From what I know, this is how HN has always operated. There have been several threads to discuss the situation with Stallman, people have voiced their opinions, and these are probably seen as a rehash of those.
There hasn't been much information in these new stories which we didn't already know about him / the situation. FWIW I didn't flag them.
In sum RMS argued that "sexual assault" in the colloquial sense is not the same as "sexual assault" in the statutory sense when as when it involves a legal minor, which is perfectly true.
Trust the woke group and SJWs to create a storm in a teacup over such a statement.
I'm fairly supportive of RMS and his movement but are you seriously failing to see why someone who is not "woke" might have a problem with somebody playing apologetics for their friend for committing statutory rape?
It's not that his point was incorrect but it's rather the fact that he is clearly bringing it up to play defence for somebody's actions which were fundamentally wrong regardless of if you take it colloquially or not. You think an underage prostitute has 100% free agency in who their clientele are? RMS either does or more likely, he hasn't thought his position through very clearly and is doing a knee-jerk defense of a friend who did a bad bad. This is also not the first time RMS has made statements about sexuality that betray a lack of understanding such as when he defended necrophilia and pedophilia as ok as long as it is consensual.
I don't think he needs to be cancelled for this or whatever since I don't think RMS is of any real danger to vulnerable people and clearly his free software activism is still needed in the world but he absolutely does deserve to have his views questioned, challenged, and criticised.
Someone born in 1983 was either 18 or 19 in 2002. I'm not that supportive of RMS, or his habits, or his goals, but even if there was sex between Minsky and Guiffre — and no allegations of it ever being occurred have been brought up so far — no statutory rape could have happened.
I would find any older man hanging out with 18-19 year olds sufficiently weird to raise my guards. I can imagine just a single reason that makes them think its a good idea to skirt the line that closely.
You're right, in the end you need proof for a conviction. We however don't need that high a bar to get a pretty good measure of a person, and we're free to dislike someone for manoeuvring themselves into situations where abuse of power imbalance is made so easy. I'm always open to correction in particular cases, but my default will always be to be aware of the decreased barriers of committing abuse.
To play a little bit of defense here, there was definitely a bit of manipulation here by Epstein himself by gathering all these scientists and engineers, many of whom were assured that their colleagues would be there - framing it as a convention instead of what it actually was.
Once you have everybody in the Island, just insert these beautiful women and try to get either entrapment or at the very least a photo or recording that looks compromising.
I don't buy that everybody in Epstein's contact list were ignorant of the true nature of his enterprise but one-off academic guests probably were.
Perhaps they were not aware beforehand, but I find it difficult to believe that on the island it wouldn't be. It provides a confronting look into ones character.
Minsky went there a second time. I'll need proof to convict him, I'll also need proof to exhonorate him. I looks like I'll get neither proof.
> I would find any older man hanging out with 18-19 year olds sufficiently weird to raise my guards
Weird is not a crime and how old is older?
In many societies including within the US, being with an older man may be seen as providing financial security and stability and is not considered as inherently wrong.
I was specific: I understand the inverse reason and find it more valid and as such don't have nearly the size of a beef with it and therefore didn't mention it.
I'm also not saying it's inherently wrong, I'm only saying that I find it sufficiently deep into suspicious territory to raise my guards. And I explained why I think that: because it lowers thresholds for committing abuse.
The young person in this scenario is not in the position of power after all.
I understand the pint regarding the intersection of free will coercion prostitutes and pimps.
But... are they going to cancel all Hollywood actors caught with prostitutes, male or female? Do you recall ‘rape-rape Whoopi? Sure, unrelated industries, but where is the media on this? They cover both but are only interested in one.
How can you seriously claim that there is somehow more media attention on the sexual misconduct of software engineers than Hollywood? There is probably more articles and news coverage on the acts of Harvey Weinstein alone than every sexual abuse case in the software world combined.
They probably are not talking that much about Hollywood actors being caught with prostitutes specifically because they are preoccupied with the rampant sexual abuse that goes on between actors themselves including towards many child actors.
> I'm fairly supportive of RMS and his movement but are you seriously failing to see why someone who is not "woke" might have a problem with somebody playing apologetics for their friend for committing statutory rape?
What apologetics are there here?
What is there to apologize for? Sex with a physically mature person male or female who proffers themselves voluntarily is not considered rape in any social settings. The fact that the "rape" has to be prefixed by "statutory" only shows that it is not rape in the colloquial sense. There is nothing to defend in regards to such an opinion.
"Statutory rape" with a consenting 17 year old is like "gay marriage". It may be a statutory definition, but marriage means "matrimony" such as Christian "Holy matrimony" to a lot of people and for them "gay marriage" is simply an oxymoron. Statute is not the sole arbiter of morality.
You are simply demanding that people conform to moral sensibilities which are not universally hled.
Consider the concept of trying juveniles as an adult. How many people who consider that there is no such thing as consensual sex with a 17 year old ever object to the concept of trying the same juveniles as adults? Apparently teenagers are mature enough to be tried as adults when it suits them and immature youths being preyed upon by older people when it doesn't.
If Victoria Giuffre had a normal life which did not involve being pimped by wealthy socialites and committed a cold calculated murder at the age of 17 would any of the people yelling "statutory rape" object if she was tried as an adult?
The very same society which yells statutory rape is the very same one which applauds and fetes entertainment stars like Beyonce, Rihanna, Ariana Grande etc, singing saucy lyrics and gyrating to preteens and feigns shock when the very same girls engage in those acts with adults. Why the double standards?
Offending sensibilities is not a crime. It is actions that constitute crime and whether he has different opinions on sex with legal minors and has no objections to necrophilia does not necessarily mean an interest or commitment to participating in them.
Many American Muslims in believe in Islamic teachings on homosexuality, sex with in minors and a whole load of edicts which are objectionable by contemporary human rights standards, even if they don't act on them.
How many of the people offended by RMS has ever confronted American Muslims who hold such beliefs?
> It may be a statutory definition, but marriage means "matrimony" such as Christian "Holy matrimony" to a lot of people and for them "gay marriage" is simply an oxymoron.
Other religions have marriages. What the law says cannot be restricted to what Christianity (some of it) believe to be the Only Right Thing.
So you think a young prostitute flown into a remote Island by a billionaire is able to consent with 100% impartiality? It's not the specific age that is the biggest issue here - the age of consent in my country is 16. It's the age gap between the parties and the fact that she was flown into private property entirely at the mercy of Epstein.
I don't agree that consent magically becomes a possibility at the age of 18 but not 17 and neither do most advocates for an age of consent for that matter. The reason for having one is because there does need to be a line drawn somewhere and pitching it higher than the onset of puberty is not a bad safety margin.
Also, may states and countries have laws that dictate cases underage sex between parties with smaller age gaps so the motivations here is not some infantalisation of the young, it's to try to have some level of checks against the often overwhelming power difference between minors and adults.
I also never claimed that RMS had any interest in participating in pedophilia or necrophilia himself. My claim was that his view on the morality these acts betray a lack of understanding as to why they are considered so objectionable.
Your point on American Muslims is just plain disingenuous and relies on trickery by omission. They believe in scripture that has views on those matters but the same is in fact true of American Christians yet if you took them aside and asked either the average Christian or Muslim on the street if they thinks sex with minors is ok, they would likely say no. Contrary to your delusions, there are a lot of practices in both the Quran and the Bible that are not widely practised by their adherents today. The vast majority of Muslims do not practice polygamy for example and the vast majority of Christians don't hold a vehement hatred for the consumption of shellfish.
There are people in the world who interpret words literally. They are wrong. Words are part of language and does not have absolute interpretations, but rather is about communication of concepts and ideas between humans that is derived through context and common culture and religious beliefs.
What should we do about those people? To have their views questioned, challenged, and criticized can be used to flag to the rest of society that percived social norms has been violated, and it might inform the party at fault that their literally interpretation is wrong. However some people either has personality trait or disorders that commonly get stuck on interpreting words literally, and strangely they seem to be more common in academic and religious environments.
It makes sense that for people who struggle with subtlety, the explicit world of academia and religion would be highly appealing.
It's difficult to reverse engineer the dynamics of the subtle in the language of the literal but I suspect it is not impossible. There are people with social disorders that had to learn all the social cues that we take for granted as intuition, explicitly but many end up having better social skills than the average. Why? Because by being forced to learn these skills in an explicit way, they have to come to a higher level understanding than that of the average sociable person.
The same is true for the artist with aphantasia or the mathematician without the ability to do mental arithmetic. In many cases, the same systematic study that people with these unique deficiencies have to undergo to learn those skills must be done by even average people to acquire real proficiency in that area, except average people have less of a blank canvas to work with which is both an advantage (there is already a bit of mileage in terms of practice) and a disadvantage (suddenly, you have to unlearn biases and bad habits that you have been unknowingly reinforcing).
This was a bit of a rant and a half but I just wanted to put down the train of thought your comment put me under.
What Stallman said in 2019, and how the media has mischaracterised that, is largely beside the point in the current kerfuffle.
What's problematic is that Stallman has resumed a role at the FSF without any community input. Paying FSF members and associates didn't get a say in the matter; it was presented as a _fait accompli_.
The wider free software movement is being badly served by the current FSF leadership. The FSF's governance process is secretive, undemocratic and no longer fit for purpose.
There's a very good quality discussion about that on the FLOSS Weekly podcast episode 622[1] from 20:40 which deserves more attention than it seems to have received.
I think Stallman is an utter idiot for doing the “well akhshually” thing and pointing out, “that an old guy who has sex with 17 year old hookers, may not be aware they are being forced to have sec with him”. It’s not exactly defending a pedo, or Epstein, it’s just really stupid.
That being said, in the world we live in, image matters. If this gets tied to open source in the media, you’ll see every one moving away from it. So I’m not sure what the hell the FSF is up to or even thinking, choosing this hill to die on.
We’re already moving any GNU licenses we have to something else because of the possible bad press.
26 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 66.5 ms ] threadhttps://rms-support-letter.github.io/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26596378
As was this one. ("Stallman's return denounced by the EFF, Tor, Mozilla, and the creator of Rust.")
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26624951
There hasn't been much information in these new stories which we didn't already know about him / the situation. FWIW I didn't flag them.
I see the media is still miss-characterizing his remarks two years later. I'm not defending his points, but this is bollocks.
Sorry RMS, still cancelled.
The writer conveniently ignores as of posting.
1. https://rms-support-letter.github.io/ - 4099 votes
2. https://rms-open-letter.github.io/ - 2885 votes
In sum RMS argued that "sexual assault" in the colloquial sense is not the same as "sexual assault" in the statutory sense when as when it involves a legal minor, which is perfectly true.
Trust the woke group and SJWs to create a storm in a teacup over such a statement.
It's not that his point was incorrect but it's rather the fact that he is clearly bringing it up to play defence for somebody's actions which were fundamentally wrong regardless of if you take it colloquially or not. You think an underage prostitute has 100% free agency in who their clientele are? RMS either does or more likely, he hasn't thought his position through very clearly and is doing a knee-jerk defense of a friend who did a bad bad. This is also not the first time RMS has made statements about sexuality that betray a lack of understanding such as when he defended necrophilia and pedophilia as ok as long as it is consensual.
I don't think he needs to be cancelled for this or whatever since I don't think RMS is of any real danger to vulnerable people and clearly his free software activism is still needed in the world but he absolutely does deserve to have his views questioned, challenged, and criticised.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Minsky#Association_with...
> Born Virginia Louise Roberts — August 9, 1983
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Roberts_Giuffre
Someone born in 1983 was either 18 or 19 in 2002. I'm not that supportive of RMS, or his habits, or his goals, but even if there was sex between Minsky and Guiffre — and no allegations of it ever being occurred have been brought up so far — no statutory rape could have happened.
You're right, in the end you need proof for a conviction. We however don't need that high a bar to get a pretty good measure of a person, and we're free to dislike someone for manoeuvring themselves into situations where abuse of power imbalance is made so easy. I'm always open to correction in particular cases, but my default will always be to be aware of the decreased barriers of committing abuse.
Once you have everybody in the Island, just insert these beautiful women and try to get either entrapment or at the very least a photo or recording that looks compromising.
I don't buy that everybody in Epstein's contact list were ignorant of the true nature of his enterprise but one-off academic guests probably were.
Minsky went there a second time. I'll need proof to convict him, I'll also need proof to exhonorate him. I looks like I'll get neither proof.
Weird is not a crime and how old is older?
In many societies including within the US, being with an older man may be seen as providing financial security and stability and is not considered as inherently wrong.
I'm also not saying it's inherently wrong, I'm only saying that I find it sufficiently deep into suspicious territory to raise my guards. And I explained why I think that: because it lowers thresholds for committing abuse.
The young person in this scenario is not in the position of power after all.
But... are they going to cancel all Hollywood actors caught with prostitutes, male or female? Do you recall ‘rape-rape Whoopi? Sure, unrelated industries, but where is the media on this? They cover both but are only interested in one.
They probably are not talking that much about Hollywood actors being caught with prostitutes specifically because they are preoccupied with the rampant sexual abuse that goes on between actors themselves including towards many child actors.
What apologetics are there here?
What is there to apologize for? Sex with a physically mature person male or female who proffers themselves voluntarily is not considered rape in any social settings. The fact that the "rape" has to be prefixed by "statutory" only shows that it is not rape in the colloquial sense. There is nothing to defend in regards to such an opinion.
"Statutory rape" with a consenting 17 year old is like "gay marriage". It may be a statutory definition, but marriage means "matrimony" such as Christian "Holy matrimony" to a lot of people and for them "gay marriage" is simply an oxymoron. Statute is not the sole arbiter of morality.
You are simply demanding that people conform to moral sensibilities which are not universally hled.
Consider the concept of trying juveniles as an adult. How many people who consider that there is no such thing as consensual sex with a 17 year old ever object to the concept of trying the same juveniles as adults? Apparently teenagers are mature enough to be tried as adults when it suits them and immature youths being preyed upon by older people when it doesn't.
If Victoria Giuffre had a normal life which did not involve being pimped by wealthy socialites and committed a cold calculated murder at the age of 17 would any of the people yelling "statutory rape" object if she was tried as an adult?
The very same society which yells statutory rape is the very same one which applauds and fetes entertainment stars like Beyonce, Rihanna, Ariana Grande etc, singing saucy lyrics and gyrating to preteens and feigns shock when the very same girls engage in those acts with adults. Why the double standards?
Offending sensibilities is not a crime. It is actions that constitute crime and whether he has different opinions on sex with legal minors and has no objections to necrophilia does not necessarily mean an interest or commitment to participating in them.
Many American Muslims in believe in Islamic teachings on homosexuality, sex with in minors and a whole load of edicts which are objectionable by contemporary human rights standards, even if they don't act on them.
How many of the people offended by RMS has ever confronted American Muslims who hold such beliefs?
Other religions have marriages. What the law says cannot be restricted to what Christianity (some of it) believe to be the Only Right Thing.
I don't agree that consent magically becomes a possibility at the age of 18 but not 17 and neither do most advocates for an age of consent for that matter. The reason for having one is because there does need to be a line drawn somewhere and pitching it higher than the onset of puberty is not a bad safety margin.
Also, may states and countries have laws that dictate cases underage sex between parties with smaller age gaps so the motivations here is not some infantalisation of the young, it's to try to have some level of checks against the often overwhelming power difference between minors and adults.
I also never claimed that RMS had any interest in participating in pedophilia or necrophilia himself. My claim was that his view on the morality these acts betray a lack of understanding as to why they are considered so objectionable.
Your point on American Muslims is just plain disingenuous and relies on trickery by omission. They believe in scripture that has views on those matters but the same is in fact true of American Christians yet if you took them aside and asked either the average Christian or Muslim on the street if they thinks sex with minors is ok, they would likely say no. Contrary to your delusions, there are a lot of practices in both the Quran and the Bible that are not widely practised by their adherents today. The vast majority of Muslims do not practice polygamy for example and the vast majority of Christians don't hold a vehement hatred for the consumption of shellfish.
What should we do about those people? To have their views questioned, challenged, and criticized can be used to flag to the rest of society that percived social norms has been violated, and it might inform the party at fault that their literally interpretation is wrong. However some people either has personality trait or disorders that commonly get stuck on interpreting words literally, and strangely they seem to be more common in academic and religious environments.
It's difficult to reverse engineer the dynamics of the subtle in the language of the literal but I suspect it is not impossible. There are people with social disorders that had to learn all the social cues that we take for granted as intuition, explicitly but many end up having better social skills than the average. Why? Because by being forced to learn these skills in an explicit way, they have to come to a higher level understanding than that of the average sociable person.
The same is true for the artist with aphantasia or the mathematician without the ability to do mental arithmetic. In many cases, the same systematic study that people with these unique deficiencies have to undergo to learn those skills must be done by even average people to acquire real proficiency in that area, except average people have less of a blank canvas to work with which is both an advantage (there is already a bit of mileage in terms of practice) and a disadvantage (suddenly, you have to unlearn biases and bad habits that you have been unknowingly reinforcing).
This was a bit of a rant and a half but I just wanted to put down the train of thought your comment put me under.
https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235124.html
What's problematic is that Stallman has resumed a role at the FSF without any community input. Paying FSF members and associates didn't get a say in the matter; it was presented as a _fait accompli_.
The wider free software movement is being badly served by the current FSF leadership. The FSF's governance process is secretive, undemocratic and no longer fit for purpose.
There's a very good quality discussion about that on the FLOSS Weekly podcast episode 622[1] from 20:40 which deserves more attention than it seems to have received.
[1] https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/622?autostart=fa...
That being said, in the world we live in, image matters. If this gets tied to open source in the media, you’ll see every one moving away from it. So I’m not sure what the hell the FSF is up to or even thinking, choosing this hill to die on.
We’re already moving any GNU licenses we have to something else because of the possible bad press.