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How is it we value free speech, but there are certain discussions you just cannot have, even in a rational and measured way, without risking making yourself com

by eloff 7y ago

How is it we value free speech, but there are certain discussions you just cannot have, even in a rational and measured way, without risking making yourself completely unemployable. You should be able to have a questionable viewpoint in a discussion, without worrying about the lynch mob ending your career. The consequences here are out of line. You can be reprimanded to take your discussions to a non company venue, in a situation like this, but fired is over the top. Stallman said “it is morally absurd to define ‘rape’ in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.” It's pretty clear with the age difference being what it is, this is exactly what statutory rape laws are for. But it is also incongruous that somehow if she was a year older it would be ok. It's also fucked up that if Minsky were 19, the consequences would be the same. Maybe there's a better law to be had here, but how would we ever know if you can't even have the discussion? I'm appalled by how free speech is under attack lately by the outrage machine.

lanevorockz 7y ago
Completely agree with you and it makes me depressed that we are living on an age that we are giving up the imperfectness of humans in exchange for fake puritanism on a standard that cannot be achieved by anyone. I bet everyone here has one opinion that can definitely and very quickly destroy their lives. Let people be wrong, let them speak, let them think ... We can then convince and converge into a common good. Cancelling the guy that gave his life for the cause is appalling and is showing how evil social media is.
- widowlark 7y ago
  ... MIT fired him not Facebook - you are not required to have perfect opinions that everyone agrees with to survive in this world, you are just required to voice them appropriately and at the correct times, which Stallman did not. Stop pretending that Free Speech is something that applies to anything other than citizens having protection from governments
  - dangxiaopin 7y ago
    So if it was Berkeley (a state school), he should have not been fired?
    - widowlark 7y ago
      Yes, this has already been addressed. He would have been more protected if it was a state school.
  - balaksakrionon 7y ago
    > appropriately and at the correct times Where and by whom is appropriateness and timeliness determined?
    - widowlark 7y ago
      private institutions, and mostly at their whim and discretion
  - ng12 7y ago
    The problem is the witch hunting. Invariably the wrongthink gets "leaked" to the bottom-dweller clickbait outfits like Vice or Slate who then feed it into the court of public opinion. I agree that there are a great number of things I shouldn't say at work, but that also doesn't mean I'm okay with the threat of being very publicly outed if I do. To me it's very close to the "well if you have nothing to hide" argument.
criley2 7y ago
>Stallman said “it is morally absurd to define ‘rape’ in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.” Stallman had no comment on whether consent mattered or whether his red herring of age was intentionally designed to excuse a rape or not.
colechristensen 7y ago
I value free speech in that I value the government's inability to limit anyone's expression with only a few reasonable exceptions. I don't take "free speech" to mean anyone can say anything without consequence. The government has a whole lot of power and it comes with limits like free speech. That doesn't mean that people in my employ can say awful things and I should just ignore it. Free speech doesn't extend to being protected from consequences for how you express yourself.
- cousin_it 7y ago
  Interesting, that's different from why I value free speech. The idea is that dissent makes good societies stronger. When you fire a dissenter, even if they're a bad person, future dissenters (some of whom are good) realize that they have no principled protection. And that's true whether you're a government or a private firm.
  - widowlark 7y ago
    it's unfortunate that you value free speech in a way that it isn't protected.
  - kazagistar 7y ago
    I bet libertarians could get leftists on board with protecting speech with from corporate interests as long as protections also cover unionization.
    - noobermin 7y ago
      I'm a leftist and I've always been on board with protecting speech. Those who don't don't know the history of the left in the US, the red scare, where the phrase "fire in a crowded theater" comes from, etc.
- eloff 7y ago
  If you can't express yourself on certain topics, there's a chilling effect where people just don't talk about them and no further progress can be made. There are now plenty of topics like this including gender [edit: I should specify that it's fine to talk about gender, but only if you have certain permissible positions on the topic]. This list used to include other things like being pro gay rights, pro equality for races or gender - but at least you were able to have those conversations without fear of being lynched and society moved forward. You should be allowed to voice a viewpoint that's against the mainstream viewpoint without risk of making yourself unemployable. It's atrocious that our academic institutions, which used to be a bulwark of free-speech are leading the charge here. Stallman made questionable, but reasoned statements. He perhaps should not have made them in a work forum, but the consequences here are way out of proportion to the "crime". You've been throwing a lot of stones here, but I'm sure you've held or expressed viewpoints just as questionable at some time in your life. I know I have. Should you now be denied the right to make a living if they come to light?
widowlark 7y ago
Stallman hasn't been silenced in any way. Free speech does not mean you can say whatever you like without consequence from private institutions and citizens, only that you may say whatever you like without consequences from the government et al. Your conflation that free speech is under attack is disappointing - That's not what is happening here.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  So let's have a new word for situation like this, describing the case when someone spins up an Internet drama around another person so that the resulting fallout ruins that person's life. There is still huge harm done, and it bypasses the court system.
  - widowlark 7y ago
    we already have a word for it - mob mentality. I am not saying that it's the right way to go about things, but it's certainly not a violation of free speech
  - kalleboo 7y ago
    "Cancel Culture" is the phrase I've heard used
    - edkennedy 7y ago
      Ah yes, the new term for "consequences"
      - kylecazar 7y ago
        I interpret it as the burning desire to impose those consequences, without sufficient thought as to whether it fits the crime. People want to be a part of something, even if it's an angry mob. Whether it's good or bad for society is a complex topic, but spending your time riling up a digital mob every time someone says something controversial can't be a personally healthy way to live.
      - 7y ago
yibg 7y ago
Free speech while extremely important cannot be used as a blanket cover to say whatever you want and expect not to suffer consequences. I’m free to call my girlfriend stupid every day, but I should expect the consequence of soon being single. There are clearly mob reactions to things, but there are also clearly inappropriate speech that should have consequences. What he said here wasn’t in isolation as some idle musing. context matters. He wasn’t talking about the theoretical of a 19 year old. He was talking about this in context of Minsky being a 74 year old man with a 17 year old girl. Maybe he wasn’t aware of the impact of his words, but that shouldn’t get him a free pass.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  > Free speech while extremely important cannot be used as a blanket cover to say whatever you want and expect not to suffer consequences. That's what Joe McCarthy and the House Committee for Un-American Activities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism) said to leftists, union organizers, communists, and others in the 1950s. Is that the kind of company progressives prefer to keep, intellectually speaking? Apparently the only difference between progressives and conservatives is which sacred cows that they're willing to mob you for for insulting. Fellow liberals, I beg of you, take heed; progressives are not our friends.
  - kazagistar 7y ago
    Or maybe they both value something higher then free speech when push comes to shove. For the far left its equality and protections of the vulnerable. For the far right is race, country, tradition and religion. So that seems like a pretty big difference actually.
  - widowlark 7y ago
    The difference in your example is that McCarthy was a government official, attacking political ideas, making what he did an absolute violation of free speech from the perspective of the first amendment. Is this really your best example?
aglavine 7y ago
Consequences aren't out of line. Any person in any private company saying same stuff would be fired. Period. It is totally inappropriate and out of context.
DanBC 7y ago
> But it is also incongruous that somehow if she was a year older it would be ok. It probably wouldn't be okay. She was coerced and trafficked, and many laws exist to make having sex with those people illegal. In some places it's illegal even if you don't know they were coerced or trafficked.
deleted 7y ago
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astine 7y ago
"How is it we value free speech, but there are certain discussions you just cannot have, even in a rational and measured way, without risking making yourself completely unemployable. You should be able to have a questionable viewpoint in a discussion, without worrying about the lynch mob ending your career." I agree with this statement. Stallman has been a problematic person for a long time. I'm no fan of his. If after a while the university had said, "Enough is enough, Richard, you need to shape up or get out." I would have understood that. However, that's not what I think happened. What happened was he shared an opinion on a hot-button issue, pedantic and maybe gross, and unfortunately had that go viral and was so hounded out of his position. If Stallman's position is wrong, we should be able to rationally come to that conclusion as a society. He should be allowed to be wrong. If his opinion is so problematic that it makes him a real liability for the university, his removal should come after a period of deliberation, not after a flash of public outrage. I can understand arguments that Stallman's position is a questionable hill to die on regarding the Epstein revelations, that even choosing to weigh in on this makes it seem like his priorities are out of order. I can also understand the argument that the email list he was arguing on was the wrong location to voice his opinions and he was making students uncomfortable. I also understand the idea that he should have been corrected by the university, either for this event or for his past behavior. But what I don't understand, is this idea that firing people in response to media shit-storms is somehow something to be applauded.
- letstrynvm 7y ago
  "problematic person" eh... He's clearly a freethinker, and we have all gotten a lot of advantages from his courage doing his thing and making his vision for FOSS a reality. Now he's said his thoughts on this too... it's legitimate for him to do so and "problematic" everyone is in a huge panic to punish him in case the mob should get set on them.
  - xwolfi 7y ago
    We all have second-hand stories of how, when Stallman came to our cities (in my case Paris) for a conference, he acted like the worst fucking person on earth towards his volunteering hosts. He was a terrible human being, and surely not very aware of how to treat other humans. He had no place in a research institution, or getting paid to pretend to be relevant on free software. Good riddance, whatever reason we can find in his statements (yeah sure, I was 18 when my wife was 17, it wasn't rape, surely... but is that really the point people were making about his nice friend of Epstein ?). People aren't for free speech, at all and anywhere: they are for people having the same opinion as them or follow an official line. He didn't do either, now he pays. For a genius like him, it should have been easy to understand you have to adapt if you want to lead, or you shut up if you see you can't lead.
deleted 7y ago
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tryitnow 7y ago
Freedom is a two edged sword. You are free to say what you like, but the rest of us are free to take actions in response to that so long as those actions don't violate your constitutional rights. There's no constitutional right to a job or a board membership.
dangxiaopin 7y ago
It's not a company. It's a university, for God sake. If no free speech there anymore, then where? In the kitchen, like in the USSR? Now if he was a pedophile, he should be in jail. But he is not, he is exersizing free speech, no matter how disgusting it is, he is entitled to it. Should Nabokov have been made unemployable too for writing Lolita?
- bandrami 7y ago
  People keep saying he was "fired", but my understanding was he wasn't actually being "paid" to begin with. (Is that correct?)
vkou 7y ago
The consequences here are not out of line, because this wasn't the first time that RMS made his views on statutory rape (he doesn't see the harm in it) clear. The man has no understanding of the concept of consent, and why a child is unable to grant it. He can have whatever opinions he wants, but as a spokesperson for the FSF, he sure as shit shouldn't be broadcasting that one. This isn't some rando who works for an organization being punished for airing their opinion. This is someone whose job is public speaking, speaking in a way that actively harms any organization he is associated with. I generally don't see the hacker community jump to the defense of someone who has so colossally mucked up at his one job, but here we are, turning ourselves in knots in the defense of the right of a public speaker to remain employed when his speech is actively harming his employer. It should also be noted, without the faintest shred of irony that the man consented to resign. I don't see why everyone is making such a big deal out of it...
pron 7y ago
> You should be able to have a questionable viewpoint in a discussion, without worrying about the lynch mob ending your career. First, "lynch mob" is inappropriate and irrelevant. Given Stallman's statements, in the forum in which they were made, many reasonable employers would have fired him, with or without some "lynch mob." Second, Stallman didn't express his views in private conversation, but rather in a forum where those views would have made it very hard for colleagues to continue working with him. If I'm X and you tell me or to Y in private conversation, "X is an idiot" or something of the sort, then that's one thing. If you say so in a forum where others can read it, then you're showing public disrespect towards colleagues, which is a fireable offense. Here's what he could have said instead: "Have we seen evidence that Minsky himself engaged in illegal activity?" That's it. It would have expressed his point just as well, and would not have shown disrespect toward colleagues.
- doubleunplussed 7y ago
  You are giving the mob far too much credit. It is just the fall of the dice that made them come after Stallman for what he said this time and not another. Had he said "Have we seen evidence that Minsky himself engaged in illegal activity?" it would still have been a crapshoot. The quotes are so amazingly out of context that if they were in the same mood, Vice and friends would still have quoted this as "Stallman says rape not bad". Media are trash. Cancel culture steamrolls everything, there is no way to avoid being their target other than complete submission. You can word what you say as carefully as you like, but if they perceive that you're a good target, it won't matter one bit. It's not about what is said, this is simply a war.
  - pron 7y ago
    Anyone who would talk about a mob is sure to place me among the pitchfork bearers, so I'm not surprised you'd think I'm giving us too much credit. Speaking for myself, I had nothing but positive feelings towards Stallman until today, and even today I gave him the benefit of the doubt until reading his actual emails. Even then I don't hate him; I just think he acted in a way that would be considered a justified cause for dismissal by many reasonable employers. I am also saddened to see that he appeals to science while having learned nothing about a subject he seems to speak so confidently about, while ignoring decades of scholarly work by those who've dedicated their lives to seriously studying the issue. I'm surprised to learn he's like that. But I agree it's a war. It's a war that's been waged for centuries and even millennia between the hegemony and the margins, and it's a war we'll win, because we always have (well, it's complicated, but if you want to speak in those terms, that's fine by me).
sbuk 7y ago
So what is the difference between this and the way Eich was treated for his donation to Prop 8? I'm not saying I agree with Eich - far from it. Seeing as an awful lot of people on this very thread were outraged by his behaviour, it strikes me as being contrary to be more understanding towards RMS for what is arguably far more heinous simply because they admire him more. Both Gates and Jobs are/were relentlessly and repeatedly pilloried for their "immoral" approach to business and freedom, but to question what constitutes rape or a suggestion that paedophilia is harmless is forgiven readily, because the individual "likes" the perpetrator is abhorrent.
- eloff 7y ago
  Source or STFU? When did he say "paedophilia is harmless"? You can't even have a conversation about paedophilia in reference to a 17 year old without seriously going off topic.
  - davidwitt415 7y ago
    "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." https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party) https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...
    - eloff 7y ago
      That's a sickening viewpoint. It's from ten years ago, so I hope his views have changed since then. I'll still defend his right to say that, as long as it's outside the venue of his work. And if a preponderance of evidence were to support him, I'd have to accept that view, as much as I disagree with it. I strongly think he's wrong though and the evidence is against him.
      - widowlark 7y ago
kace91 7y ago
A point that I'm not seeing raised enough is that Stallman's current job is nowadays almost purely evangelisation and PR. He is a public figure. In that context, fired is more than fair. His image being linked with pedophilia (on top of the other issues he has) makes him a really bad choice for the public face of a movement/foundation. If he was, say, a lead engineer whose work was not tied to his image, we could have an argument - but that's quite clearly not the case.
jameslk 7y ago
Valuing free speech and valuing what others say are not one in the same.
xorcist 7y ago
The use of the word attack implies force. Clearly no one has been struck physically and there is no force involved. So the idea that free speech is somehow under attack must be misguided.
- eloff 7y ago
  Don't be overly pedantic, verbal attacks are a thing.
  - widowlark 7y ago
    They were mocking Stallman's penchant for pedantics
tonystubblebine 7y ago
> there are certain discussions you just cannot have The way I look at this is through responsibility. It's like what we learned in Spiderman, "With great power, comes great responsibility." So it's not that Stallman can't have this conversation anywhere. It's that when he has it so publicly, it makes people question whether he is wielding his power well. Sometimes responsibility means not saying anything at all. Presumably, Stallman is at MIT for computer science and free software. Why is he speaking off topic to MIT students and alum? Presumably he could develop non-MIT relationships and have whatever crazy conversations he wanted. More often, I think the responsibility is just to do a lot more work. If you're famous and you speak off the cuff on topics that you haven't researched, then your comments get a reach that's undeserved. It's a misapplication of your fame. I thought that about PGs most recent luggage comments. This is something that had an answer that he could look up and share with people. Or if that's too hard, he could have gotten a thorough answer privately. Seeing him be so willfully and publicly ignorant made me question whether he deserved the power that comes with fame. Laziness like that is diminishing and eventually it gets to the point where people are so diminished that they should lose their jobs and/or positions of authority.
jcranmer 7y ago
Just as important as freedom of speech is freedom of association. If your speech is seen as extremely odious, other people have the right to cut ties with you. And if you're in a prominent officer position, the organization as a whole has a right to disassociate itself from you because of those views. So is Stallman's speech in question here odious? At first glance, not really. But when you put it in context: The entire brouhaha starts with a sexual predator whose actions are known to but ignored by associates because money (or equivalently, power). Stallman is defending an associate of his who is tainted by association with Epstein. In the kinder light, this defense is essentially pedantry (just rape, not sexual assault). In the harsher light, this defense is "there's nothing inherently wrong with the entire situation here." In this situation, I think the harsher light is closer to RMS's intent. He has made statements in the past saying that he believes there is nothing inherently wrong with having sex with children (although he has now walked back those statements). In addition, he appears to have acquired a reputation as a sexual harasser among women at MIT over the past few decades. With that context, it does look like Stallman shares a lot of attributes with "prominent people whose sexual harassment has been ignored because they're powerful people, and who is not sorry about it." And pushing him out of leadership positions because of those views is acceptable consequences in my opinion. More so because it appears to me that he doesn't appreciate how power differential may affect the ability of people to give consent, he is in a position of power, and he appears to desire consent that may be unwilling.
freespeech2000 7y ago
> How is it we value free speech we don't value free speech at all since this topic is blacklisted from the front page and many of the comments are being censored. i know that having this den of pro pedo/rapists is a bad look for HN and SV in general. But why censor the people calling it out, instead of censoring the apologist? do you all really endorse child rape? Epstein. Minsky. RMS. Eric Schmidt. Bill Gates. Larry Ellison. Dominos fall. Go ahead. Censor this comment. Your turn will come.
aarongreenblatt 7y ago
> How is it we value free speech, but there are certain discussions you just cannot have, even in a rational and measured way, without risking making yourself completely unemployable. Like just how prominently Jews feature in these depraved scandals? Epstein, #MeToo, Anthony Weiner. Larry David: "I couldn't help but notice, a very, very disturbing pattern emerging - which is that many of the predators - not all, but many of them are Jews." https://www.jweekly.com/2018/01/24/tough-jewish-men-admit-metoo-us/ https://www.jweekly.com/2018/01/24/tough-jewish-men-admit-me...
mvc 7y ago
> without risking making yourself completely unemployable Can you provide some examples of people who have been made "completely unemployable" by the twitter lynch mob?
shadowgovt 7y ago
Regarding the United States at least, there are topics that we, as a country, have decided are not up for debate in the workplace. That's a feature not a bug; we've had enough decades of, for example, observation of how covert and overt racism harms people it is directed against that we've made it the sort of thing that companies can be directly liable for if they allow it in their space. There's a hundred years of history explaining why the balance point between freedom of speech and freedom from fear has been calibrated thusly.
nikdaheratik 7y ago
Except it's not just about "free speech", it's about protecting the organisation's integrity which was already shot because of Epstein. Context matters, and in this case MIT couldn't afford to just let him off with a warning after already being hit for taking money from a sex trafficker. If RMS had thought about the big picture, he would have known better than to engage on the topic to begin with, especially in that forum. The FSF is even worse because he's supposed to be in a position of leadership there and represents the organisation. And they shouldn't be put in a position where they have to decide whether to support some controversial statement about age of consent laws just because one of their leaders decided to stick up for one of his friends. It's just not worth it.
Haga 7y ago
The outrage machine is controlled and monitored by your peers at Facebook and Co.
kccqzy 7y ago
> How is it we value free speech, but there are certain discussions you just cannot have, even in a rational and measured way, without risking making yourself completely unemployable. You should be able to have a questionable viewpoint in a discussion, without worrying about the lynch mob ending your career. Just ask James Damore and his memo on a certain ideological echo chamber. I read his document, and found his view point to be sadly misinformed; yet his right to speech wasn't protected. He was fired. That was the moment I realized free speech isn't really a thing any more if it touched certain topics. Yes constitutionally we still do, but we can easily lose everything that matters to us even if we win the court battle.

by eloff 7y ago

lanevorockz 7y ago

Completely agree with you and it makes me depressed that we are living on an age that we are giving up the imperfectness of humans in exchange for fake puritanism on a standard that cannot be achieved by anyone. I bet everyone here has one opinion that can definitely and very quickly destroy their lives. Let people be wrong, let them speak, let them think ... We can then convince and converge into a common good. Cancelling the guy that gave his life for the cause is appalling and is showing how evil social media is.

widowlark 7y ago
... MIT fired him not Facebook - you are not required to have perfect opinions that everyone agrees with to survive in this world, you are just required to voice them appropriately and at the correct times, which Stallman did not. Stop pretending that Free Speech is something that applies to anything other than citizens having protection from governments
- dangxiaopin 7y ago
  So if it was Berkeley (a state school), he should have not been fired?
  - widowlark 7y ago
    Yes, this has already been addressed. He would have been more protected if it was a state school.
- balaksakrionon 7y ago
  > appropriately and at the correct times Where and by whom is appropriateness and timeliness determined?
  - widowlark 7y ago
    private institutions, and mostly at their whim and discretion
- ng12 7y ago
  The problem is the witch hunting. Invariably the wrongthink gets "leaked" to the bottom-dweller clickbait outfits like Vice or Slate who then feed it into the court of public opinion. I agree that there are a great number of things I shouldn't say at work, but that also doesn't mean I'm okay with the threat of being very publicly outed if I do. To me it's very close to the "well if you have nothing to hide" argument.

criley2 7y ago

>Stallman said “it is morally absurd to define ‘rape’ in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.” Stallman had no comment on whether consent mattered or whether his red herring of age was intentionally designed to excuse a rape or not.

colechristensen 7y ago

I value free speech in that I value the government's inability to limit anyone's expression with only a few reasonable exceptions. I don't take "free speech" to mean anyone can say anything without consequence. The government has a whole lot of power and it comes with limits like free speech. That doesn't mean that people in my employ can say awful things and I should just ignore it. Free speech doesn't extend to being protected from consequences for how you express yourself.

cousin_it 7y ago
Interesting, that's different from why I value free speech. The idea is that dissent makes good societies stronger. When you fire a dissenter, even if they're a bad person, future dissenters (some of whom are good) realize that they have no principled protection. And that's true whether you're a government or a private firm.
- widowlark 7y ago
  it's unfortunate that you value free speech in a way that it isn't protected.
- kazagistar 7y ago
  I bet libertarians could get leftists on board with protecting speech with from corporate interests as long as protections also cover unionization.
  - noobermin 7y ago
    I'm a leftist and I've always been on board with protecting speech. Those who don't don't know the history of the left in the US, the red scare, where the phrase "fire in a crowded theater" comes from, etc.
eloff 7y ago
If you can't express yourself on certain topics, there's a chilling effect where people just don't talk about them and no further progress can be made. There are now plenty of topics like this including gender [edit: I should specify that it's fine to talk about gender, but only if you have certain permissible positions on the topic]. This list used to include other things like being pro gay rights, pro equality for races or gender - but at least you were able to have those conversations without fear of being lynched and society moved forward. You should be allowed to voice a viewpoint that's against the mainstream viewpoint without risk of making yourself unemployable. It's atrocious that our academic institutions, which used to be a bulwark of free-speech are leading the charge here. Stallman made questionable, but reasoned statements. He perhaps should not have made them in a work forum, but the consequences here are way out of proportion to the "crime". You've been throwing a lot of stones here, but I'm sure you've held or expressed viewpoints just as questionable at some time in your life. I know I have. Should you now be denied the right to make a living if they come to light?

widowlark 7y ago

Stallman hasn't been silenced in any way. Free speech does not mean you can say whatever you like without consequence from private institutions and citizens, only that you may say whatever you like without consequences from the government et al. Your conflation that free speech is under attack is disappointing - That's not what is happening here.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
So let's have a new word for situation like this, describing the case when someone spins up an Internet drama around another person so that the resulting fallout ruins that person's life. There is still huge harm done, and it bypasses the court system.
- widowlark 7y ago
  we already have a word for it - mob mentality. I am not saying that it's the right way to go about things, but it's certainly not a violation of free speech
- kalleboo 7y ago
  "Cancel Culture" is the phrase I've heard used
  - edkennedy 7y ago
    Ah yes, the new term for "consequences"
    - kylecazar 7y ago
      I interpret it as the burning desire to impose those consequences, without sufficient thought as to whether it fits the crime. People want to be a part of something, even if it's an angry mob. Whether it's good or bad for society is a complex topic, but spending your time riling up a digital mob every time someone says something controversial can't be a personally healthy way to live.
    - 7y ago

yibg 7y ago

Free speech while extremely important cannot be used as a blanket cover to say whatever you want and expect not to suffer consequences. I’m free to call my girlfriend stupid every day, but I should expect the consequence of soon being single. There are clearly mob reactions to things, but there are also clearly inappropriate speech that should have consequences. What he said here wasn’t in isolation as some idle musing. context matters. He wasn’t talking about the theoretical of a 19 year old. He was talking about this in context of Minsky being a 74 year old man with a 17 year old girl. Maybe he wasn’t aware of the impact of his words, but that shouldn’t get him a free pass.

ThrowawayR2 7y ago
> Free speech while extremely important cannot be used as a blanket cover to say whatever you want and expect not to suffer consequences. That's what Joe McCarthy and the House Committee for Un-American Activities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism) said to leftists, union organizers, communists, and others in the 1950s. Is that the kind of company progressives prefer to keep, intellectually speaking? Apparently the only difference between progressives and conservatives is which sacred cows that they're willing to mob you for for insulting. Fellow liberals, I beg of you, take heed; progressives are not our friends.
- kazagistar 7y ago
  Or maybe they both value something higher then free speech when push comes to shove. For the far left its equality and protections of the vulnerable. For the far right is race, country, tradition and religion. So that seems like a pretty big difference actually.
- widowlark 7y ago
  The difference in your example is that McCarthy was a government official, attacking political ideas, making what he did an absolute violation of free speech from the perspective of the first amendment. Is this really your best example?

aglavine 7y ago

Consequences aren't out of line. Any person in any private company saying same stuff would be fired. Period. It is totally inappropriate and out of context.

DanBC 7y ago

> But it is also incongruous that somehow if she was a year older it would be ok. It probably wouldn't be okay. She was coerced and trafficked, and many laws exist to make having sex with those people illegal. In some places it's illegal even if you don't know they were coerced or trafficked.

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astine 7y ago

"How is it we value free speech, but there are certain discussions you just cannot have, even in a rational and measured way, without risking making yourself completely unemployable. You should be able to have a questionable viewpoint in a discussion, without worrying about the lynch mob ending your career." I agree with this statement. Stallman has been a problematic person for a long time. I'm no fan of his. If after a while the university had said, "Enough is enough, Richard, you need to shape up or get out." I would have understood that. However, that's not what I think happened. What happened was he shared an opinion on a hot-button issue, pedantic and maybe gross, and unfortunately had that go viral and was so hounded out of his position. If Stallman's position is wrong, we should be able to rationally come to that conclusion as a society. He should be allowed to be wrong. If his opinion is so problematic that it makes him a real liability for the university, his removal should come after a period of deliberation, not after a flash of public outrage. I can understand arguments that Stallman's position is a questionable hill to die on regarding the Epstein revelations, that even choosing to weigh in on this makes it seem like his priorities are out of order. I can also understand the argument that the email list he was arguing on was the wrong location to voice his opinions and he was making students uncomfortable. I also understand the idea that he should have been corrected by the university, either for this event or for his past behavior. But what I don't understand, is this idea that firing people in response to media shit-storms is somehow something to be applauded.

letstrynvm 7y ago
"problematic person" eh... He's clearly a freethinker, and we have all gotten a lot of advantages from his courage doing his thing and making his vision for FOSS a reality. Now he's said his thoughts on this too... it's legitimate for him to do so and "problematic" everyone is in a huge panic to punish him in case the mob should get set on them.
- xwolfi 7y ago
  We all have second-hand stories of how, when Stallman came to our cities (in my case Paris) for a conference, he acted like the worst fucking person on earth towards his volunteering hosts. He was a terrible human being, and surely not very aware of how to treat other humans. He had no place in a research institution, or getting paid to pretend to be relevant on free software. Good riddance, whatever reason we can find in his statements (yeah sure, I was 18 when my wife was 17, it wasn't rape, surely... but is that really the point people were making about his nice friend of Epstein ?). People aren't for free speech, at all and anywhere: they are for people having the same opinion as them or follow an official line. He didn't do either, now he pays. For a genius like him, it should have been easy to understand you have to adapt if you want to lead, or you shut up if you see you can't lead.

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tryitnow 7y ago

Freedom is a two edged sword. You are free to say what you like, but the rest of us are free to take actions in response to that so long as those actions don't violate your constitutional rights. There's no constitutional right to a job or a board membership.

dangxiaopin 7y ago

It's not a company. It's a university, for God sake. If no free speech there anymore, then where? In the kitchen, like in the USSR? Now if he was a pedophile, he should be in jail. But he is not, he is exersizing free speech, no matter how disgusting it is, he is entitled to it. Should Nabokov have been made unemployable too for writing Lolita?

bandrami 7y ago
People keep saying he was "fired", but my understanding was he wasn't actually being "paid" to begin with. (Is that correct?)

vkou 7y ago

The consequences here are not out of line, because this wasn't the first time that RMS made his views on statutory rape (he doesn't see the harm in it) clear. The man has no understanding of the concept of consent, and why a child is unable to grant it. He can have whatever opinions he wants, but as a spokesperson for the FSF, he sure as shit shouldn't be broadcasting that one. This isn't some rando who works for an organization being punished for airing their opinion. This is someone whose job is public speaking, speaking in a way that actively harms any organization he is associated with. I generally don't see the hacker community jump to the defense of someone who has so colossally mucked up at his one job, but here we are, turning ourselves in knots in the defense of the right of a public speaker to remain employed when his speech is actively harming his employer. It should also be noted, without the faintest shred of irony that the man consented to resign. I don't see why everyone is making such a big deal out of it...

pron 7y ago

> You should be able to have a questionable viewpoint in a discussion, without worrying about the lynch mob ending your career. First, "lynch mob" is inappropriate and irrelevant. Given Stallman's statements, in the forum in which they were made, many reasonable employers would have fired him, with or without some "lynch mob." Second, Stallman didn't express his views in private conversation, but rather in a forum where those views would have made it very hard for colleagues to continue working with him. If I'm X and you tell me or to Y in private conversation, "X is an idiot" or something of the sort, then that's one thing. If you say so in a forum where others can read it, then you're showing public disrespect towards colleagues, which is a fireable offense. Here's what he could have said instead: "Have we seen evidence that Minsky himself engaged in illegal activity?" That's it. It would have expressed his point just as well, and would not have shown disrespect toward colleagues.

doubleunplussed 7y ago
You are giving the mob far too much credit. It is just the fall of the dice that made them come after Stallman for what he said this time and not another. Had he said "Have we seen evidence that Minsky himself engaged in illegal activity?" it would still have been a crapshoot. The quotes are so amazingly out of context that if they were in the same mood, Vice and friends would still have quoted this as "Stallman says rape not bad". Media are trash. Cancel culture steamrolls everything, there is no way to avoid being their target other than complete submission. You can word what you say as carefully as you like, but if they perceive that you're a good target, it won't matter one bit. It's not about what is said, this is simply a war.
- pron 7y ago
  Anyone who would talk about a mob is sure to place me among the pitchfork bearers, so I'm not surprised you'd think I'm giving us too much credit. Speaking for myself, I had nothing but positive feelings towards Stallman until today, and even today I gave him the benefit of the doubt until reading his actual emails. Even then I don't hate him; I just think he acted in a way that would be considered a justified cause for dismissal by many reasonable employers. I am also saddened to see that he appeals to science while having learned nothing about a subject he seems to speak so confidently about, while ignoring decades of scholarly work by those who've dedicated their lives to seriously studying the issue. I'm surprised to learn he's like that. But I agree it's a war. It's a war that's been waged for centuries and even millennia between the hegemony and the margins, and it's a war we'll win, because we always have (well, it's complicated, but if you want to speak in those terms, that's fine by me).

sbuk 7y ago

So what is the difference between this and the way Eich was treated for his donation to Prop 8? I'm not saying I agree with Eich - far from it. Seeing as an awful lot of people on this very thread were outraged by his behaviour, it strikes me as being contrary to be more understanding towards RMS for what is arguably far more heinous simply because they admire him more. Both Gates and Jobs are/were relentlessly and repeatedly pilloried for their "immoral" approach to business and freedom, but to question what constitutes rape or a suggestion that paedophilia is harmless is forgiven readily, because the individual "likes" the perpetrator is abhorrent.

eloff 7y ago
Source or STFU? When did he say "paedophilia is harmless"? You can't even have a conversation about paedophilia in reference to a 17 year old without seriously going off topic.
- davidwitt415 7y ago
  "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." https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20(Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party) https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...
  - eloff 7y ago
    That's a sickening viewpoint. It's from ten years ago, so I hope his views have changed since then. I'll still defend his right to say that, as long as it's outside the venue of his work. And if a preponderance of evidence were to support him, I'd have to accept that view, as much as I disagree with it. I strongly think he's wrong though and the evidence is against him.
    - widowlark 7y ago

kace91 7y ago

A point that I'm not seeing raised enough is that Stallman's current job is nowadays almost purely evangelisation and PR. He is a public figure. In that context, fired is more than fair. His image being linked with pedophilia (on top of the other issues he has) makes him a really bad choice for the public face of a movement/foundation. If he was, say, a lead engineer whose work was not tied to his image, we could have an argument - but that's quite clearly not the case.

jameslk 7y ago

Valuing free speech and valuing what others say are not one in the same.

xorcist 7y ago

The use of the word attack implies force. Clearly no one has been struck physically and there is no force involved. So the idea that free speech is somehow under attack must be misguided.

eloff 7y ago
Don't be overly pedantic, verbal attacks are a thing.
- widowlark 7y ago
  They were mocking Stallman's penchant for pedantics

tonystubblebine 7y ago

> there are certain discussions you just cannot have The way I look at this is through responsibility. It's like what we learned in Spiderman, "With great power, comes great responsibility." So it's not that Stallman can't have this conversation anywhere. It's that when he has it so publicly, it makes people question whether he is wielding his power well. Sometimes responsibility means not saying anything at all. Presumably, Stallman is at MIT for computer science and free software. Why is he speaking off topic to MIT students and alum? Presumably he could develop non-MIT relationships and have whatever crazy conversations he wanted. More often, I think the responsibility is just to do a lot more work. If you're famous and you speak off the cuff on topics that you haven't researched, then your comments get a reach that's undeserved. It's a misapplication of your fame. I thought that about PGs most recent luggage comments. This is something that had an answer that he could look up and share with people. Or if that's too hard, he could have gotten a thorough answer privately. Seeing him be so willfully and publicly ignorant made me question whether he deserved the power that comes with fame. Laziness like that is diminishing and eventually it gets to the point where people are so diminished that they should lose their jobs and/or positions of authority.

jcranmer 7y ago

Just as important as freedom of speech is freedom of association. If your speech is seen as extremely odious, other people have the right to cut ties with you. And if you're in a prominent officer position, the organization as a whole has a right to disassociate itself from you because of those views. So is Stallman's speech in question here odious? At first glance, not really. But when you put it in context: The entire brouhaha starts with a sexual predator whose actions are known to but ignored by associates because money (or equivalently, power). Stallman is defending an associate of his who is tainted by association with Epstein. In the kinder light, this defense is essentially pedantry (just rape, not sexual assault). In the harsher light, this defense is "there's nothing inherently wrong with the entire situation here." In this situation, I think the harsher light is closer to RMS's intent. He has made statements in the past saying that he believes there is nothing inherently wrong with having sex with children (although he has now walked back those statements). In addition, he appears to have acquired a reputation as a sexual harasser among women at MIT over the past few decades. With that context, it does look like Stallman shares a lot of attributes with "prominent people whose sexual harassment has been ignored because they're powerful people, and who is not sorry about it." And pushing him out of leadership positions because of those views is acceptable consequences in my opinion. More so because it appears to me that he doesn't appreciate how power differential may affect the ability of people to give consent, he is in a position of power, and he appears to desire consent that may be unwilling.

freespeech2000 7y ago

> How is it we value free speech we don't value free speech at all since this topic is blacklisted from the front page and many of the comments are being censored. i know that having this den of pro pedo/rapists is a bad look for HN and SV in general. But why censor the people calling it out, instead of censoring the apologist? do you all really endorse child rape? Epstein. Minsky. RMS. Eric Schmidt. Bill Gates. Larry Ellison. Dominos fall. Go ahead. Censor this comment. Your turn will come.

aarongreenblatt 7y ago

> How is it we value free speech, but there are certain discussions you just cannot have, even in a rational and measured way, without risking making yourself completely unemployable. Like just how prominently Jews feature in these depraved scandals? Epstein, #MeToo, Anthony Weiner. Larry David: "I couldn't help but notice, a very, very disturbing pattern emerging - which is that many of the predators - not all, but many of them are Jews." https://www.jweekly.com/2018/01/24/tough-jewish-men-admit-metoo-us/ https://www.jweekly.com/2018/01/24/tough-jewish-men-admit-me...

mvc 7y ago

> without risking making yourself completely unemployable Can you provide some examples of people who have been made "completely unemployable" by the twitter lynch mob?

shadowgovt 7y ago

Regarding the United States at least, there are topics that we, as a country, have decided are not up for debate in the workplace. That's a feature not a bug; we've had enough decades of, for example, observation of how covert and overt racism harms people it is directed against that we've made it the sort of thing that companies can be directly liable for if they allow it in their space. There's a hundred years of history explaining why the balance point between freedom of speech and freedom from fear has been calibrated thusly.

nikdaheratik 7y ago

Except it's not just about "free speech", it's about protecting the organisation's integrity which was already shot because of Epstein. Context matters, and in this case MIT couldn't afford to just let him off with a warning after already being hit for taking money from a sex trafficker. If RMS had thought about the big picture, he would have known better than to engage on the topic to begin with, especially in that forum. The FSF is even worse because he's supposed to be in a position of leadership there and represents the organisation. And they shouldn't be put in a position where they have to decide whether to support some controversial statement about age of consent laws just because one of their leaders decided to stick up for one of his friends. It's just not worth it.

Haga 7y ago

The outrage machine is controlled and monitored by your peers at Facebook and Co.

kccqzy 7y ago

> How is it we value free speech, but there are certain discussions you just cannot have, even in a rational and measured way, without risking making yourself completely unemployable. You should be able to have a questionable viewpoint in a discussion, without worrying about the lynch mob ending your career. Just ask James Damore and his memo on a certain ideological echo chamber. I read his document, and found his view point to be sadly misinformed; yet his right to speech wasn't protected. He was fired. That was the moment I realized free speech isn't really a thing any more if it touched certain topics. Yes constitutionally we still do, but we can easily lose everything that matters to us even if we win the court battle.