8 ms·

Is anyone else baffled by the idea that discussing something on an intellectual level, even related to a person, has to somehow be a 'defense' or an 'offense'?

Is anyone else baffled by the idea that discussing something on an intellectual level, even related to a person, has to somehow be a 'defense' or an 'offense'? I've spent basically my entire life discussing things in the abstract. I'm not a politician, I don't make laws, and frankly I wouldn't want that power. To me it makes absolute sense that someone would attempt to "defend" even the most heinous person. It's weird to me that being considered a "defender of X" could even be a bad thing. That's the process by which we collectively make decisions, it's the basis behind stuff like fair trials for example; the lawyer acting for a defendant is not a bad person. It's what (rational) individuals do when they make decisions - even some of the most obviously correct ones - take the opposing side and see where it leads. It doesn't seem to be limited to this case - I don't know if it's a recent thing, having mostly come of age post-Internet. It's just like, really weird. Amongst my real-life friendship groups this sort of "hate mob" type stuff just doesn't exist, pretty much any topic is up for grabs.

teh_klev 7y ago
I have, with the best most charitable reading of your post, no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps some context would be useful with regards to Stallman. Edit: in my defence, is op defending Stallman, or Epstein? Honestly, I don't know how Epstein and Stallman are related. I don't follow Stallman's every statement he makes. I simply asked for some context and enlightenment in this headline and esotericn's comment. edit: ok...finally some context from other commenters answering (finally) my question, which I think is this from 11th August 2019: Jeffrey Epstein appears to have committed suicide in his cell. Or perhaps he was murdered — it is not unusual for prisoners to murder prisoners accused of sexual crimes. Epstein was accused of trafficking: bringing people long distances on false pretenses and then pressured them into sex or prostitution. He also reportedly raped some of those people. I believe those accusations, and I think he deserved to be imprisoned. Some of his victims were legally adult. Some were teenage minors. I don't think that makes any moral difference. I don't think rape is less wrong if the victim is over 16. Ok maybe I'm really thick, how does this cause Stallman to resign? His language seems pretty much on par with newspaper of headlines in his "blog". I really don't have an axe to grind either way. I'm trying to get to the bottom of who said what? Edit..again: so thanks to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990293 , this is the crux of the matter: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420... I've not read the full thread so don't have an opinion either way. If Minsky and Stallman were good friends then I can understand Stallman coming to his defence, especially when dead people can't give an account of themselves. That said I kinda feel Stallman's dug a bit of a hole for himself, and may need a bigger shovel to get out.
- esotericn 7y ago
  > Edit: in my defence, is op defending Stallman, or Epstein? Honestly, I don't know how Epstein and Stallman are related. I don't follow Stallman's every statement he makes. I simply asked for some context and enlightenment in this headline and op's comment. Am I the OP in this context? I think this is exactly what I'm talking about? I've made a comment explaining how this environment baffles me, and you think my comment must be somehow tribal in nature.
  - teh_klev 7y ago
    > and you think my comment must be somehow tribal in nature. Tribal in what way? And I said nothing of the sort. I have no "tribal" interest in Stallman's efforts or his beliefs. I think the man has done some fine things in terms of GPLv2, less so v3, but I'm certainly not an absolutist. I genuinely didn't understand your comment, which you still haven't answered, yet you attack me for being "tribal".
    - esotericn 7y ago
      Well, you asked whether I'm defending Stallman or Epstein. The answer is, err, "not applicable"?
      - teh_klev 7y ago
        Then your comment is a non-sequitur, and you seem unwilling to defend or explain it (either way). edit: ok, so now I have some context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990293 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420... Which after all this was what I was asking for. Jeezo.
- stevenwoo 7y ago
  It came out this weekend that Stallman wrote that it was most plausible that the Epstein sexual partners were willing participants and the semantics of the word rape when used to refer to the children with whom Epstein had sexual relations in an email thread defending Epstein, Stallman also argued about the age of consent varying between different territories so not all the partners were below the age of consent where the alleged crimes occurred. Stallman also defended Marvin Minsky who went to Epstein events against victim accusations that Minsky was part of Epstein's trafficking ring.
loser777 7y ago
When you’re famous enough to be considered a “representative” of a community (e.g., “hacker culture” in the case of rms) then you should be ready for anything you say to be taken at face value. There’s all the incentive in the world to write a takedown and rake in the karma (or claps).
- esotericn 7y ago
  Could you clarify what you mean by 'face value' in this sense? I guess you mean that a position taken for the purposes of intellectual discourse (e.g. devil's advocate) could just as well be the person's "real" position? Is there actually a difference in practice, if they're not in a position to act upon it anyway? (Or is the issue that by engaging in the discourse they are acting upon it?) I think I understand your basic point - everyone who's a public figure is subject to the opinions of a huge number of people who might want to attack them (politically, physically, whatever), and that limiting expression of opinion is a way to protect against this. But doesn't that ultimately result in all public figures being "soft", "tame", basically politicians? > “I have to confess, when me and my friend, sort of, used to run through the fields of wheat – the farmers weren’t too pleased about that.” - Theresa May, UK prime minister, when asked of the naughtiest thing she'd ever done
  - mc32 7y ago
    “My god” as Slavoj would say. This is an extreme example of orthodoxy gone wrong. If people aren’t even able to philosophically evaluate things and take opposing views to test their positions, we're in for some truly dogmatic times. Just look at the state of comedy today. It’s absurd. Their jokes are taken as their actual real-life positions on things.
vkou 7y ago
It has been my experience that the people who most loudly defend rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of reprehensible ideas are often not interested in rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of how, say, their right to speech or, say, liberty should be restricted. It's an odd twist of irony. Everyone seems to be able to be rational, intellectual, and level-headed, when the issue they are debating does not personally affect them. Edit: Judging by the karmic sentiment, we are probably unable to have a rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of such a topic. Pity.
- esotericn 7y ago
  I don't really have an opinion on this, but I found your sentence interesting: > rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of how, say, their right to speech should be restricted Isn't that a contradiction in and of itself?
  - vkou 7y ago
    Only from the perspective of one of the two sides in the debate. The other side thinks that it's perfectly good and proper to not have a rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of reprehensible topics, and would rather the first side not pull them into it.
    - partialrecall 7y ago
      Are you referring to a particular debate, or debates in general? If the later, I strongly disagree. There are many debates in which both sides argue rationally in good faith.
- meowface 7y ago
  Your comment is kind of confusing and ambiguous. Could you give an example of what you're referring to? I think any downvotes are probably more due to the crypticness than anything else.
  - 7y ago
mindslight 7y ago
I only takes a handful of people to escalate an abstract discussion into a direct personal attack, by claiming that the speaker's abstract discussion hurt their feelings. It's basically a weaponization of empathy, that gathers momentum by preying on a human bias to support others when they claim to have been wronged.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  "weaponization of empathy", I like it. Smart coined concept for something that seems to appear everwhere currently. Should be discussed more.
baddox 7y ago
Do you have the impression that the negative response toward Stallman's recent comments have anything to do with the general concept of "defending" anyone whatsoever? I certainly don't have that impression. I think people were upset over the specifics of his comments, not merely the fact that his comments might qualify as a "defense" of another person.
taneq 7y ago
It’s a natural consequence of thinking ideologically rather than rationally. You don’t care about objectivity, only about what supports or attacks your ideology.
codesushi42 7y ago
What the hell are you talking about? What intellectual level? Stallman is quoted to have said: Stallman wrote that “the most plausible scenario” for Giuffre’s accusations was that she was, in actuality, “entirely willing.” How is that a rational, defensible statement in any terms?
- frio 7y ago
  I'm really hesitant to wade into this. I think resigning was the right move for Stallman. What he actually said, without Vice editing the quote, is: 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. From the email thread reproduced in its entirety by Vice at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001.html?embed=true&responsive=false&sidebar=false https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420.... In my estimation, there's a big difference between Vice's framing of "Stallman said she was 'entirely willing'" and the full quote above. There are, of course, other poor comments in that thread. EDIT -- I mention Vice specifically, because their article (which I'd read earlier) has similar phrasing to the wording used here (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-from-mit-over-epstein-comments https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist... -- "Stallman said the “most plausible scenario” is that one of Epstein’s underage victims was “entirely willing.”"), and I'd thought the quote that codesushi used was from that publication. On double checking, it might be unfair to single that publication out for the given quote.
  - teh_klev 7y ago
    Thanks for the link, now I have some context.
  - codesushi42 7y ago
    I see no real difference. He said that. And there are even worse comments that he made in that thread.
geofft 7y ago
> It's weird to me that being considered a "defender of X" could even be a bad thing. That's the process by which we collectively make decisions, it's the basis behind stuff like fair trials for example; the lawyer acting for a defendant is not a bad person. Except that in fair trials we have the concept of stare decisis, that once something has been decided, it's been decided. We very intentionally do not have the courtroom try to reason something out from first principles every time. We do not defend each person who runs a red light by saying, is it actually bad to run a red light. The cases which do overturn existing legal or social precedent are rare, carefully picked by the lawyers to be as sympathetic as possible (cf. Rosa Parks), and carefully timed to line up with sufficient hope of social consensus having changed around the law. While it is absolutely your right to say "What if this bad thing is not actually bad," to do so without presenting a novel argument about it, and especially to do so for the sake of being contrarian, is not how we make decisions. You should look at the strongest arguments on both sides. You should privately take the opposing side and then see if you can knock it down. The arguments Stallman presented were hardly arguments and were not novel at all. They're arguments that have occurred to the people he's arguing against, already. If he wants to seek the truth and not just advocate a side, he could have and should have figured that out. I still believe in his right to free speech (in the sense that I would defend his freedom to speak without government coercion), but I don't think he made a contribution to the discourse that's worth defending at a social level.
- darawk 7y ago
  > The arguments Stallman presented were hardly arguments and were not novel at all. You think that Minsky being unaware of the coercion would not be a mitigating factor in accusing him of sexual assault? When was that decided?
  - cannonedhamster 7y ago
    When he was charged it was determined that despite this possible defense there was enough evidence to convict him off knowingly committing sexual assault. It's possible he'll be found not guilty in the court of law, but it's unlikely a convicted sex offender with a harem of women is above coercion and the law likely find the defendant would more likely have known than not known.
primroot 7y ago
This is a quote from an interview, where Norman Finkelstein discusses the subject of thought policing. "What he should have done was in my opinion deliver one policy speech. 'This is where we stand on antisemitism. This is where we stand on the mechanisms for dealing with antisemitism in our party. Case closed.' The other major mistake he made was .. a complete abandonment of the principle of free speech. People have a right to say and think whatever they want. 'I'm a member of the Labour Party. OK. I subscribe to Labour Party's political platform. That's what makes me a member.' But that doesn't mean you have the right to troll my Facebook postings, you have the right to vet everything I say or post on Instagram. I mean that's Romania under Ceausescu, that's North Korea under Kim Il Sung. That's now going to be the mandate of the Labour Party? To be trolling in your thoughts and ideas? To see whether you are an antisemite? Everybody, including you, including your camera people harbors some antisemitic stereotypes... OK. Who cares? I mean It's very hard to extirpate, ... because it's rooted in thousands of years. I mean it's everywhere. It's part of the atmosphere, it's part of the environment, it's part of the history. Do I not harbor any anti-black stereotypes any racist stereotypes? Do I harbor no sexist stereotypes? No! And now we are going to have a Labour Party, which is going to [?] the depths of your conscience, ... looking for some evidence of antisemitism, ...? It's complete lunacy and it's a complete repudiation, abandonment of the most fundamental principles of what's called the Enlightenment beginning with as the Germans put it in that nice German folk song Die Gedanken sind Frei (Thoughts are free). People have the right to think what they believe, and since thought is inseparable from speech, you have the right to think and speak as you please. And if you don't like what a person is saying then you have the right either not to listen or try to persuade the person ... but what you don't have the right to do is penalize people, punish people, expel people for their thoughts... It's a complete political disaster because all it does is it forces people to repress what they're thinking until a demagogue comes along and starts saying what you're thinking, what you were forced to repress. And instead of your erroneous thoughts having been answered, the fact that you were forced to repress them, it validates it for you. ... And then the demagogue comes along and starts to exploit all of those repressed thoughts. So morally it's unacceptable to try to police people's thoughts and politically it's a complete disaster." https://youtu.be/OPYfLY2cAi4?t=616 https://youtu.be/OPYfLY2cAi4?t=616
- Bendingo 7y ago
ykevinator 7y ago
In general yes, but he has some pedophilic tendencies in his writings.
twiceaday 7y ago
This is just a common over-simplification of a position. It is easier to share and digest so it travels better than the truth. This is what social media does to public discourse.
selfawareposter 7y ago
If one of my friends started defending pedophilia and saying it’s okay if the children consent then they would swiftly not be my friend anymore. Judging someone for an opinion is not wrong and hiding behind a veneer of dispassionate intellectualism doesn’t remove your responsibility for your own actions. I find it’s mostly arrogant tech fools who think it does. This sort of behavior is how you end up with Stallman defending pedophilia, rape being debated in the LKML, and idiots like James Damore.
pryce 7y ago
The conditions that apply to an "Ethics tutorial in a philosophy paper" aren't universally applicable, and that isn't a sign of something being wrong. It took me a while to understand this myself. Suppose you wished to discuss "ethical problems" in a tutorial, people can do that, and in some other (limited) environments too. You might - to invoke a particularly awful idea - like to hypothetically explore whether what people wear had relationship to their likelihood of being targeted for sexual assault. If you are in a position of leadership however, you incur responsibilities. People under your leadership must be confident that if someone were to tell you they have been sexually assaulted, your response would not be to wonder what they were wearing. The reason for this is, as is well established, that speculation over what women (or survivors in general) were wearing at the time they were sexually assaulted is a loaded idea that has widespread use in casting blame on the victim of sexual assault, and has been very effective at this for hundreds of years, leading to a vast amount of preventable suffering, all because of we continue to tolerate the mistaken idea that women might somehow 'invite' their own assault. A person in a leadership or representational role doesn't get to publicly speculate about "clothing and sexual assault" in the abstract, because they have a duty to be aware of how incredibly damaging that is in the general sense, and how public speculation about that sort of relationship would clearly act to dampen survivors of sexual assault from coming forward, including in the org they are leading, in addition to being distressing for the people who have experienced it in the past, which is a significant fraction of people in general, even supposing the speculator meant well.
- gruez 7y ago
  >If you are in a position of leadership however, you incur responsibilities. [...] >A person in a leadership or representational role doesn't get to publicly speculate about "clothing and sexual assault" in the abstract [...] How is this applicable to Stallman? What was Stallman doing at MIT? It doesn't seem like he's in any sort of leadership position.
  - pryce 7y ago
    1) President of the FSF is a leadership position. 2) It would take a staggering feat of mental gymnastics to suggest Dr. Stallman's idiosyncratic role at CSAIL -described variously as "visiting scientist"- absolves him of having leadership responsiblities to students. 3) Though I did not go into details at the time, the argument above applies more widely than leaders per se - it applies to people who affiliate with and represent organisations; for example, I think we could probably agree it would apply to television anchors whether or not they led a 'team' of any kind. Stallman's relationship with MIT (and vice versa) is a public enough role that I've known about for nearly 20 years though I live on the other side of the planet.

teh_klev 7y ago

I have, with the best most charitable reading of your post, no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps some context would be useful with regards to Stallman. Edit: in my defence, is op defending Stallman, or Epstein? Honestly, I don't know how Epstein and Stallman are related. I don't follow Stallman's every statement he makes. I simply asked for some context and enlightenment in this headline and esotericn's comment. edit: ok...finally some context from other commenters answering (finally) my question, which I think is this from 11th August 2019: Jeffrey Epstein appears to have committed suicide in his cell. Or perhaps he was murdered — it is not unusual for prisoners to murder prisoners accused of sexual crimes. Epstein was accused of trafficking: bringing people long distances on false pretenses and then pressured them into sex or prostitution. He also reportedly raped some of those people. I believe those accusations, and I think he deserved to be imprisoned. Some of his victims were legally adult. Some were teenage minors. I don't think that makes any moral difference. I don't think rape is less wrong if the victim is over 16. Ok maybe I'm really thick, how does this cause Stallman to resign? His language seems pretty much on par with newspaper of headlines in his "blog". I really don't have an axe to grind either way. I'm trying to get to the bottom of who said what? Edit..again: so thanks to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990293 , this is the crux of the matter: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420... I've not read the full thread so don't have an opinion either way. If Minsky and Stallman were good friends then I can understand Stallman coming to his defence, especially when dead people can't give an account of themselves. That said I kinda feel Stallman's dug a bit of a hole for himself, and may need a bigger shovel to get out.

esotericn 7y ago
> Edit: in my defence, is op defending Stallman, or Epstein? Honestly, I don't know how Epstein and Stallman are related. I don't follow Stallman's every statement he makes. I simply asked for some context and enlightenment in this headline and op's comment. Am I the OP in this context? I think this is exactly what I'm talking about? I've made a comment explaining how this environment baffles me, and you think my comment must be somehow tribal in nature.
- teh_klev 7y ago
  > and you think my comment must be somehow tribal in nature. Tribal in what way? And I said nothing of the sort. I have no "tribal" interest in Stallman's efforts or his beliefs. I think the man has done some fine things in terms of GPLv2, less so v3, but I'm certainly not an absolutist. I genuinely didn't understand your comment, which you still haven't answered, yet you attack me for being "tribal".
  - esotericn 7y ago
    Well, you asked whether I'm defending Stallman or Epstein. The answer is, err, "not applicable"?
    - teh_klev 7y ago
      Then your comment is a non-sequitur, and you seem unwilling to defend or explain it (either way). edit: ok, so now I have some context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990293 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420... Which after all this was what I was asking for. Jeezo.
stevenwoo 7y ago
It came out this weekend that Stallman wrote that it was most plausible that the Epstein sexual partners were willing participants and the semantics of the word rape when used to refer to the children with whom Epstein had sexual relations in an email thread defending Epstein, Stallman also argued about the age of consent varying between different territories so not all the partners were below the age of consent where the alleged crimes occurred. Stallman also defended Marvin Minsky who went to Epstein events against victim accusations that Minsky was part of Epstein's trafficking ring.

loser777 7y ago

When you’re famous enough to be considered a “representative” of a community (e.g., “hacker culture” in the case of rms) then you should be ready for anything you say to be taken at face value. There’s all the incentive in the world to write a takedown and rake in the karma (or claps).

esotericn 7y ago
Could you clarify what you mean by 'face value' in this sense? I guess you mean that a position taken for the purposes of intellectual discourse (e.g. devil's advocate) could just as well be the person's "real" position? Is there actually a difference in practice, if they're not in a position to act upon it anyway? (Or is the issue that by engaging in the discourse they are acting upon it?) I think I understand your basic point - everyone who's a public figure is subject to the opinions of a huge number of people who might want to attack them (politically, physically, whatever), and that limiting expression of opinion is a way to protect against this. But doesn't that ultimately result in all public figures being "soft", "tame", basically politicians? > “I have to confess, when me and my friend, sort of, used to run through the fields of wheat – the farmers weren’t too pleased about that.” - Theresa May, UK prime minister, when asked of the naughtiest thing she'd ever done
- mc32 7y ago
  “My god” as Slavoj would say. This is an extreme example of orthodoxy gone wrong. If people aren’t even able to philosophically evaluate things and take opposing views to test their positions, we're in for some truly dogmatic times. Just look at the state of comedy today. It’s absurd. Their jokes are taken as their actual real-life positions on things.

vkou 7y ago

It has been my experience that the people who most loudly defend rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of reprehensible ideas are often not interested in rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of how, say, their right to speech or, say, liberty should be restricted. It's an odd twist of irony. Everyone seems to be able to be rational, intellectual, and level-headed, when the issue they are debating does not personally affect them. Edit: Judging by the karmic sentiment, we are probably unable to have a rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of such a topic. Pity.

esotericn 7y ago
I don't really have an opinion on this, but I found your sentence interesting: > rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of how, say, their right to speech should be restricted Isn't that a contradiction in and of itself?
- vkou 7y ago
  Only from the perspective of one of the two sides in the debate. The other side thinks that it's perfectly good and proper to not have a rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of reprehensible topics, and would rather the first side not pull them into it.
  - partialrecall 7y ago
    Are you referring to a particular debate, or debates in general? If the later, I strongly disagree. There are many debates in which both sides argue rationally in good faith.
meowface 7y ago
Your comment is kind of confusing and ambiguous. Could you give an example of what you're referring to? I think any downvotes are probably more due to the crypticness than anything else.
- 7y ago

mindslight 7y ago

I only takes a handful of people to escalate an abstract discussion into a direct personal attack, by claiming that the speaker's abstract discussion hurt their feelings. It's basically a weaponization of empathy, that gathers momentum by preying on a human bias to support others when they claim to have been wronged.

pvaldes 7y ago
"weaponization of empathy", I like it. Smart coined concept for something that seems to appear everwhere currently. Should be discussed more.

baddox 7y ago

Do you have the impression that the negative response toward Stallman's recent comments have anything to do with the general concept of "defending" anyone whatsoever? I certainly don't have that impression. I think people were upset over the specifics of his comments, not merely the fact that his comments might qualify as a "defense" of another person.

taneq 7y ago

It’s a natural consequence of thinking ideologically rather than rationally. You don’t care about objectivity, only about what supports or attacks your ideology.

codesushi42 7y ago

What the hell are you talking about? What intellectual level? Stallman is quoted to have said: Stallman wrote that “the most plausible scenario” for Giuffre’s accusations was that she was, in actuality, “entirely willing.” How is that a rational, defensible statement in any terms?

frio 7y ago
I'm really hesitant to wade into this. I think resigning was the right move for Stallman. What he actually said, without Vice editing the quote, is: 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. From the email thread reproduced in its entirety by Vice at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001.html?embed=true&responsive=false&sidebar=false https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420.... In my estimation, there's a big difference between Vice's framing of "Stallman said she was 'entirely willing'" and the full quote above. There are, of course, other poor comments in that thread. EDIT -- I mention Vice specifically, because their article (which I'd read earlier) has similar phrasing to the wording used here (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-from-mit-over-epstein-comments https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist... -- "Stallman said the “most plausible scenario” is that one of Epstein’s underage victims was “entirely willing.”"), and I'd thought the quote that codesushi used was from that publication. On double checking, it might be unfair to single that publication out for the given quote.
- teh_klev 7y ago
  Thanks for the link, now I have some context.
- codesushi42 7y ago
  I see no real difference. He said that. And there are even worse comments that he made in that thread.

geofft 7y ago

> It's weird to me that being considered a "defender of X" could even be a bad thing. That's the process by which we collectively make decisions, it's the basis behind stuff like fair trials for example; the lawyer acting for a defendant is not a bad person. Except that in fair trials we have the concept of stare decisis, that once something has been decided, it's been decided. We very intentionally do not have the courtroom try to reason something out from first principles every time. We do not defend each person who runs a red light by saying, is it actually bad to run a red light. The cases which do overturn existing legal or social precedent are rare, carefully picked by the lawyers to be as sympathetic as possible (cf. Rosa Parks), and carefully timed to line up with sufficient hope of social consensus having changed around the law. While it is absolutely your right to say "What if this bad thing is not actually bad," to do so without presenting a novel argument about it, and especially to do so for the sake of being contrarian, is not how we make decisions. You should look at the strongest arguments on both sides. You should privately take the opposing side and then see if you can knock it down. The arguments Stallman presented were hardly arguments and were not novel at all. They're arguments that have occurred to the people he's arguing against, already. If he wants to seek the truth and not just advocate a side, he could have and should have figured that out. I still believe in his right to free speech (in the sense that I would defend his freedom to speak without government coercion), but I don't think he made a contribution to the discourse that's worth defending at a social level.

darawk 7y ago
> The arguments Stallman presented were hardly arguments and were not novel at all. You think that Minsky being unaware of the coercion would not be a mitigating factor in accusing him of sexual assault? When was that decided?
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
  When he was charged it was determined that despite this possible defense there was enough evidence to convict him off knowingly committing sexual assault. It's possible he'll be found not guilty in the court of law, but it's unlikely a convicted sex offender with a harem of women is above coercion and the law likely find the defendant would more likely have known than not known.

primroot 7y ago

This is a quote from an interview, where Norman Finkelstein discusses the subject of thought policing. "What he should have done was in my opinion deliver one policy speech. 'This is where we stand on antisemitism. This is where we stand on the mechanisms for dealing with antisemitism in our party. Case closed.' The other major mistake he made was .. a complete abandonment of the principle of free speech. People have a right to say and think whatever they want. 'I'm a member of the Labour Party. OK. I subscribe to Labour Party's political platform. That's what makes me a member.' But that doesn't mean you have the right to troll my Facebook postings, you have the right to vet everything I say or post on Instagram. I mean that's Romania under Ceausescu, that's North Korea under Kim Il Sung. That's now going to be the mandate of the Labour Party? To be trolling in your thoughts and ideas? To see whether you are an antisemite? Everybody, including you, including your camera people harbors some antisemitic stereotypes... OK. Who cares? I mean It's very hard to extirpate, ... because it's rooted in thousands of years. I mean it's everywhere. It's part of the atmosphere, it's part of the environment, it's part of the history. Do I not harbor any anti-black stereotypes any racist stereotypes? Do I harbor no sexist stereotypes? No! And now we are going to have a Labour Party, which is going to [?] the depths of your conscience, ... looking for some evidence of antisemitism, ...? It's complete lunacy and it's a complete repudiation, abandonment of the most fundamental principles of what's called the Enlightenment beginning with as the Germans put it in that nice German folk song Die Gedanken sind Frei (Thoughts are free). People have the right to think what they believe, and since thought is inseparable from speech, you have the right to think and speak as you please. And if you don't like what a person is saying then you have the right either not to listen or try to persuade the person ... but what you don't have the right to do is penalize people, punish people, expel people for their thoughts... It's a complete political disaster because all it does is it forces people to repress what they're thinking until a demagogue comes along and starts saying what you're thinking, what you were forced to repress. And instead of your erroneous thoughts having been answered, the fact that you were forced to repress them, it validates it for you. ... And then the demagogue comes along and starts to exploit all of those repressed thoughts. So morally it's unacceptable to try to police people's thoughts and politically it's a complete disaster." https://youtu.be/OPYfLY2cAi4?t=616 https://youtu.be/OPYfLY2cAi4?t=616

Bendingo 7y ago

ykevinator 7y ago

In general yes, but he has some pedophilic tendencies in his writings.

twiceaday 7y ago

This is just a common over-simplification of a position. It is easier to share and digest so it travels better than the truth. This is what social media does to public discourse.

selfawareposter 7y ago

If one of my friends started defending pedophilia and saying it’s okay if the children consent then they would swiftly not be my friend anymore. Judging someone for an opinion is not wrong and hiding behind a veneer of dispassionate intellectualism doesn’t remove your responsibility for your own actions. I find it’s mostly arrogant tech fools who think it does. This sort of behavior is how you end up with Stallman defending pedophilia, rape being debated in the LKML, and idiots like James Damore.

pryce 7y ago

The conditions that apply to an "Ethics tutorial in a philosophy paper" aren't universally applicable, and that isn't a sign of something being wrong. It took me a while to understand this myself. Suppose you wished to discuss "ethical problems" in a tutorial, people can do that, and in some other (limited) environments too. You might - to invoke a particularly awful idea - like to hypothetically explore whether what people wear had relationship to their likelihood of being targeted for sexual assault. If you are in a position of leadership however, you incur responsibilities. People under your leadership must be confident that if someone were to tell you they have been sexually assaulted, your response would not be to wonder what they were wearing. The reason for this is, as is well established, that speculation over what women (or survivors in general) were wearing at the time they were sexually assaulted is a loaded idea that has widespread use in casting blame on the victim of sexual assault, and has been very effective at this for hundreds of years, leading to a vast amount of preventable suffering, all because of we continue to tolerate the mistaken idea that women might somehow 'invite' their own assault. A person in a leadership or representational role doesn't get to publicly speculate about "clothing and sexual assault" in the abstract, because they have a duty to be aware of how incredibly damaging that is in the general sense, and how public speculation about that sort of relationship would clearly act to dampen survivors of sexual assault from coming forward, including in the org they are leading, in addition to being distressing for the people who have experienced it in the past, which is a significant fraction of people in general, even supposing the speculator meant well.

gruez 7y ago
>If you are in a position of leadership however, you incur responsibilities. [...] >A person in a leadership or representational role doesn't get to publicly speculate about "clothing and sexual assault" in the abstract [...] How is this applicable to Stallman? What was Stallman doing at MIT? It doesn't seem like he's in any sort of leadership position.
- pryce 7y ago
  1) President of the FSF is a leadership position. 2) It would take a staggering feat of mental gymnastics to suggest Dr. Stallman's idiosyncratic role at CSAIL -described variously as "visiting scientist"- absolves him of having leadership responsiblities to students. 3) Though I did not go into details at the time, the argument above applies more widely than leaders per se - it applies to people who affiliate with and represent organisations; for example, I think we could probably agree it would apply to television anchors whether or not they led a 'team' of any kind. Stallman's relationship with MIT (and vice versa) is a public enough role that I've known about for nearly 20 years though I live on the other side of the planet.