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Comment by mustafa_pasi | Hacker News Reader

Mob justice is not OK just because women do it. If these women have anything substantial they should make formal reports/complaints, not anonymous vogue statements like, "he make me feel uncomfortable". Cannot believe that one even has to say this. Why are women always presumed to be innocent and men always presumed to be guilty?

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.

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I don't see how this is relevant _at all_ to the linked article. You seem to be taking existing arguments that aren't even related to RMS's case and arguing against a strawman of an extreme version of them.

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.

Don't rewrite history, main reason Richard was pushed out was a MeToo/racism witch hunt against him. He was not the only one attacked on it, most heads of open source projects were also a target at the same time.

Every[1] reputable[2] source[3] I[4] can[5] find[6] (literally just the top search results for "stallman resigns" that have any info about the reason) says that Stallman resigned over his comments defending a fellow computer scientist over his participation in the Epstein scandal. Do you have a reason to believe otherwise?

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...

I think the issue here is that you've misunderstood the politics of these kinds of "resignations".

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.

Even if he really ""resigned"" rather than resigned, I think we both agree the cause was his comments about the Epstein situation, not a "MeToo/racism witch hunt" that I've seen no evidence to support.

I would have liked to personally drive a cattlerod through Epstein's brain, and yet I don't think there was anything wrong with Stallman's comments. How do you square that? Maybe you have not properly characterized the situation.

What "resignation" can mean in the context of such a situation for top high-level people might not be your typical resignation concept for e.g. employees, or even middle management.

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.

This is what he said which some idiotic people have taken for some kind of endorsement of sexual assault:

"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.

I think you and I must be reading that differently and I also think maybe you're forgetting the context of all this. The victims were as young as 11 years old and that was widely known (and surely obvious to the men involved); his comment therefore boils down to "is it REALLY statutory rape if she seems like she's OK with it?" and the answer is, of course, yes. Surely you can understand why people would see that as an endorsement of sexual assault, albeit perhaps coming from a place of absurd ignorance rather than malevolence?

First of all statutory rape is mostly a US phenomenon. In most other countries something either is a rape or isn't. Second, the term statutory rape is engineered to make people stop thinking and short circuit to "rape". Therefore it's toxic. There's nothing wrong with consensual sex between a 19 yo and a 17 yo. However, in the US they will be put on the rapist list and have their lifes ruined.

Your close-in-age example among people who are near the age of majority is quite morally different than an adult having sex with an 11-year-old. Some US states even have close-in-age exceptions to keep cases like your example legal, and the most common age of consent in the US for purposes of sex is 16, although certain states do have it at 18.

Most US states have “Romeo and Juliet” laws that specifically exempt cases like this where the two are close in age but one is past the line.

As others have pointed out, your specific example is usually covered by the legal system and a strawman in this case - Epstein's friends were middle-aged or old men (Minsky himself was in his seventies when he visited the island), so it's a totally different situation.

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.

But it was no vague anonymous - he once hit on me - lynch mob, but very concrete criticism of RMS. Things he said and did in the past - and in the present.

(only thing would be, that his "voluntary resign" was obviously done with a lot of pressure)

one of those criticisms as a i recall was 'he had a mattress in his office' as if this suggested something untoward rather than him sleeping in his office

No. If you go back and look at that accusation, it was that he was propositioning people for sex in the halls of MIT, AND he had a mattress in his office.

> propositioning people for sex in the halls of MIT

you are going to need to cite that. the only accusations of 'sexual harassment' i have seen are asking women at conferences on dates.

That counts as harassment in my opinion if it happens without at least some reasonable reason to believe the women may be interested in dating him, if he persists with a given woman after she doesn't respond with interest, if there is any sort of power dynamic or other coercive context in place that might make the woman feel not free to decline without social or professional penalty (within a community like the free software world this obstacle would often be present in relation to someone like RMS who is prominent within that community), if he makes a habit of propositioning people in professional contexts, or if he asks women out in unprofessional ways like inappropriate touching. If none of these patterns occur, it's probably not harassment, but I suspect he does some of them.

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.

He used to live in his office.

He moved out around 1998.[1]

[1] https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html

Well, but in combination with the sign on his office" Knight for Justice (and hot ladies)" and other remarks he did - you maybe see, why some people might get another idea?

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?

Which apparently was written by someone else who then snapped the photo.

You know that as a fact, or are you providing alternative facts based on what?

I have not seen the sign in person, but been told by people that it was indeed there.

The source is https://whoisylvia.medium.com/richard-stallman-has-been-vili...

Is it bad for a man to hit on a woman?

No. But to hit on any hot women out of principle(like his sign said on his office door) ... is not quite mature behaviour. Also called sexism/macho.

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?

In 2021, yes, it is, or at least that's the set of norms we've created. To be more precise, it's bad for anyone to hit on anyone else unless one omnisciently knows the other party is interested in you and wants to be hit on.

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.

> In 2021, yes, it is, or at least that's the set of norms we've created. To be more precise, it's bad for anyone to hit on anyone else unless one omnisciently knows the other party is interested in you and wants to be hit on.

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.

"but I think we've been moving that line too far for reasonably acceptable human behavior"

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.

It so if the woman isn’t in a position to refuse without risking social consequences. Turning down my boss, mentor, or giant in my field is dangerous for me, because they can ruin me if they wanted to.

Only if the woman feel something she'd prefer not to and ascribes it to that action. Or claims to feel something. Ok, yes, it's bad.

The norms around dating in liberal America have completely diverged from the ground reality.

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...

Honestly I think they went after Stallman because he is a prominent figure and at the same time white, male and not exactly in his twenties.

> willingly resigned

Voluntary suicides are in your pipeline as well, no? Dictatorship sure doesn’t innovate.

Nah, it works better when you make it possible for the monsters and demons to discover the error of their ways and redeem themselves in a voluntary labor camp.

As a woman who, at my 16 was able to fool many men in selling me alcohol and nicotine, was able to interpret RMS arguments properly.

It's a shame that his words are being twisted once again after everything he went through.

I can understand what Stallman meant, but I am not at all surprised at the reaction. This particular case has little to do with him hitting on women around him. This had been happening for decades and most people just rolled their eyes and made fun of him behind his back about it. This had everything to do with MIT's exposure to Epstein.

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.

"... and Stallman writes an e-mail that sounds very much as if he's obliquely defending Epstein"

Complete misinterpretation of what RMS has written about. He defended Minsky, not Epstein.

Yes, but he sounded like he was defending Epstein.

It doesn't matter. He waded into a giant scandal and published something that sounded like he was defending the whole thing. I can't think of a single institution that this would not get you fired from, usually within hours.

Hell CEOs can be fired for such things... unless they have Elon Musk or Steve Jobs levels of reality distortion fields and cult followings.

I like how you managed to victim blame an autistic person for not having enough social skills to avoid an ideologically driven struggle session / witch hunt just now.

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?

On the other hand, I had no trouble convincing people to buy me booze and smokes either, only I was a fat ugly boy

> willingly resigned from his position at the FSF because of it.

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.

It's possible this is true, although I personally suspect if he was willing to put out a statement that said something like (paraphrasing) "I did a dumb thing, I'm sorry, I now understand why rape is bad, and I'll work on being better about understanding why these types of things are bad" he would have kept the position.

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 write out an exact description of what he said and what he has changed his views on, but I doubt people who has seen the media characterization of his comments would be made any happier.

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?

It would change my perception, I can't really pretend to speak for "the media" though.

Nah, that is an optimally bad strategy. Don't concede things you didn't actually say or mean in the hope that it will mollify people, it never works and will only be held against you.

Have you read the comments in question?

> "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.

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.

What about befriending superiors? What if I refuse to befriend them? Wouldn’t they retaliate? Can I mention my favorite sports team at work?

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.

I see no problem with any of those things.

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.

I find it embarrassing that this is the top comment on this post. Not only is this comment mostly incoherent, it's pretty far from the facts at hand. These aren't hard to find, you can search Google or read the paragraph on Stallman's Wikipedia page.[0]

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...

Just to be clear, are you saying that you disagree with Stallman, that we _should_ morally define rape depending on the country it was committed in?

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.

The commenter is saying that the poster perhaps deliberately mischaracterised the actual complaints against Stallman to belittle the complaint and that's embarrassing.

This is even worse. So this is not about he did something? Just he voiced his opinion on something?

Do you even mob justice bro?

1) Stallman was attempting to morally distinguish sex with a minor who was being coerced by a third party with rape or assault. He wasn't saying that the former is right, only that it's less bad than the latter, and that the distinction is important. You can say "he shouldn't have approached such a radioactive topic" but the moral philosopher in Stallman compelled him to; not addressing it meant conceding defeat to people who conflate less bad actions with worse actions for their own gain. For example, to name one closer to Stallman's wheelhouse: conflating copyright infringement with theft. Or piracy. The very fact that sexual offenses are radioactive provides ample opportunity for information and context to be lost about the nature and severity of a deed, and this has dire real-world consequences for people. People end up on sex-offender registries for life for relatively innocuous offenses like peeing on the side of the road or being that weird kid who tried to kiss a girl in his elementary school class. Do you think the report of the offense will say "oh yeah, he was a weird kid who didn't know how to act appropriately around girls back in the fifth grade, but a talking to from the principal set him straight"? No, it will say "INDCNT ASSAULT, VICTIM UNDER 12". What do you think that means to anyone reading the report? Like a neighbor, landlord, or employer? That's why these moral distinctions are important.

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?

I'm trying to understand what you are accusing him of... but I don't actually see any actions or conduct towards real life individuals.

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?

This was not mob justice. There was decades of poor behavior here, he wasn't pushed out because of this singular event.

https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...

Yet some other women defend him, including Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU. https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web

So 0.0001% of his messages, most of which were said at a time when the Internet/Usenet was an innocent substitute for the local pub, are offensive to some.

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:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bushnell

Anyone that has worked for/closely with the FSF or with GNU leadership knows that RMS has a long history of bad behavior across a number of facets. Leaving aside controversial public statements, he was not a good President and I'm glad he's not anymore.

What you are saying here would get you cancelled 100 times over if you were a public person, sadly.

It goes to show that it's not regular people who create 'cancel culture'. It's the financial elite. They do it as means to push forward a financial agenda. If those who orchestrate the cancellations were who they portray themselves to be, the hypocrisy would be brain-splitting.

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.

I think some cancellations are driven by powerful people but I'd say most are definitely organic.

    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.

Multiple strawman arguments in the same sentence.

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.

>> Few if any are claiming RMS is "a bad person" in totality

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.

Enter the cartoon with a banker with the mob outside all "occupy wall street" on the phone with his PR firm, instructing them to the tell the mob "what identity politics is".

Once upon a time there was a dude with such an attitude and he became a president. Edit: And his story is not over yet. Apparently.

Yeah, being rich is a great insulator. But RMS isn't rich.

Trump? Clinton? Kennedy? Johnson? I suspect that the shorter list would be the list of non-womanizing presidents.

I think that's true and it definitely shows how cancel culture only hurts some people but doesn't hurt others that much depending on their wealth and their influence. That said, really add to the discussion for others who aren't that powerful relatively.

They tried to impeach him twice!

They did impeach him twice.

The difference is, in American politics there are two very distinct polarized sides, and the one he was running for doesn't really care about this kind of thing very much. It's much worse when your own side is the one "cancelling" you.

Hear hear! We as a civilization have an organization for dealing with these kinds of issues, its called the police. If assault happens, immediately go to the police and report your issue. Watching non-law enforcement agencies get involved in criminal matters has been an utter clusterfuck.

I would entirely agree but police also have a horrible track record when it comes to these things. The mob justice happens because the cops can’t be trusted to do justice, and haven’t been shown themselves worthy of that trust for generations when it comes to sexual assault. (Sometimes the cops themselves are the ones doing the assaulting!)

Does mob justice have a wonderful track record? Just because police and justice system are not perfect doesn't mean that the "alternative" is the one that should be considered right.

I think mob justice has a horrible track record! I think it happens because the public has lost all faith in police, which is equally horrible.

Yeah. Unless cops are all saints we should rely on mob justice.

For the record, I disagree with mob justice! I just also disagree that cops can be relied on right now for sexual assault cases. Currently, there is no real fair place for sexual assault victims to reliably receive real justice, and that is a tragedy in of itself.

We should not - it's a dangerous idea which gets people's lives destroyed. "Innocent until guilty" is an important concept which mob justice often forgets which causes a lot of damage.

Just because one system is broken, doesn't mean that we have to replace it with another broken one.

Why are you mischaracterising this? Complaints that "he make me feel uncomfortable". Isn't the reason he ran into problems.

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 wonder why some people draw such ire and others don't? For example, I'm surprised Charlie Munger hasn't been canceled yet. That old dude says whatever the hell he likes and DGAF.

Anyway, I'm glad we have strong, independent voices in the world, and that not everyone has been brainwashed by sensitivity training.

I agree. On the racism side of the cancellation coin, you have ordinary people canceled for citing the preeminent scholar on the efficacy of nonviolent protest (who also happens to be black) and Tweeting an interview in which a black man expresses concern over black-on-black crime; however, you have the Canadian PM going around in blackface so often he can’t even keep count by his own admission and he’s regarded as basically a lovable goofball darling by the cancel culture folks while the others are “literal Nazis” or something. Mob justice isn’t great at assessing guilt or determining proportional sentences, but some people will defend it to the death.

Mob justice only exists because regular justice is not effective against sexual harassment. Victims have no other choice than do "justice" publicly. Fixing the justice system is the best solution. Only then we can cancel cancel-culture.

> Mob justice only exists because regular justice is not effective against sexual harassment.

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.

Were there any allegations of him doing unwanted flirting? This post seems to be conflating rms' cancellation with other people's unwanted behavior.

His inappropriate behavior toward women is well documented. One example where women traded advice on how to keep him away.

https://mobile.twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/99426727746...

This is hearsay...if it is well documented may be it would help to provide an example of bad behavior from someone who dealt with it directly.

https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...

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.

>Star Simpson @starsandrobots Replying to @corbett

>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.

> We went from "he grabbed me by the pussy"

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.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37595321

It's always fascinating to me that the free speech crowd can't stand seeing people facing consequences for exercising that right.

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