EPFL cancels Stallman's lecture citing “the situation regarding” his persona
clic.epfl.ch
clic.epfl.ch
…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.
…he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”.
Stallman wrote that “the most plausible scenario” for Giuffre’s accusations was that she was, in actuality, “entirely willing.”
Early in the thread, Stallman insists that the “most plausible scenario” is that Epstein’s underage victims were “entirely willing” while being trafficked.
"By satisfying the mob today, we are sacrificing our future. That’s the real risk."
https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/09/30/in-defense-of-richard-stal...
IMO it just looks bad for EPFL if they decided to cancel the lecture based solely on this. If they knew about it, then why tell RMS he could hold a lecture only for them to cancel it on the last minute to bring back this topic again?
Exaggerating a bit but this is like inviting Linus Torvalds for a lecture, then cancelling it at the last minute because of his previous attitude towards the Linux git repository.
EDIT: I just read their response and they are boldly assuming that RMS would divert the topic from free software and open source during his lecture, which I find it very difficult to do so, unless asked, given what I know of his persona.
[1] https://ynternet.org/detail-de-la-conference/epfl-conference...
"There will be other opportunities [..] to talk [..] in a more peaceful context."
The problem with a lot of these sorts things is intentionally making yourself blind to the emotional impact, pretending not to know, when some part of you does understand what you’re doing.
It’s all just plausible deniability. We get it quite clearly, we don’t need it explained to us.
You might say this is tone policing but he’s a prominent leader of the open source movement. What he says matters.
“Much better” in what sense? I think Minsky is guilty because using sex workers is categorically immoral. But most on HN don’t agree with me, and think that it would’ve been no problem had Virginia Giuffre been 18 and willing. In that case, doesn’t Minsky’s moral culpability turn on whether he knew Giuffre was 17 and unwilling rather than 18 and willing?
On 99% of the planet, if a 17yo acts like, and is willing to screw your brains out, you're good to go and quite legal. In fact, same for a 16yo. In fact, on half the planet including a large portion stateside, that works for 15 too.
The fact that you bring up morals here is very telling. Sex is not some magical scary thing that's worse than murder, and should stay hidden and never talked about. It's... just sex. It doesn't matter if there is a power imbalance - women find powerful men attractive. The power imbalance can't be used at work on a screw me or get fired basis, but it can be used in "I'm powerful and that scores me points with you."
Now if someone is a hooker and under 18, but you're not hiring the hooker nor know she is a hooker, guess what... You did nothing wrong, neither did the hooker, nor is sex work "immoral." The guy the hooker works for did something wrong and... died for it. All is well, undersexed people need to stop poking their nose in other people's assholes.
You will not find a less Puritanical view of the matter on a forum composed of mostly people from the US or deeply embedded within its culture, like many software engineers are.
For US and tech, sex talk and sexual freedom is a concept best avoided. You'll find more people arguing against gun control than arguing in favour of sex work or that age of consent is an arbitrary, cultural limit, not a hard one.
EPFL being an scientific organisation with international reach is influenced by this US cultural effect, and in general Switzerland is culturally more prude than its neighbours.
You're conflating "is powerful" with "has power over me." The latter can be used for coercion, and it's not always sexy for someone to threaten you.
The guy was on an island with a horny 17yo who was all over him. He wasn't threatening anyone. Now maybe the owner of the island was - and that guy went to jail and died.
Now the real question is, why would you run over a puppy with your car? You see, if running the puppy over with your car is wrong, then I'm right.
It is modern morality with out better understanding of psychology and brain development that lead many people to believe that sex in extreme age differences and extreme power imbalances is fraught. And in many cases, immoral. Regardless of whether the young person is a day under or a day over the "age of consent".
I would posit that cases where a 17 year old is sleeping with a 55 year old and it is NOT due to some form of coercion, are extremely rare.
Only if you assume that for some reason minors are pure and always operate rationally and "morally", thus it is just impossible that a 17 year old has decided that, yes, they want to have sex with a much older person. And somehow when they turn 18 their brain completely reconfigures.
Because I've been 17, I've had friends that age that wanted to do just that by their own accord, and some that have gone through that fantasy, without being coerced whatsoever. It's a bit weird, not really my cup of tea, but I know what being a horny teenager feels like.
While I am strongly in favour of 18 being the arbitrary threshold of consent, we as society need to remember that teenagers become sexual beings much earlier than 18 years old. It's simple biology, and I wonder if many of these "prudes" have lived a weirdly sheltered childhood and have not experienced normal sexual development.
So "posit" what you like, the rest of us live in the real world where 17yo girls at a nightclub are crazy, rebellious, and very horny.
You do need to be able to dance well, you need to pay the bill for the whole table, and you need to be fun. That's what going out is for, that's why people are there.
Me, I'm old and married now but not a karaoke trip to Cyprus goes without some 17yo trying and repeatedly failing to go back to my hotel despite the ring. That's because this old dude can sing sensitive french ballads, rap-up some jay-z, or dance well while singing k-pop reading native hangul. If that doesn't work, I'll do a russian song w/o an accent, and we all know those girls are easy. I'm fun, I'm not fat, and that's all it takes.
That 17yo btw. That's probably your daughter, and the more you lock her in to a repressed life, the more she'll shack up with guys like me. Choo-choo!
This is one opinion, not held by the majority globally.
Do you not have them?
> Sex is not some magical scary thing
Clearly that’s not true—virtually every society treats sexual assault as a far worse crime than the equivalent physical assault. In the “Me Too!” era, words about sex can get you fired and blacklisted in ways similarly offensive words about other subjects won’t. And that makes sense as a matter of science. Sex is how humans procreate. Women’s power over mate selection plays a critical role in ensuring fitness of the species. It’s totally unsurprising, therefore, that we have developed myriad social mechanisms to reinforce women’s power over mate selection.
Woman find powerful man attractive? Srsly?
All woman I know don't give a f about 'powerful men'.
And while I think sex work should be allowed and legal, there needs to be a mechanism which makes it much much harder to coheres someone into doing sex work who actually doesn't want to do it but has no better option.
You know the people who do sex work because there is no other option. The kids! Who do this because of there parents .
People who do this due to pressure. People don't even go to the police if they are aware that a priest was molesting a child! People were not telling CK of who was mastorbating in the office!
And don't think most girls in Thailand like their jobs. They got used to.
What any documentation about prostitutes. They accept what they do. Seldom have I seen anyone saying 'oh I love my job's the opposite is true.
We take dreams from people because we can.
Even normal woman have so much pressure alone going out of the house without makeup.
Or having to have sex.
Most people are not as oversexed as you. Stop projecting.
Pretty clear choice here, and pretty clear how many people here are taking the other side while trying to obscure that they know exactly what they're actually standing up for.
RMS comments are so egregious exactly because "she acted like she wanted it" is not an excuse for such situations that involve such a gross imbalance of age and power.
If you do not see that plainly you have some hard thinking to do about who you are and just what you want to do.
Many people are comfortable and support prostitution. I don’t morally support prostitution but won’t condemn others for consuming prostitution where the sex workers was compelled or morally harmed in doing her work (eg, human traficked, blackmail, unfair revenue share, underage, etc etc).
Obviously if you’re on an island and some teenage girl wants to have sex with an old man, something is up. But it’s not beyond imagination that the answer is prostitution and not only explained by compelled, unwilling human trafficking.
But I feel like we spend too much time circling here. RMS was just commenting on logical explanations for what has happened. I’m not trying to judge Minsky’s actions but RMS’s quote where he did not say that Guiffre was willing and “sources” misquote the mailing list.
To me, it seems RMS is clearly saying that Minsky thought that Guiffre was willing, not that she actually was. RMS was saying that Guiffre was likely instructed to pretend to be willing, not that she actually was. The language isn’t confusing or obtuse, it’s just quotes incorrectly.
I think if someone is misquoting they are dull or have ill intent. I don’t think it’s right to misquote to support your point. It’s wrong and wastes time correcting the quote rather than arguing the point.
If someone wants to argue Minsky was wrong to sleep with a 17 year old, then do so. But conflating RMS with Minsky’s actions, especially years afterwards is a separate issue. Id expect more from programmers and logical thinkers working to build and promote the use of free/open source software.
Even if I accept the premise that sex work is categorically immoral, which is an interesting position and maybe even the right one for society.
The situation that Minsky found himself in was not one where he knew that Virginia was a sex worker nor one where he was paying her or having her paid by proxy. The situation was one where he was approached by her and she acted interested in him.
I suppose you could argue that he is morally guilty of sex outside the marriage or cheating(don't know if he was married or not).
Disagree, but voted up.
Unless using any workers is immoral, in which case I may agree . . .
Morality is a cultural construct, that radically changes over time. Whoever thinks otherwise is simply ignorant there is a wider world outside their reality bubble.
And then there are states and countries with even lower legal ages.
Just because I think it’s skeevy, doesn’t mean society is settled on it.
Take a look at strip clubs and professional porn and you’ll find tons of 18 year olds being salivated on by middle aged men (and I suppose middle aged people of all genders, but mostly men).
I recently read the bio of sex actress Sasha Grey who started making porn days after her 18th birthday and won industry awards and Hollywood fame as a teenager.
If you are a 40 year old man with substantial financial power, and you're on a private island where a teenager suddenly wants to have sex with you, that throws an entire universe of red flags. It may not be illegal, but it would absolutely be the basis for me to cut someone out of my life, and I'm disappointed the galaxy brain libertarians here don't see what's obviously problematic about it.
What he says about other things probably doesn't matter as much
Agree. Broadly speaking, if someone is accused of a moral crime about which you have no privileged information, publicly hypothesizing about how they might be innocent is tantamount to a defence.
It's a limit on free speech. And in private circles, it could be debated responsibly. But when stated publicly, the argument's components of character defense and appeal to rationality are confusingly (possibly inextricably) balanced, which should be obvious ex ante.
What ??? How ??? Are we supposed to assume that every accusation we hear about is true, and everyone is guilty until proven innocent?
No. Not publicly* commenting on an accusation is very different from blindly accepting it. (Note the caveats: moral crime and your having no new information.)
* I recognise he made these comments on a “private” mailing list, but I have to assume someone like RMS understands the futility of trying to keep a mailing list of all things private.
I think it’s fair to discuss with people you trust. A mailing list between friends could be that. But I know of no reasonable expectation of privacy on anything referred to as a mailing list. (If you don’t know everyone on the list, it may be confidential, but it isn’t a personal conversation.)
To quote the original comment in this thread: ""The original Remove Richard Stallman post contained leaked communications from a private mailing list."
I can't see any other intepretation of the statement. Whether that's a reasonable things to expect from Minsky (or whether we want to hypothesize at all on what happened) it's up for debate, but the formulation doesn't seem ambiguous.
I think the real problem is that the journalist lacks the moral vocabulary to explain why RMS and Minsky are both wrong, and must resort to nonsensical legalisms. Virginia Giuffre was 17 when this happened, making her, in the words of the author, “an enslaved child.” But according to sex-positive feminism a mere year later she could’ve be an empowered sex worker. Under that logic, whether Minsky could tell the difference between those is dispositive of his moral culpability. And of course that’s ridiculous.
The real explanation is that a 17 year old is a child and cannot meaningfully consent to sex with a 73 year old man. Nor can an 18 year old. Or a 21 year old. It’s inherently coercive and wrong. And Minsky sure as hell knew that Giuffre was young and not on equal footing with himself.
Why does the age of consent just keep going up? How long before we have laws regulating age gaps for full grown adults? At what age does a person get entrusted by the All Knowing Democratic State to make all their own personal decisions for themselves?
Maybe the real explanation is that the age is arbitrary, a 17 year old is most likely as capable as an 18 year old of making these decisions, is not a child, and that the word "coercion" here applies because she was isolated on an island by someone who traffics in human beings for the express purpose of trafficking her. Of course this position is unfashionable, but it has the miraculous benefit of identifying it as enslavement even if the woman had been 50, as well as allowing people to make their own personal decisions without infantilizing them.
Human brains aren’t fully developed until the mid-20s. Historically, people got married and had sex long before that, but those relationships were arranged by family that at least in theory was supposed to make good decisions for the young person. As society has moved to an individualistic model, where adults are taken out of the loop, it makes sense that the age of consent would go up.
> Maybe the real explanation is that the age is arbitrary, a 17 year old is most likely as capable as an 18 year old of making these decisions, is not a child, and that the word "coercion" here applies because she was isolated on an island by someone who traffics in human beings for the express purpose of trafficking her.
That doesn’t address the author’s apparent view that Minsky is morally culpable and so is RMS by defending him. You can disagree with that view, but it’s worth trying to understand why many people would think Minsky did something wrong whether or not he knew about Giuffre’s specific situation.
Also, your logic is circular. “Trafficking” is a legal term that applies here because the women were under 18.
Also it's not at all established that anything actually happened with Minsky; from the testimony it's only clear that she "was directed" to have sex with Minsky, but not that any sexual activity took place. Given that she was clear about this in other cases, it seems that nothing happened.
I don't just disagree with the view, it is on its face disingenuous.
“Section 1591 covers sex trafficking for both children and adults. This provision, however, applies to trafficking in adults aged 18 or older for commercial sex acts only if done by actual or threatened force, fraud, or coercion. The use of force, fraud, or coercion is not necessary for criminal liability to attach when the victim is under 18 years of age.”
“Coercion” is defined to mean threats of physical harm or physical restraint, or threats of abuse of legal process.
Epstein was charged with sex trafficking of minors, so the government didn’t need to prove the “force, fraud, or coercion” element. For her part, Giuffre’s primary allegation is that she was “groomed” while she was underage.
In [1] it says "she was forced to have sex with MIT professor Marvin Minsky", but if you read the actual records that's based on then it's very vague and unclear if she was only "directed" and it never happened, or if it did.
This makes it quite different from Prince Andrew for example, where she stated she did have sex with him in clear terms.
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jef...
Careful with broad assumptions.
That's not true in most European countries, for example.
> And Minsky sure as hell knew that Giuffre was young and not on equal footing with himself.
So what?
Madonna is only dating guys that are at least 30 years younger than she is.
Anyway, sex between Minsky and Giuffre was never proved and, most of all, what Stallman said has nothing to do with it, he simply said that if someone send a girl to have sex with you, she's gonna act as willing and will probably lie about her age. Ans that it is pretty ridiculous that at 17 years + 364 days you're considered a child, but they day after you are free to become a sex worker. People should not jump from being kids to adulthood just because the law says so, they should go through different phases of increasing responsibilities and agency.
At my age it's difficult for me to tell 17 years old people and 27 years old people apart They look the same to me. A few times I've asked aren't you too young to drink/smoke? and they were over 25 and got pretty offended by my question.
Good job smearing mud without saying anything i guess. Did stallman say something since he was invited that was particularly noticeable? if not then these organizers don't know what they 're doing and this reflects bad on them
>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.
Is very controversial, even if he backpedalled (only after it resurfaced and created a lot of controversy). I totally get why it wouldn't fit the values of a university
He said he didn’t understand the issue and talking to abuse survivors helped him understand it better, and that led to him changing his view. To me, that sounds like a person simply updating their views in response to new evidence-new to them even if much older to many others. Labelling it as “back-pedalling” seems to me to be needlessly uncharitable to him
It might be hard to understand why it took him so long to realise this-but I think you have to understand he occupies a very different position in society from most people, with the result he is often ignorant of mainstream trends, or feels no motivation to care about them. His former position on this was actually reasonably mainstream on the Left in the 60s/70s, so in itself far from unusual for someone of his vintage, what was unusual was it took him so long to abandon it (or at least learn to shut up about it). But, if you try to understand him, rational explanations for it taking him that long may occur to you
I’ve never seen any evidence he has any actual sexual interest in children - just that children are somewhat of an intellectual abstraction to him. Before I became a father, children were somewhat of an intellectual abstraction to me too. I think that is a large part of why the wrongness of his former view was not obvious to him in the way it is to many others
Yes, he rarely changes his mind-but, all evidence I’ve seen is that if he says he’s changed his mind about something, then he indeed has. I don’t see any good reason to doubt him on that-he’s the kind of person who speaks their mind (maybe even one of those people with a “poor filter”), I’ve seen zero evidence he’s someone who tries to hide their true views
> But in any case my point was mostly that he actually made pretty controversial statements at some point, and it's a bit disingenuous to insinuate that the statement in the article was just baseless smearing and that we won't know which statements are against their values.
Why does it matter what his past statements were if he has made clear he no longer agrees with them?
Saying you don’t want to platform a speaker because of their current views on unrelated topics - I feel uncomfortable about it, but in some cases it may be defensible. But saying you don’t want to platform a speaker because of their past views which they’ve since renounced on an unrelated topic - how is that defensible? “Baseless” seems an entirely apt description for it.
There are still people in 2020 that get surprised when people talk about assault which does not involve coercion. Sweden as an example updated their laws in 2018 to change from a coercion based definition to a consent based definition (Stallman post was in 2003).
Stallman changed his mind in 2019, by highlighting that harm can exist even without coercion.
What I recall before they changed the law, people did occasionally discussed the word definition of coercion when it came to sexual assault. It was one of the major reason why they changed it to a consent based definition. I don't know however if the US academic word had similar discussion, but I wouldn't be surprised.
It was 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21092184
Stallman is also not known as someone who can be coerced to say he believes something that he doesn't believe in.
Stallman’s ideas on open source are well thought out, and vigorously defended for decades.
His terrible ideas are neither well thought out, nor extensively defended.
It's an awkward journey to have in public. I'll step off the gangway with a personal example: I did not know much about abortion a few years ago. I had misguided assumptions and changed (or more accurately, developed any) views as I learned. It would have been totally inappropriate for me to express scepticism about anything in any direction publicly before having done the research. A better answer is "I don't know."
Someone needs to invent a time machine, so that I can go back and slap myself before each foot-in-mouth incident.
No he said he was skeptical that pedophilia harms children. The quote wasn't "say, anyone know does this pedophilia thing actually harms children?" He did more than that: He imputes claims of harm to parents not wanting to admit their kids are "maturing". Now his position his quite hard to distinguish from someone who fully supports pedophilia. If they were in his position, I would expect them to go this well-trodden route: Question the harm; accuse opponents of being puritanical; claim it's already happening anyway.
I believe the poster you are replying to was referring to what Stallman said at a later date, recanting his "skepticism" because he "didn't understand the issue" at the time he made that comment.
> It might be hard to understand why it took him so long to realise this-but I think you have to understand he occupies a very different position in society from most people, with the result he is often ignorant of mainstream trends, or feels no motivation to care about them.
That's an absurd take on this. He's not updating his stance on over easy eggs, or beer preference (not as in free, but IPA vs porter), this is about children. And "different place in society" doesn't excuse it either, this isn't knowing the current memes or bands. This is simple fundamental logic, common sense, etc.
Before I had kids, it was still completely and utterly obvious that sex with kids is wrong. Yes, there's a grey area around age of consent + one year older or whatever, but that is entirely not applicable to his comments, Epstein, etc. Trying to justify Epstein is just wrong.
Obama once said that gay marriage is wrong [0]. I have always thought gay marriage is correct and a fundamental right. Does that mean that Obama can never be redeemed for his earlier incorrect thoughts and beliefs. Is he doomed to be judged forever based on his egregious historical beliefs?
What do you think someone needs to do for redemption?
[0] “Marriage is between a man and a woman,” on not supporting gay marriage but only civil unions https://time.com/3816952/obama-gay-lesbian-transgender-lgbt-...
And this was decades ago. Maybe he changed his mind after people responded to his enquiry? Anyway, it doesn't seem relevent to this recent cancellation.
It's germane to his current persona because of his statements that what Minsky supposedly did does not constitute assault because he was deceived about the victim's age. It was taken as "here we go again, Stallman is defending chomos again."
Maybe it was ok on the internet back then, but 2006 isn't that far away. So we can't even say that the cultural context was different. I'm not saying he lied when he said that it just took someone to talk him through it... But it sure is weird that a grown 40yo+ educated man didn't understand that having sex with children was bad.
Prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness
Would you be advocating that anything other than 17 is wrong? It reminds me of people who are born into a random country with a random god, and insist that only that god is correct. What luck!
The "age rule" [1] about dating is that the younger person is at least half the age of the older person plus 7 years. This implies that it's okay for a 20 year old to date a 17 year old, but not a 21 year old (unless the 17 year old is 17 and a half).
It's a kind of silly rule, but has some purpose in terms of "ickyness" (edit: and equivalent maturity) when applied to people in the first decade after puberty.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/meet-catch-and-keep/...
A 40 year old coupling with a 20 year old is still icky to me due to the life experience as an adult divide. A 30 year old with a 50 year old much less so; I just think the 30 year old is setting themself up to spend a lot of time as a caretaker at some point.
If the 30 year is mentally incompetent and unaware of their future as a caretaker then the issue isn’t age, but abuse of the mentally incompetent. And, again, I don’t think this applies to your intent but it reminds me of people complaining about how hard it is to live as a gay person or interracial marriage, etc etc. Where the various difficulties are noted when discussing if it should be allowed or not. Interracial marriage is a right as long as they are consenting adults.
Age is a parameter which can sometimes be shamed because of possible differentials in experience. It can't be shamed all of the time, but there are valid reasons to use it as a first-line gate, even after age-of-consent laws are no longer in the picture.
Part of the pressure to move the world into a total '“don’t kink shame consenting adults” phase' is from people with abusive kinks who don't want to be checked on their abuse. Screw them. Every kink deserves nested evaluation as to whether it should be totally shamed, generally shamed (with exceptions), generally not-shamed (with exceptions), or seen as okay to do in private (but not public), or seen as okay in general.
Oh yeah, and who decides? Stop acting as if there is an absolute universal moral. There's none. Everything apart "don't hurt people and living beings" are arbitrary rules we have agreed upon over time. And in any case, even that is just as arbitrary, but pretty much everyone is in favour of.
Sodomy between consenting adults doesn't hurt anyone, nor a weirdly horny 16 yo going at it with an older adult because they wanted to. Prepubescent paedophilia on the other hand is entirely traumatic because one is simply not sexually tuned at that age, so they cannot consent.
I don't know why people make a mountain out of a molehill. Are all involved parties consenting? Are they of sound mind and body? Then do whatever the hell you want.
> Every kink deserves nested evaluation as to whether it should be totally shamed
Fuck no, keep your morality ideas for yourself. Who are you to judge?
I think there’s a game theory where whatever people think others think is bad are shameworthy.
It doesn’t seem principle based and instead works backwards from disliking someone and the working backwards to find something wrong. That seems like a bad way to set moral standards and social norms. And sets us up for a constant second guessing of what to do or say, etc etc.
I think having a clear rule set (is legal? Is consenting? Then none of my business) is more productive. The last thing I want is people believing they need to perform some “nested evaluation” to determine if my missionary sex kink is appropriate or not.
An example that I encountered recently is that a friend was asking me to comment on other friends’ open marriage and tried a “would I permit that” reasoning to determine if it was appropriate. Asking simple questions like “is it legal” and “are all parties willing” is possible. But trying to have every person apply their own preference onto other people is a nightmare.
This can be as minimal as PDA, to stuff as egregious as Key & Peele's skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3h6es6zh1c
If you're discussing about furry sex or 50 shades of Grey, maybe keep it to the privacy of an adult furry community or a book club.
> Fuck no, keep your morality ideas for yourself. Who are you to judge?
You're judging that no one should judge.
I'm not a Libertine. I have a right to be in this world too. I don't have to just go by your standards. I'll live and let live as long as you give me space for my preferences, but that is never where it ends. Because libertines don't like me asserting my boundaries when they are in my space.
If I don't know about it, I can't kink shame it. If I do know about it, then you pushed it into my space.
Totally legal:
> https://www.statista.com/chart/11848/americas-youngest-child...
As our infographic shows, the youngest to marry since 2000 were three ten year olds. According to Frontline, the three girls married men aged 24, 25 and 31 in Tennessee in 2001.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/02/10/...
> We learned that in 38 states, more than 167,000 children — almost all of them girls, some as young 12 — were married during that period, mostly to men 18 or older.
> Minors such as Siddiqui can easily be forced into marriage or forced to stay in a marriage. Adults being pressured in this way have options, including access to domestic-violence shelters. But a child who leaves home is considered a runaway; the police try to return her to her family and could even charge our organization criminally if we were to get involved. Most domestic-violence shelters do not accept minors, and youth shelters typically notify parents that their children are there. Child-protective services are usually not a solution, either: Caseworkers point out that preventing legal marriages is not in their mandate.
> Women who marry at 18 or younger face a 23 percent higher risk of heart attack, diabetes, cancer and stroke than do women who marry between ages 19 and 25, partly because early marriage can lead to added stress and forfeited education. Women who wed before 18 also are at increased risk of developing various psychiatric disorders, even when controlling for socio-demographic factors.
> Sherry Johnson of Florida, who said she was raped repeatedly as a child and was pregnant by 11, at which time her mother forced her to marry her 20-year-old rapist under Florida’s pregnancy exception in the 1970s.
Such a church lady of me.
In the US, Alaska, Hawaii and dozens of other states have the age of consent at 16 [0] and many countries [1] (Germany at 14, holy smokes. China at 15. And South Korea st 20, good on them).
So while you don’t think the distinction matters, billions of people do think it matters. If you have such beliefs in this matter then you hold the majority of the world as perverts who think “child sex” is appropriate and legal. That’s a rough way to go through the world thinking that you are superior to so many people who are egregiously wrong.
[0] https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/statutory-rape-guide-state-laws... [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/age-of-co...
I suspect a number of adults must be shocked at their own sexual attraction to post-pubescent teens and might have a rather adverse reaction to that....
Again, I'm not saying he is guilty of a thought crime just that I understand that (and why) there is a controversy and that it isn't accurate to say that "We ll never know what "the situation" is and whatever "statements that do not correspond to any of our values" are". We know those statements.
As one commenter has already pointed out, the hyperlinked WWW site is for CLIC, the student-run organization, not for the EPFL as claimed in the title at the top of this page. The page says CLIC in the banner at the top, and CLIC four times in the body.
I'm not sure how "Association des étudiant.e.s en Informatique et Communications" abbreviates to "CLIC". Apparently it was "CDIC" some years ago. That doesn't help to clarify, though. (-:
All we know is that someone was paid by the Swiss tax-payers to write that.
> Did stallman say something since he was invited that was particularly noticeable?
Maybe they found another anonymous blog post to cancel him? Who knows.
What he said was that the girl who was ordered to offer sex to Minsky would have been ordered to present it as if it was a willing offer.
This should not have been controversial.
One of the first things covered in Evil Villain School is that when you are using your slaves (sex or otherwise) to try to curry favor with someone who doesn't know you are an evil villain you provide a cover story so that person won't know they are dealing with slaves.
Also, come on, I'm 37 and I wouldn't have sex with a teenager. Even beyond legality (which isn't really an issue, the dude is dead) there are the ethical considerations. This dude was sketchy and RMS is sketchy for defending him.
Stallman's whole point is that Epstein almost certainly concealed these facts from his associates. Stallman does not in any way argue that these women's and girls aren't victims, only that Minsky was likely unaware of this.
I don't see anything sketchy about defending one's dead friend: Minsky isn't alive to say "I had no idea these women were underage and being trafficked" and it seems natural Stallman wants to point this out to people calling his friend a pedophile and a rapist.
It was in the US Virgin Islands where the age of consent was 16 at the time.
There are real crimes happening you can get upset about (and maybe even do something about). This is about internet points for people that want to be seen to be upset. They are trading on the suffering of the very people they purport to represent.
Simple as
And real crimes? Like trafficking teenaged women around the world to be used as sex slaves to please one's powerful male associates?
RMS being a bozo isn’t a crime and internet outrage about it has no effect on real crimes.
If you donate $5 to a charity helping those affected, for instance, you’ll have done more than all the virtue signaling outrage in the world. You’re not raising awareness, you’re not changing opinions, it’s not “problematic”, you’re just getting your anger/attention rush. It has negative utility and value for the world, and you’re making things worse.
(You in the general sense, you understand. Not you specifically).
Not sure what this has to do with what I posted...
Outrage about the actual crime of human trafficking is of course called for but has nothing to do with RMS. Also, outrage at RMS won’t actually in any way address those crimes. But it feels good!
You are right that Stallman was trading on that suffering to defend his hero. There was no reason for him to say anything at all. His argument was not relevant as the hero he represented had been dead for year, and only served to shake a stick in a nest of already angry bees.
We don't have One World Government with globally consistent laws, and I hardly think that's what you want. Yes, the speed limit can change crossing a state border. Turning right on red may be legal in one place, and not legal a mile down the street.
You can still get a ticket for breaking the law.
My issue is that “sketchy” isn’t enough to block a speaker from presenting on a subject where they have expertise. If MLK was alive today, would be be blocked for the “sketchy” behavior of cheating on his wife? Not that I have expertise enough to be invited to speak anywhere, but would I be blocked for the “sketchy” behavior of defending MLK?
This all seems like bikeshedding and is decreasing our intellectual growth that comes from sharing ideas about free software and developing from them.
Just looking at the natural experiment of differing ages of consent in different First World countries there doesn't seem to be an inherent problem with an age of consent below 18.
In the US it is 18 in only 11 states (Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin).
It is 17 in 6 (Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, New York, and Texas).
In the other 33 plus DC it is 16.
In Europe it is 18 in 3 countries (Vatican City, Turkey, Malta), 17 in 2 countries (Cypress, Ireland), 16 in 20 countries, 15 in 12 countries, and 14 in 14 countries.
It's 16 in Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and most of Australia (17 in the rest).
That includes instructing the people you have enslaved to not act like they are enslaved when they are around people who don't know you are a sex trafficker. You provide them with plausible cover stories that explain why they are around and why they are offering services to your guests.
Also, note that Minsky was not accused of having sex with the girl. His name came up in a deposition where she was asked to list some of the famous people she was told to offer sex to. The deposition did not cover which of those people accepted the offer. Greg Benford was there when she approached Minsky and says that Minsky declined.
This is a lie. I don't believe you are lying, just repeating something you have read, but it's a lie all the same. You can read his comments yourself. He was entirely consistent that the victims were victims and that Epstein was a sex trafficker. His remarks were probably inappropriate but nothing like what people accused him of.
Stallman's sin is that he doesn't know how to comport himself publicwise. He is insensitive. He will talk about any topic at any time or place, no matter how taboo and no matter how strange his opinion. This is bad behavior, but not evil behavior.
Gates had a personal relationship with Epstein that started after Epstein was first convicted of sexual abuse of children [2] and after allegations of his sex trafficking were publicized. [3] He flew on Epstein's plane, repeatedly visited his home, and had dinner with him on many occasions. Gates and Epstein were usually entertained by young and attractive women at these meetings. [2] His wife was deeply uncomfortable with their friendship and told Gates this at the time. Gates evidently hid the extent of their friendship from his wife, as she ultimately divorced him when the details emerged in the Times. [1]
But Gates' personal behavior is atrocious even if we leave Epstein aside. Gates has, for decades, made unwanted sexual advances at female subordinates and had sexual relationships with multiple employees during his marriage. This behavior was well known to employees at both Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. [1]
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/16/business/bill-melinda-gat...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-pedophile-bill... (Note the publication date)
If you’re around criminals enough, most of them try to simultaneously deny involvement while at the same time trying to excuse the crime. I’m not saying Stallman has this criminal mentality. I don’t know. But the types of statements are similar to those we all run into. And I think this also causes people to raise red flags.
I am not trying to claim Stallman isn't strange and insensitive. He is unlikable and unpleasant to be around. I just don't think that's such a big deal. Our society tends to condemn the honest weirdo but ignore the charismatic predator. That has got to change.
The quote everyone seems to remember from Stallman was basically the same thing: he said that Minsky was deceived.
Stallman was also criticized for, inter alia, keeping lewd pictures on the wall of his office at the Free Software Foundation, and (IIRC) hugging people without asking in a way that made them uncomfortable. But I haven't heard anything about that in this thread until I said it myself.
Stallman's comments were later exaggerated by several bloggers, to make them sound outrageous. Somehow the untrue misdeeds have outweighed the real ones, which makes it hard to believe there has been an honest evaluation of the situation.
> Gates first met face to face on the evening of Jan. 31, 2011, at Mr. Epstein's townhouse on the Upper East Side (nyt)
No, Stallman said that the people involved didn't necessarily know that the women and girls were trafficked - that Minsky was unaware that these people were victims as Epstein probably ordered them to present themselves as willing participants. This is a vastly different thing than claiming "the victims weren't victims". This comment just reinforces my belief that people's perception of Stallman are based in misinformation.
There are good reasons to distance oneself from Stallman - among others his assertion that being paid to write closed-source software is unethical, which I think is too radial to be productive - but I worry people are distancing themselves on account of mistruths.
???
Then his wife proceeds to get out of there asap, idk man, actions speak louder ...
RMS doesn’t have Gates’ resources.
The wording of the cancellation is just ... wierd. Just as if they have to say something, but don't really want to say anything at the same time. Such a wishy-washy bs.
The similarities go deeper than that. A mostly-uncontested empire (then, British, now, American) produced a leisure class that does not really have anything better to do than play zero-sum Moral Olympic Games.
Which also means that the only way out is in increased competition from non-Western nations. No one can afford too much verbal fluff in a Cold War 2.0.
What bothers me is the übersensitivity over a leaked e-mail from a private group. Weird people like Stallman can be expected to express weird opinions in their e-mails. Repression of weirdness can result in worse societal results than its expression.
Edit: the level of downvotes/flag-kills of comments just asking "why" and "what happened" is pretty depressing.
People I imagine were suspicious that you were not simply asking "why" with the somewhat loaded "offended certain political persuasions" bit.
It wasn't just my comment, others were downvoted and flag-killed too (though I can't identify the exact one I saw killed, because it looks like it's been vouched or deleted).
And the "offended certain political persuasions" bit is apt, even if some people don't like it. There's a big one nowadays that will characteristically treat people like Stallman has been treated here.
Meanwhile, Reid Hoffman is now known to have visited the island and has not seen any firestorm of cancellations, as far as I'm aware.
He basically said that the victims were harmed, that they were forced to have sex, but that probably Epstein also forced them to make sure it's not known, otherwise who would agree to such a relationship, that would be basically rape? Taking into account how easy is to accuse people and that Minsky had died 3 years earlier, Stallman just said what he thought of the situation and witch-hunting. Not to mention that the victim just said that Epstein asked her to have sex with Minsky but there is no mention that it actually happened - at least his wife denies this happened.
But this was misrepresented in the media and even in headlines of major papers so I don't think the harm can be ever repaired.
Recently, or years ago? Because I'm pretty sure those remarks happened years ago.
we are comparing two people: one participated, and one was giving a personal opinion about the participation.
here's my question. why are we pretending as if these two offenses are equal?
An opinion can be changed, an action cannot.
the plausible deniability factor of acting deaf and blind to a situation that surrounds you is paper-thin.
It is an abstract academic ideology where symbols and words matter a lot, while real-world activity does not.
[0] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/of-course-you-know-what...
edit Even this comment, which is just listing a series of objective facts, is getting wildly upvoted/downvoted
As far as I’m aware he was ousted from MIT soon after, though the folks who actually signed the checks to/from Epstein faced no such consequences. This is America.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman...
But the cancelation crowd's witch hunt continues even today.
[0] https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-agai...
[1] https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/09/30/in-defense-of-richard-stal...
Stallman's personality is not new, and has not changed since the 80s, and nothing newly controversial has come out in like a decade at this point.
It's inexcusable at this point to keep inviting him to give talks and then cancelling them. Either you're ok with hosting him regardless and any of his many prior statements - and I get he has made some super questionable ones - or you're not. Either is ok, but this BS where you pretend that some comment that you don't want to be associated with is new or different or you were unaware of has got to stop.
I do think if you’re inviting someone to give a talk, you probably should do some homework to make sure that you’re comfortable with their persona. And if not, don’t invite them. But it’s less common knowledge than you might think.
Exactly.
> But it’s less common knowledge than you might think.
I don't think it's necessarily "common knowledge" - and there are a bunch of comments in these surrounding threads I wasn't immediately familiar with - but if you're inviting someone to talk you should be doing some basic due diligence which should turn up all of these issues.
Stallman has definitely been a massive driving force behind many of the technological developments and philosophies that back the thriving open source ecosystem we have today.
On the other hand, he has also stated some pretty controversial opinions regarding children and sexual relationships that I remember reading and disagreeing with in context.
If the tech folks arrange a nice meeting with the guy to discuss open source/GNU/etc. and the PR people are only informed later (after the first complaints of his haters undoubtably came in), the cancelation may have come to a surprise to those who set up the meeting.
It can be easy for technically minded people to brush aside politics and old statements when one wants to focus on discussions around technology, but it can also be easy to forget that most engineers and philosophers don't exist in a vacuum.
The text itself very much reads like "we wanted an in-depth discussion about open source but the organisation decided inviting Stallman was not such a good idea". Perhaps the people who invited him were naive, but I too learned about the controversies surrounding the man years later than many others.
The committee that decided to retract the invitation has clearly not done their homework when they approved the invitation, or lacks the necessary vetting procedures for guests. This is a mistake on the side of the people that canceled the invitation, but I wouldn't necessarily throw the people who sent the invitation in the frost place under the bus.
This was in 2019, and in all likelihood is also why he was uninvited from this event.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman...
"Values".
https://stallmansupport.org/nadine-strossen-hannah-wolfman-r...
“Personality” is probably what the submitter intended, though again, it’s an editorialization, as the original article is more understated about the exact reasons.
If he commits a crime, arrest him. Until then, I'll pay attention to him re: open source and ignore the rest.
Want to cancel his appearances? Fine, up to you.
I don’t know or care a whole lot. He isn’t exactly active on issues outside open source.
All I need to hear from him is “I may very well be wrong about this, but I just don’t care enough to argue” and he’s off my mental sh*t list.
Have you not visited his personal website?
Basically, a private twitter feed (but using free software!)
I personally don't like the guy, but to take away his views for the people that were genuinely interested was cowardly.
Beyond pathetic.
[starts out by mentioning some people are complaining about RMS being schedule to talk], then:
"We have considered the decisions of certain organizations that serve as examples for us and have made certain choices in the past" ("avons considéré les décisions de certaines organisations qui nous servent d’exemple et qui ont fait certains choix avant nous").
then they go on to say they've decided to cancel the talk.
So - sounds like they're getting blowback and don't want to deal with all the politics / bad press around it? But also don't way to say they're just ducking out, and so have phrased it really weirdly.
If you're a parent, read these comments and understand better.
It is really underappreciated how many female autists go unnoticed, even by themselves. They just freak out about all the other nerds' autism in a seemingly prosocial way. This explains an unreasonably large chunk of internet culture war.
https://www.meneame.net/my-story/MDman/ahora-ha-muerto-stall...
Unlike in most RMS-derailed conversations, this time it sounds like it might've confused the grave allegation in the original conversation, at the same time it compounded outrage.
I'm glad RMS now understands that his ideas around this were mistaken, but I think most people aren't wired quite like he is. He might be thinking some kind of "Oh, it turned out that theory seems incorrect, thank you for correcting me with this information I did not have before". But a lot of people were/are upset, and going to respond in various different ways.
I think RMS's intentions remain principled, and I hope RMS now has advisors to help him function best towards those intentions, including helping him understand how different people will perceive and think about things.
Otherwise it's just sparkling consequences.
Not that you would likely have heard about that since (like, say, Michael Jackson) pro-Stallman reporting is unwanted.
Structure your organizations to be impervious to complaints so you can ignore them and focus on the guest’s area of competency.
In my opinion, yes, absolutely.
It is well-known that Gates continued to associate with Epstein after the latter was convicted of procuring a child for prostitution. There doesn't really need to be anything else to the story in my opinion.
(Editing to be clearer: I don't think he is guilty of Epstein's crimes by association. I think he is guilty of associating with Epstein while being aware of some of his horrible crimes. I'm not saying he needs to be locked up over this, just that I don't trust him, and I question the judgment of people who do.)
Gates knew Epstein from earlier so likely would have known about the conviction. Also, it sounds like relationship soured in 2014.
The issue is that hanging out or doing business with someone as unsavory as Epstein is gia
I doubt as severe as what Epstein did.
You using the word "guilt" suggests you're venturing into the strawman of "innocent until proven guilty", or that public opinion must follow the same rules as the judicial system.
Even if he didn't do anything illegal, Jeffrey Epstein is gross and awful. It's totally fine for society to not want people "guilty" of associating frequently and voluntarily to be powerful and influential.
Public opinion is not a court.
Epstein's lawyers and his realtor, his tailor and his golf partners also associated with him but they don't appear at all to be desirable targets to debase with the same treatment and that's probably because they aren't rich or powerful or influential. And I'm certain that's what's tripping you. It's not just OK but maybe even preferential and encouraged by you to take a dump on certain people when a tiny vague chance presents itself only because the person is powerful.
I found this earlier comment from you on this topic which is a bit funny given your statement. To me youre kinda describing yourself.
HN is pretty divided about Stallman. Bringing up the things he actually at one
time said, even if later he said something different, results in a lot of
downvoting and toxicity. You can't talk about him without it devolving into
binary thinking and binary debates. Same as everything else in 2023 I guess.Why is that irrational?
> Epstein's lawyers and his realtor, his tailor and his golf partners also associated with him
Surely we as reasonable people can acknowledge the societal difference between Bill Gates and his tailor, no?
> It's not just OK but maybe even preferential and encouraged by you to take a dump on certain people when a tiny vague chance presents itself only because the person is powerful.
Powerful people's decisions deserve to be scrutinized at a higher level than societally irrelevant people, yes.
> I found this earlier comment from you on this topic which is a bit funny given your statement. To me youre kinda describing yourself.
That comment is in response to a person saying they simply asked "Why" and were downvoted. The answer is because rational thought is thrown away in favor of binary thinking with regards to people like RMS.
To be direct, my comment is almost not about RMS at all. Simply, every human is allowed to decide what they are or are not okay with. If you think what RMS did was wrong, you're welcome to hate him for it. This is not the same as a jury deeming a person guilty of a crime, and relating the two is a strawman.
I think the opposite, at least as far as this is concerned. To Epstein's tailor, Epstein is very replaceable, whereas to Gates, the tradeoff for ditching Epstein would be something like millions fewer people getting vaccinations
For one, powerful people generally have advisers whose job it is to prevent people like Gates from associating with sex criminals like Epstein.
Here's where "guilt by association" is bad:
1. You're a vegetarian.
2. Hitler is also a vegetarian.
3. Therefore, you're evil.
Here's where making inferences about moral character using personal associations is good:
1. Bill Gates started his relationship with Epstein, after Epstein was convicted of sex crimes.
2. There is no reasonable way Gates couldn't know this about Epstein.
3. Therefore, Gates is in the wrong for having a relationship with Epstein.
There are many factors that go into evaluating such claims, such as whether it is reasonable to know the facts about the person you are associating with, and what sort of power dynamic exists between the two. For example, MIT Media Lab received a lot of funding from Epstein, and yet I don't think the students there need to be tarred by association. The professors, I'm more suspicious of. The leadership like Joi Ito are despicable, given that Epstein was convicted of "procuring a child for prostitution" in 2008!
Simply dismissing all of these claims as "guilt by association" means that you aren't evaluating their respective strengths independently.
you can figure out what he thinks about things because he will tell you.
on the other hand, you can sort of see how issues get cherry-picked for controversy because he probably has thousands of issues he's written about and discusses there.
Then they could claim to be degrading him, due to his twisted views, while still letting people hear his wisdom on open source etc if they want to.
However, the world has changed many times since Stallmanism entered the zeitgeist. It may simply be time to retire and let the younger generations carry the torch going forward.
Some people in the comments saying he doesn't follow mainstream society as if that somehow makes what he had to say defensible, but that just highlights that the world has changed and he hadn't. He may well have changed his opinion, but that's just symptomatic of a larger issue.
Personally, I only want to hear about software and tangential topics of ethics like privacy from Stallman. It's unfortunate that it played out this way, but perhaps it's simply over and it's time for some fresh perspective and to get back to the major area of concern with FOSS. As-is, FOSS is developing a public image problem as being something old farts who hold questionable views are into. To make statements like that whilst championing privacy is not a good look.
At what point do we admit that his continued involvement is damaging the activism and credibility of others and the FOSS movement as a whole? He's had his time, and it's been a lot longer than most folks managed. The movement should focus on substance and not egos.
I would go as far as to argue that there's not really any going back now. This will seemingly always be resurfaced, and it will always cause a PR disaster for not just Stallman, but anybody and any project associated with him.
I wish him the best of health, happiness and peace if he does decide it's time to retire from the public eye rather than be cancelled and have this as what he's remembered for, which would be a huge shame.
Me too. That's why I disregard the things he says on other topics.