"The original Remove Richard Stallman post contained leaked communications from a private mailing list. In it, the author quotes an email from Stallman where he explains that Marvin Minsky likely wouldn’t have known that the woman on Jeffrey Epstein’s island was coerced:
…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.
A paragraph later, the author summarizes Stallman’s view as:
…he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”.
This is the opposite of what Stallman said, but this lie was repeated by the press. An article in the Daily Beast said:
Stallman wrote that “the most plausible scenario” for Giuffre’s accusations was that she was, in actuality, “entirely willing.”
An article in Vice spread the same lie:
Early in the thread, Stallman insists that the “most plausible scenario” is that Epstein’s underage victims were “entirely willing” while being trafficked.
There are two possibilities here. Either the author of the Medium post was not capable of correctly parsing the sentence, or she didn’t care about truth and was leveling as many accusations as possible in the hope that one would stick. In other words: she is either foolish or malicious. The same goes for the writers of the Vice and Daily Beast articles. To describe what they did as journalism would be an insult to journalists."
"By satisfying the mob today, we are sacrificing our future. That’s the real risk."
So, in the end, RMS lecture in 2023 was cancelled because of a controversy that happened 2 years ago that since then has been solved?
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.
EPFL PhD student here. This lecture was organised, and then canceled, by a student association called CLIC, not by EPFL. Notice that the linked website is not EPFL's
It was organized by Ynternet [1]. CLIC, I'm guessing, was mainly used for logistics, which is why their withdrawal ultimately pulled the rug from under everyone.
You’re right, that is a misquote. But what he actually wrote honestly wasn’t that much better.
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.
> You’re right, that is a misquote. But what he actually wrote honestly wasn’t that much better.
“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?
I honestly gotta ask. Why is it that half the planet commenting on young sex with very strong, very critical opinions, keeps confusing the age of consent with the age you're allowed to vote?
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.
American culture, including Puritanism, being exported worldwide since the 1980s, first through Hollywood and then through tech.
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.
Rayiner is from Bangladesh originally, not the USA. You may be surprised to learn that the USA is by no means the culture with the strictest rules about sex and prostitution.
EPFL PhD student here. Please note that the linked website is not EPFL's. The lecture was organised and then canceled by a student association called CLIC
I love how you make up this fake scenario in your head where the guy is threatening the woman with his power. Yes, the scenario where a powerful guy is threatening the little girl is unsexy. Good thing the only brain conflating the article and discussion thread with this little world you've created in your head, is the person who created this little world in your head.
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.
This is so true. The "morality" when it comes to sex, is thinly disguised religious dogma, that has been passed down the generations unquestioned. A 17 year old is absolutely capable of consent. However I feel if she has been manipulated in any way then it should be illegal.
It's quite the opposite. Religious dogma is quite comfortable with young women marrying old men and sleeping with them.
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.
> 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.
Then you need to leave Alabama, where the 17yo marries the 55yo first, and go to a nightclub in half the European and most of the Asian countries, pick up a 17yo, and do her in the bathroom. You won't succeed the first night. If you're overweight you won't succeed at all. But if you're a decently aged 55yo who looks good but old, and takes care of his appearance and is a fun person to hang with, you will succeed the second night.
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!
In most of the world prostitution is either legal or tolerated and not really looked down upon. You might be right that it is an opinion, but you're wrong that it is not held by the majority globally. Most people throughout the world would agree with the person you're responding to.
Prostitution is illegal throughout Asia, which has a plurality of the world’s population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Asia. Even in places where it is legal or semi-legal, it is an unspeakably grave moral offense. For example it’s legal in Bangladesh, where I’m from. But that’s because it’s viewed as a last resort for desperate women who have no families in a country that has no social safety net. Prostitutes are outcasts from the rest of society.
That they are outcasts is just surface level societal judgment and not at all addressing what actually occurs in the society nor how perverted people actually are in it, despite you insisting otherwise up and down this thread
> The fact that you bring up morals here is very telling.
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.
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.
That's not the dichotomy. It's whether or not she was coerced, and there's a presumption of coercion with minors. It's still wrong if she's 18 and being trafficked.
You're a middle aged man on a private island and a teenage girl suddenly wants to have sex with you. Is this natural or a cause for concern?
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.
> You're a middle aged man on a private island and a teenage girl suddenly wants to have sex with you. Is this natural or a cause for concern?
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).
17 is legal all over the US - I don't really think you are grasping the issue with Epstein, his island, the victims, and the gentleman he invited there.
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.
It’s not in the sense that it’s currently legal in every US state to have sex with teenagers (18 and 19). So I don’t think it’s a categorical dilemma in that the entire US legally allows it. And laws are based on morals, etc etc.
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.
> You’re right, that is a misquote. But what he actually wrote honestly wasn’t that much better
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.
> 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.
What ??? How ??? Are we supposed to assume that every accusation we hear about is true, and everyone is guilty until proven innocent?
This is especially ridiculous in the US where nearly every rich person can be expected to get sued about anything because it's common to hand out hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in settlements to avoid publicity before the case even reaches court.
> 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.
So, you think this statement should not be made publicly but also not in private since a private statement is just a public statement yet to be leaked? Bollocks.
> you think this statement should not be made publicly but also not in private since a private statement is just a public statement yet to be leaked
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.)
> And in private circles, it could be debated responsibly.
To quote the original comment in this thread: ""The original Remove Richard Stallman post contained leaked communications from a private mailing list."
csail-related really wasn't all that private. Anybody at MIT could add themselves to it (and perhaps could add others to it) and many undergraduates did just to see Stallman make the comments he did. (Long before this scandal, he had several amusing habits and mannerisms on this particular list.) It wasn't exactly public, but it wasn't really private either. And there had been prior scandals from it that had been made public ("a mailing list" in this article but I remember it happening on csail-related): https://thetech.com/2017/04/20/egg-donor-advert
"the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing" means that "most likely she told Minsky that she was entirely willing [and not being coerced, and Minsky didn't doubt that]".
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.
> he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”.
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.
By this reasoning a 21-year old also cannot consent to sex with another 21-year old, or indeed, can consent to anything else. You're correct that human brains aren't fully developed until the age of 25 or so, but that doesn't mean humans are blubbering morons who can't consent to anything before that age.
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.
“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.
Is it established that Minsky did, in fact, have sex with Giuffre? She said so in her deposition, and said it would have been on the island. But Minsky's wife said that was impossible because they were always together.
She said Epstein "directed her" to have sex with Minsky, but if I'm reading this right she didn't say she actually did have sex with him; copying from Wikipedia: "Virginia Giuffre testified in a 2015 deposition in her defamation lawsuit against Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell that Maxwell "directed" her to have sex with Minsky among others. There has been no allegation that sex between them took place nor a lawsuit against Minsky's estate. Minsky's widow, Gloria Rudisch, says that he could not have had sex with any of the women at Epstein's residences, as they were always together during all of the visits to Epstein's residences."
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.
> a 17 year old is a child and cannot meaningfully consent
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.
We talk about inclusivity here all the time, but what about being inclusive of neuroatypical folks who have quirks that don't come off as being polished and PC in current social code du jour?
This all so so grates on me because it means we are wasting all this time and energy on things that don't matter all the while the real monsters of society go unchecked because with their psychopathic streak they know how to play a convincing PC game on the outside while committing real atrocities.
The thought-leader of the FSF might be socially awkward, but no, people, he is not the great Public Enemy No. 1 some people are making him out to be.
There is nothing about neurodiversity that requires tolerating apologetics for peadophilia.
As a child sexual abuse victim myself I assure you, this matters far far more than RMS making another one of his stump speeches.
He played an important role in software yes. He also burned his reputation purely through his own choices and convictions, not any mental condition. He can fade away and the computing world will be just fine.
My understanding is that he has been misquoted (as OP explained), and anytime he did attempt to make a "defense" for Minsky it was all full of "Yeah technically" in the way that autistic folks tend to process things. The only problematic thing he said, to my knowledge, he recanted and then explained he learned better after engaging with sexual abuse victims to learn more of their experiences. It's hard for me to see autistic people as actual predators, because in my experiences they are almost always the victims who have their intents and words mischaracterized and misconstrued for a dozen and more reasons.
> If that's true, then you can write informatively rather than with hand-waving.
He is neuro-atypical in some not-well-defined way. His behavior is perceived as anti-social by the typical person who interacts with him. He's pushy, abrasive, and doesn't follow American mainstream social norms.
He also has real enemies (douchebags like ESR who tried to steal credit for his work), who up-play this. You'll see attacks on TMI or personal hygiene.
He's also brilliant, devoted his life to making the world a better place, and was largely successful.
Then condemn him for the things he actually said or did (and I agree, there are valid reasons to distance oneself from him), not on account of misinformation.
While i agree in principle, in practise it is very human nature that once someone does enouh questionable things people will stop rushing to that person's defense, and it starts to matter much less if the current thing is true. It is sort of reverse boy who cried wolf.
We ll never know what "the situation" is and whatever "statements that do not correspond to any of our values" are.
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 mean, his statements regarding pedophilia are enough. It's not exactly a hidden secret. Saying stuff like
>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
> Is very controversial, even if he backpedalled (only after it resurfaced and created a lot of controversy).
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
To be clear, I'm not implying that he himself is a pedophile. I also get that he might have changed his mind, but Stallman is also not known to actually change his mind very often. I'm not a mind reader and it's just an impression that I've gotten in the way he apologized. 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.
> I also get that he might have changed his mind, but Stallman is also not known to actually change his mind very often.
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.
Stallman is known to be fairly academic and pedantic about how words get defined, and historically all act of sexual assault was defined in term of coercion.
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.
I think part of the controversy is that Stallman is known for being an uncompromising absolutist on open-source. So people assume he has the same attitude towards his terrible ideas.
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.
> that sounds like a person simply updating their views in response to new evidence-new to them even if much older to many others
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."
I've done this so many times. Each time is hugely embarrassing, after the realization kicks in. Any more, my starting assumption is that I'm wrong about almost everything.
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.
"No he said he was skeptical that pedophilia harms children."
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.
> 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.
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.
So if someone has a thought that is wrong, they can never reconsider and correct the thought. Is there no redemption?
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?
He is skeptical of the basis of the laws and is requesting more information.
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.
Somebody had to sit down with him and walk him through why pedophilia is bad and is rape, irrespective of whether the victim gave consent. It is, as they say, "not a good look, my dude".
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."
Exactly! I think this is why "he changed his mind" does not really sit right with me. This isn't rocket science or even some culture war contentious issue. Having sex with kids is bad, and was considered bad when he said those things and put the blame on parents for being mad that their kids got abused. If there's one thing that communists, liberals, conservatives, fascists, anarchomonarchists (lol) can all agree on is that pedophilia is bad. It's a bi/tri/partisan issue. It's not some status quo position that he just happened to defend by force of habit.
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.
Is he talking about pre or post puberty? The term pedophilia sometimes lumps both together. Pre seems quite unnatural, or at least there is no obvious natural mechanism that would make it normal or beneficial. Post is a cultural matter, since age of marriage has fluctuated a lot over time. Discussing post seems reasonably defensible, discussing pre immensely less so.
Personally I don't think the distinction matters (both are bad), but even then he also doesn't seem to make the distinction. Here is another quote [to be clear, I don't disagree with the first two lol]:
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
Both are bad? So it just so happens that the current threshold for post-pubescents (18 years old) happens to align with what you believe to be the only moral value? So all those other states, countries and provinces throughout history which have adopted slightly different cutoffs (and therefor state-sanctioned pedophilia by your definition) were just morally bankrupt and evil? So 17 is wrong? So 16 is wrong? 15 is wrong? Which would you say is wrong if you were born in a time or state when 17 was the legal limit? Would you have seen through the poor legislation and advocated for raising it to you magic number of 18?
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.
This is a silly rule as a 40 year old marrying a 20 year old breaks the rule and there are many situations where this can be explained. And it’s legal everywhere. This rule isn’t a rule at all as a heuristic to use at dinner parties to be snooty about rich people and trophy wives (they are almost always rich old men with young women exchanging their youth and beauty for wealth. It’s icky, but I think everyone understands Anna Nicole Smith’s reasons).
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.
I get it’s icky for you, but I think the world is trying to move into a “don’t kink shame consenting adults” phase where there’s less commenting in the vein of “sure sodomy is legal, but personally, I find it icky.” I’m not sure many people in the world are interested in what you and I find icky.
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.
There are kinks which deserved to be shamed, and these are the kinks in which grooming and ratcheted boundary violations exist. This includes relationships which weren't always seen as kinks, but have become so as society has evolved.
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.
> There are kinks which deserved to be shamed, and these are the kinks in which grooming and ratcheted boundary violations exist.
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.
> > 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?
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.
All right church lady. I’m not sure how you choose which kinks are shameworthy. I’ll stick to what’s illegal, thanks- pedo, necro, beast, etc. And then a simple heuristic like if it’s consenting adults and legal then that’s enough for me.
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.
> 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.
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.
Thanks for the quote. I do agree both are bad, but in the way that severely beating someone and murdering someone are both bad. It sounds like he is pretty out there.
This isn't the place to have this discussion. As a writer who writes stories set in the past, you have to be really careful with this topic. It's not one you bring up in a general forum.
Thanks for the input. To be clear, I'm not advocating for any social changes here, and I generally agree with the current social approach given brain development stages and the fact that individuals choose their own partners these days. But one thing is, like, brain damaged levels of icky, and the other one is more of an eccentric and socially tone deaf opinion.
What's even worse is that it's quite normal for adults to be sexually attracted to post-pubescent teens, and the term for an exclusive sexual preference for such is 'ephebophilia'. Technically pedophilia is an exclusive sexual preference for pre-pubescent children, which is not normal at all.
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....
Who cares what his thoughts and opinions are! As long as he doesn’t harm anyone I couldn’t give a damn! We don’t shun people for abhorrent thought, only abhorrent behavior!
I can't read French (shoot, scroll down to the English), but I believe he was originally invited to share his thoughts and opinions. So the audience of EPFL cared. Now, EPFL doesn't want to risk giving a platform to, or otherwise being associated with, potentially problematic speech that they do not control. I'm sure he can still be a member of the audience at EPFL, so I don't know that this is shunning, per se.
Hi, EPFL PhD student here.
Please note that the lecture was organised and then canceled by CLIC, which is a student association. EPFL did not write this statement: the linked website is CLIC, not EPFL.
It's a fairly modern taboo, historically speaking.
While the unrestricted age of consent is between 16 and 18 in all U.S. states, the laws have widely varied across the country in the past. In 1880, the ages of consent were set at 10 or 12 in most states, with the exception of Delaware where it was 7.[104] The ages of consent were raised across the U.S. during the late 19th century and the early 20th century.[105][106] By 1920, 26 states had an age of consent at 16, 21 states had an age of consent at 18, and one state (Georgia) had an age of consent at 14.[104] Small adjustments to these laws occurred after 1920.
If I remember right, the median age of people who have sex before the age of 20 is 15 years. (where I live)
It is one of those slight odd statistics, especially if it is similar in places where the age of consent is 18. It does however explain why there are so many different age of consent, and why it is hard for law makers to fix it to a number that make people happy.
I live in one of four US states where you must be 18 to get married. Most other states have "parental consent" laws that allow you to get married at age 16.
Pedophilia isn't exactly an American only issue. I'm not American but if thinking that pedophilia harms children is an American "taboo"... Then consider me thoroughly americanized lol.
It's far from exclusive, but I don't know enough about other cultures to definitively say universally strong in all existing ones. (It hasn't been historically.)
It is certainly not exclusive to the USA and no one is trying to deny or diminish victims in other countries, but statistically, it is an endemic US problem.
According to US HHS "over the course of their lifetime, 28% of young people in the US, aged 14 to 17, had been sexually victimized."
Compare that to 4.8% for the UK, also a country with a severe child SA problem.
The US is thusly quite anomalous, and is only really comparable to undeveloped nations in terms of CSA rates.
So when an American goes out of his way to defend forms of CSA on his personal webpage, unprompted, it can certainly be seen as symptomatic of this larger US cultural issue.
Sure, and then he was disinvited. If they had the agency to invite him, they had the agency to disinvite him.
One time I got in a fight with an ex and made a scene at a party. We weren't invited to any more of their parties. I was miffed but it made sense to me.
I'm not sure I understand your point. Obviously children experimenting with each other is very different from children having sex with adults. He didn't even mention older teens, he straight up implied that he
1) thinks that voluntary pedophilia is a thing
2) children can consent to sex with adults (again, broad statement that he didn't even limit to older teens)
That's very different from children experimenting together. Stallman implies that not wanting some adult creep to prey on your kid is just some sort of moral panic, which is... a pretty horrible take and one that is often repeated by predators. A teen having sex with another teen is normal and part of the process of maturing, but with an adult it has a completely different power dynamic.
Plus, being attracted to prepubescent or pubescent teens as an adult is inherently awful and problematic. It has nothing to do with a teen being attracted to another peer.
I think you’re misunderstanding the definition of what that word means.
1) A 12/13 year old and a 16 year old experimenting is likely pedophilia depending on the biology of the 12/13 year old.
2) consent is a circular argument. The assumption that they can’t give consent arises from the assumption of harm and therefore cannot be used to justify harm.
Animals for example can’t give consent to each other, that doesn’t make two bald eagles reproducing harmful.
That's the thing, Stallman does not say anything about teenagers being attracted to other, younger teenagers!
Especially since the quote was in the context of dutch pedophiles organizing to create a pro pedophilia party. Those are explicitly adults, some were very old adults too, organizing to be able to have sex with kids and teens. It wasn't just him defending teenagers fooling around or sending nudes.
(I added a bit more to my other comment after I posted, sorry about that)
The assumption that a child can't give consent is based on their lack of understanding of what exactly they're consenting to, same as a drunk person can't give consent for the same reason. So yes, a 16yo seeking out a 12yo to have sex with would be wrong. Or an 18yo with a 14yo. They are not peers.
The question was about when the younger party instigates. If such contact is inherently harmful then two prepubescent experimenting with each other would presumably cause similar issues. I feel some cognitive dissonance between those two examples which is why I was hoping someone had some actual research on the topic.
Freshman dating seniors in high school seems a lot different from adults forming a party to advocate for sex with prepubescent children. I wouldn't have thought it belongs in the same discussion but maybe I just got old.
re:1) If a child in highschool (16) is experimenting with a elementary/middleschooler (12/13), there is a problem. The groupings of children in educational institutions is not abstract. So yes this is pedophilia.
re:2) The assumption that they can’t give consent is due to the inherent power imbalance in their “relationship”.
2) Rules of thumb aren’t some deep universal truth. Power imbalances likely favor the older kid, but what about a developmentally disabled 16 year old, a 13 year old paying for an BJ etc. The most extreme counter example older slave girls and 12/13 year old masters used to be a thing.
In general power imbalances are likely, but if that the argument then you should talk about power imbalances not age.
PS: Not an objection to downvoting but what exactly do you disagree with here?
It wasn't taken out of context, considering the context was him reacting to the news of a possible new pro pedophilia party in the Netherlands. It wasn't a one off comment either.
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.
It's not a press release from a years-long professional in the industry. It's an announcement from the press officer, who is (per the WWW site's own directory) a BSc student in a STEM subject not related to PR, of a student-run organization that does social events.
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. (-:
EPFL PhD student here. The lecture was organised by a student association, not by EPFL. Please note that the linked website is CLIC (the name of the student association), not EPFL!
Bill Gates had bonds with Epstein. His multi decade marriage fell after the fact became public. He didn't get 1% the flak that Stallman had for commenting about a word to describe Marvin Minsky.
Bill Gates didn't say much about it, except he didn't know about any of the "bad stuff" and was deceived. Stallman said a bunch of to try to either claim that the victims weren't victims. Or to try to downplay what happened. Those are huge differences.
> Stallman said a bunch of to try to either claim that the victims weren't victims. Or to try to downplay what happened.
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.
She was 17, and it happened in Florida where the age of consent was 18 at the time. So it really doesn't matter how "willingly" she may have presented herself.
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.
> She was 17, and it happened in Florida where the age of consent was 18 at the time. So it really doesn't matter how "willingly" she may have presented herself.
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.
Correct, in some states it's a strict liability crime, but it's not without controversy: should a 25 year old who had sex with someone he met a bar, who entered with a fake ID indicating she was 21, be charged with rape of a child? Even if it doesn't matter in the eyes of the law, it's still a very important factor.
Which just demonstrates how nuts this all is. You’re in this jurisdiction on day X it’s one crime, another jurisdiction on day X+1 it’s another crime.
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.
Yes those are indeed real crimes and there are real ways to effect change with respect to those issues.
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).
Nah I was dismissing faux outrage at a guy saying whatever dumb shit, and those people basing their outrage in large part on such arbitrary jurisdictional issues.
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!
I don't care about RMS, but what are the arbitrary jurisdictional issues. There's nothing arbitrary or jurisdictional about human trafficking, just because might be of legal age. I feel like you aren't getting the fundamental issue that people base their shock/outrage/whatever off of. It's totally separate from thinking that attacking RMS over it will result in anything - as that's nothing but a strawman. There's no reason why criticism of anyone has to be tied to creating whatever societal-wide change is desired. That's just facially absurd.
Yes, Stallman was trying to get intranet points for Minsky, at a time when the local MIT people were protesting MIT's long-term support for the convicted sex trafficker Eppstein.
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.
I thought Minsky happened in the US Virgin Islands, where it was legal (but now isn’t, thankfully).
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.
> I thought Minsky happened in the US Virgin Islands, where it was legal (but now isn’t, thankfully)
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).
I think it's reasonably controversial for RMS (or anyone) to make up such hypothetical excuses for Minsky. It's far simpler and easier to think, "wait, Minsky did what? that's awful, there's no excuse for that."
Epstein was very evil, but he was not an idiot. The null hypothesis should be that he ran his sex trafficking operation the way pretty much everyone else who has successfully gotten away with running a sex trafficking operation as long as he did has run theirs.
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.
Epstein was convicted for child trafficking long before his final arrest. People knew. Even if you believe he was a changed man, eventually you should figure out what's happening if you are offered sex by a very young person in relation to Epstein.
>Stallman said a bunch of to try to either claim that the victims weren't victims.
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]
I’ve read the mailing list comments. The problem is that he is trying to excuse something potentially horrible without sufficient data. A far better statement IMO would be to say that I hope Minsky didn’t know of the coercion or age. Because he doesn’t know what Minsky did or didn’t know.
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.
Everyone else was trying to condemn Minsky based on just as little evidence. Why is that OK but defending him isn't?
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.
>Bill Gates didn't say much about it, except he didn't know about any of the "bad stuff" and was deceived
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.
I haven't seen a single credible claim that Gates participated in anything inappropriate. The biggest red flag IMO is that his wife divorced him over it.
Given how open of a secret this apparently was in Hollywood circles, it's a little hard to believe someone as well connected as Bill Gates wouldn't have any shred of an idea...
why would he go and hang out at an infamous convicted felon's house when it was a widely publicized story by that time? like, how did he even end up there?
> Gates first met face to face on the evening of Jan. 31, 2011, at Mr. Epstein's townhouse on the Upper East Side (nyt)
> Stallman said a bunch of to try to either claim that the victims weren't victims.
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.
I doubt anyone who spent a lot of time with Epstein didn’t know. I’m sure many didn’t participate, but everything I’ve read suggests Epstein was practically radiating his obsession with young girls.
The difference - one is naively engaging with the topic to try and defend his friend, while the other is saying the predictable politically correct thing that gets attention off him the quickest.
The difference is them managing their PR - ability and opportunity. Bill's achievement is not avoiding the flak from this latest thing. He was able to completely rebrand himself from ruthless businessman to an affable philanthropist.
Bill Gates is a billionaire, guarded by assistants, PR consultants, and crisis management consultants. RMS is an awkward nerd, one step up from couch surfing. Easy targets are easy targets.
I expect Gates has a PR firm tasked with reducing this kind of stuff. And I am cynical enough to believe it includes astroturfing any social media or site (including HN) to disinfo it away.
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.
If they say something, it's defamation and reflects negatively on them, and anybody else and any projects associated with them. It's also potentially libellous.
It really feels like a new Victorian age is upon us. Not only are you allowed to show an ankle under your skirt, even talking about female legs is frowned upon.
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.
I wouldn't have a problem with disinviting anyone who actually did exploit minors, such as Polansky.
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.
> 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.
> Stallman made some remarks defending Marvin Minsky (very poorly) from victims' allegations that he abused young girls on Epstein's island.
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.
Stallman's comments can be verified. However we have no idea what Reid Hoffman saw or did on the island - he had plausible deniability. Therefore Stallman can face social consequences for his actions (without exposing EPFL to a defamation lawsuit), that is much harder with Reid Hoffman.
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.
edit Even this comment, which is just listing a series of objective facts, is getting wildly upvoted/downvoted
He convinces many people that some business models are unethical. People who benefit from those business models feel like he's taking money out of their pockets.
This is pretty disingenuous. Outside of open source, almost no one knows who RMS is. For many, his behavior and opinions on social matters have long since dug him into a hole his lack of social skills can't dig him out of. It's all anyone talks about. I haven't heard anything about his opinions on open source for a very long time.
To those asking, last I heard from Stallman were his comments in the MIT CSAIL mailing list after the Epstein fallout basically of the theme: “some of them surely liked it”.
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.
I know the things he said, the context he said them in, and the reasons he might have said them, and I still find it appalling. There were some headlines that took some of the quotes out of context, but that doesn't mean that what he said was ok.
Ignoring the questions of whether Stallman's persona is good, bad, or irrelevant this kind of thing shouldn't still be happening.
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.
Believe it or not, a lot of people still don’t know much beyond RMS being the founder of gnu. I have certainly found that plenty of people are not aware of any controversies until they’re pointed out. Whether these organizers had any clue I don’t know.
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.
> 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
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.
There's a good chance the people who arranged the meeting and the people who canceled the meeting rarely ever speak to each other.
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.
I'd guess that he was earnestly invited by people who respected his contributions to software despite his social obtuseness. Then when the event was publicized, various "groups" got wind of it, threatened to kick up a public relations shitstorm for the institution, and the people who invited him found themselves overruled by "management".
According to EPFL, hosting that enemy of liberty ex-NSA Technical Director Brian Snow in June 2014 was totally fine, but hosting RMS is just a bridge too far.
TBH in Europe "canceling" a meeting is quite common in French and Italian, while the social media inclined "woke" version is almost never used. The title is in French and I think it reflects the most common usage of the verb here, to void a meeting.
When I worked at a nonprofit RMS was a lone voice advocating (respectfully) via email that our code be free. I don’t have a dog in this Epstein fight but when I look at the dude’s body of work and see that none of the allegations are basically new shit that has come to light, it makes me doubt the motives of the people “canceling” him.
The submission title appears to be editorialized; the word “persona” doesn’t appear in the original article, and it’s an odd choice, as it implies that Stallman’s statements and actions are a deliberate facade that’s separate from his true identity.
“Personality” is probably what the submitter intended, though again, it’s an editorialization, as the original article is more understated about the exact reasons.
I don't care about Stallman's views or interests outside of Open Source. I'll bet I disagree with him on 95% of things in general, whether or not those things are immoral or illegal in my view. Doesn't matter to me.
If he commits a crime, arrest him. Until then, I'll pay attention to him re: open source and ignore the rest.
>We've seen your feedback on Richard Stallman's conference. We are very sorry to be so late in realizing the extent of the implications of organizing this event.
I personally don't like the guy, but to take away his views for the people that were genuinely interested was cowardly.
This looked pretty good until it devolved into an appeal to the masters of the social justice cult. “L-Look! RMS is a true b-believer! Don’t punish him, please…”
[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.
I also think it is interesting to note (for non natives) that they use the interpunct character in their writing, which is used by some french speakers to 'de-gender' french, similar to the usage of the singular 'they' in english. (développeur / développeuse -> développeur·euse·s). This practice is coming from the 'intersectional' movement, which is pretty similar to the woke movement in the US. This practice is quite controversial and is currently banned from official use in France and Switzerland. (The interpunct character is not on the keyboard, so it is quite cumbersome to use)
EPFL PhD student here, I'd like to point out that this statement is NOT from EPFL. The lecture was organised by a student association called CLIC, and the linked post was made by the association. As such, this is not a formal statement from EPFL by any means.
The title of this thread is highly misleading and should be changed immediately.
Everyone always talks about stallman, nobody talks about the fact that the woman who wrote that medium post has all the signs of being an equally difficult to bear sperg (obsessive thoughts, noise sensitivity, punctuality/time focused, disgust at the idea of being touched, etc)
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.
Anyone have a background summary? Last I heard he kept a mattress in his office and asked people to lay on it, and he had a stupid neutral pronoun idea he was very insistent on using. Has something stranger come up?
What I suspect happened is that RMS had a theory in his head about something incidental to the topic of conversation, and he immediately derailed the conversation to mention his theory.
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.
Could you please stick to the rules when posting here? You've been breaking them badly and we have to ban that sort of account. I don't want to ban you, so it would be good if you'd review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of the site more to heart.
There are many factually accurate statements that are, nevertheless, inappropriate to wildly inappropriate under the circumstances. I have personally interacted with rms decades ago and have a generally positive impression of his entire body of contributions to computing. Nevertheless, reading the controversies section on the wikipedia page induces a combination of cringing and face-palming.
Someone researching the science of attraction in humans could very well be justified in saying "it is normal for adults to be physically attracted to adolescents".
Someone commenting in apparent defense of a convicted sex offender should not make that exact same claim, whether factually correct or not.
This is a classic motte and bailey: "it's normal for adults to be attracted to adolescents" used to defend "it was reasonable for a fat CS prof in his 70s to believe a young minor on Epstein's island wanted to have sex with him absent any coercion going on (or for Stallman to advance this idea)."
For all we know, she may have been coerced to tell Minsky that reading The Society of Mind was such a turn on for her that she had to ravish the author there & then…
Literally canceled. Perhaps having an eternal memory of everything bad human beings ever do in their entire lives to be summoned up to destroy people is not such a good idea.
I think the intent of folks in this situation is not to look for targets for career destruction, but help prevent new people from being exposed to harm. In that context, a more accessible record of public figures' harmful acts seems like a net positive
if this is referring to his past controversies, i fail to see how this is 'cancel culture'. if he says controversial shit that other organizations dont want to be associated with, its up to him to deal with the consequences of that. he has the right to express his views just like anyone else has the right to not want to be associated with him and those views.
It's not the kind of public statement you can just disavow and all is well! It's extremely damning that he ever held it and damning of his judgement that he thought expressing it was a good idea. I'm glad he has backpedaled but it doesn't rehabilitate him all the way back to zero.
not convinced that he didn't backpeddle just to escape further criticism. it's alarming that he held that opinion in the first place. it makes you wonder what opinions he holds in private.
For anyone denying that the "cancel culture" (a big misnomer btw) actually exists - this is a perfect example. At least they could say what the reason is, then this could be addressed somehow - but as it is now it's just mud-smearing.
We live in a new age, where we can know a lot more about the personal lives of famous people. Decades ago, the problematic personalities of famous people were hidden by the gate keepers. JKF benefited from this. It would be nice if there was a more uniform way to handle situations like this. RMS isn't alone, in being accused of unsavory things. Should we shun Bill Gates because of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein? It's a thorny issue, because it's so hard to know much about the details of these problematic relationships.
I'm not sure what you think I'm implying about their relationship.
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.)
What does "associate with" mean in this context? As in, what does it mean concretely? Genuine question. I've had friends ("associated with") that had criminal histories, some of them even quite severe. Of course, I took no part in those crimes, and I don't think anyone here would hold having friends with criminal histories against me.
That's all very superficial though; "flew on Epstein's jet" can mean anything from "let's discuss my donations to your foundation while we're travelling from A to B" to less savoury things.
I guess the flight was Gates by himself. But weird he would be flying Epstein's plane and not his own. They did do "plenty discuss foundation", including making charitable fund that would make Epstein money.
The issue is that hanging out or doing business with someone as unsavory as Epstein is gia
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.
Maybe it's that I'm not rested right now but I find it hard to follow this train of thought because your reasoning is kinda wide, lofty and out there but I think OP means that it's irrational to throw Bill Gates entirely to the side based only on -another person- he associated with. Like how picky and fussy people refuse to touch something clean and unspoiled just because it sat next to something else that happened to be gross and smelly. I know it's clean but eww, icky. That kind of guilt by association.
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.
> I think OP means that it's irrational to throw Bill Gates entirely to the side based only on -another person- he associated with.
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.
> Powerful people's decisions deserve to be scrutinized at a higher level than societally irrelevant people, yes.
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
What is derisively referred to as "guilt by association" is generally a pretty good way to evaluate moral character.
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.
I don't understand why you can't contain yourself from being condescending and patronizing by posing your own preferred reasoning against such an absurdly childish example. The same could be said about your reasoning: you haven't evaluated the different characters and traits of people like Gates and, say, Donald Trump or a certain member of the British royal family. These are very different people. Unlike yourself I just don't assume the most damning scenario to be the likeliest when it comes to Bill Gates.
I presented a couple of clear-cut cases in the beginning (Gates/Epstein is as open-and-shut as Hitler/vegetarian imho) and elaborated at length about what I consider to be more borderline cases afterwards. I feel like I did a pretty good job communicating what I think. I'm sorry you felt it was condescending.
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.
It is interesting times indeed, even with problematic personalities in full view, one can still have one's loyal followers attack anyone saying anything against their dear leader with screams of "fake news!". They could even be manipulated to commit insurrection...
The man that did the heavy lifting to create the open source operating system would predictably have personality quirks (or even worse), we should just be doing what our ancestors did, make fun of him and complain behind his back (half-joking) but to cancel his appearances in which he'd discuss his professional career and thoughts on computer science, is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
this man is not a normal man. He's a brilliant programmer. We shouldn't expect everyone to be normal. He is the definition of fringe and weird.
> Correct move. Holding an opinion that is unethical, immoral and destructive to society is unacceptable. And nobody wants to be associated with that. I wish this was not up for debate, but unfortunately, we seem to want to debate the same things repeatedly no matter how many times we know that certain things are problematic.
Who gets to decide what opinions are correct and therefore allowed? Sounds very thought-police to me. There are many viewpoints that are commonly held by practitioners of the "woke" religion that I find to be unethical, immoral, and destructive, but I would never want to silence them. A debate enriches us all. If an idea holds no merit or substance it will fall apart in a fair debate, particularly if it can be supported by evidence. I am deeply suspicious of those who would silence debate and suspect their opinions lack substance.
> For what it's worth for the HN crowd: A lot of us are in various points of our careers. Some starting, some in the middle, some at the end. You can spend decades establishing yourself. But it only takes 1 second to destroy it all. Think before you speak, think before you act.
Is this right though? Should a decades long career be destroyed completely by 1 second of indiscretion? I personally find this viewpoint unethical, immoral, and destructive to society.
> Should a decades long career be destroyed completely by 1 second of indiscretion?
It really depends on what happened during that 1 second. The answer could certainly be "yes" depending on how heinous it was. Your rhetorical question bears an unfortunate resemblance to the father of rapist Brock Turner arguing his son shouldn't go to prison for "20 minutes of action".
In Stallman's case, his crime appears to have been white knighting for his dead friend on a mailing list, and during the ongoing discussion, Stallman was his usual Socratic self. He wasn't entirely "cancelled", but there was a huge fallout because he didn't consider his audience properly.
There's nothing wrong with having a debate on the age of consent, it's clearly an arbitrary dividing line that varies between jurisdictions and cultures, there is no right answer other than "at some point near the end of adolescence" but the absolutely worst place you could have that debate is during a discussion of whether a 80-something man had sex with a 16-year old girl being coerced by a child sex trafficker.
As far as Stallman's choices of what to debate, and how, and where are concerned.
The problem that is being raised here is with the ethics of those who smear an individual's reputation while refusing to admit they were wrong and knowing full well that it is impossible to undo the damage even if they did, and of those who end up supporting the former by shunning that individual.
Like I said, there's no reason to debate certain things anymore. You mentioned the exact point that I preemptively stated. We don't debate that racism is bad, there's no debate to be had about it. We don't debate climate change, it's a fact. We don't debate women's rights, its been decided a thousand times over and the effects have been proven several million times over.
Asking to debate these things is unproductive and doesn't serve any other purpose than a dishonest discussion of ideas and topics that have already been concluded as problematic.
That's how it gets decided. We decided as a collective that murder, rape, abortion, climate change, evolution, gender pronouns, and all the other stuff was the right direction. It's about as ridiculous as wanting to debate that 2+2 = 4.
> Like I said, there's no reason to debate certain things anymore.
That's your opinion.
> We don't debate that racism is bad
The Supreme Court is about to decide on a case regarding Affirmative Action, which is the practice of making decisions based upon someone's race (AKA racism).
> We decided as a collective that murder, rape, abortion, climate change, evolution, gender pronouns, and all the other stuff was the right direction.
There have been debates about whether murder is justifiable in certain situations, such as self defense under the castle doctrine.
We're literally discussing Stallman's opinion about whether some girls were raped.
Abortion is INCREDIBLY controversial. It is far from a decided issue with concensus.
Same with climate change, not even the entire scientific community is certain to the degree of man-made influence on our climate.
Darwinian style evolution remains officially a theory.
Gender pronouns, yeah again, hardly a consensus there. Biologically, there are X and Y chromosomes, and that's where known and agreed upon science ends. It's just very disingenuous to pretend that people having gender pronouns that differ from their biological sex is some universally agreed upon truth.
>Same with climate change, not even the entire scientific community is certain to the degree of man-made influence on our climate.
This is false, the scientific community that studies climate is in agreement of the impact of humans. It's absurd to call the three scientists that fox news has on to deny climate change anything more than less than 1% of scientists involved in the matter. 99%+ of climate scientists along with the current state of research definitely agrees that humans have had an incredible impact on the current changes we see in the climate
It's like that stat that says 9/10 dentists agree that brushing your teeth is good or whatever. Are you going to side with the one dentist that doesn't? That's what you're doing here
People always did, especially the smart ones like Stallman. His blog literally consists of his provocative takes on various issues. Thinking results in having an argumentation for one's actions. That argumentation might be wrong, and the person could change their views when presented with evidence. If you never overlook blunders and allow to self-correct, you are discouraging original thinking.
Incorrect move. Having an opinion is not destructive to society. On the contrary, interrogating our beliefs clarifies them and allows the truth to come through and controversial opinions are a vehicle for that. Wanting to ban and silence people who say controversial things is a sign of weakness and fear, that should itself be examined.
No, it doesn't only take a few stupid utterances. The moral crusaders only have power with those who have none. Donald Trump still isn't in prison for doing and saying far, far worse over several decades.
> Donald Trump still isn't in prison for doing and saying far, far worse over several decades.
Donald Trump isn't in prison because he hasn't been convicted of any crimes. Well except for in the court of public opinion, but fortunately for us, they hold no power within the American justice system.
I respect Stallman's contributions to computers, I respect a lot of his ideas, I respect his not uncommonly quite eloquent writing, I've enjoyed his talks. The world is objectively a better place having had his involvement.
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.
"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...