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.
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.
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?
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
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.
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)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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....
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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!
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. (-:
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)
> 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.
> 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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
> 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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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).
> 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.
>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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 294 ms ] threadthis 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.
I've been using Emacs since the late 1970s (actually, an Emacs clone, since 1990). It's a great editor, and he wrote a lot of it.
But I won't support or condone his behavior, nor am I interested in anything he has to say.
Otherwise it's just sparkling consequences.
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.
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.
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.
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.
RMS simply kept faith on someone he knew and respected personally (not Epstein!), in the face of accusations he did not believe to be true[0].
0. https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-agai...
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.
Otherwise it's just sparkling consequences.
In my opinion, yes, absolutely.
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.)
Gates knew Epstein from earlier so likely would have known about the conviction. Also, it sounds like relationship soured in 2014.
The issue is that hanging out or doing business with someone as unsavory as Epstein is gia
I doubt as severe as what Epstein did.
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.
Public opinion is not a court.
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.
For one, powerful people generally have advisers whose job it is to prevent people like Gates from associating with sex criminals like Epstein.
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.
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
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.
https://www.stallman.org
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.
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 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
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.
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.
Damn Deleware, 7?!
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.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/11/01/child-mar...
Not to mention like every big rocker had a teenage girlfriend in the 1970s.
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.
What people are saying is that organizations have a right to choose whether to associate, or not, with people based on their opinions.
It would be a grim world if we took freedom of thought to the extreme of mandating that people who disagree must not object.
EPFL is not a person. It does not have a set opinion on the subject. And its individual members likely disagree on the matter.
I am also not denying EPFL right to associate, I am questioning their judgement here.
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.
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.
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)
Taken out of context it’s a different story.
re:2) The assumption that they can’t give consent is due to the inherent power imbalance in their “relationship”.
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?
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.
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
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.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/meet-catch-and-keep/...
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.
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.
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.
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.
This can be as minimal as PDA, to stuff as egregious as Key & Peele's skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3h6es6zh1c
If you're discussing about furry sex or 50 shades of Grey, maybe keep it to the privacy of an adult furry community or a book club.
> 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.
Totally legal:
> https://www.statista.com/chart/11848/americas-youngest-child...
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.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/02/10/...
> 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.
Such a church lady of me.
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.
[0] https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/statutory-rape-guide-state-laws... [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/age-of-co...
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....
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.
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
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.
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.
It was 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21092184
Stallman is also not known as someone who can be coerced to say he believes something that he doesn't believe in.
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.
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.
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.
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."
Someone needs to invent a time machine, so that I can go back and slap myself before each foot-in-mouth incident.
> 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.
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?
[0] “Marriage is between a man and a woman,” on not supporting gay marriage but only civil unions https://time.com/3816952/obama-gay-lesbian-transgender-lgbt-...
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.
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."
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.
All we know is that someone was paid by the Swiss tax-payers to write that.
> Did stallman say something since he was invited that was particularly noticeable?
Maybe they found another anonymous blog post to cancel him? Who knows.
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. (-:
Beyond pathetic.
[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.
Edit: the level of downvotes/flag-kills of comments just asking "why" and "what happened" is pretty depressing.
Meanwhile, Reid Hoffman is now known to have visited the island and has not seen any firestorm of cancellations, as far as I'm aware.
Recently, or years ago? Because I'm pretty sure those remarks happened years ago.
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.
we are comparing two people: one participated, and one was giving a personal opinion about the participation.
here's my question. why are we pretending as if these two offenses are equal?
An opinion can be changed, an action cannot.
the plausible deniability factor of acting deaf and blind to a situation that surrounds you is paper-thin.
It is an abstract academic ideology where symbols and words matter a lot, while real-world activity does not.
[0] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/of-course-you-know-what...
edit Even this comment, which is just listing a series of objective facts, is getting wildly upvoted/downvoted
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.
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.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman...
But the cancelation crowd's witch hunt continues even today.
[0] https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-agai...
[1] https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/09/30/in-defense-of-richard-stal...
[2] https://itsfoss.com/richard-stallman-controversy/
I personally don't like the guy, but to take away his views for the people that were genuinely interested was cowardly.
The difference is probably that Stallman has no money or power, so he's an easy, safe target to attack.
> Gates first met face to face on the evening of Jan. 31, 2011, at Mr. Epstein's townhouse on the Upper East Side (nyt)
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.
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.
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.
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.
It was in the US Virgin Islands where the age of consent was 16 at the time.
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.
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.
You can still get a ticket for breaking the law.
Simple as
And real crimes? Like trafficking teenaged women around the world to be used as sex slaves to please one's powerful male associates?
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).
Not sure what this has to do with what I posted...
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!
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.
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).
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.
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.
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]
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/16/business/bill-melinda-gat...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-pedophile-bill... (Note the publication date)
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.
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.
???
Then his wife proceeds to get out of there asap, idk man, actions speak louder ...
RMS doesn’t have Gates’ resources.
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.
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.
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.
Pathos is as important as logos.
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.
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.
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).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/shaunharper/2023/05/04/presiden...
> 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.
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.
Then they could claim to be degrading him, due to his twisted views, while still letting people hear his wisdom on open source etc if they want to.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This was in 2019, and in all likelihood is also why he was uninvited from this event.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman...
If you're a parent, read these comments and understand better.
"Values".
I don’t know or care a whole lot. He isn’t exactly active on issues outside open source.
All I need to hear from him is “I may very well be wrong about this, but I just don’t care enough to argue” and he’s off my mental sh*t list.
Have you not visited his personal website?
Basically, a private twitter feed (but using free software!)