Hacker News Reader

> completely independent of whether he's the best choice as leader for the FSF

It's not independent, you can't just drop the context. RMS the 9-5 software dev at some nameless corporation having this discussion is, while still unacceptable (because the relevant society has decided that it is obvious why sex with minors is harmful), not nearly as impactful as RMS the respected-by-many leader of the free software movement. The clout he has from that position and work makes him influential even outside of the sphere, as well as affecting people who might join the movement but are pushed away because they find his other opinions unacceptable.

That's why we're talking about it in this comment thread instead of ignoring it like we do most of the weird takes on the internet.

> I'm also not sure why "inclusive" is a good criterion for FSF leader, it seems like just a hollow shibboleth buzzword at this point. People who harp on "inclusion" are usually the most interested in exclusion.

The paradox of tolerance explains why it might feel like being inclusive of many groups of people involves exclusion.

I appreciate your thoughtful reply.

I think the problem in it with respect to mine lies here: "because the relevant society has decided that it is obvious why sex with minors is harmful"

But it's not obvious who is a minor or when a minor having sex is wrong. I commented elsewhere, but what about two 15 year olds? A 15 and a 20? In some country X where age of consent is 14, vs. in some country Y where age of consent is 18--is there a moral difference? Where is the real moral line that society has decided upon, according to you? 17.375 years?

The Minsky / RMS thing involved this sort of question. The girl was 17.

That was the question RMS asked, but it is oblivious of a way more relevant point: the girl was a victim of human trafficking. Regardless of age a sex slave cannot consent.

Not to mention how clueless you have to be to discuss age of consent laws on a many-thousand person workplace mailing list with teenagers on it.

...right, but you can't look at someone and based on looks end up thinking, "That person is a victim of human trafficking!" in the same way you might look at someone and think, "That person might be younger than 18 [or whatever the local law says]!". It might be possible to blame Minsky for the second thing, but the first seems completely crazy to me.

Um, what? I must be misunderstanding you because rape isn't OK just because the perpetrator has plausible deniability about whether it was intentional. Doubly so when there is a strong case he knew or should have known something something was wrong.

Yeah, I think there's a misunderstanding. Basically, there is no possible way to know by looking at 17-y-o girl at some island party that she has been "sex trafficked". But there is a reason to suspect that a 17-y-o girl is less than 18 by looking...she looks about 17. So it makes sense to consider blaming Minsky for failing on the second thing, but to consider blaming him for the sex trafficking aspect doesn't make any sense at all. Edit: and I should be fair to Minsky's memory, there is no evidence he had sex with the 17-y-o, and significant evidence that he did not.

> because the relevant society has decided that it is obvious why sex with minors is harmful

Society declares a lot of things obviously wrong and most of us never really examine why they are wrong, particularly from first principles. I think being willing to examine and question these kinds of assumptions fosters a very open culture where people aren't afraid to speak up (unlike the other 99% of the world where you live in fear).

E.g. I'm in the same boat Stalman was in that I've never recieved a satisfactory exaplanation from first principles about why mutually agreed (using that term because "consensual" has legal meanings) non-penetrative sexual interaction between a child and an adult is harmful. I've just been told to take it on faith that it causes horrible damage (and ignore the obvious confounders in the "studies"/anecdotes and the surrounding society working hard at placing the victim label on the child, which could easily cause damage itself).

that's completely fair!

but on the other hand some might think that the FSF is becoming one of those organizations were "social indignation" has more importance than "due process" and it might alienate old and new contributors that value that aspect.

Politics is always a trade off, you can't make everybody happy.

> He wants to have a discussion about what makes sex between people of varying ages wrong.

Great, it's an interesting philosophical question. If the issue is so important to him, he should transition to a career in philosophy, or sociology, or anthropology.

However, as a board member of the FSF, a public-facing leadership role, his job is to promote free software and nothing but free software. He shouldn't muddle that message by talking about ideas that are generally taboo in normal conversation. And I don't think it's just the [blue-team elite coastal] public for whom sex-with-minors talk is not regular dinner conversation, or at least I hope it's not.

> Great, it's an interesting philosophical question. If the issue is so important to him, he should transition to a career in philosophy, or sociology, or anthropology.

By that logic, a person without primary job in social study can criticise him for his social behaviour. People are more than just what they work on and everyone has ideas to themselves how society should be including me, you and him and sometimes like to tell the world about this. I generally tend to ignore that, e.g. when a programmer tells how bad trump is or what should be the age for consent in this case. But this doesn't mean there should be anything bad in expressing social opinion publicly.

Agree with you that the discussion shouldn't be part of his job. But there should also be room for him to have a public discussion that isn't part of his job. I don't recall the details, were parts of this discussion on the fsf home page or something?

Not FSF's site that I know of, but there's mentions of these "consensual pedo" stuff on his blog. As he's a visible spokesperson, that means his blog content is part of his overall role, and not something that can be treated in isolation.

I'd also push back on the post further up: It's not a particularly interesting philosophical question, and I don't think pure inquiry is RMS's goal here given his tendency to aggressively hit on women that are completely uninterested in him in contexts where such behavior is inappropriate.

His blog clearly states: "This is the personal web site of Richard Stallman. The views expressed here are my personal views, not those of the Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project. For the sake of separation, this site has always been hosted elsewhere and managed separately. "

That's far from enough.

"As he's a visible spokesperson, that means his blog content is part of his overall role, and not something that can be treated in isolation."

I agree this is de facto the case. It's kind of sad, though, and I don't think the world needs to be this way. There should be a way for an e.g. CEO or similar to have a life and persona outside of a job.

There are various ways to do that. Plenty of famous people manage to figure it out. That's not what RMS was after. He's putting this stuff up on his blog, which he uses for activism, not abstract philosophical inquiry.

"How dare people have opinions on politics or society on their personal web blogs". How is this any different than telling celebrities to pipe down, as if people aren't human anymore once they become famous?

When you have the megaphone of fame in your hand, you can't pretend it doesn't exist. That kind of influence is an enormous privilege, one that nearly everyone that has it has had to chase aggressively their entire careers if not lives. You cannot pretend a celebrity pontificating into a camera that is broadcasting to 100's of millions of people is the same thing as someone's personal weblog that no one ever reads. You can't abstract or generalize to "principles" in that sense over this. Once you're famous you have to own that, or take yourself out of the spotlight. As I said in another comment, there are many famous people who've figured out how to self actualize their lives without attracting attention.

People also make the choice to cling onto famous peoples' words. They could just as well not do that.

> That kind of influence is an enormous privilege, one that nearly everyone that has it has had to chase aggressively their entire careers if not lives.

I don't think RMS did that, and I don't think "nearly everyone that has it has had to chase [it]". Some people do, and others just... become (in)famous in their respective fields. Imagine just wanting to be good at basketball, getting some of level of fame, and then just hearing "shut up and dribble", etc.

> there are many famous people who've figured out how to self actualize their lives without attracting attention

And how does one go about this without e.g. not saying anything at all? Discussing politics or societal ills is -always- going to irk some people. It's really not fair to say that, because someone now has some level of reach, that they have to basically say nothing at all. Why is there no personal responsibility or accountability? I'm going to assume the controversial stance here that people just don't raise children right, to not dwell on peoples' words just because they're "famous". And that is a larger societal issue than celebrities simply having opinions as a human being.

> People also make the choice to cling onto famous peoples' words. They could just as well not do that.

We cannot change the behavior of every person in the world.

But we can change the people who represent the FOSS community to the world.

> You cannot pretend a celebrity pontificating into a camera that is broadcasting to 100's of millions of people is the same thing as someone's personal weblog that no one ever reads.

I'd say it's getting harder and harder to tell the difference.

Who arises to that status is becoming more organic, which is probably a good thing in my book, but access to the top tiers of success/influence remains closely guarded by the people with the power to do so.

People can say whatever they want. If you don’t like someone’s specific critique, tell us why instead just saying it is bad to critique famous people.

Being a public figure has a lot of downsides. Maybe society could, as a whole, be a bit nicer to public figures (and everyone else for that matter). But that is a bigger ask. And it’s not exactly clear how to achieve that.

...yeah, and activism should be an acceptable (albeit insufferable) part of one's non-work persona.

> There should be a way for an e.g. CEO or similar to have a life and persona outside of a job.

It's called private life for a reason: it's not in public.

But when acting as a public speaker and spokeperson you should be acting accordingly.

Weird remarks about age of consent on public mailing lists, or hitting on every young woman at a conference or eating skin from a foot in front of a whole audience are all behaviors that put the whole FOSS movement in a bad light.

Downvoting without commenting... interesting.

I'd love to see what contributions to FLOSS the downvoters have achieved.

No, they were on his personal site where he writes voluminous “political notes”.

The only reason that didn’t create more controversy before is that he is very left-wing politically and so are most power brokers in the industry. So being outspoken about the Iraq war, etc didn’t get him canceled in the same way as happened to the Dixie chicks. If he were a strident Republican I suspect his political notes would have put him in trouble far sooner.

One could certainly argue that as an ambassador for FLOSS he should have avoided all politics on his website, on the other hand i guess it was only the two (very bad) notes on statutory rape that were dredged up later, along with a variety of other material, to justify the campaign against him since the initial Epstein/Minsky related allegation fell apart so quickly.

The former head of the aclu (a woman) defends Stallman and his various positions. The post was shared a lot last month and is a good read about the entire stallman situation. https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web-rms

> He wants to have a discussion about what makes sex between people of varying ages wrong

Wtf does that have to do with free software?

And why does he keep doing this over and over again? There's no smoke without fire

Why are you so obsessed with RMS? There's no smoke without fire.

/s

I'm commenting on an article that made it to the front page and is related to an organisation I deeply care about. Otherwise I wouldn't give RMS the time of day ;)

He was writing those things on his personal web site, before anyone called them blogs.

It has nothing to do with free software, you're right, they are his opinions on stuff.

> He wants to have a discussion about what makes sex between people of varying ages wrong.

That alone makes him unfit to lead anything (among the many other things he's done). I do not want to hear his opinion on this subject.

So do not read his private webpage (which is full of his personal political opinions). RMS clearly separates his free software-related activities and other personal opinions.

The OP is on fsf.org.

But OP does not contain discussion about sex with minors. That discussion was (in the past) on his personal web stallman.org .

Yes it does. It claims the allegations against Minsky are false. That has not been proven and the allegations are highly credible. It's an offensive and stupid thing to say, especially publicly, especially when you're "apologizing".

Innocent until proven guilty? The accusation were neither proven to be true, so what is up with your really flawed reasoning?

The ability to be an effective leader is not a court of law. I'm totally ok calling for someone to step down after they defend statutory rape, in theory and practice (which RMS did both).

> It claims the allegations against Minsky are false.

I don't think he did.

From the post:

"False accusations -- real or imaginary, against me or against others -- especially anger me. I knew Minsky only distantly, but seeing him unjustly accused made me spring to his defense. I would have done it for anyone. Police brutality makes me angry, but when the cops lie about their victims afterwards, that false accusation is the ultimate outrage for me."

yes, exactly.

He was arguing that he was wrongfully accused of rape, because according to the testimony the sex never happened and nobody has been able to prove otherwise (an eyewitness swears that Minsky refused her).

He then added that even if the sex happened, and he had no doubt that it could be possible, the victim was sent to him to act as willing, so that would make it statutory rape, due to the age of the girl (unknown to Minsky at the time).

He was contesting the legal semantics, not the fact per se.

More importantly, he was talking about it on the mailing list of MIT in response to this

“deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims)”

In his own words Stallam said

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.

[...]

Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.

Hardly a defense, he was calling for better and more precise terms to describe what happened.

Something I would expect from someone of his age talking with young students, fueled by passion and rage

I’m writing this because I’m too angry to work. says Selam G. on her blog post.

Angry people that let their anger win never made the World a better place IMO.

Whatever is the truth, I think it takes courage to defend someone you know "only distantly" when you think he's been wrongfully accused (in your opinion) and to do it publicly even though that could cost you your career and you have nothing to gain.

Anyway Minsky's long been dead.

No, it doesn't make him unfit. It makes him curious and open-minded. How are we as a society supposed to come to conclusions about ethical issues without examining them? If we adopted your stance, nothing would ever change. Conservatives like you would have had the exact same stance on homosexuality 100 years ago: "Zomg no, it's so terrible we won't even consider talking about it except to condemn, and we'll punish people who do try to have an honest conversation". I say this as a person who also is a conservative with respect to statutory rape laws.

Are you comparing the rape of a minor to homosexuality?

I would not work with someone who conversed like this in a professional setting. I'm not alone. It's wildly inappropriate at the very least. It's not his field and he's personally involved with the accused.

"Are you comparing the rape of a minor to homosexuality?"

Yes, that's exactly it. Respectable people would have felt the same way about homosexuality 100 years ago as you do about sex involving minors.

Further, your characterization as "rape of a minor" is problematic. What's a minor? If one minor is involved, it automatically becomes rape? In much of Europe ages of consent are surprisingly low (14) to Americans, who tend to expect 18. What about a 17 year old and a 19 year old? Two 14 year olds? A 15 year old and a 20 year old? Is what's 100% wrong and prison-bound in the U.S. morally permissible in Spain because the laws are different?

Or maybe you have access to the Objective Moral Truths, such that this game is easy for you? If so, do share. It'd make all of this so much easier.

> If one minor is involved, it automatically becomes rape?

YES. This is how it works legally, because one person does not have the emotional and intellectual maturity to provide fully informed consent.

I really think that lumping forcible rape in the same category as a 17 year old successfuly seducing a 21 year old in California (as opposed to, say, Spain) is bad for discourse.

Even if we grant the latter is harmful and wrong, the mechanism via which the harm happens is different, as is the amount of harm.

>a 17 year old successfuly seducing a 21 year old

Most countries have laws allowing relationships within an age difference of 3 or 4 or 5 years.

But some people want to blur the lines around consent claiming that a 15yo can consent to sex with some 45yo without the latter being held responsible.

> the mechanism via which the harm happens is different, as is the amount of harm

I never argued otherwise.

Just like for any other illegal behavior, legal systems are designed take into account the circumstance and impact of an event.

But this does not change the initial point about informed consent and rape being rape.

> But this does not change the initial point about informed consent and rape being rape.

I think it does. "Rape being rape" relies on the word having a precise meaning where all things in the category share essential characteristics that allow you to make moral judgements based on category membership.

But "rape", like all heavily contested political words with high moral weight, is definitely not such a word. It has a canonical example value (unfortunately I feel I have to be specific here: a stranger dragging a fighting women into the bushes and sticking his penis in her until he cums), but has a range of meanings that varies fairly drastically across conversational contexts (e.g. we talking ethics/morality? Law? Descriptiveness?), geography (e.g. is drunk sex rape? Depends on jurisdiction. What counts as a "minor"?), time and even subcultures.

No, it doesn't.

What about Japan where age of consent is 13?

Or Switzerland were the age of consent is 16, although if the age gap between parties is three years or less – for example between a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old – no charges can be brought