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Autism is very different for everyone who has it. No one is saying that autistic people are assholes, but that stallman may not see or understand how his commen

Autism is very different for everyone who has it. No one is saying that autistic people are assholes, but that stallman may not see or understand how his comments are taken or why people will get upset when the comment is factually correct.

Avshalom 6y ago
Literally: >>thoughtless / mean / an ass >This is precisely what people with autism tend to be
howinteresting 6y ago
Speaking as an autistic person, that really does not matter. Even though I don't believe in free will, I do believe that a functioning society requires people with power (like RMS, in his capacity as a free software leader) to be held responsible for the harm they cause regardless of how neurodivergent they are. What about all the other people who were excluded from the movement because RMS was an ass? A common human fallacy is to overindex on the contributions of assholes, while ignoring the potential contributions of those who were excluded by their actions.
- bobsled 6y ago
  How does one accurately quantify hypothetical contributions by people who may or may not exist?
  - howinteresting 6y ago
    Most things in life aren't quantifiable, unfortunately. In our field we're spoiled by how many things can be reduced to numbers, but when it comes to interactions between humans it's essentially impossible. So instead, we have to use subjective evaluations. My subjective evaluation, having met RMS in person and looked at the consistent patterns in his behavior, is that he is "below replacement value" -- he has overall caused far more harm than the average person in his position would have.
    - bobsled 6y ago
      Thank you for the clarification. Please understand that I don't mean to be pedantic.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    I agree with the sibling that there are many things in life that we just can't reduce to numbers. Sometimes you can't make a decision based on hard, irrefutable data. You just have to go by what you think will or won't happen based on the possible choices. In this case, though we actually could, if we wanted to, find some data. We could go around and ask a bunch of people if they wanted to get involved with the FSF but didn't, and see how many of those people were turned off by RMS. Another option could be to look at the demographics of people getting involved in the FSF before and after RMS had been outsted, and compare. None of that is perfect, and especially the second option would only give you a correlation, not necessarily causation. But, again, our data will always be incomplete, and you just have to go with what your experience tells you will or won't happen.

Avshalom 6y ago

Literally: >>thoughtless / mean / an ass >This is precisely what people with autism tend to be

howinteresting 6y ago

Speaking as an autistic person, that really does not matter. Even though I don't believe in free will, I do believe that a functioning society requires people with power (like RMS, in his capacity as a free software leader) to be held responsible for the harm they cause regardless of how neurodivergent they are. What about all the other people who were excluded from the movement because RMS was an ass? A common human fallacy is to overindex on the contributions of assholes, while ignoring the potential contributions of those who were excluded by their actions.

bobsled 6y ago
How does one accurately quantify hypothetical contributions by people who may or may not exist?
- howinteresting 6y ago
  Most things in life aren't quantifiable, unfortunately. In our field we're spoiled by how many things can be reduced to numbers, but when it comes to interactions between humans it's essentially impossible. So instead, we have to use subjective evaluations. My subjective evaluation, having met RMS in person and looked at the consistent patterns in his behavior, is that he is "below replacement value" -- he has overall caused far more harm than the average person in his position would have.
  - bobsled 6y ago
    Thank you for the clarification. Please understand that I don't mean to be pedantic.
- kelnos 6y ago
  I agree with the sibling that there are many things in life that we just can't reduce to numbers. Sometimes you can't make a decision based on hard, irrefutable data. You just have to go by what you think will or won't happen based on the possible choices. In this case, though we actually could, if we wanted to, find some data. We could go around and ask a bunch of people if they wanted to get involved with the FSF but didn't, and see how many of those people were turned off by RMS. Another option could be to look at the demographics of people getting involved in the FSF before and after RMS had been outsted, and compare. None of that is perfect, and especially the second option would only give you a correlation, not necessarily causation. But, again, our data will always be incomplete, and you just have to go with what your experience tells you will or won't happen.