Can we please stop excusing bad behavior with some form of "oh because autism"? It's an insult to the many, many neuro-atypical people who don't say shitty, stupid things online, who don't act creepy around women, who don't have a sign on their MIT office that says "Knight for Justice (Also: Hot Ladies)", who don't have a gross mattress in their office where they encourage people to lie topless, who don't try to pressure women into dating them by saying they'll kill themselves otherwise. All of those things describe RMS, things that have been mostly quietly ignored and hand-waved away for decades.
We don't have to tolerate people who make women feel unsafe and unwelcome in our (or any) industry.
You seem to be arguing the usual tired old thing: "but he's a genius and does such great work that we should tolerate the bad things he does". I really thought we'd started to move past that over the last few years.
Attributing all his behavior to his autism is wrong, you're right, but autistic people do have social problems that can influence some behavior, like the ability to pick up social cues and learn something is wrong before hearing others say it.
Also, you're doing a bait and switch, neuro-atypical covers a large swathe of people including autistic people. May be you're using it here as a mere synonym for "autistic" for lingual flare, but it includes people who are generally typical in social settings.
I agree with both of you, and I think stallman also had the misfortune here to be so beloved that people are willing to give him a pass on a lot of the things he's said.
It's absolutely true that neuro-atypical people can learn from others, even if they can't pick up on social cues the way neurotypical people can. I'm guessing stallman just goes unchallenged on much of this stuff because of the lingering effects of the rockstar syndrome in tech, where "great men," geniuses, whatever, get cut a lot of slack because of their position in the industry.
It's only recently that I've seen a shift away from prizing our jerk 10x rockstars ("hey, he's so smart he can keep the whole codebase in his head!") to valuing better-behaved people. stallman seems like he'd be even more isolated than the typical one of those, with less chance to have the rough edges smoothed off in the rock tumbler of social interaction.
Again, not an excuse, but I'm more interested in, "how did we get here?" (where "here" is a decades-long public figure questioning the wrongness of pedophilia and making jokes like the "emacs virgin" thing well into the 2000s).
My daughter who has autism constantly says things that could be considered offensive because she's not aware of sensitivities around race, gender, orientation, etc. It certainly can explain it for certain individuals. You can't say many neuro-atypical people don't say bad things so it can't be an excuse for him. "Neuro-atypical" is a huge, huge group of people who are very different.
The ultimate thing is though that as the leader of the FSF foundation his actions have broader consequences and demand a stricter scrutiny. He was given a loooong time to learn and improve, people have been talking about how he's actually kind of sexist and problematic for years.
Stallman's job as head of FSF wasn't just to be technically competent, which he has in spades, but to forward the mission of the foundation and a certain level of social acuity is a necessary part of that.
Can you link to sources regarding Stallmans behavior towards women? It’s not that I don’t believe you but because I tried to google “Richard Stallman suicide threat” and couldn’t come up with anything... I do want to believe you, but I can’t propagate information without evidence.
So far as I can tell the name "Stallman" appears nowhere in that document. (I'm not 100% sure because it seems to be a scanned PDF -- but searching for some other words I can see on the page appears to work OK.)
> Can we please stop excusing bad behavior with some form of "oh because autism"? It's an insult to the many, many neuro-atypical people who don't say shitty, stupid things online.
No it's not an insult to anyone. It's an attemoted explanation of why some neuro-atypical people behave in atypical fashion.
Are you, or the parent, a mental health professional? If not, then I'd suggest you aren't qualified to tell if he's even autistic at all, or, if he is, that his autism is what's causing the problems here, not terrible beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes. In that light, using autism as an excuse for Stallman's behavior is just an unfounded theory by an armchair psychiatrist with no business making diagnoses.
The wisdom of attempting to diagnose someone without a formal diagnosis is an entirely different issue, and I agree it is unwise.
The original claim was that saying that someone's anti-social behaviour was due to being neurological atypical, was an insult to everyone who is neurological atypical. This is clearly nonsense.
OK. Let's take an analogy. Do you believe that saying that a history of parental violence contributed to the boy to be violent in his own turn is an insult to everyone who was beaten up by their father?
I didn't read the parent's post as "excusing" Stallman at all.
I certainly would not excuse him! Nor should anybody else!
But given his stature, it's surely worth discussing and understanding him. And any attempt to do that would certainly have to include his famously black-and-white and self-described borderline autistic thinking.
Pointing out that somebody is austistic (or left-handed, or that they have psoriasis, or dyslexic, or seven feet tall, or...) and thinking about how that may affect their actions isn't excuse-making. It is empathy. It is critical thinking.
> I didn't read the parent's post as "excusing" Stallman at all.
I did. To me, it says "I've known a lot of creepy people; as long as they get their work done, it's ok". And I don't agree with that.
> self-described borderline autistic thinking.
That's another thing: has he actually been diagnosed? If not, well, he may still be autistic, but that just sounds like RMS himself hiding behind a shield of autism that he's crafted himself, which is pretty low.
> Pointing out that somebody is austistic and thinking about how that may affect their actions isn't excuse-making. It is empathy. It is critical thinking.
Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what was written. The parent even said "if RMS was some random superhacker doing his thing" he'd defend him. To me, that's excuse-making, not empathy or critical thinking.
But I do agree that autism can certainly explain some behaviors, and it's worth trying to understand people, even though the explanations may not excuse the behavior. The parent's post just did not strike me as that.
> "but he's a genius and does such great work that we should tolerate the bad things he does". I really thought we'd started to move past that over the last few years.
Nobody thinks this of RMS. He's a competent developer who was in the right place at the right time to found a new ideology: The idea that software should work for the user, the only way for software to do so is to empower the user to also be a developer themselves. That's all.
Being competent himself wasn't a sufficient condition for anyone to listen to him, but it was necessary.
This isn't about disagreement; it's about creating a hostile environment for women at MIT and continuing to do so for years. I'm not prepared to tolerate things like that.
If we want to talk about disagreement...
He only recently recanted (with quite suspicious timing) his view that pedophilia is fine if the child gives consent. No, I'm not going to tolerate that view. I wouldn't want to work for someone that had that view.
In the email thread under discussion, he wanted to redefine "sexual assault" and "child rape" to something that agrees more with his sense of linguistic purity. No, that's not ok.
At some point, when people keep having disgusting views, and won't change them, you give up on them entirely. It's just not worth the effort anymore.
It seems to me that nobody who remains within the bounds of the law, but consistently flirts with the bounds of polite society deserves no respect from polite society but every bit of due process in a nation of laws. So the only matter that seems of any value is constraining the scope of 'bad behavior' within the context of polite society.
Hand waving and quietly ignoring is the mark of tolerance. But one wonders exactly how polite society is. One certainly presumes the existence of both knights for justice and hot ladies in a nation of millions. What society are we talking about?
I don't expect MIT to be any more representative of society than the NFL. It is a magnet for extreme people who defer common sense and common acceptance in search of very particular goals. I wonder if we were to get rid of Stallman and replace him, deserving as he must be, for a bust in our Hall of Fame if our society could resist defaming his very image and existence.
It is you and those like you that make people feel unsafe and unwelcome. RMS is quirky and weird and he says what many don't feel safe to talk about. The recent assault based not on fact or principle but rather implied (assumed)intent is a farce and wont lead to good things. Tech is dead and RMS is a fallen king. Take your PC bullying and wreck havoc over everything the geeks or "autists" created. I'm moving on but the industry is no longer a place of inclusion and all of the safe guards put in place were not enough to stop societies wicked. Enjoy eating each other in your Brave New World.
And yet, women have been driven out of CSAIL for years by RMS's (and others') behavior (I know several, personally). And he's only being driven out now.
We don't have to tolerate people who make women feel unsafe and unwelcome in our (or any) industry.
You seem to be arguing the usual tired old thing: "but he's a genius and does such great work that we should tolerate the bad things he does". I really thought we'd started to move past that over the last few years.