Hacker News Reader

He didn't defend Epstein did he? I recall him (clumsily) trying to defend Minsky though. Basically saying "Maybe Marvin Minsky didn't know those girls were underage"

The reasons for RMS getting booted from the lab were many and mostly imho deserved; his defense of Marvin was merely used as the final straw.

> > He does say things I disagree with and indeed sometimes that I think are quite wrong.

> Your whole post is completely empty of details, so how can we decide?

I didn't ask you to decide, and deliberately left the specifics out to avoid distracting from the point I was trying to make.

> Are the disagreeable things disputes about some software thing? Or does this guy feel that homosexuals should die, that trans people are sick, and women inferior? Or something in between?

But since you ask: one of his strongly held opinions is that the global population needs to decrease and that the way to do it is not through coercion but persuasion, through an approach I consider vaguely paternalistic and reminiscent of an aspect of colonialism. I don't think he feels specifically that the population needs to decline only among a subset of people meeting some specific criterion 'X' (i.e. it's not some sort of racist belief), simply that the global birth rate needs to go down.

For my part, I don't really care much if the population goes up or down; I certainly don't see a declining birth rate as a bad thing, but I feel that making everybody richer will tend to do that anyway so let's work on that instead because it's an absolute good thing.

The problem is that when he talks about this it alienates some people.

> But when he started defending Jeffrey Epstein because one of the girls he trafficked was as old as 17 and had been pimped out to Marvin Minsky whom RMS admired!

RMS's argument was absurd and thoughtless, but I have four friends who were on the island trip at the same time as Marvin and his wife who can't understand how it could have happened just from a timing POV. Plus it's pretty unlike him (though who knows anyone that deeply?). I am dubious that it occurred, but do realise: why would the woman make up the story? That seems even more unlikely. It's not like Marvin was the kind of famous person it might be even remotely worth making up a story about. So really I don't know what to think.

> But when he started defending Jeffrey Epstein

I followed the whole affair, and I don't recall him defending Epstein.

> An example in my real life - a friend of mine called me up out of the blue during the pandemic and made a big play for the message, "There are too many old people on the planet, so many of them need to die."

> I don't think she realized how old I was, but it makes no difference. We never really spoke again, because depraved indifference to others is horrifying.

Sorry, but this just reeks of virtue signaling.

> depraved indifference to others is horrifying

The grievous or depraved indifference of many people cost 6.3m lives worldwide during the pandemic. The US has had > 1m deaths. Yet people had only to wear a mask, distance, and receive a vaccination.

It's easy to be brazen when others are paying for the consequences.

But she is right. After some time, the old has to make way for the new. There is no way around this. The pandemic has taught this lesson to many people while they were forced to sit alone at home.

You don't want someone to say "Hitler"[1] but you're a supporter of geronticide??

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32236065