beedeebeedee

Once again, you are demonstrating a naive and simplistic understanding of political economy that is irrelevant to the discussion.

> your comments tell me you live in a fantasy world of books and theories instead of the real world, where reality is much simpler and crueler. Keep on living in Disney.

No. We create our reality. I don't accept the beliefs that you advocate. I don't accept that our government shouldn't care for all of its people, regardless of what they contribute in tax revenue. I don't accept that our government regulates the economy to create poverty while redistributing wealth to the already wealthy. That is abhorrent and an unacceptable state of affairs. It directly contradicts the American Revolution and what inspired it.

Like I suggested before, please go read a book

You've brushed off the failure of your arguments. That indicates that your position is not being driven by reasonable considerations.

> If the government hadn't imposed such strict lockdowns in some states, there would have been no need for the "essential" workers

That is a non sequitur. We do have essential workers whether or not they are the only workers working during a time of crisis or not.

> the American revolution was based on the premise of no taxation without representation

That is a bumper sticker level of understanding of our history. Please educate yourself on what inspired it. Read the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson.

> get off your high horse

No. An enlightened government takes care of the people (and an unenlightened government is not worth having). Our economy creates poverty. We are in a crisis that has been growing since the 1980's and is reaching a flashpoint. You may not have been here for the 2008 financial crisis and Occupy Wall Street, so you may not have heard of Thomas Picketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, but this webpage will give you a brief overview and a graph: https://www.epi.org/publication/top-1-percents-share-income-...

> DSA and communism in the USA are screwing up a country which is great

They are bringing a long overdue correction that is necessary to preserve our country. They have not even begun, so your claim that they are screwing up this country is absurd. This country is being run into the ground by the current administration and his fellow travelers.

Even on your own terms, your argument fails. You claim that rich people pay for almost all the income, sales and property tax, but then only back up your claim with the federal individual income tax.

The federal individual income tax only accounts for about half of the federal government's revenue, let alone the revenue for states and localities from taxes and other fees. The payroll tax, property and sales taxes, as well as fees, are paid predominantly by the non-rich (you claim a Pareto distribution but that only holds for the individual income taxes- sales taxes are highly regressive). The top 10% receive roughly half the total income and pay roughly half the total revenue. That is not even close to "almost all" of the tax revenue for the governments in the United States.

Not only does your argument fail on its own terms, your terms are wrongheaded. I presume that you were here during covid, and must have realized that the "essential" workers were predominantly the lowest paid people in the US. That should clue you into the fact that people contribute a lot more to society than taxes!

> as I’m guessing you are a native born bleeding heart American liberal, otherwise you would have a more realistic view of the world

I am a native born American and my forefathers and foremothers fought for the prosperity and rights that you enjoy but do not appreciate. You say you are from a third world country, and that might partially explain why you are ignorant on this matter. I suggest you read the works that inspired the American Revolution and try to understand why people fought for it.

> You are taking a reactive point of view that over-applies hidden meanings to words

You don't seem to have read the comments. There is no hidden meaning that I have over applied.

> They are also, literally speaking from a logistics point of view, a problem.

You are assuming the problem and then redirecting from its origins. The economy creates poverty. The economy is regulated by the government. Enlightened government should take care of the people and the common wealth, not be a tool for the wealthy to capture more wealth.

Besides demonstrating a naive and simplistic understanding of political economy, your statements are irrelevant to what we have been talking about.

Please explain to me how "[poor people] eat through resources without replenishing them" and how "rich people" do not? Please explain how it is good or just for a government to act as a system to secure private wealth for the wealthy and not to care for all of the people and the common wealth?

> Poor people are a problem, they eat through resources without replenishing them, how you deal with them is another thing

Wow, you really doubled-down. That's a deeply anti-social way of thinking. Poor people are not a problem. An economy that creates poor people is the problem. That is a failure of government when it is captured by the wealthy and turned into a system to create private wealth rather than common wealth.

And by the way, poor people eat through resources without replenishing them? Ha, what do you think 'rich' people do?

Earlier I mentioned that the legal age was 16 in the Virgin Islands. I was emphasizing that the legality of age was not the primary issue; the issue was the morality of taking advantage of a vulnerable person. I think we may be on the same side of this.

> They said it's hard to accept the poor of other nations when you are busy supporting your own poor

The original comment did not say what you claim.

The original comment framed it as “dealing with” the poor population. That is bad framing. The role of government is to take care of the people, not to “deal with” them. That framing is important because the people are not a problem to be dealt with. They are to be protected and cared for. The framing is important because it dictates what is accepted and what gets done.

> everyone already has their own poor population to deal with

Yikes, that is quite the dehumanizing framing

Edit: A person commented "why?" before deleting their comment, which I had started responding to. I still want to give my response:

Because an enlightened government is for the people (and an unenlightened government is not worth having). The purpose of a government is to care for the welfare of the people, not to be the securer of private wealth for the wealthy. The above comment frames it as "dealing with" an undesirable population. That population is the people, and it is a perversion to think otherwise.

The World Health Organization includes not just actual but also threatened physical force or power that results in injury, death or psychological harm

I’ll jump in- why care? Because it sucks to have people taking pot shots at you. If it is just one, then sure, that isn’t so bad, but when you have a group doing it, it can become existential. You may not have seen this type of violence before but it is unsettling. A group of people can do low effort violence that feels fun and harmless to them (each taking a lazy swing at someone), but the cumulative effect can be beating up or killing someone. Getting yelled at, or having someone write threatening things to you, is not as bad as being punched or having a stone thrown, but it is still damaging to humans.

I thought that was how most people understood LLM’s capabilities? We have spent millenia creating language to map onto our world. Therefore, implicit in that language is a simulacrum of our world.

Yikes, please stop. It doesn't matter if Minsky did or did not accept her offer. Please re-read my comments (and your own).

We've gone over this several times. You have not discussed this in good faith. I won't respond to you again about this.

I can't edit my last comment but want to address the rest of your response even if it has become clear that you are not discussing this in good faith.

> > Not just because friends and colleagues would want to defend someone they are involved with...

> ... you have paranoid delusions. That's just not how the world works.

This is absolutely how the world works. Notice I did not say only. There usually will be a cohort that will immediately try to distance themselves, but also a cohort that will defend. The ratio will be different in different circumstances. You are denying the defending cohort while you are clearly part of it (if we believe your prior statements about your closeness to the situation). That is absurd.

What is further absurd is that you are comparing Minksy and Epstein to Jesus's ministry amongst the poor and marginalized. I am not sure how to respond to that. I did not know Minksy but I can assure you he was much more likely thinking about his grant money and protecting his own reputation (and MIT's) than being Christ-like to Epstein.

What you are talking about is enabling: ignoring morality. Once again, I'll state that that is not ok, and admonish Minksy for his own actions, as well as understanding that why we do this as a society is also to remind each other of what should be ok and what should not be ok. You seem to want to say that Minksy's association with Epstein was ok. I disagree. Let's leave it at that.

> > Not just because friends and colleagues would want to defend someone they are involved with...

> ... you have paranoid delusions. That's just not how the world works.

Your brain is cooked if you’re going to deny that and resort to insults and other nonsense again

You've made several dubious claims. I'm honest and humble enough to be self-critical and not claim beyond what the deposition said, but that doesn't mean I should be held to a higher standard than you (i.e., if you did what you are demanding of me, you would have already apologized several times).

You are claiming there is no difference in the defense by the widow (who said she was always with him), while also claiming that Minsky was offered but declined. Both can only be the true if the offer was discreetly made and that the widow did not notice. The consequence is that it diminishes her as a reliable witness and also raises the question if the offer was discreet, couldn't it have been just as discreetly accepted?

If we accept your insider knowledge, it does not improve the circumstances. Not just because friends and colleagues would want to defend someone they are involved with (and indirectly, themselves), but also because the issue here is not just whether he participated, but why didn't he respond appropriately?

He was an intellectual leader. Shouldn't we demand our leaders to be moral? In a slightly better world, he would have had the moral clarity of Norm Finkelstein and rejected any association with Epstein once he was offered sex by a 17 year old under his care. It does not appear that Minsky did that, likely because he did not want to risk the grant money and perks of hob-knobbing with the wealthy, or risk reputational harm that Epstein could have inflicted to discredit him.

I will share a more ambiguous situation to make it clearer why Minsky's response was problematic. I had a friend at a Zen center when two young women came to visit. One of them was wealthy, and the other was nominally her friend but behaved like a servant. The wealthy one even directed her to have sex with some of the male students and other visitors. It was disturbing to my friend, and at the time, he was not sure how to respond. One could claim that the young woman who was being directed was benefitting from the relationship, and that, after all, she was an adult.

However it is clear that it is toxic behavior, even if the young woman's victimhood might seem ambiguous to some. I would claim that the behavior should be rebuked and that morality should not just be about protecting the victims you see but also about rebuking malevolence, because there are so many victims that are not seen. The wealthy young woman was exhibiting her character, and that character would likely persist whether it was in a relationship with her friend, children, or other vulnerable people. She should be plainly told that it is not ok.

Although I think some of your assessments are misguided, I think we have common ground about scape-goating (which you were referencing in the second half of your response, but didn't name). If Minsky had rebuked Epstein, or if my friend had rebuked that young woman, it is likely that both would have been scape-goated. Malicious people do not bind themselves to morality so they can lie, instigate and conspire to undermine the reputation of whistle-blowers and other truth speakers. This is a persistent problem of humanity that was exemplified by the stories of Socrates and Jesus, and all of free-thinkers killed during the European medieval period, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It is a problem even in much more mundane settings, and will occur whenever a moral person confronts immoral leadership. That is why we have to trumpet morality, lend support to moral behavior and speak out against abuse.

I'm not advocating for Minsky to be condemned as a terrible person. I'm just pointing out that he, as an example of wide-spread societal behavior, did not do the right thing.

> It is not materially different.

It is materially different. Either it did not happen as the widow claimed, or it did and it was declined.

I will back down from my claim that Minsky did have sex with Virginia Giuffree. In the deposition in the case against Maxwell, the questions were if Maxwell directed her to have sex with Prince Andrew, Jean Luc Brunel, Bill Richardson, Marvin Minsky and others. She was not asked if she actually followed through.

If you have non-public information, then feel free to share, otherwise there is nothing left to say.

Then your argument about this is a red herring

>> Minsky's participation

> Did not happen

Unless you have special knowledge that the public does not have you do not know that and need to stop basing your argument on it

In the deposition in Giuffre v Maxwell, she says she was directed by Maxwell to have sex with Prince Andrew, Jean Luc Brunel, Bill Richardson, Marvin Minsky and others. In those remarks, she is usually asked if she was sent or directed, presumably because they were concerned with Maxwell's involvement, and less concerned with the actual acts.

> Accounts from Minsky's wife say that Minsky declined.

That statement is factually false, unless you have a source that is not publicly available. The only accounts I can find is that his widow said it couldn't have happened because she said she was always with him, not that he declined.

> Because it would be absurd for the morality of the act to radically shift based on whether it takes place a couple of months later or earlier.

The morality of this is that you should not take advantage of and harm a vulnerable person. In this case, being a child makes them deeply vulnerable. It doesn't matter if it is "a couple of months later or earlier".

The above commenter and others have made the claim that Stallman is just being "precise" and "correct" about a misapplication of what sexual assault means, which is exactly besides the point and a red herring. They have also made the claim that "she would have presented herself as entirely willing". That is also besides the point. A 17 year old is a child, and that should have been enough for Minksy to not have engaged with her like that, and to recognize that Epstein was taking advantage of her (and in fact, trying to take advantage of him by offering her to him). That should have been enough. Making arguments about definitions or that she appeared "willing" are illegitimate attempts to deflect a serious moral failing. That in and of itself is a moral failing of Stallman, compounding Minsky's failing by trying to defend it.

> Stallman's comments, if read logically like a computer, are generally strictly correct. Stallman's comments, if read inferentially like a human might, often imply abhorrent things.

That's not true. I understand the drive to categorize it as such, but if you look at the context of what he said, which is even mentioned in that article, you will realize that this is not a "definitional" issue or have anything to do with strict precision of terms.

That is a red herring that you are getting stuck on and using to defend him. I don't care about whether or not he thinks they are applying a word that he disagrees on the definition. I will cede that if you wish, because it is besides the point and not what he is actually arguing.

He (like you) is making the claim:

> Coincidentally, it's highly unlikely Minsky did anything wrong.

That is demonstrably an incorrect statemet. We may not a definitive morality that I can point to you and we both agree to the letter, but a 73 year old man should have the wisdom to recognize that sleeping with children is damaging to children even if they appear willing.

I will grant that Minsky's participation was probably not the most damaging thing in her life, but he chose to participate and he harmed her, contrary to what you and Stallman are claiming. It is unfortunate that we have many men (and women) who believe and like Stallman and Minsky. It shows that we need to address this and train ourselves better, so that everybody is on the same page when it comes to how we let children develop in our culture.

> > but his views are not precise or correct in this matter.

> The views he expressed re sexual assault were abhorrent

Hi, yes, I think we agree- I was using those terms because that was what the commenter above was claiming

From the article, Stallman said "We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing."

That expresses an extreme obtuseness about human behavior and a lack of nuance. A 17 year old is a child.

> Coincidentally, it's highly unlikely Minsky did anything wrong.

Virginia Giuffre said that she had sex with Minsky when she was 17 and he was 73. I think no matter how you look at it (even if she was technically above the age of consent in the jurisdiction of Epstein's island), it is still wrong and he absolutely should have known that.

I am a big fan of Stallman's work and his views considering computer science and its role in society, but his views are not precise or correct in this matter.

Example: Surveillance state, endless propaganda. That is already happening and is the most frightening but not included in your list. Are you not worried?

The only way to stop it is to regulate it. We’re almost there. Read the history about the war on drugs. David Musto has a great book about it, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control. It was never designed to stop it. Its goal from the beginning has been to criminalize “undesirables”

If you’re feeling down, go listen to music on Sixth Street, head to New Orleans or camp out at Enchanted Rock

I think those two arguments converge into one- you can’t get the intent unless you have the process