8 ms·

Related earlier post: > I want to respond to the misleading media coverage of messages I posted about Marvin Minsky's association with Jeffrey Epstein. The cov

• melling 7y ago
  I didn’t follow the story. Was Stallman taken out of context? Anyway, he probably should have know better than to weigh in. One’s well thought out response and subtle points can often turn out to have a few holes. In fact... “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged”
  • smacktoward 7y ago
    > Anyway, he probably should have know better than to weigh in. RMS is not exactly famous for his keen social skills.
    • partialrecall 7y ago
      It really seems like his real 'sin' is not being neurotypical. Should he try to have more tact? Sure, of course. But failing that, the correct response is compassion and gentle correction, not a witchhunt. Not driving him out of his jobs.
      • fwip 7y ago
        I mean, this certainly isn't the first time that he's publicly said that he thinks "consenting pedophilia" is 100% fine, and it's not the first time that people have told him "Hey, don't say that, you're gonna get in trouble." At a certain point it stops looking like ignorance and stubbornness and more like he's got a horse in the race.
        • partialrecall 7y ago
          You know he's also recanted that shit, right? > and more like he's got a horse in the race. Has the mob now progressed to insinuating that he's a pedophile himself? Is that what the 'horse in the race' idiom means in this context?
          • ceejayoz 7y ago
            Sure. He recanted those comments two days ago (after espousing them on his website at least between 2006 and 2013), and after his comments on the Epstein case started getting attention, which makes it look more like damage control than a genuine change in opinion. https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_%28Sex_between_an_adult_and_a_child_is_wrong%29 https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...
            • partialrecall 7y ago
              I'd say recent statements more accurately reflect somebody's current beliefs than old statements. Considering how badly he's been recently slandered by media outlets leaving out context and mischaracterizing his remarks, I am disturbed by your willingness to exclude that context from your previous comment.
              • ceejayoz 7y ago
                As a general rule, I tend to give more credit to consistent and freely offered opinions espoused over years than a sudden conversion immediately after a PR crisis. There's a famous saying: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
      • roywiggins 7y ago
        I expect CSAIL is bristling with non-neurotypical people who didn't take this as a good time to come to the defense of Marvin Minksy in such a frankly bizarre way. It's one thing to say I don't think he did it, but to say "if he did it, it would not have been bad, and in this essay I will-" and to then distribute that to the entire CSAIL mailing list! I'll grant that some of the headlines about what RMS wrote were overblown, but still. You don't have to look outside the four corners of what he wrote to see why it wasn't an excusable thing to blast out to a departmental email. Once you expand from those four corners to his prior comments on pedophilia it gets way worse. At a certain point, if you have lived as long as RMS has, you should have some knowledge of your own limitations. It would take an absolute master of rhetoric to make his argument and not have it taken badly. He is not one, and he should (at this point) have the barest humility to not subject the entire CSAIL mailing list to his half-baked ideas on how Minsky might be exonerated.
        • partialrecall 7y ago
          I think Stallman is tactless, and I've thought that for years. That email didn't change anything I thought about him. I also think that being tactless is not a moral crime. It's aesthetically offensive and counterproductive from a leadership perspective, but being a bad leader doesn't make somebody a bad person.
          • roywiggins 7y ago
            If it comes down to whether RMS's position at CSAIL amounted to a leadership position or not, I'd venture that it did. Professors have institutional power that everyone else on the CSAIL list who isn't one don't have. Someone who abuses their name and position to blast screeds like that, I can see why CSAIL might not want him around anymore.
            • throwaway1918 7y ago
              He was not a professor. He quit his job at MIT (as some sort of staff researcher/programmer) in 1984 to start the GNU project. He was an unpaid visiting scientist and had an office, although he was rarely in it (he spends a lot of time traveling). He did not have any institutional power beyond his participation as a rando on the mailing lists.
      • geofft 7y ago
        Matthew Garrett, who served on the FSF board of directors, wrote about the "not being neurotypical" hypothesis two days ago: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html In particular, he says he did try to do the compassion and gentle correction work, and Stallman had no interest in it. Stallman's job has a job description - leading the Free Software Foundation. If he's not leading it effectively, it is important for his own cause that he step away, and it is important that the FSF Board do their job by finding someone more effective at it. If he's not suited for it for reasons outside of his control and never will be, that's all the more reason that we should compassionately and gently get him to find another job. (Also, I think this argument is deeply unfair to the many neuroatypical people in this world who still manage to not say the things Stallman does - which is in most cases not merely a matter of "tact," but even so, many of whom put conscious, learned effort into having tact. I have friends with all sorts of things going on in their brain who are wonderful people and in many cases also wonderful free software authors, and I think this argument does them a disservice.)
        • partialrecall 7y ago
          I think it should go without saying that atypicality is not a binary matter.
          • geofft 7y ago
            Sure. I know people "on the spectrum," I know people with various forms of PTSD, I know people with bipolar, I know people with ADHD, I know plural folks, etc., and none of them act like RMS. I know very friendly, conscientious, and kind neuroatypical folks. I know brusque and tactless neuroatypical folks with whom it's draining to interact in certain ways. They still don't act like RMS. So the (implicit) argument "This is just what you expect with neuroatypical people" / "If we want to be welcoming of neuroatypical people, we have to be welcoming of people who act like RMS" is even less true because of how diverse the category is. We know RMS isn't being excluded because of his (hypothetical) neuroatypicality because there are so many neuroatypical people who aren't and wouldn't be excluded. If you want to argue that the problem with RMS is he is in the narrow category of people who act like RMS (and I would say that not even Linus Torvalds is in this category), that's a fine argument to make, but it's a bit circular to defend his inclusion on such grounds. Is this category the sort of category, like race or class or neurological makeup, that is beyond (or mostly beyond) one's control and has little correlation with whether you can do good work? Or is this a category like "asshole"?
      • wavefunction 7y ago
        I downvoted you because both the neurotypical and neuro-atypical suffer from myopia, sentimentalism, favoritism, deficits of empathy, and methods for introducing and justifying moral lapses.
        • selfawareposter 7y ago
          I’m also just sick of hearing about how old nerds just don’t know any better even when people are literally telling them to stop. That the topic is a bad idea. That they will make themselves look bad. And it’s deeply unfair to people who have issues to simply blame gross behavior in being “neuro-atypical”.
      • selfawareposter 7y ago
        No. His sin was what he said. His sin was having a history of pretty disturbing comments about child porn and sex with children and animals. Sorry but you don’t get to weasel out by saying you have poor social skills.
        • partialrecall 7y ago
          If you'd ever met the man, you would know that Stallman being social oblivious with no tact or decorum is not merely some idle claim.
          • mixologic 7y ago
            Tact and decorum are how ideas are presented. No amount of tact or decorum would make it possible to defend somebody for sleeping with an underage girl. He's attempting to find some remotely plausible scenario where the actions of his friend are morally acceptable. No amount of tact makes that okay, and complete lack of tact just makes it worse.
          • azernik 7y ago
            GP's point was that social obliviousness is no excuse.
  • vkou 7y ago
    He was dancing on a tightrope. Whether or not his statements were taken out of context requires a mind-reader to intuit what exactly he, uh, meant by them. It's not an interesting defense, and given his prior statements on the subject of statutory rape, I'm having a hard time taking it seriously.
    • michaelmrose 7y ago
      His statement was perfectly comprehensible no mind reading required you are just muddying the waters.
      • happytoexplain 7y ago
        Surely this means you are either unaware of the many people who took his meaning differently, or you believe they somehow don't count?
        • michaelmrose 7y ago
          People who actually read the thread and took it differently have poor reading comprehension its all perfectly clear.
        • catslam72 7y ago
          I believe they were misled by the numerous reports by leading news sites who claimed he described the victims as willing in their headlines.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • danso 7y ago
    Someone emailed an event for protesting Minsky, and Stallman accused her of wrongly inflating the term "sexual assault" when using it to refer to Minsky and Epstein. Stallman bends over backwards for Minsky, saying that he shouldn't be automatically to blame if Epstein forced someone to have sex with him. It's little different than the absurd pretzel that Lessig bent himself into when trying to defend his friend Joi Ito [0]: > Q: Doesn’t it make sense to you that people would say someone who is taking money from and cozying up with a guy who is a pedophile and who is targeting young women, maybe he shouldn’t lead an institution that includes women? > Lessig: I’m not sure it describes the case, and more importantly, what about the institution? > Q: What do you mean it doesn’t describe the case? > L: I don’t know about the “cozying up to.” > Q: Going to his house, being socially in his orbit, taking money from him. > L: In the context of raising money — just like you would go up there and meet with him in the context of an interview... > L: When you say that he is cozying up to him, that’s something very different from what I understand actually happened, which is: Joi, in the context of his job for the M.I.T. Media Lab, built a relationship with one of the people he’s raising money from. I don't begrudge Lessig and Stallman for attempting to apply what they think is logic and rationality in approaching these topics. I absolutely despise them for their hypocrisy in the way they refuse to acknowledge how they themselves are tainted by irrationality when defending their friends. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/business/lessig-epstein-ito-mit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/business/lessig-epstein-i...
    • tzs 7y ago
      > It's little different than the absurd pretzel that Lessig bent himself into when trying to defend his friend Joi Ito It's massively different, because Joi Ito's interactions with Epstein were after Epstein's sexual atrocities were known. Minsky's were in 2001, which as far as I have been able to find is before Epstein was known to be evil.
      • pryce 7y ago
        Minsky arranged a second conference with Epstein, on Epstein's private island in 2011 [1]. What sources were you using that implied Minsky's contact with Epstein stopped 10 years before that? [1] https://www.pr.com/press-release/383199 https://www.pr.com/press-release/383199
  • tzs 7y ago
    > I didn’t follow the story. Was Stallman taken out of context? Yes. This statement of Stallman's: > We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates. has been reported in several places as Stallman saying Epstein's girls were "entirely willing", completely ignoring that he was not saying they were willing--he was saying that Epstein would have required them to say they were willing. If you have sufficient power over someone to force them to have sex with whomever you want them to, you almost certainly also have sufficient power over them to tell them to pretend to be doing it of the own free will. Epstein was massively evil, but he wasn't massively stupid, so almost certainly would have exercised such power. Stallman was talking about Marvin Minsky's sex with a girl at Epstein's island retreat in 2001, which was a few years before Epstein's sexual atrocities became known. Stallman was arguing that from Minsky's point of view, he probably had no reason to suspect that he was not dealing with a consenting girl.
    • selfawareposter 7y ago
      Except for the part where he got taken to a remote island by a billionaire and was presented with a very young woman who immediately wanted to have sex with him.
      • veemacs 7y ago
        Hindsight is 20/20, scrutinizing our understanding of past events instead of making grandios assumptions is the key to realising justice. Misinterpretting the words of a man because you don't like the way they think is an injustice.
      • tzs 7y ago
        You mean the island that Epstein regularly invited numerous people to in order to discuss assorted legitimate things, like supporting their charities or their research? Epstein's island wasn't some stereotypical villain lair where anyone who steps foot on it must be up to no good. It was a place that he conducted the normal business that any entirely legitimate billionaire would conduct, in addition to the villain stuff. Based on the girl's deposition, it looks like she was there on the record to provide massages to guests, and off the record was forced to make those erotic massages including sex. It is not clear which, if any, recipients of those massages plus sex knew that the sex was something she was forced into. There are no details given on her sex with Minsky other than it happened.
  • selfawareposter 7y ago
    Yes, but it was also awful in context. It was taken directly as the girl being “willing” when what he actually said was that she may have been coerced by Epstein into appearing to be “willing” to Minsky. It doesn’t help that he has a documented history of fucked up comments in this general area.
    • miracle2k 7y ago
      Should news outlets and social media personalities who do purposefully take this comments out of context (and I think there can be little doubt that it is done on purpose [1]) be punished? [1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-defends-epstein-victims-were-entirely-willing https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-r...
      • enriquto 7y ago
        Clearly. This is a false accusation that damaged his work and reputation. At the very least, these news outlets and media personalities must be compelled to apologize publicly.
    • partialrecall 7y ago
      > "she may have been coerced by Epstein into appearing to be “willing” to Minsky." Is that not a possibility?
      • mixologic 7y ago
        Would that somehow absolve Minsky? A "willing" obviously young girl seems to want to have sex with somebody she doesnt know. If Minsky suddenly find himself in the plot to a porno, and just went along with it, then trying to defend his moral culpability is probably a lot out of the bounds of acceptability.
        • partialrecall 7y ago
          I didn't say it would absolve Minsky. Somebody who has sex with a prostitute is lower than dirt in my book.
  • forclarity 7y ago
    At least in the case of the Daily Beast article by Blake Montgomery, enough context was included that a plain reading of the quoted material makes clear that the surrounding text and headline were radically incorrect. Journalistic malpractice if not deliberate libel. The author has since doubled down. I, for one, won't be believing a damned thing written by the man in the foreseeable future. I encourage you to make your own determination. Stallman defended Minsky. Judge him for what he said. Don't judge him for a defense of Epstein - he unambiguously condemned Epstein with the rest of us.
  • m000 7y ago
    > Anyway, he probably should have know better than to weigh in. That's the problem with the internet today. It's too toxic to hold any meaningful public discussion. I'd bet that RMS was open to discussing the point he expressed. Because that's what you do on an old-fashioned mailing list. But apparently he got no response to his email. Instead Selam jumped the gun and started, essentially, a shaming campaign on medium. This kind of attitude essentially hushes people who can actually hold a meaningful online discussion, and perhaps revising their starting opinions after one. Instead we only get to hear the voices of people that are righteous about their opinions—be right or wrong. Internet has transformed from an open forum to a shouting contest; if you can't join a big enough shouting group, no need to waste your energy participating.
    • DanBC 7y ago
      He wasn't attempting to have a meaningful discussion though, was he? He was defending a 70 year old who had sex with a coerced child by trying to say that the word "assault" shouldn't carry either its everyday English meaning or its more specific legal meaning, but should instead have some other meaning that he created.
      • m000 7y ago
        I sense a generation gap here. csail-related is a closed mailing list. If you disagree with a point, you are expected to come back with some arguments. Not to leak emails out with zero effort in making a discussion. That's the established mailing list netiquette for almost 30 years. It's also funny that you complain about RMS twisting the "everyday English" meaning of "assault" while at the same time you call "child" someone who you'd most definitely call a "teenager" or "youngster" if you met in person. This urge to abuse words in order to sensationalize an already perfectly valid argument is what RMS was pointing out in the first place.
      • lowmagnet 7y ago
        Redefining words is basically RMS's gimmick.