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> He takes everything literally and doesn’t necessarily take feelings and the reactions of others into account when making statements that are outside the bound

> He takes everything literally and doesn’t necessarily take feelings and the reactions of others into account when making statements that are outside the bounds of his expertise in free software. Whelp, then no one should be that surprised when people stop taking his feelings into account and decide they no longer want to be associated with him. Not being an asshole is a two-way street.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mlevental 7y ago
there's a large contingent of people on hn (in tech, in the world) that fetishize "logic" and believe it always trumps "feelings". i put both in quotes because to this contingent both of those concepts have absolutely zero relation to their actual form. i too used to be quite fond of making completely dispassionate arguments about controversial things (race, gender, class, etc.) because i believed that the entire content of a thing was what i understood about it in my oh-so logical way. what i was missing was experience (and often context), which is not neatly captured by syllogisms and facts. e.g. ask the jews who's entitled to palestine. now ask the palestinians. there is no theorem prover that will enable you to resolve that one no matter how many historical facts you feed it because ultimately the significance of each fact is refracted through personal experience (i.e. feelings). this was as a result of being young and arrogant. i had the luxury of dispassion because none of these things had affected me in any way - i was lacking in experience of the injustices of the world that can't be written down using a set of "objective" facts. in retrospect it's a shameful mistake to have made. this kind of bullying with "logic" is abhorrent to me now, especially when coming from someone who abuses their "logical" authority ("i'm very logical at x so trust me when i reason about completely unrelated y"). i always do my best to fight that kind of fire with fire. i believe if you have abilities (oratory, "logical") your responsibility is to aid those that don't, that don't get the same kind of attention, room to speak, credence, that you do simply because what they've experienced can't be formalized.
- viklove 7y ago
  I think you summed it up really well, but reached the wrong conclusion. Who cares who is entitled to Palestine? It's a boring and pointless problem to try and solve. People who are interested in spending their lives productively are understandably fed up with others who want to squabble over their pointless feelings that contribute nothing to society.
  - mlevental 7y ago
    >Who cares who is entitled to Palestine? ~5 million people. how can you be so blithe as to completely discount the existence/experience of that many people. i challenge you to empathize with someone living there. truly imagine it and then tell me it's completely trivial.
  - osdiab 7y ago
    As someone with friends and family personally impacted by that conflict, I’d wager quite a few people care and think that resolving that geopolitical issue is very contributive to society.
- mr_woozy 7y ago
  The only progress you seem to have made is allow your feelings of abhorrent-ness to disregard all logical arguments that come your way which you decide are abusing their logical authority. Pretty self-reinforcing thought pattern you've built there.
  - hailk 7y ago
    What even is a logical authority? Someone who is right factually? Is that bad somehow now?
  - osdiab 7y ago
    Why so black and white? OP’s saying that there are other things besides “logic” (which is often itself just masked “feelings” from someone unaware of their own biases) that are relevant to the problems of the world; not saying that logic altogether is abhorrent and shutting “all logical arguments that come their way” down. You ought to inspect why you yourself are getting defensive over that statement.
qzx_pierri 7y ago
He’s autistic. Suddenly the people who were annoyingly vocal about being “inclusive” are forgetting Stallman’s disability. He says “creepy” things because he doesn’t understand social cues or casual communication at a certain level. Everyone in this thread demonizing RMS should be ashamed of themselves. This is the same reason why he can’t hold a relationship, or why he sleeps in his office. He’s just far out there - This doesn’t take anything away from his hard work, his genius, or his dedication. He never had a chance. People look at the “evidence”, but refuse to look at it with the proper context.
- mlevental 7y ago
  >He’s autistic. this is literally the "we need better mental health facilities because of gun violence" argument. the vast majority of autistic people do not behave like stallman. it's not a pass. if he's so fucking smart why didn't he figure out how to comport himself better amongst the normies?
  - megous 7y ago
    You can start by reading something about the condition, instead of assuming and insinuating, and making inacurate similies.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    Plainly spoken, he probably underestimated the mental abilities of his listeners and wasn't prepared for his statements to be misinterpreted in this way.
- throwawayjava 7y ago
  > He’s autistic... He never had a chance. That's quite bleak.
- sp332 7y ago
  This is bull. He had decades to learn not to make women uncomfortable by doing one single thing - calling his business card his "pleasure" card when he handed it to a woman - and he still does that. That's not autism. Autism might hypothetically lead to doing that until someone pulled him aside and told him it was creepy and made others uncomfortable. After that it's just being an asshole.
throwaway877cf9 7y ago
> He takes everything literally and doesn’t necessarily take feelings and the reactions of others into account when making statements that are outside the bounds of his expertise in free software. Funny that sounds like every SJW activist in tech these days. If you're a white cis male, if you're religious, if you're conservative then it's "FUCK YOU, YOU'RE A BIGOTED PIECE OF SHIT AND YOU SHOULD BE PUBLICLY SHAMED". Someone like Coraline Ada comes to mind who has used these tactics to force a "Code of Conduct" on open source projects and publicly shamed maintainers on Twitter who don't give in. But that's okay to you people because it's a liberal trans person so they can do no wrong. Fucking clowns.

> He takes everything literally and doesn’t necessarily take feelings and the reactions of others into account when making statements that are outside the bounds of his expertise in free software. Whelp, then no one should be that surprised when people stop taking his feelings into account and decide they no longer want to be associated with him. Not being an asshole is a two-way street.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mlevental 7y ago

there's a large contingent of people on hn (in tech, in the world) that fetishize "logic" and believe it always trumps "feelings". i put both in quotes because to this contingent both of those concepts have absolutely zero relation to their actual form. i too used to be quite fond of making completely dispassionate arguments about controversial things (race, gender, class, etc.) because i believed that the entire content of a thing was what i understood about it in my oh-so logical way. what i was missing was experience (and often context), which is not neatly captured by syllogisms and facts. e.g. ask the jews who's entitled to palestine. now ask the palestinians. there is no theorem prover that will enable you to resolve that one no matter how many historical facts you feed it because ultimately the significance of each fact is refracted through personal experience (i.e. feelings). this was as a result of being young and arrogant. i had the luxury of dispassion because none of these things had affected me in any way - i was lacking in experience of the injustices of the world that can't be written down using a set of "objective" facts. in retrospect it's a shameful mistake to have made. this kind of bullying with "logic" is abhorrent to me now, especially when coming from someone who abuses their "logical" authority ("i'm very logical at x so trust me when i reason about completely unrelated y"). i always do my best to fight that kind of fire with fire. i believe if you have abilities (oratory, "logical") your responsibility is to aid those that don't, that don't get the same kind of attention, room to speak, credence, that you do simply because what they've experienced can't be formalized.

viklove 7y ago
I think you summed it up really well, but reached the wrong conclusion. Who cares who is entitled to Palestine? It's a boring and pointless problem to try and solve. People who are interested in spending their lives productively are understandably fed up with others who want to squabble over their pointless feelings that contribute nothing to society.
- mlevental 7y ago
  >Who cares who is entitled to Palestine? ~5 million people. how can you be so blithe as to completely discount the existence/experience of that many people. i challenge you to empathize with someone living there. truly imagine it and then tell me it's completely trivial.
- osdiab 7y ago
  As someone with friends and family personally impacted by that conflict, I’d wager quite a few people care and think that resolving that geopolitical issue is very contributive to society.
mr_woozy 7y ago
The only progress you seem to have made is allow your feelings of abhorrent-ness to disregard all logical arguments that come your way which you decide are abusing their logical authority. Pretty self-reinforcing thought pattern you've built there.
- hailk 7y ago
  What even is a logical authority? Someone who is right factually? Is that bad somehow now?
- osdiab 7y ago
  Why so black and white? OP’s saying that there are other things besides “logic” (which is often itself just masked “feelings” from someone unaware of their own biases) that are relevant to the problems of the world; not saying that logic altogether is abhorrent and shutting “all logical arguments that come their way” down. You ought to inspect why you yourself are getting defensive over that statement.

qzx_pierri 7y ago

He’s autistic. Suddenly the people who were annoyingly vocal about being “inclusive” are forgetting Stallman’s disability. He says “creepy” things because he doesn’t understand social cues or casual communication at a certain level. Everyone in this thread demonizing RMS should be ashamed of themselves. This is the same reason why he can’t hold a relationship, or why he sleeps in his office. He’s just far out there - This doesn’t take anything away from his hard work, his genius, or his dedication. He never had a chance. People look at the “evidence”, but refuse to look at it with the proper context.

mlevental 7y ago
>He’s autistic. this is literally the "we need better mental health facilities because of gun violence" argument. the vast majority of autistic people do not behave like stallman. it's not a pass. if he's so fucking smart why didn't he figure out how to comport himself better amongst the normies?
- megous 7y ago
  You can start by reading something about the condition, instead of assuming and insinuating, and making inacurate similies.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  Plainly spoken, he probably underestimated the mental abilities of his listeners and wasn't prepared for his statements to be misinterpreted in this way.
throwawayjava 7y ago
> He’s autistic... He never had a chance. That's quite bleak.
sp332 7y ago
This is bull. He had decades to learn not to make women uncomfortable by doing one single thing - calling his business card his "pleasure" card when he handed it to a woman - and he still does that. That's not autism. Autism might hypothetically lead to doing that until someone pulled him aside and told him it was creepy and made others uncomfortable. After that it's just being an asshole.

throwaway877cf9 7y ago

> He takes everything literally and doesn’t necessarily take feelings and the reactions of others into account when making statements that are outside the bounds of his expertise in free software. Funny that sounds like every SJW activist in tech these days. If you're a white cis male, if you're religious, if you're conservative then it's "FUCK YOU, YOU'RE A BIGOTED PIECE OF SHIT AND YOU SHOULD BE PUBLICLY SHAMED". Someone like Coraline Ada comes to mind who has used these tactics to force a "Code of Conduct" on open source projects and publicly shamed maintainers on Twitter who don't give in. But that's okay to you people because it's a liberal trans person so they can do no wrong. Fucking clowns.