get a visit tonight", the person in question is probably not long for this world. Did the mafia boss order the killing of said person?
I agree that every little sentence, in isolation, shouldn't be scrutinized, and meaning inferred in a vacuum. However, surely patterns of behavior and the larger context of the words being said should play a role in our interpretation of the words said?
Otherwise you end up with things that, read hyper-literally, are innocuous while being completely heinous in context. "Exterminate the Vermin" said by an exterminator is very different to it being said by a German in 1944.
Weasel words are always going to dog whistle, but if you think that someone is implying something, the best scenario is to get them to explicitly agree or disagree with that statement.
Definitely not applicable in all cases, but if a person explicitly says "I did not mean to imply X, and I disagree with X", then it seems a good rule of thumb to believe that they do in fact disagree with X.
The age of consent is so named because it is widely accepted that no minor is able to present themselves to an adult as "willing" to engage in sex. After much debate over hundreds of years and with inputs from researchers in child psychology, people below the age of consent are judged by society to not have the emotional maturity to make those decisions, irresepective of their physical maturity.
Now, a contrarian might argue that the age is wrong - and indeed, it does vary country by country, and often when the couple are very close in age it is accepted there was not a typical case of sexual exploitation by the elder party - but in the case RMS was referring to, Minsky was likely aware of the age of consent and the reason for its existence AND that his own behaviour was extremely likely to be exploitative and abusive no matter what the child said, so RMS's argument is logically absurd.
Minsky's behaviour can not be explained as "acceptable", because the law is not widely considered unjust in this situation other than by pedophiles. RMS' argument can logically be judged as being advocative of a pedophile's behaviour.
Therefore RMS' arguments are technically - i.e. logically - incorrect, as well as being deeply offensive to a large number of people.
He has since accepted this himself. He does not dispute it.
Also, a lot of the people who are upset with RMS and think he should stop being the figurehead of the movement are, themselves, neurodivergent! If we're going to assume that autistic people are fundamentally incapable of communicating with mainstream norms, what do we do for autistic people who are harmed by RMS's actions but aren't able to express it in a way the mainstream can hear?
rms has repeatedly said he does not suffer from autism.
Even if he did, there is nothing about autism that compels you to try and legitimize child sexual offenders.
Where, exactly, did RMS do so? This isn't a troll or a "gotcha" either.
All the claims about RMS doing so are from now public statements by RMS. Please provide (with appropriate context) evidence for the assertion that RMS tried to "legitimize child sexual offenders."
If you perform that exercise in good faith, you'll find that there is no evidence that RMS did (or attempted) any such thing.
I don't know RMS, nor am I associated with any organization with which he is or ever was associated. In fact, I was quite angry when I read the accusations against him.
But rather than take the word of others, I read his statements, in context, and came to the conclusion that those accusations were both false and sensationalized.
I have my suspicions as to why those false and sensationalized accusations were made, but I won't do what those who sought to portray Stallman as an advocate for pedophilia, rape and assault did.
I'll let others make up their own minds as to the motivations of the folks who sought to amplify such claims.
Edit: Clarified the reasons for not airing my suspicions in this comment.
Having sex with a child is an offense in most countries.[4] Offender means someone who commits an offense.
[1] https://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html#28%20June%20...()
[2] https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun...
[3] https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jan-apr.html#25_April_201...
And so I can only assume you're not posting in good faith. That's sad, as it's something I really like about HN.
I had responded in detail to each of the claims you made and expounded on the fact that age of consent is wildly different in all those countries you mention. Sadly, it was all lost with a <ctrl>-w[1] in Firefox.
In fact, in 20 US states, there is no lower limit on the age of marriage[0], which explicitly allows sexual activity.
I don't expect anything from you. I'm just disappointed in the (I can only assume deliberate) way you omitted and distorted Stallman's statements to suit your point of view. That's sad.
[0] https://www.equalitynow.org/learn_more_child_marriage_us
Maybe you don't like I only mentioned in passing Stallman said anything about consent. But it's irrelevant to the claim he didn't advocate pedophilia. And now he understands why people say children can't consent.[1]
Your source says 20 states have no minimum age "with a parental or judicial waiver". You left out that detail. The minimum age without a waiver is 18 or over in all states.[2] Wikipedia's source says only 13 states don't have a statutory minimum age. And at least 1 of them has a minimum age through case law.[3]
This usually affects but doesn't necessarily eliminate the age of consent. California has a law against "any lewd or lascivious act" with a child under 14 for example. Spouses aren't exempt.[4]
I didn't mention any countries. But Wikipedia listed only 4 countries with a general age of consent below 13. So almost the whole world agrees adults having sex with children is wrong. Even though they don't agree when adolescents are mature enough.
[1] https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_age_in_the_United_Sta...
[3] https://www.tahirih.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/State-Sta...
[4] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....
You won't get any argument about that from me. Consent is never optional and if an individual isn't able to consent (for whatever reason), then sexual activity with that individual is both inappropriate and, as you pointed out, a crime in most places.
The discussion as to when a person should be legally able to consent to sexual activity is one that's hotly debated and the laws concerning that varies greatly around the world.
Such variation causes a great deal of confusion. I can legally have (consensual) sex with a 12 year-old in Brazil, but in the Virgin Islands, I could go to jail.
But reality is rarely as cut and dried as that. Teenage boys in the US have been branded sex offenders for life because they engaged in consensual sexual activity (and not just sexual acts either. There have been cases where sexting between teenagers has landed children in jail) with teenage girls.
It's wholly inappropriate, and IMHO, should be a crime for adults to manipulate children into sexual activity. Sadly, that happens all too often.
On the larger issue, I expect that we are in violent agreement. However, I choose not to demonize someone for having a conversation about the setting of arbitrary age limits WRT the ability to consent, especially given the wide variation in those arbitrary limits.
It seems clear to me that age limits need to be set to deter the manipulation and abuse of vulnerable individuals (in this case, young people) and it seems unworkable to address those on a case-by-case basis. As such we're back to setting arbitrary limits.
Simply discussing what those limits should be isn't harmful to anyone, and no one should be demonized for just having that conversation.
There's a big difference between contemplating what range of ages should be considered appropriate for consent to sexual activity and actively abusing those without the ability to consent.
To quote the eminent philosopher[0], those two things:
"...ain't the same fucking ballpark. It ain't the same league. It ain't even the same fucking sport."
He didn't engage in conversation. He declared opposing ideas prejudiced and narrow minded. He invented a story about who disagreed with him and mocked them.
When adolescents can consent legally is arbitrary and varies greatly. The idea children too young for puberty lack the understanding and independence to give consent varies not much at all. Even Stallman seems to understand that now. Prosecuting teenagers for sexting is draconian but a different issue completely.
I'm not sure how to make that call.
And I am not talking about avoiding consequences. Those are ever present as they should be.
However it all plays out, if we do shut that door, what inventive is there for people to improve?
Secondly, how do they actually present having done it, or even begin the attempt when those doors are slammed shut?
It should not be easy, but should also be possible.
[1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2551458/asperger-s-oxy...
Could this be an opportunity for your focused effort? Exclusion is dramatically unkind.
Example: it doesn’t make sense to punish a cat that eats your parrot, because that’s what cats do. It does make sense to lock the door between the cat and the parrot.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/richard-stallman...
(Posting the amp link because haha)
I think we should thank Stallman for all the work he’s done in advocating for free software but then let him go and be the crazy old man yelling at the clouds and fade into irrelevancy.
They also say: "Yet, we must also acknowledge that Stallman’s behavior over the years has undermined a core value of the GNU project: the empowerment of all computer users."
Andy also wrote: "I can hear you saying it. RMS started GNU so RMS decides what it is and what it can be. GNU has long outgrown any individual contributor. I don't think RMS has the legitimacy to tell this group of largely volunteers what we should build or how we should organize ourselves. Or rather, he can say what he thinks, but he has no dominion over GNU; he does not have majority sweat equity in the project. But I don't accept that. GNU is about practical software freedom, not about RMS. [...] I simply state that I, personally, do not serve RMS."
Your comment is the one attributing to others malicious intent:
"Unfortunately, there are activists within the GNU movement, like Andy Wingo, that have done everything they can to have RMS removed from everything he has built."
I don't know why, maybe when you get older (as I do), you start being afraid of being put out of work by younger people (I don't), or maybe you are yourself neurodivergent and weird with people (I do). It is logical, then, to feel empathy for rms. But, factually, rms is not being confronted for his "quircks" or his age.
The way public figures behave, publicly and in their relationship with others as part of their work, has an impact on the culture it encourages. The fact that people express discomfort, fear, etc. when they want to contribute to free software is worrying. I feel bad for them. I see nothing unfortunate here in having people confront someone in power for his behaviour.
I mean, it is 2021, do I need to quote the Peter Parker principle?
---
https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and...
https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-pr...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/heidilynnekurter/2019/12/23/4-s...
https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and...
He says:
"The result, sadly, is that a significant proportion of those that have stuck with GNU don't see any problems with RMS."
Yes, isn't it sad that so many don't see any problems with RMS. What can we do about that? How can we make people see problems with RMS? This is despicable activism.
[1] Why are There so Few Female Computer Scientists (Ellen Spertus, 1991)
https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7040
[2] How to Encourage Women in Linux (Val Henson, 2002)
https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/
[3] What Happens to Us Does Not Happen to Most of You (Kathryn S. McKinley, 2018)
https://www.sigarch.org/what-happens-to-us-does-not-happen-t...
[4] Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing (Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, 2001)
https://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Clubhouse-Women-Computing-P...
One of the responsibilities of anyone in power is to avoid emboldening sexual predators and silencing victims. Anyone in power who does that should be called out; and anyone who continues to do it after being called out should be asked to step down.
Let me start by saying that Stallman's words defending Minsky have absolutely been misinterpreted. He did not say that Guiffre was "entirely willing". And given that the age of consent in most of Europe is 16 or below [1], I think it's hypocritical for so many people to be outraged about Stallman saying maybe 17 isn't so bad.
Nonetheless, his defense of Minsky is still problematic. Why? Because in the hypothetical situation he described, Minsky had sex with Guiffre even though he should have seen red flags. (Don't get distracted here by arguing that Minsky did see red flags and didn't actually sleep with Guiffre. That's not the point: Stallman still defended Minsky as though he had.) By defending Minsky, he was indicating to all future sexual predators, "I will try to find excuses to defend your bad behavior"; and to all future sexual victims, "There is no point in coming forward; I will try to excuse the person who did this to you."
Now maybe Stallman didn't realize that's what he was doing; and maybe the reason he didn't realize it was because his brain is wired differently, which makes it difficult for him somehow. If so, we can cut him some slack personally; but it doesn't change the fact that it's harmful to have him in leadership.
It is absolutely fine for young people to consent to having sex with other young people. A minimum age makes little sense there. Very young kids do stupid things all the time, including touching each other's genitals. By some definitions, if two toddlers "play doctor", the older one is somehow a criminal. That seems insane. I remember being 14 and doing sexual things with my 15 year old girlfriend. At that point we were both falling foul of the law. But once she turned 16, she was suddenly a pedophile and a stutory rapist because I was only 15? Again, that seems insane.
Then there's the issue of older people having sexual relations with younger people. This is where things become a lot more complex. It's pretty clear that it's inappropriate when authority figures are involved (e.g. teacher and underaged student). But then that can be inappropriate regardless of age. I can't imagine 14 year old me having been sexually interested in anyone over the age of 30, but that seems entirely arbitrary and subject to taste. I can certainly imagine 14 year old me thinking that my sex life wasn't anyone else's business. Some 14 year olds are more mature than some 18 year olds. Yet the former somehow can't consent to anything, but the latter can consent to sex with anyone aged 16-120+?
Age is a pretty good proxy for maturity on a population scale, but it's a really lousy proxy on an individual level. Perhaps we, as a society, would do well to remember that individual differences can be huge, and that consent is more important than merely the age.
Right, and I carefully worded what I said about it to try to avoid expressing any opinion on the subject. :-)
After some high-profile cases (usually involving minorities and disapproving parents), some states in the US have corrected this via "Romeo and Juliet Laws".
(Had to look into this due to having a bit younger girlfriend right around that age)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_rape#Romeo_and_Julie...
Yes, exactly.
Pointing out extenuating circumstances of someone's (alleged) bad behavior is necessary and useful. But it should always come second to determining what the person should have done instead, and holding them accountable to push society towards a place where everybody has the responsible behavior by default.
The attitude of "if there's any plausible reason person X might have thought they weren't doing anything wrong, we shouldn't punish them" gives the exact wrong incentives.
Computing can possibly be considered a 'safe space' for people like the above but that has now been dismantled to suit other people. Who owns the safe spaces?
I'm not condoning people being assholes, BTW.
If having to criticize something do it on technical grounds: "This part here is wrong because it's possible to go past the end of the buffer in this case".
I know that some people sometimes post colorful rants on there, but I don't think it adds anything good to the atmosphere, and any time spent on coming up with florid prose could be spent on code that actually does something useful instead.
However it does not, or at least should not, extend to excusing/permitting behaviors that hurt others.
Much human anguish and suffering could be alleviated if we had a greater understanding of one simple truth: "your rights end where mine begin."
On balance, I think RMS is ultimately a person who has greatly benefited the world. However, the stories of people made uncomfortable by his actions and statements are legion and in a more practical sense are detrimental to his cause. How can folks with with/under him when he's behaving in some of these ways? Why does the leader of the FSF even need to be broadcasting his beliefs that Minsky did nothing wrong when he had sex with a 17 year-old provided to him by a child trafficker?
As somebody who (like most folks on HN, probably) is not exactly "neurotypical", I realize that it's part of my responsibility to moderate my own words and actions if I want to take part in society.
You can have a robust and diverse culture in which there's broad agreement that a few things are bad - murder, slavery, sex with minors, etc.
RMS defended Minsky's sex with a minor and perhaps more relevantly if we read the linked articles, it's part of a longstanding trend with him. And he feels the need to push these views on others in a workplace/academic setting, via mailing lists.
His personal blog is presumably a place which you would peruse, if you wanted to know what his personal views on things are, and it was so obscure that seemingly no one knew of it until someone really went digging.
Not only that, but he didn't even make these views with any particular frequency. One was made in 2006. Another six years later. So, a couple of comments he casually tossed out over decades, in a place where he would have expected few to ever see it.
To be clear, I don't agree with many of his opinions (some suggest he might have worded his opinions really, really badly, and might mean something else), although I agree with one original blog post he referenced, where child porn laws have become so stretched they're being applied in places they were never originally intended to be.
Like someone recording evidence to provide to the police of their children behaving in an overtly sexual manner which could be an indicator of abuse, arresting someone for a drawing which is a serious waste of police resources, the risk that someone can't reference historical images like the one from Vietnam, and so on.
On the mailing list, he responded in a literal fashion taking the premise that Minsky had been misled. Unfortunately, it was poorly worded. If he had simply said that, rather than going on about her "presenting herself", or the other utterances, then it wouldn't even be a story.
Even given this generous interpretation, RMS' poorly chosen words are still rather egregious.
Specifically he misses the forest for the trees. A fundamental duty of adults is to make sure that our sex partners are (a) of legal age (b) truly freely consenting without coercion.
One can think of various circumstances in which one might reasonably make such a mistake in good faith. However, somebody's private... child sex island is not one of those places.
Even more importantly, RMS neglects even some sort of token recognition of the actual victims of Epstein's trafficking. Hint: Minsky is not one of them!
Just because you're autistic doesn't mean you're not responsible for the things you do or say.
I've also been vocally against RMS's particular brand of outreach as being incredibly alienating of the people whose opinions he actually needs to address. Admittedly, if he does have autism there's a ton of things that start to make sense, speaking from my own experiences with and around it, but I can't actually find a reference to any confirmed diagnosis from him. He's said he "suspects" as such, and I might as well, but it doesn't really help as neither of us are trained professionals. That being said, from my experience with autistic folks and what I know about him, it's not super surprising that he wouldn't get himself actually diagnosed or checked.
> publicly sharing that private medical information
Are we gonna side-step the fact that he's publicly stated in several interviews that he suspects that he's on the spectrum, or nah?
> make you start treating him as an actual human being
In what way have I not?
Publicly speculating about medical diagnoses, for one thing.
[1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2551458/asperger-s-oxy...
How dare you.
So if your friend was accused of heinous crime, the right thing to do is to distance yourself as far as possible?
Because you did not feel bothered by him you assume no one has a right to it?
And justified or not, there was real harm done to the reputation of FSF.
Because minimizing harm is nothing bad as far as I am concerned.
If you believe your friend has committed a heinous crime (assuming this isn't just a quote "crime" but actually involves heinous harm to others), the right thing to do is support your friend as a human being and support and encourage them to take accountability for the harm they've done and try to repair it, and either way support what is necessary for them to be taken out of a position where they can continue to do harm, while trying to make sure your friend is okay too (as far as still having a roof over their head and food to eat and emotional support and dignity etc).
I know this isn't the way our society works right now. It is the right thing to do.
Come to think of it, it's the right thing to do even if the harm is less heinous.
Part of the problem is that our society has taught us that the only choices are a) total abandonment of someone, throw them away completely or b) that "supporting" them means helping them deny the harm they've caused avoid any consequences and continue to do harm.
Neither one will work to reduce the amount of harm done or build a culture where we can be human.
Also worth noting: Minsky was never actually accused of anything. His name came up in a case and the press & twitter hordes went on a rampage. That's what Stallman was reacting to. It really bothers me that the press outlets that went with "Famed AI Researcher Raped Children" aren't even being discussed, but the guy who said "Did he really, though? I think we should wait for more info" was (and still is) being dragged over the coals for it, even after he was vindicated.
Your statement (think about it) is a non-sequitur: I did not reject kindness, I just set an order. Think about mafias.
And I did not advocate violence, at all.
Richard is argumentative about his bad behaviour. He's not oblivious. Plenty of people have spoken to him about it. You'd think he might take a hint after being removed from his own organisation and all the surrounding commentary. He doesn't care.
(Separately, "techrights" is run by an obsessive troll who harasses people in the FLOSS community.)
I'll generally excuse people who are trying to do the right thing. Richard is trying to do the right thing. If you don't, you'll do very badly in other cultures. By US standards, most cultures do things which are extremely abusive or neglectful (and vice-versa).
I will also mention autism is a psychological term defined in DSM, not a self-identity term. Many people who are autistic don't believe they are, and vice-versa. It's not a personal choice.
I understand within your cultural frame and value system, ethical behavior is defined with regards to other people's comfort. That's not true for Richard (not for the culture I was born in, for that matter; I don't much care if people around me feel comfortable, nor if they make me feel comfortable, although I do know how to code switch, and do so in professional settings so as to be successful in the US).
Cross-cultural fluency involves being able to interact with people with different value systems. People in the Middle East, China, or Russia will have very different views of what the right thing is from yourself.
I've almost never met a person who tried as hard to do what *they* (not you, not me) believed was right as Richard.
Using cross-cultural fluency to defend Richard Stallman, who doesn't care one iota about cross-cultural fluency, and constantly embarrasses people inside and outside his own culture, is weird.
From within Richard's cultural frame, he's doing the right thing in both the large and the small.
Making people feel uncomfortable, embarrassing people, and otherwise are perfectly valid tactics for achieving change in many cultures; just not the one you're from. The extreme emphasis on politeness is very Western (although many Confucian cultures have something similar in the concept of face).
And although it might seem weird to you for me to be making arguments from cross-cultural fluency, Richard would be a hypocrite if he were making an argument from cross-cultural fluency, but he's not, and I'm not Richard.
I've made the same argument to Americans acting inappropriately in all sorts of countries, even though in many of those cultures neither had (not, often, valued) cross-cultural fluency. I'm sorry, but you're being wrong in both the large and small things, just as much as an American in Iran or Japan expecting everyone to behave like them, and talking about how people are either jerks or overly generous when they behave differently, or when Americans talk aabout how cultures have bad attitudes towards children/women/education/civil rights/etc., or are just plain weird.
If it makes you feel better, Richard is verbally hostile towards men too. The "verbal abuse" is equal opportunity.
And all that said, a lot of immigrants get fired in the US for what's perceived to be inappropriate cultural behavior here. African Americans too, for that matter. Many communication styles are perceived as verbally abusive within US culture. That doesn't make it right.
This doesn't seem consistent with the commonly accepted meaning of "comfortable." By their very nature things that make someone uncomfortable are things they care about. If they truly didn't care they would not experience discomfort.
Are there really cultures where inflicting suffering on others is not "within their cultural frame and value system"?
Yes!
* Consider treatment of children in Korea, where kids are forced, by their parents, to study 16 hours per day.
* Consider tactics used in many resistance movements against oppressive governments in Slavic cultures (and similar tactics recently adopted by oppressed African American communities in the US), which are explicitly about making people feel uncomfortable about wrongs.
* Consider Spartan culture (or any other macho culture). Even in the US, why would Marines do the things they do?
* Consider historical Catholic culture of denial and self-sacrifice.
* Consider "drink from the firehose" culture at elite tech schools like MIT.
* Heck, consider the way many cultures temper kids to be resiliant to discomfort (e.g. dipping in cold water in parts of Eastern Europe)
... and so on. Contemporary progressive Western culture is almost uniquely focused on concepts like fun and personal comfort.
The way your comment conflates "comfort" with "things they care about" is an example of that.
Broadly speaking, Western culture is also (both currently and historically) more focused than most other cultures on surface politeness. "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" is an middle/upper-class WASP concept. In China, if you're fat, you'll get called fat. That's not uniquely US (Japan is even further in that direction), but it is a place a lot of people have to code switch in the US, since the US (with a few other countries, like England, Germany, and Japan) are outliers there. I can't raise my voice in a professional middle-class US workplace. I can do a lot of things on international conference calls (to the relief of both sides!) which would get me instantly fired in the US.
It's a signalling and oppression mechanism too; if a construction worker learned to code but didn't learn to code switch US cultures too, they'd likely never achieve socioeconomic mobility. Google would say they're an aggressive, sexist, white male (or if not white, at the very least, not a "culture fit"). It's how I let you know I'm part of your in-crowd.
Fortunately, I can code switch now!
> By their very nature things that make someone uncomfortable are things they care about. If they truly didn't care they would not experience discomfort.
You're conflating two different things (which are deeply conflated in US culture, so this isn't a comment about you). I'll give a couple of examples:
* I care about personal growth. Personal growth requires discomfort. Whether that's grinding through a complex math text, learning to code switch through immersion in a different culture, being told I'm wrong, or otherwise.
* My girlfriend has a mental health issue. She cares about resolving it. US culture has conditioned her to "manage" it by seeking ways which avoid "triggering" situations. As far as I can tell, that's leading to a spiral where it's getting worse. In my culture, you'd do the opposite; you'd seek out those situations to habituate to them (which is exceptionally uncomfortable).
All those cultures have a goal in mind when inflicting discomfort. Does Stallman?
Yes, making someone feel uncomfortable is considered bad everywhere, but in many parts of the world, it's the same kind of bad as using the wrong fork to eat your salad in the US. No one cares. No one will argue it's not better than using the Right Fork, but whatever. (And yes, there are cultures where eating etiquette and ritual is super-important).
That's even true in parts of lower-class US culture. If I'm on a construction site, and there are two workers:
- One is impeccably polite, and never makes me uncomfortable
- One always helps me out in a bind; if I need a shift covered, or my family has an emergency, but goes out of their way to tease everyone
Guess who'll be preferred? It's the opposite from elite British society (which the US descends from), where I can conquer your country and exploit your people so long as I'm polite and don't lose my temper.
And yes, different types teasing and other ways of making people intentionally feel uncomfortable for NO reason are parts of many cultures, and no one cares.
As a footnote: As far as I know, Stallman does have a goal in inflicting discomfort: he is advocating for a particular set of social changes. Is that an effective way to do it? Probably not. But no one's perfect. Stallman works from first principles and kind of ignores prevailing culture.
Upthread someone made a pretty convincing argument that he has no idea what he's talking about on that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26537802
Let's not pretend that people are even mad at him for anything he did. It's just journalists contorting facts to make a good story, and Silicon Valley's inability to discern truth.
If he'd ever showed any sign that he wanted to improve people might be a bit more tolerant. He's had years to put support in place, and he's declined to do so. He keeps blaming lack of understanding on other people - [I'm sorry you misunderstood what I said, vs I'm sorry I said what I said].
And now we have dozens of people who describe the harassment and aggression they faced when working with him.
People defending RMS on HN want it both ways: when allegations are made these people will say "it's unfair to put this in public; complaints need to be dealt with in private". But then when we're trying to talk about RMS's behaviours those same people will ask for huge amounts of detail in order to litigate the accusations.
It's an inconsistent approach that's driven by defending RMS rather than wanting to find out what the truth is.
Stallman was pressured to resign from the board and MIT because of some of these controversies:
- Jeffrey Epstein coerced one of his victims to have sex with Marvin Minsky. In an online thread, Stallman argued that this might not be sexual assault if Minsky didn't realize she was coerced.
- 10 years ago, Stallman claimed that 14 year olds are old enough to consent to sex and it's not pedophilia. He since retracted this claim
- He is generally very weird and doesn't have etiquite. For example, he was invited to a fancy restaurant and then pranced around the tables because he wanted to dance
Overall, Stallman is very unaware of societal expectations, so sometimes he says things ranging from non-PC to outright sexist, albeit unintentionally.
EDIT: Fixed some inaccuracies
[0] https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/
A character assassination campaign, and nothing more than that.
Nobody is saying we should 'cancel' Canada for having bad laws in the past.
IMO this is a really weak argument.
I just find it frustrating that Stallman is considered beyond reproach, because he wrote something great decades ago, when his contribution in the past 20 years or so was hardly irreplaceable. Almost makes me wonder if he's being held as champion because he is an asshole who can't talk to women without creeping them out.
But he has been a huge contributor to GNU's decent into irrelevance in recent years. As an organization, they're perpetually stuck in the 1990s.
A one-man show with the one man missing made no sense to me.
Meanwhile, the GPL License is more "teaching a man to fish", and I think the software written and protected by this license has grown, both in importance and coverage.
Lots of people are "getting it" as we clearly see how "our" phones and computers are really not living up to their promise.
I agree, but this reason, alone, is enough for him to be off the board. Maybe his time has passed, maybe free software has grown into something larger than he has vision for, maybe it grew in a way incompatible with his vision.
Stallman should have given up GNU long ago to someone better, but he’s much better at advocacy which is what the FSF does.
GPLv3 basically forced the embedded Linux community to dump the GNU userspace in favor of Busybox. That's a lot of active developers who stopped using and contributing to Bash, Coreutils, and a whole host of other projects.
RMS propelled free software forward in the early days, and should be remembered as a visionary. It's been downhill for GNU since 2008 though, and that's a trend I'd love to see changed.
As a consequence of this, you can't have signed/encrypted firmware unless you provide your users with the private-keys.
You also basically can't stop people from inspecting/modifying any secret-sauce parts of your design, at least not without jumping through an awful lot of hoops. Because if your users must be allowed to install a modified version of Bash (for example), then all bets are off for what they'd insert to get access to the rest of your filesystem.
Lots of companies have IP that they want to protect. Maybe it's DSP modelling plugins that your engineers wrote. Maybe it's programs that access private APIs on the company servers. Maybe there's shared firmware across products in a feature-differentiated product family. Maybe there's a legal requirement that customers can't modify your firmware, for something like FCC or FAA compliance. None of these kinds of models are feasible if your users can modify your rootfs. So in essence, it means your product can't include GPLv3 software if you also want to ship IP that you need to protect.
When GPLv3 was released, the FSF basically pushed it onto every GNU package. Which they could do, as owners of the copyright on all code in all GNU-managed projects. So that means bash, coreutils, make, bc, find, grep, sed, gawk, libtool, gpg, gzip, tar, wget, etc. And also more subtle items like readline, which finds its way as a dependency into all kinds of things. This essentially meant that all of it became verboten for lots of developers to include in their products, forcing them to move to alternatives like Busybox.
He really doesn't like it.
It’s clear he has a vision for the GNU software, but the development process itself is chaotic and needs more central guidance on a policy/process level—but he tries to lead it on a more technical/maintainer level.
One example is the glibc/emacs unexec discussion. He stepped in to meddle without enough knowledge of the relevant teams, in order to solve an issue that would have been avoided with a more explicit policies in place about the relationship between different GNU projects.
Having a vision is not enough, there are a lot of other things you need to do right in order to lead a project like that.
https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/blogs/lxo/2021-01-10-resignati...
https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/blogs/lxo/2020-12-19-leadershi...
Also, frankly, there is a point at which, certain behaviour might make you feel uncomfortable, but that does not mean it is grounds for firing that person. At some point you have to just fend for yourself and tell the person to fuck off. We cannot just fire anyone who has some harmless quirk that you don't appreciate. I myself have to work with loads of people with nasty behaviours, but I don't presume to demand they all get fired just because of that.
I mean, this has gotten ridiculous. We went from "he grabbed me by the pussy" and "he jerked off in front of me" to .... "he once hit on me and I had to reject him". The latter is perfectly normal behavior unless you propose we criminalize being a man.
The only reason their brain lobes are still attached together is because they know that they're being deceptive and it's part of an agenda.
It's not possible for a rational, cohesive mind to believe that a person who dedicated his whole life to free software is a bad person just because he once said something without thinking through it.
It's not possible for a rational, cohesive mind to
believe that a person who dedicated his whole life
to free software is a bad person just because he once
said something without thinking through it.
1. Few if any are claiming RMS is "a bad person" in totality. While I realize the internet is no place for nuance, please understand the question is about whether somebody who's said these things is fit to lead or represent an institution. You can disagree or disagree with that. But please understand that is the question, not "is Richard Stallman a bad person." I certainly don't think he is.
2. "once said something without thinking through it" -- unfortunately this displays a spectacular misunderstanding. These are multiple things said over multiple years on mailing lists, his site, and so forth. Additionally, RMS's communiques are... well, they are not off-the-cuff. I've read reams of his statements over the years. They are the writings of somebody speaking very very deliberately about things he has reasoned through in very deliberate ways according to his beliefs.
I used the word 'believe' for a reason, it's people's beliefs who drove him out in the first place. Besides, the term 'stawman argument' makes no sense when discussing ethics or human behavior. This is not math or engineering. These kinds of statements are necessarily axiomatic; either you understand it or you don't. Either it neatly fits into your logical understanding of the world or it doesn't.
I wouldn't write off someone who has done such great things for so many decades when I know for a fact that most people in positions of power today are hypocritical monsters (only difference is that they have good PR teams to manage their public images); you need to put it in perspective.
https://mobile.twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/99426727746...
Among other examples:
“When I was a teen freshman, I went to a buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant in Central Square with a graduate student friend and others from the AI lab. I don’t know if he and I were the last two left, but at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him. I felt bad for him and also uncomfortable and manipulated. I did not like being put in that position — suddenly responsible for an “important” man. What had I done to get into this situation? I decided I could not be responsible for his living or dying, and would have to accept him killing himself. I declined further contact. He was not a man of his word or he’d be long dead.” —Betsy S., Bachelor’s in Management Science, ’85
His social cluelessness is legendary--no one really disputes it. Why it wouldn't be true toward women as well, I have no idea.
I'm sure you will find a way to dismiss this, but there are plenty of stories out there if you look.
>I remember being walked around campus by an upperclassman getting advice during my freshman year at MIT. "Look at all the plants in her office," referring to a professor. "All the women CSAIL professors keep massive amounts of foliage" s/he said. "Stallman really hates plants."
Star is correct: RMS really hates plants, and is afraid of trees.
Anyway, I'm glad we have strong, independent voices in the world, and that not everyone has been brainwashed by sensitivity training.
No "mob justice" happened here. No women came forward and said RMS "hit on them" or whatever. RMS faced criticism for comments which justified rape and were close to victim blaming, and willingly resigned from his position at the FSF because of it. A position I personally believe he could have kept had he decided not to resign (and the fact that he is able to return to it so soon after leaving suggests I am correct).
Edit: I think that several people are placing too much importance on the "willingly resigned" part of my comment downthread. If you believe that RMS was forced out and he had no choice in the matter (i.e. it was "resign or get fired"), then feel free to replace the words "willingly resigned" with "was fired" in my comment (and ignore the last sentence in that paragraph), the point being made still stands.
1: https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman...
2: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/09/17/richa...
3: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard...
4: https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist-ri...
5: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/09/17/computer...
6: https://www.cnet.com/news/computer-scientist-richard-stallma...
In the public mind (even if not in reality) when someone "resigns" because of "past comments", they have either been given an ultimatum - "Jump or be pushed" - or they are experiencing intrusions into their personal life (or there is behaviour from the community that makes this person believe these intrusions are imminent)
My understanding at the time was that it was the former - there were murmurings of possible action against him, and whether it was to avoid harm to the FSF or risk the public damage to his reputation I have no idea, but he decided to gracefully step aside.
So yes, officially you may be correct - but especially with someone like RMS, it is highly unlikely that he just chose to resign because he previously made comments that people didn't like. RMS is very used to making controversial statements and weathering the storm, I find it unlikely (though not impossible) that this was just one storm he couldn't weather - and much more likely that he chose the path of least damage, to himself or his cause or his legacy.
For example ministers of most gov "resign" when they are told to do so, and yes they do resign, even when this is not from their own initiative, and even if they absolutely would not have done it if not told to. For other structures, you can have various kind of pressure playing a role.
We will probably never know the exact degree of pressure and the comprehensive list of who did it, the alliances, maybe the threats etc, and technically it absolutely was a resignation, but given RMS further actions in the GNU Project (that is: not resigning despite additional attempts to leverage his departure from the FSF to make him do likewise here too), I can only say I have my doubt on the total amount of practical freedom he had concerning the FSF part; and it is now probably not just him phoning back and saying: "oh by the way I changed my mind I want to come back", but more likely other "political" and/or alliances changes at the top letting that be even possible.
"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 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. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates…"
If pontificating as to the actual perpetrator of a crime is somehow being complicit in that crime, then I think we may need to overhaul our system of policing and justice for yet another reason.
The concept of statutory rape recognises the difference between informed and uninformed consent. Children can be coerced or persuaded to consent to things they don't understand, and that are not in their best interests; that's why such laws exist.
(only thing would be, that his "voluntary resign" was obviously done with a lot of pressure)
you are going to need to cite that. the only accusations of 'sexual harassment' i have seen are asking women at conferences on dates.
And if it is harassment, I'd probably say it's sexual harassment since it relates to unwanted seeking of romantic or sexual relationships in a professional environment.
And why women feel uncomfortable around such a men? And why it therefore might be a bad idea to have such a person in a leadership position?
I have not seen the sign in person, but been told by people that it was indeed there.
And can you maybe see, how this makes women uncomfortable? And wanting to avoid such a person? And all together .. avoiding the whole group he has a leadership position?
As a result, the new forms of dating are that in order to move forward your risk for "making a move" (be it small or large) is not only rejection but also, apparently, potentially career ending for many (especially public figures).
I'm glad I'm happily settled and far removed from the dating scene. Perhaps my principles are too crass for many but I feel in today's romantic relationships, you almost need to have an attorney with you on a date and notary that can sign off that both parties are going to consent to physical contact before making physical contact or much beyond verbally flirting in the most uninteresting ways leaving both parties wondering if the other is at all interested in them romantically.
I'm not condoning rape or flat out sexual assault, there is certainly a line that should never be crossed, but I think we've been moving that line too far for reasonably acceptable human behavior. Heaven forbid you take the chance of misreading the situation and attempt to kiss someone before also having that notarized by your attorney present.
I can't believe anyone seriously thinks this.
It's bad if you're in a position of power and you hit on someone under your influence - doesn't matter if they would reciprocate or not.
We maybe did. But we are also far from the dystopian scenario you described. I can tell you, in the real world dating still just works fine.
But yes, some behaviours like slapping on some ass, are more frowned upon and called out. Rightfully so.
The times where a woman had to marry her rapist, (this is actually from the bible) are gladly mostly over. But those times were the reason, now it got pushed back too much.
Because there is some unresolved anger left. And being aware of it - can help understand some rections better.
Like the original blog post that started all this. Which many here waved away as a sneaky smear campaign to create attention. Well no, it was a very emotional, honest expressed post. Maybe not really fair in all points, because - emotions. But authentic.
When you are a leader in an idealistic movement and you are incapable of sensing other peoples feelings - before you wave accusations of rape just away - then you are just wrong in that position.
Statistically, you are 3x as likely to meet your future spouse in the workplace than a bar/club.[1]
Let's take a look at the stereotypical man in STEM:
* Looks: Below 80 %ile --> Failure at Tinder[2]
* Socially: Below average --> No romantically successful friends groups to set them up
* Early life: Never cool in school / male dominant peer group --> Still single by the time they graduate
This massively raises the stakes of a workplace romantic encounter, because every other avenue has already been shut in their face.
At this point, "it's only harassment if you are undesirable" is a well known anecdote. So, uncharismatic + unattractive men are basically doomed. The alternative is to fully acknowledge the brutally objectifying nature of it all, objectify yourself and go for obnoxious outward displays of desirability. Ie. "look expensive" and target demographics that value your ability to be gainfully employed and accumulate moderate wealth.
The harder alternative is to hit the gym, learn social skills and actually learn how to be charismatic. This is way harder, especially when society actively ostracizes you. Like trying to make a fish climb a tree.
[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10135
[2] https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...
Voluntary suicides are in your pipeline as well, no? Dictatorship sure doesn’t innovate.
It's a shame that his words are being twisted once again after everything he went through.
MIT gets outed as having numerous researchers who took money from and traveled with a convicted pedophile sex abuser, sex trafficker, and likely financial criminal, and Stallman writes an e-mail that sounds very much as if he's obliquely defending Epstein.
I imagine someone at MIT's communications office having a heart attack. "Oh fuck shut this idiot up NOW!" someone probably shouted.
This wasn't #metoo. This was Stallman embarrassing MIT and numerous powerful people.
I feel sort of sorry for Stallman because it's clear that he's "on the spectrum" or at least is the sort of person who thinks ultra-logically and doesn't understand the irrational power machinations of politics. He felt like he was writing something logical, and he was, but he stepped in a gigantic bear trap that would have been obvious to anyone with any social understanding.
Pro tip: if your institution is enmeshed in scandal, keep your mouth shut unless you are coordinating with your communications department or whomever is in charge of such things. If you do check, 99% of the time they will tell you to keep your mouth shut. If you do open your mouth, even with good intentions, polish up your CV first.
It amuses me that this entire 500+ post thread is about "cancel culture" when that's not what happened at all in this case.
Complete misinterpretation of what RMS has written about. He defended Minsky, not Epstein.
Hell CEOs can be fired for such things... unless they have Elon Musk or Steve Jobs levels of reality distortion fields and cult followings.
It's amazing what defenders of the Critical Theory / Twitter driven cancel culture will defend. Really, victim blaming an autistic person for not having social skills, literally one of the things affected most by their disorder? This is a new low to sink to for you lot.
What's next, you gonna blame an amputee for not running out of the way of a moving truck?
I don't think willingly is the best way to put it. It was more along the lines that he was told there would be consequences and he could avoid them if he resigned.
However, even if I'm wrong, and he really was forced to resign, I don't think it detracts that much from my point that GP is arguing against strawmen like "fired for hitting on a women and being rejected" that are completely unrelated to RMS's case.
He could say "I previous thought the word sexual assault meant the word assault added a qualifier that required the application of force or violence, but I now know that the word assault in this case mean a legal definition that also includes negligent to seek consent and absent of intent to cause harm.". Would that change the media perception?
https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...
And we say that's "decades of poor behavior"!
80% of the population says random stuff that is a 100x worse at parties.
It this article is not an impersonation, it is pretty sad that such self-righteous and intransigent statements come from a Gregorian friar:
Just because one system is broken, doesn't mean that we have to replace it with another broken one.
If you are a superior to the person in question, I don't agree that it's normal behavior. In that case you put that person in a very tough position. Same for teacher/student.
That's also why a lot of companies have a policy against that. Notice how I didn't specify the genders, since it doesn't really matter.
I consider prisoners and children/mentally unfit taboo. The rest is human and not per se bad or to be forbidden. Obviously some setups carry more risk.
But I still see a problem with making a move onto a subordinate, which can put that person in a very awkward position. Same way as you don't hit on your friend's partner. Some people are just off limits. If they want something, it's up to them to make the first move.
Richard Stallman attempt to defend Marvin Minsky's involvement with Jeffrey Epstein was offensive. CNet[1] has a recap of the email thread (I believe Motherboard first reported it[2]) if you are interested in the details. The part highlighted by CNet was this:
>Stallman's resignation comes just days after Motherboard published an email thread in which Stallman suggests that "most plausible scenario" is that one of Epstein's underage victims "presented herself to [former colleague Marvin Minsky] as entirely willing."
>When someone else on the thread points out that Virginia Giuffre was 17 when she was forced to have sex with Minsky, a pioneer in artificial intelligence and founder of the Media Lab, Stallman argued that "it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17."
In my opinion, this is very different from someone claiming that Stallman "made them feel uncomfortable".
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
[1]: https://www.cnet.com/news/computer-scientist-richard-stallma...
[2]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scient...
That is to say, if a 16yo had sex with an adult in Niagara Falls, ON where the age of consent is 16, then no moral crime had been committed, but if the two crossed over to New York where the law states 17, then the elder of the two is a rapist in your eyes? I believe that's the point Stallman was trying to make, and I'm curious to hear if you dsiagree.
2) At least two eyewitnesses, including Minsky's widow, claimed that Minsky turned down Epstein's girl. He only took money from Epstein back before it was widely known that Epstein was a perv. At what point do we say "let's not drag Minsky's name any further through the mud"? Should we disbelieve these accounts because #BelieveAllWomen? Should we assume that Minsky did in fact have sex with Epstein's girl because of a "context" in which Minsky's friends and associates are known, or thought, or assumed, to have done likewise? Should we adopt a Wikipedia-like standard of evidence wherein the abridged, quoted out of context, sometimes heavily distorted press accounts are considered more authoritative than reports from people who were there?
It seems like you're offended by his opinions to the point that you think he should be removed from his career - which also has nothing to do with the subject of the comments he made.
I'm also glad you posted his specific comments so that people can see what all this drama is about - instead of the vague name-calling.
On the surface, his two comments seem at least rational - even if I don't agree with them. Is it "moral" to define the same act as "rape" depending upon which country it occurs? That's a pretty reasonable question. Is it plausible than the victim in the case above "presented herself" as willing? I don't know - that's plausible I suppose, isn't it?
What's so heinous about these comments that you think he should have his career destroyed?
I challenge this assertion. I think mob justice would still exist even if we had omniscient judges who could administer perfect justice in every scenario.
Mob justice is intoxicating. Mob justice is exhilarating. Mob justice can make you feel "a part of something" or "making history". Cancel culture extends far beyond sexual harassment. Mob justice is not about justice for most of the people in the mob. It's about wielding power over your peers. It's about squashing your ideological opponents from a position of faux righteousness.
I hate having to write this. But this is one of the biggest examples of fakenews out there that “our side” is ok with because we want to be lied to.
As awful as he was, not a single woman ever actually accused Trump of this. His statements were off record to in discussion about how women react when you are famous.
We didn’t even go from “he grabbed me by the pussy”. We went from the actual quote ”and when you a star, they let you do it, you can do anything... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything”. [0]
If we’re going to call out fake things and being intellectually honest about accusations and “canceling”, let’s start close to home first.
In a deposition, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims said Epstein he instructed her to have sex with with the late Marvin Minsky of MIT.
RMS jumped to Minsky's defence, nitpicking about whether whether this could really be “sexual assault,” since the young woman, he reasoned, would have seemed to be presenting herself to Minsky willingly.
Whether or not, you think Stallman deserved the level of aprobium that hit him, it's nothing to do with accusations against RMS himself that he made anyone feel uncomfortable. Or "he once hit on me and I had to reject him"
And then you have the temerity to include, in this masterpiece of misdirection, the question: "Why are women always presumed to be innocent and men always presumed to be guilty?".
I recall https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-pr... happening at the same time as the FSF incident, which fortunately didn't pan out.
It felt to me that we were attempting to purge a man from his life work, for...What? I'm still not sure, a vague allegation of alienation of a hypothetical future user base.
I found the whole thing distasteful, and moved away from guix as a consequence. I do in earnest hope they rescind their statement - if nothing else the timing of it was terrible, like they were jumping on a bandwagon.
This does not extend to some or many of his other expressed views and behaviors outside of the realm of software freedom.
There are many invididuals in the Free Software world that backstabbed RMS and tried to destroy him with malicious character attacks. Here is one example:
https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and...
Has Andy Wingo apologized?
I'm not sure I understand your logic. It seems to me that we should be wary of our impulse to be protective of people whose principles we support. We often don't want to hear about the problematic things those people do.
Frankly, Stallman has been a boat-anchor to his own cause more than much else for a while, and he is IMHO a vile little imp; his poor hygiene, both physical and emotional, and his chronic id-salving, went through their mileage before the current millennium started, let alone a few decades in.
The social hygiene movement represented a rationalized, professionalized version of the earlier social purity movement.
People here think he must be autistic and hard to work with because he's ugly and old and dirty.
Maybe you (the collective you) should actually stop assuming that dirty people are incompetent.
GNU software absolutely has been stagnating for the past 2 decades under Stallman's leadership. It is a little known fact that in 2005, there was an offer to merge the LLVM project into GCC, and assign the entire copyright to GNU. The patches to do so were even submitted. [0]
They were rejected [1], because GNU wasn't interested in producing a modular compiler. They thought that if the compiler was allowed to be modular, then it might be used by proprietary software behind their backs.
But it turns out that modular compilers are generally quite useful, even for huge quantities of FOSS software. So the LLVM project continues, outside of GNU, and here we are 15 years later and essentially all academic research, and all new tooling development, happens in the LLVM ecosystem. Massive self-inflicted wound.
And yet, the stonewalling [2] and bridge-burning [3] [4] continued, long past the point of rationality. Continuing to object to development of useful tools even after the damage was done. At this point, just pissing off a lot of people who were interested in doing the work to help improve the usefulness of GCC.
And not limited to this topic, either. Such as when Stallman decided to leverage his "veto power" in opposition to removing an abortion joke from the glibc manual, against the consensus of nearly all of the glibc core team, despite not having contributed to glibc himself in years. [5]
And if I was interested in continuing to dig through mailing list archives, I could probably pull out a bunch more examples.
[0] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU4MzE
[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-02/msg00...
[2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-01/msg00...
[3] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-01/msg00...
[4] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-01/msg00...
https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2005-11/msg00888.html
https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2005-11/msg01112.html
Even within active GNU projects, this egregious incidence of mismanagement is still not widely known, although many maintainers of active GNU projects have their own stories of when Stallman's ignorance of a subject led him to make poor decisions.
For at least a decade, his near-total ignorance of how people (billions of them!) use computers has been encouraged and deepened by the sycophantic acolytes who encourage him to ignore developments in computing, like the ostrich with its head in the sand.
All the while, the FSF and GNU can do less and less for the users who are stuck living in the dystopia that he predicted in the 80s and 90s.
It's as if, after the first time they booted a computer with a fully-free operating system, they declared the work to be complete, abandoning the future.
Can you expand on this point? I don't doubt you, but I'd like to know more.
The LLVM world has moved to a non-copyleft one, with results that RMS maybe considers mixed: on one hand it attracts work (but being non-copyleft is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition, and for ex Linux attracts way more work by being copyleft), on the other hand RMS does not think that helping to create proprietary software based on free software is a good idea (of course the main purpose of a compiler is to compile software, even proprietary ones, but the philosophical issues come when you can make proprietary derivatives of the compiler or parts of it, not merely use it)
In the end, for a supposedly stagnant project, GNU is not doing bad. It is still an essential part of mainstream Linux based systems. It is being actively developed. GCC is moving fast and also attracts lots of work nowadays.
OpenOffice is stagnant. GNU? Not that much.
http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2019/10/15/fsf-rms.html
> I have been silent the last month because, until two days ago, I was an at-large member of FSF's Board of Directors, and a Voting Member of the FSF. As a member of FSF's two leadership bodies, I was abiding by a reasonable request from the FSF management and my duty to the organization. [...]
> For the last two years, I had been a loud internal voice in the FSF leadership regarding RMS' Free-Software-unrelated public statements; I felt strongly that it was in the best interest of the FSF to actively seek to limit such statements, and that it was my duty to FSF to speak out about this within the organization. Those who only learned of this story in the last month (understandably) believed Selam G.'s Medium post raised an entirely new issue. In fact, RMS' views and statements posted on stallman.org about sexual morality escalated for the worse over the last few years. When the escalation started, I still considered RMS both a friend and colleague, and I attempted to argue with him at length to convince him that some of his positions were harmful to sexual assault survivors and those who are sex-trafficked, and to the people who devote their lives in service to such individuals. More importantly to the FSF, I attempted to persuade RMS that launching a controversial campaign on sexual behavior and morality was counter to his and FSF's mission to advance software freedom, and told RMS that my duty as an FSF Director was to assure the best outcome for the FSF, which IMO didn't include having a leader who made such statements.
(Copious internal links evidencing those claims omitted, check the original.)
In my judgement, he has done marginally more good than harm. Under his leadership the FSF has had only limited impact. Mirroring his own behavior, it has instead often wasted money and good will tilting at windmills instead of of effecting change.
I support the ideals of software freedom, but I do not support the FSF or Richard Stallman. He was key to getting the ball rolling decades ago, but has mostly been a distraction and impediment since then. Other projects, such as Debian and Mozilla, have made far larger contributions over the past couple decades.
Many people in the same position would have let their ego take control and keep it under the license they created or were most associated with out of pride.
Every single thing that RMS refused to compromise on has been a weakness for the cause of software freedom. RMS didn't compromise on his technical vision for GNU's kernel, and the HURD barely works today. RMS didn't compromise on allowing GCC to have an IR, and LLVM, a weak-copyleft compiler, has caught up. RMS didn't compromise on his personal unwillingness to use non-free JS on the web and basically decided to ignore the web entirely as a result, and it was basically an abandonment of setting any strategic direction for the free software movement re the web. We have a whole generation of folks who are ready to insist that "open source" means anything on GitHub, license or no license.
We could have had a victorious free software movement. What we got was a cult of personality.
I am a fan of his ideas related to software, and his gift to us has paid me and most of my peers off over and over. Tons of others have added to all that and here we are today.
Personally, I will consider what he says about software, data, IP.
The man is not often wrong. Has a lot to say, and he should be heard.
There are other issues, and that is all quite difficult. Painful. I would say unnecessary, but I know better, save to say I do not see that in terms of bad intent. I do see a very different set of priorities. Not speaking to right or wrong here, just understanding and a desire to move open ideas further along, bolster them to endure.
I sincerely hope everyone involved can help keep the focus where it counts.
I do not plan on speaking to RMS as a person, nor giving his opinions weight outside of computing freedom. Given these times, an RMS, however painful, seems necessary.
I just want the software, data, IP vision to endure, thrive and continue to deliver far more use value than any one contributor adds or user invests. He can really help to do that, and I think he should.
OSS is a beautiful thing.
I remember the first time I heard about GNU. Was profound.
Took a while, and the likes of ESR and others who took the time to write and speak to people like me seeking to grok it all.
Unlike physical goods and services, software can be a multiplier. The whole is greater than the parts. We can, and often easily do, get more than we may give.
These ideas have empowered people all over the world.
And they range from curious, driven people of little means dumpster diving to get going through to others who may want for nothing, all able to pick up the body of OSS code and open data and run with it.
I feel deeply our actions, law, norms, expectations all set now will matter for a very long time.
Getting all that more right than wrong is going to touch pretty much everyone and the potential impacts are profound. The possible futures vary widely, and not just degrees of good. It could all be not so good at all.
Either way, this will all solidify.
Does not have to be bad. I sure hope it isn't.
He seems helplessly lost in the past, before the web, the explosion in javascript, etc. etc.
Old != wrong and or irrelevant
The FSF matters, the ideas matter. RMS is an important part of all that.
Web? Javascript? There is a big world of software out there.
Are the ideas worth it or not?
To me, they are worth some effort. How likable RMS happens to be is an entirely different matter.
And, frankly an excuse I have seen used to dodge a meaningful discussion about the ideas.
My only interest in RMS is related to those ideas, put another way.
("brand" in quotes because it's not quite what we usually mean with that term, but I can't think of a better English word right now)
Others can and should be doing active, mass outreach.
Leader does not have to mean public figure.
Someone has to really mean it. RMS has no peers in this regard.
Maybe the right thing to do here is firm up a 5 year plan, go on a donation drive and fund organizers, who can work the crowds.
> Leader does not have to mean public figure.
> Someone has to really mean it. RMS has no peers in this regard.
This IMHO conflicts, you can't have a leader that you view as "has no peers in this regard" but has no public presence. Having the "weird extremists" (=really mean it) in some corner has some value, but negative perception of other traits hurts their usefulness in that role too.
Which is overall why I think supporting the ideas behind Free Software is best done outside that. Times have changed. If I'm wrong, I'll be positively surprised.
What I did suggest what's a standard effort well-trodden ground to go out and do the public advocacy and Outreach.
And in terms of the ideas the leadership and all of that, I put that in my first comment. I sincerely hope people can keep the focus on the ideas.
Regarding the rest of your comments, they're valid, and solidarity on ideas is hard.
Software Freedom really matters to me. I'm willing to act with others to advance those ideas. I don't have to like some of the people all that much. Neither does anybody else.
And if we map this stuff onto well known politics, political organizing activities, what we've got here is a fight on our hands.
There's an awful lot of money very interested in letting some of these ideas prevail and the really important ones fall by the wayside or be co-opted.
Looking around at our side, the software freedom side, it looks kind of grim. We've got work to do.
And frankly, if enough of us don't prioritize this, do not value it highly, that work won't get done, these ideas die.
All of that is why I could give two shits who is likable or not. What I want to know is who's behind the ideas, who believes in them, who's willing to do work, and what that means, and how I can help.
And on that note, speaking of leadership, those are the things that need solid answers. Or, again, these ideas die.
Forget RMS. Does the FSF matter to you personally?
Why or why not?
If it does matter, I submit the best course of action is to help others better understand.
If it does not matter?
...
It became clear to me that while I agreed with many of Stallman's aims, I disagreed with how he treated people, particularly women. Also, he actively made decisions that, in my opinion, seriously hurt GCC. So I left.
None of that even moves the needle on how high value the ideas are for me.
What we are basically talking about here is solidarity on software freedom.
Acting in solidarity means priorities. This is why I am focused on ideas. Liking people is not as high of a priority as the software freedom is.
To put it bluntly: even my enemies, "those other people" benefit from greater software freedoms.
Having a strong anchor matters. Stallman is not going to dilute things down or be co-opted. Great.
Given the last decade, I definitely value those things highly.
You appear to have other priorities. That is fine, but it is also not about software freedom anymore too.
I'd like to separate two things out. I believe it severely hurts the cause of software freedom to have Stallman at the helm. I think software freedom is bigger than any one person, and Stallman has been, for many years, damaging to the cause.
Do you think "the ideas or Stallman" are more important?
It is my intent to understand.
Edit: and let us be clear we are just two good people having a tough discussion. I just want to understand you and your position better.
I agree software freedom is more than a given person.
So far, I have not really seen the ideas put into question here, right?
One of the originators of those ideas is in question.
And that person has done things others don't like, right? (I think so)
From what I can tell, those things are not about the ideas.
In my original comment, I had expressed my sincere desire for there to be focus among the people involved to keep it all about the ideas.
Not doing that does hurt the cause, because people may find themselves unwilling or unable to be a part of things.
You are expressing that, yes?
Either that focus happens, or it does not, and we shall see.
Re: gcc
Stallman would say, fork it and do one better.
He is not wrong about that, FWIW.
That's the freedom part in play. Does not mean we get what we want. It does mean we can do what we want.
Even if I was willing to work with Stallman, I believe many, many people will not.
If Stallman wished for this to be "just about the ideas", he could have never told jokes about "deflowering female virgins" because they have not used Emacs. I assume he told these kinds of jokes because he hoped it would make him, or the FSF, more popular. He was (in my opinion) wrong.
And they will die because it's just not a priority otherwise. Our opponents know that and absolutely will exploit it.
Solidarity on things is hard. It does require dealing with people we do not like, and it often also requires we accept our enemies, and "those other people" benefit same as we do.
I entertained this chat to see whether similar dynamics are in play on this matter, and they are. I have experience in this from labor politics.
Know when they win? They win with high degrees of solidarity rooted in mutual benefit. They always lose when personal judgement is a higher priority than the mutual benefit is.
Put simply, even the assholes need to pay rent, feed the kids, spend time with family, see the doctor, etc.
If it is more about who is the bigger asshole than it is the ideas, we will be left with a solid understanding of who the bigger asshole is, not a more robust, solid state of software freedom.
Now, that said, don't go blaming Stallman for your own choices. I won't blame him for mine.
He said very undesirable things. Lots of people do that, and it would be better if they didn't.
As painful as all that is, the hard truth of it has nothing to do with software freedom.
I think he can be a ripe ass, frankly. Maybe better choices are in his future. I hope so.
> before the web, the explosion in javascript
The FSF could have been at the forefront, providing support and useful code under the GPL and LGPL. Instead very little web code is under their licences, because their leader won't interact with the modern web.
I teach CS undergrads, and they in the main don't even know what RMS and the FSF are.
FSF cannot write all code in the world, this is relatively small organization. They do provide a lot of support AFAIK and explain how to make your javascript free. AFAIK Discourd forums and Mastodon are examples of free-javascript websites.
RMS can be trusted and depended upon to hold up the idea of free software and lead it. Cancellation mobs and political opportunists cannot be trusted, because they will never be satisfied with their agenda, and because they do not truly care about the foundations of FSF and GNU, and what they stand for.
In short, RMS has already said his piece. The main concern is his control and leadership for the organizations.
Well said. I agree.
Open source software has never been bigger, but the FSF, and Stallman, are nowhere to be seen. I see articles about Linus all the time.
I've seen him speak twice, and both times persuaded me mainly he is an awful speaker, and actively put much of his audience off joining the FSF (I saw a talk where he did his famous "it is our holy task to deflower the female Emacs virgins" joke).
And here we are. I find myself thinking about hardware I want to keep longer term.
So this was the original post that lead to RMS resign.
https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21...
Here is a defending one.
https://whoisylvia.medium.com/richard-stallman-has-been-vili...
But there I have a question. Regarding the "Knight for justice (and hot ladies)" sign.
"not the sign about welcoming “hot ladies” on his MIT Media lab office door, which someone else wrote as a joke and which he removed but not before someone took a photo of it"
Was the sign a one-time joke, someone knowingly did, RMS left amused there for a while, days, weeks, months?
Or was he annoyed and removed it once he got to it?
Or was it part of a smear campaign? Even just happened recently at the time of the attacks, or way before?
Quite different scenarios. I suspect the first one to be true. But I am open to more solid facts, for example by someone, who actually was or is at the MIT.
And what should we do about it? Ask him to take it out? Refuse to have him at conferences and universities? Kick him from MIT and the FSF?
We're too quick with our judgment and punishment nowadays. This level of offense used to be normal from the Christian prudes and the scared moms, not the progressive liberals.
To me it would be not such a big deal, but to a pretty, but insecure hacker women - probably yes. As she would then avoid RMS and the FSF. If the FSF is fine with that, fine for them. I am also not joining.
But to me a big deal is, how people are dealing with facts.
Because saying, someone else wrote it and put it up and RMS put it down implies he did not endorse it. People here told me it is fake.
But if he would have left it there for good and only put it down much later after people told him that it is not appropriate... then saying the sign is fake would be lying propaganda to be.
And if someone would have put it there with the purpose of discediting RMS - would tell about about its enemies.
Thats why I want facts. So far I gathered quite some facts about quite some people involved.
But like I said, for all I care, RMS can be total or partial leader of the FSF again. They are not really my crowd anyway, despite myself living and loving open source.
It's great that he's back, but he shouldn't have been gone in the first place. Mob justice ("cancelling") shouldn't be a thing. It's time we had a serious discussion about what we can do to stop this. Step 0 should be finding the courage to stick up for people like RMS in the first place.
Subsequent steps? I'm not sure. We need to collectively get the feeling that it's gone way too far and the costs of sticking up for people like RMS are i) smaller than they seem, and ii) worth it.
I haven't been a fan of the FSF in years (especially after meeting a few of their employees in Germany) but bringing RMS back is the definitive nail in the coffin of that organisation. I wouldn't be surprised if the few reasonable people still working for FSF leave and the org shuts down in a few years because they can't attract talent anymore and their donations dry up.
RMS doesn't need to be on the board to have an impact - he's already well known (for better or worse) and can support the FSF as an individual.
Apparently no one learned anything from the experience, and history will repeat itself. FSF has shown its true colors - a cult of personality around RMS.
Citation?
Furthermore, It's kind of funny seeing some folks defend rms who wouldn't defend him on anything else, particularly on some of his activist stances.
This is a positive sign that maybe we can figure out how to eventually get it right and it won’t just be a circular firing squad getting smaller and smaller over time.
Pretending that these people have any morals past gathering power is as stupid as pretending that the mob burning down your restaurant is your fault for not installing enough sprinklers to put out napalm.
> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
That’s how it goes these days. Attack people you don’t like in power by proclaiming your moral system to be objectively true, regardless of its actual veracity.
Sooner or later, we’ll all realize that there is no truly objective morality and that we all must argue on a level playing field.
Not sure why it would be appropriate then to exclude Stallman from serving on the Board of the FSF while allowing Rafael Reif, for example, to remain president of MIT after sending a personally signed "thank-you note" to one of the most notorious alleged sex-traffickers and convicted child-rapists in US history:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2020/01/12/after-epstei...
Nor would it be any more appropriate to allow Mr. Seth Lloyd back onto the MIT campus:
https://thetech.com/2021/02/25/mit-administration-epstein-op...
What are the allegations against Stallman regarding the aiding and abetting of sex-trafficking and/or child rape?
“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.”
https://thenextweb.com/dd/2019/09/13/free-software-icon-rich...
[1] https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...
[2] https://stallman.org/notes/2019-jan-apr.html#25_April_2019_(...
Suppose some guy (Stallman or not) argues that the age of consent should be lowered to 14. Now you are in your right to oppose to that proposal or even be disgusted by it. What you dont have the right to is to silence and ostracize the guy or even suggest that opinion must have any type of consequence , be it legal or moral.
If a situation involves "exploitation" under the law, as most of Epstein's crimes would be considered to, then it is also automatically illegal.
Also, it’s extremely dishonest of you, and frankly a little contemptible, to keep smearing a man by taking this out of context and failing to also mention where he learned more about the issue and changed his views. This serves no other purpose than character assassination.
Defend him if you want. But let's be accurate.
[1] https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...
[2] https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...
[3] https://stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_January_2...
(Sorry, you're on your own looking for it -- it was on the first page at the time I saw it.)
I read in The Netherlands in the 70s child porn was quite readily available. See also “Chick arrest”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography_laws_in_th...
In this period there were even politicians openly advocating for allowing sex with children on television: https://youtu.be/nSMpAhQRDB8 (Dutch spoken)
It seems to me often the people advocating for allowing sex with children would be left-oriented.
https://timeline.com/children-of-god-5245a45f6a2a
However I believe most decent human beings these days realize sex with children can be very harmful to children.
Perhaps this is a background Stallman grew up in.
And teenagers. My kid's progressive K-12 private school had a scandal recently when more than a dozen victims came forth with allegations that they had been sexually abused by male teachers in the 1970s. Much of the testimony recounts that sexual relationships between male teachers and high school students were an "open secret" around the school, teachers would invite students to parties at their houses, etc.
It was a very liberal school back then too--the fact that it did not generate a scandal at the time despite being an "open secret" tells you about how the boundaries were being pushed in various directions back then. Luckily that turned out to be an ideological dead end.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...
This professional conduct is not political correctness, it is not any specific political stance, it is basic things like don't make sexualized remarks, don't make sexual advances, don't ask for personal favours.
If someone can't adhere to these basic standards it is not clear to me why everyone else in a professional environment should be disadvantaged on their part.
Not sure why it would be appropriate then to exclude Stallman from serving on the Board of the FSF while allowing Rafael Reif, for example, to remain president of MIT after sending a personally signed "thank-you note" to one of the most notorious alleged sex-traffickers and convicted child-rapists in US history:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2020/01/12/after-epstei...
Nor would it be any more appropriate to allow Mr. Seth Lloyd back onto the MIT campus either:
https://thetech.com/2021/02/25/mit-administration-epstein-op...
What are the allegations against Stallman regarding the aiding and abetting of sex-trafficking and/or child rape?
When the Garrets of the World are defeated by facts, it's always a good day.
Sounds like he did not, is the tide starting to turn? Will we stop shaming and cancelling people over a shirt they wear? (was my personal turning point)
This is considerably longer and more detailed than any heretofore described pop singer 'diva' or CEO. I can't think of anyone but heads of state with such requirements.
Stop defending Stallman's 'neurodivergence' as some kind of excuse for his behaviour - this is straight up egocentric narcissism.
[1] https://groups.google.com/a/mysociety.org/g/mysociety-commun...
I like cats if they are friendly, but they are not good for me; I am
somewhat allergic to them. This allergy makes my face itch and my
eyes water. So the bed, and the room I will usually be staying in,
need to be clean of cat hair. However, it is no problem if there is a
cat elsewhere in the house--I might even enjoy it if the cat is
friendly.
CEOs and pop singers stay at hotels, where there is a pretty well defined culture of what is to be expected. It is a much stabler environment than some random free-software style hippie's house. Heaven help the hotel that routinely has cat hair in the rooms, it will not get CEOs and pop stars staying there. And I expect Heads of State travel with chefs and butlers to sort these details out in person from a similarly detailed list. Or stay at a hotel.
I love and support open source[1], but I don’t support all software being “free of cost”.
[1] Not the OSI definition of it.
Note that I said above:
> but I don’t support all software being “free of cost”
Does anyone really support all software being free?
That means developers would have to live like saints / monks, with donations to support themselves (and forgo the the 250k income that's become the standard/median in Silicon Valley today...).
Yeah, none of these would be sufficient to produce all the software that is "needed" or wanted. So, as long as there are people willing to pay for software they can't get for free, all software won't be free.
I support the idea of all software being free, including social changes that would be necessary for that to be realistic, such as serious alterations to capitalism.
I actually have a bunch of friends that I went to college with, who all have PhDs now. Getting a tenure track position is nearly impossible. Also, grants are extremely hard to get. They’re all working either: (1) as postdocs (where there is a grant funding it), or worse (2) looking for a postdoctoral or tenure-track position (or have lost a postdoc position because the grant ran out). These things are incredibly hard to do.
> You can have a job working for a non-software company that lets you produce free software for that company's use that you can also give away, while they keep paying your salary.
If the plan is abolish proprietary software, there’s not gonna be a lot of companies making money selling software, ie making software. So do you mean some hardware company that needs to write some specific software for its needs?
I suppose there could be a world where most/all software is free (in GNU terms), but you’d end up with almost everything becoming web-based SaaS, and that would be the commercial model. (I mean, we’re already pretty close to that.)
Universal basic income requires a tax base of highly productive, and high earning taxpayers. Just look at the economic contribution of software and technology companies. If the government were to take a wrecking ball to that literal economic powerhouse, how significantly would the tax base shrink by?
Stallman and the FSF agree with you; selling software is perfectly OK:
> With free software, users don't have to pay the distribution fee in order to use the software. They can copy the program from a friend who has a copy, or with the help of a friend who has network access. Or several users can join together, split the price of one CD-ROM, then each in turn can install the software.
The type of “selling” that GNU is proposing here is exactly the same as asking for donations (and is a misuse of the word “sell”). Since people can resdistribute the software without limit (and someone is sure to put it up on internet), you “charging” for it is the same as asking for donations.
In addition, things have shifted to cloud, which favors bin corporations even more, and data and code is not even accessible, even theoretically, for the user.
Of course big business is a fan of free software, it enables them to get for basically free, a lot of infrastructure code.
Lawyers and Doctors must absolutely hold programmers in derision for undermining their own economic power.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Your proposal contradicts freedom 0, so the FSF cannot support it without abandoning their mission. To do so is both undesirable and unnecessary, because the alleged "exploitation of software developers" is in most cases just people doing what those developers permitted when they chose to use a permissive license. The correct solution is encouraging developers to choose more suitable Free Software licenses, and the FSF already does this by advocating copyleft licenses in most circumstances. The AGPL especially has strong protections for the four freedoms, which makes it very difficult to "exploit" developers who use it.
I guess you can argue they would have changed it by now but for the subsequent sponsorship. There's no real way to resolve that claim one way or the other.
But it is a coherent philosophy on it's own, it's not some incoherent thing that makes sense only as self-interest of big corporations.
Open source from the start as envisioned by rms and others was about creating software that users could use as they choose, including altering it as they choose and deploying it where and how they want. While they may not have envisioned the economic system that has resolved from that, all the proposals I see on HN for "not letting big corporations take advantage of developers writing open source" are about removing this freedom, making it no longer open source.
So, sure, if some developers don't want to produce work that can be taken advantage of by others without payment, including big corporations -- they can stop producing open source. You shouldn't produce open source unless you want to produce open source. But that doesn't mean the definition of open source is wrong.
I don't dispute the fact that it is coherent, but it is serving the interest of big corporations. Could you explain why do you think it doesn't?
> Open source from the start as envisioned by rms and others was about creating software that users could use as they choose, including altering it as they choose and deploying it where and how they want. While they may not have envisioned the economic system that has resolved from that, all the proposals I see on HN for "not letting big corporations take advantage of developers writing open source" are about removing this freedom, making it no longer open source.
Big corporations shouldn't be treated the same way as individual users, as this is facilitating exploitation. Maybe indeed in the beginnings of FSF this was not thought about, but when big corporations realised this is benefiting them in many ways they started sponsoring the movement to keep the status quo.
> So, sure, if some developers don't want to produce work that can be taken advantage of by others without payment, including big corporations -- they can stop producing open source. You shouldn't produce open source unless you want to produce open source. But that doesn't mean the definition of open source is wrong.
This is a fallacy. This is the same problem as with unpaid internships - you could say if you can't do unpaid internship, you can find company that will pay for your time, but why would companies do that if they can get free labour? This creates disadvantage for people from unprivileged backgrounds as they cannot afford to gain experience through unpaid internship as they have bills to pay and families to feed. That's why in many countries unpaid internships are illegal.
I am not surprised that this idea gets pushed back here, as there is too many people here who wouldn't like coporations they work for to finally start paying.
Not true. The AGPL solves the problem elegantly. IMHO, the FSF compromised its principles by not closing the “running a binary for someone doesn’t count as distributing the software to them” loophole.
Their compromised ethical stance is what has led them to irrelevance.
As it is, GPL is functionally equivalent to BSD licensing for most of the industry (and essentially all of cloud computing).
Nobody's forcing them to license out their software for free. The reason why they do so is simple: they know they won't be able to make a buck off of it if it was commercial (even with the individuals/small company exemption you mentioned), and that stringent terms will only harm adoption of their project. See for instance companies unwilling to touch GPL licensed software, for instance.
From the corporation/executive's view, why would they bother adopting a piece of software that has a royalty system, especially when there are alternatives? For instance, other projects that are permissively licensed, writing it themselves, or paying for a proprietary/commercial version.
That's not the reason why someone would choose a copyleft license of the kind the FSF advocates, like the GPL or one of its variants.
You choose a copyleft license because you primarily care about freedom.
The creator is free to create what they want, the user is free to support them, or not. What you are not free to do is appropriate the "creation" itself.
They obviously want everyone and anyone to use their software and don't care who makes money from it, if its licenced that way. They can licence it so it excludes large corporations, or even demand recompense under certain situations, such as company size.
Your attitude just sounds like you object to large corporations (and their executives) making money from free software. If it's not your software it's really none of your business.
Sure, but rms has nothing but pure comtempt for every big corporation and their approach to software. The only difference is the FSF doesn't have influence over big tech the way it does over hobbyists. This isn't a condemnation of the FSF, but of its marginal position. An alternative perspective is that the principles of the FSF are good, and should be enshrined in law and regulation, much like other freedoms are. We shouldn't make FOSS software less free, we should make big tech software more free.
The FSF views all global people are the "worker" - so rights and freedoms are for people outside the organisation.
So you'd like a workers coop but with a (variable) lesser set of rights that the FSF currently has to everyone else?
I could imagine a closed license that #1 only members of the coop can develop software with that license and #2 only the coop can sell the software. You could optionally allow non members to develop with copy left-like term but not sell their work or the software.
How would you do it?