Richard Stallman Talks Red Hat, AI and Ethical Software Licenses at GNU Birthday
fossforce.com
fossforce.com
His claim here that generative AI shouldn't be called intelligent because it generates bullshit is funny because isn't that ~95% of published human writing, like much of what he's experienced directly?
So then you run into this awkward thing of how many plausible deniability criteria are we going to work with? "Presented as willing"? "Never asked age"? What else?
Stallman basically believes in freedom, love, and the precise use of language. He doesn’t even like people using “they” pronouns, preferring other gender-neutral pronouns like “pers,” because it’s singular. That’s the kind of argument he usually gets into.
Here, he was objecting to the use of the term “sexual assault” for people who had only been accused but not found guilty of anything because it carries so much force. He attempted to show that most plausible situations didn’t involve force or coercion on the part of the accused in this case. He doesn’t care about the consensus popular or legal definition of “sexual assault,” only the most precise one.
I don't agree with what he said, but I also don't give a shit what someone completely unrelated to the Epstein stuff says at all
It's perfectly clear what Stallman said and what he meant by it. But if there are bystanders with their own agendas, perhaps Stallman isn't the problem here.
His job is to give talks about Free Software, its ethics and benefits. Being uncouth and pedantic and a giant neckbeard is not at all required to do his job. In fact as time goes on and the programming community diversifies beyond being primarily composed of people who look, think and act like him and share his proclivities, his personality and behavior hinder the cause more than help.
But of course, many of his supporters only see though the lens of culture war, so there's really no point in doing anything but wait for him to die so the free software movement can move on from him and his cult.
It's also amazing to me that RMS was the only person at MIT to see consequences. All these prominent MIT people had Epstein connections, but the guy who's too weird to even get invited is the one we scapegoat? Over ill-advised forum posts?
I get the feeling you're trying to turn this into a "normies hating the neurodivergent" argument or something, which I've seen done countless times in defense of RMS, but that isn't what this is about. No one is out to get the guy who's too weird. He defended pedophilia passionately in those ill-advised posts for years and only bothered to retract after the whole debacle went down. Only once, afaik, almost as an afterthought. And he had a history of creepy behavior towards women that people aggressively ignore, discount or otherwise invalidate.
This is the issue - The reaction to him and to his words was perfectly reasonable even if he didn't mean what people thought he meant. If RMS were anyone but the ur-neckbeard "install Gentoo" avatar of nerdkind, with his history and paper trail, no one here would be giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Past positive contribution should not be enough to warrant continued involvement if their current contribution is toxic. This isn't just about the future of the projects but also about honoring their past contribution. Toxic leadership is the fastest way to undo previous good works.