3 ms·

Celebrating neurodiversity is crucial! It is in my view a very basic human rights issue. However it does not, or at least should not, extend to excusing/permit

Celebrating neurodiversity is crucial! It is in my view a very basic human rights issue. However it does not, or at least should not, extend to excusing/permitting behaviors that hurt others. Much human anguish and suffering could be alleviated if we had a greater understanding of one simple truth: "your rights end where mine begin." On balance, I think RMS is ultimately a person who has greatly benefited the world. However, the stories of people made uncomfortable by his actions and statements are legion and in a more practical sense are detrimental to his cause. How can folks with with/under him when he's behaving in some of these ways? Why does the leader of the FSF even need to be broadcasting his beliefs that Minsky did nothing wrong when he had sex with a 17 year-old provided to him by a child trafficker? As somebody who (like most folks on HN, probably) is not exactly "neurotypical", I realize that it's part of my responsibility to moderate my own words and actions if I want to take part in society.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I just fundamentally reject the equivalence between “hurt” and “uncomfortable”. The idea that people have a moral obligation to be normal, that I’ve been injured when someone acts weird or offers distasteful opinions, could come straight out of a Moral Majority handbook. It only makes sense from within a strict monoculture, where everyone feels obligated to conform and confident that the things they have to conform with are unchanging.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  This is not about a strict monoculture. You can have a robust and diverse culture in which there's broad agreement that a few things are bad - murder, slavery, sex with minors, etc. RMS defended Minsky's sex with a minor and perhaps more relevantly if we read the linked articles, it's part of a longstanding trend with him. And he feels the need to push these views on others in a workplace/academic setting, via mailing lists.
  - buisi 6y ago
    To be fair, he voiced most of his opinions on his personal blog, and not on the mailing list. His personal blog is presumably a place which you would peruse, if you wanted to know what his personal views on things are, and it was so obscure that seemingly no one knew of it until someone really went digging. Not only that, but he didn't even make these views with any particular frequency. One was made in 2006. Another six years later. So, a couple of comments he casually tossed out over decades, in a place where he would have expected few to ever see it. To be clear, I don't agree with many of his opinions (some suggest he might have worded his opinions really, really badly, and might mean something else), although I agree with one original blog post he referenced, where child porn laws have become so stretched they're being applied in places they were never originally intended to be. Like someone recording evidence to provide to the police of their children behaving in an overtly sexual manner which could be an indicator of abuse, arresting someone for a drawing which is a serious waste of police resources, the risk that someone can't reference historical images like the one from Vietnam, and so on. On the mailing list, he responded in a literal fashion taking the premise that Minsky had been misled. Unfortunately, it was poorly worded. If he had simply said that, rather than going on about her "presenting herself", or the other utterances, then it wouldn't even be a story.
    - JohnBooty 6y ago
      Right. I have full faith that his belief was that Minsky had made an honest mistake with a girl that would be considered legal anyway in large swaths of the world. I give RMS (what I would consider to be) the full benefit of the doubt here and I believe his message was less "Minsky is blameless" or "sex with kids is okay" and more "let's not confuse Minky's poor judgement with far, far more heinous crimes." And I wouldn't even really disagree with RMS there on a factual level. Even given this generous interpretation, RMS' poorly chosen words are still rather egregious. Specifically he misses the forest for the trees. A fundamental duty of adults is to make sure that our sex partners are (a) of legal age (b) truly freely consenting without coercion. One can think of various circumstances in which one might reasonably make such a mistake in good faith. However, somebody's private... child sex island is not one of those places. Even more importantly, RMS neglects even some sort of token recognition of the actual victims of Epstein's trafficking. Hint: Minsky is not one of them!

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

I just fundamentally reject the equivalence between “hurt” and “uncomfortable”. The idea that people have a moral obligation to be normal, that I’ve been injured when someone acts weird or offers distasteful opinions, could come straight out of a Moral Majority handbook. It only makes sense from within a strict monoculture, where everyone feels obligated to conform and confident that the things they have to conform with are unchanging.

JohnBooty 6y ago
This is not about a strict monoculture. You can have a robust and diverse culture in which there's broad agreement that a few things are bad - murder, slavery, sex with minors, etc. RMS defended Minsky's sex with a minor and perhaps more relevantly if we read the linked articles, it's part of a longstanding trend with him. And he feels the need to push these views on others in a workplace/academic setting, via mailing lists.
- buisi 6y ago
  To be fair, he voiced most of his opinions on his personal blog, and not on the mailing list. His personal blog is presumably a place which you would peruse, if you wanted to know what his personal views on things are, and it was so obscure that seemingly no one knew of it until someone really went digging. Not only that, but he didn't even make these views with any particular frequency. One was made in 2006. Another six years later. So, a couple of comments he casually tossed out over decades, in a place where he would have expected few to ever see it. To be clear, I don't agree with many of his opinions (some suggest he might have worded his opinions really, really badly, and might mean something else), although I agree with one original blog post he referenced, where child porn laws have become so stretched they're being applied in places they were never originally intended to be. Like someone recording evidence to provide to the police of their children behaving in an overtly sexual manner which could be an indicator of abuse, arresting someone for a drawing which is a serious waste of police resources, the risk that someone can't reference historical images like the one from Vietnam, and so on. On the mailing list, he responded in a literal fashion taking the premise that Minsky had been misled. Unfortunately, it was poorly worded. If he had simply said that, rather than going on about her "presenting herself", or the other utterances, then it wouldn't even be a story.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    Right. I have full faith that his belief was that Minsky had made an honest mistake with a girl that would be considered legal anyway in large swaths of the world. I give RMS (what I would consider to be) the full benefit of the doubt here and I believe his message was less "Minsky is blameless" or "sex with kids is okay" and more "let's not confuse Minky's poor judgement with far, far more heinous crimes." And I wouldn't even really disagree with RMS there on a factual level. Even given this generous interpretation, RMS' poorly chosen words are still rather egregious. Specifically he misses the forest for the trees. A fundamental duty of adults is to make sure that our sex partners are (a) of legal age (b) truly freely consenting without coercion. One can think of various circumstances in which one might reasonably make such a mistake in good faith. However, somebody's private... child sex island is not one of those places. Even more importantly, RMS neglects even some sort of token recognition of the actual victims of Epstein's trafficking. Hint: Minsky is not one of them!