I, as many others, never personally liked Dr. Stallman and didn’t agreed with many of his views.
That being said, the way that that happened is absolutely terrifying. Fact, that people rather crucify someone instead of argue, explain or prove him wrong is the sign of our times.
End of free speech is here. It’s free only if it doesn’t offend group powerful enough to destroy you, and it’s narrowing every single day. We’ve seen many instances of this happening both on personal, unpopular views and gossips and false accusations.
Want to keep your career? Best you can do is to steer out of the social media and don’t share your thoughts with anyone. Not only controversial ones, because what might not be controversial now, might be controversial in 10 years, and you will suffer because of it.
“If you actively harass women at work for literally 30 years and do not stop any of the many, many times people to stop, and then also justify the sexual abuse of children as your job tries to distance itself from it’s collaboration with a know pedophile you might lose your job” doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a situation that will ever be relevant to my life, thank.
I never thought in a million years I'd see the Silicon Valley bubble become so deranged that they'd reverse polarity. Watching HN eat their own liberal legends like Stallman, at the direction of Fox News and NY Post. This is truly astonishing.
Or be a comedian. Satire is practically immune. It’s hard to attack someone for something when they say something other than what they’re really talking about.
it's rather interesting how all the information technology (social media, etc...) is slowly moving our culture towards increasing self-censorship. One has to have the right opinion or stay quiet.
Having the wrong opinion about certain topics is getting more expensive. Stay away from taboos or else... never mind the fact that what we regard as wrong changes across different societies over time.
Weirdly all the information technology is steering towards being more similar in our opinions and in what we can say without facing consequences.
Recently I started to thing about how in spite of having the ability to share, and change, and store information better and with more ease than ever, we seem to be going in the opposite direction. Instead of having more transparent institutions, everything is getting more "opaque" (so to speak) towards the public (even it this is happening due to overload).
does anyone remember "information wants to be free"? I don't think anybody says that anymore, but I remember reading that a bunch on slashdot in the early 00s
If you start expressing opinions about how sex with a sex-trafficked child should be legal, won't your friends and family raise some questions about your character?
Unless we're talking of morally flexible individuals. And at least parents should raise an eyebrow, since we have this natural reaction to protect our children.
> information wants to be free
Whomever said that was probably thinking of facts, of knowledge, s/he was probably not thinking of having opinions about pedophiles.
There is no evidence that he was a pedophile. In fact, many of the 'girls' he had relations with were by their own admission consensual and involved compensation.
He certainly broke the law in this country and his morals and character are in question, but what he did is (and has been throughout history) legal in much of the world and we can't act like US law is a surrogate for universal ethics/morals:
At some point we have to decide if girls/women have agency to decide their sexual activity. 25 year-olds can be coerced in asymmetric power relationships just like a 16 year-old. We already know about the double-standard of sex when drunk--if you are man, it's consensual, but if you are a woman, it's always rape.
And as an aside, I think that the use of 'sex trafficking' in this context does a disservice to the actual, bonafide victims of sex trafficking--people that are kidnapped, passports confiscated, literally enslaved. Now because the term has been co-opted by a self-righteous political agenda, we can't have personals on Craigslist.
Edit: Particularly relevant to the topic of self-censorship: "unmeasured vituperation, enforced on the side of prevailing opinion, deters people from expressing contrary opinion, and from listening to those who express them."
>If you start expressing opinions about how sex with a sex-trafficked child should be legal, won't your friends and family raise some questions about your character?
In a civilized world you would be sued for libel for saying that.
I look forward to someone making a startup doing just that.
In a civilized world, you would be able to sue someone for libel for making a statement of opinion, in the abstract, that might somehow be applied to you? And this is your response to a thread rooted in someone concerned about the need for self-censorship?
First of all, Stallman argued that rape is no the same as having sex with a minor. He is right, that's not the definition of rape and is wrong to call it rape.
Second, a minor is not necessarily a child. You can be a minor and the next day be 18 in a porno movie.
And never did Stallman said it was ok, He just raised the question whether Minsky knew She was being coerced by Epstein. Clearly not the same.
I think that it has next to nothing to do with technology. MIT was still reeling from the fall out with the Media Lab and Epstein. If it wasn't for that, they might have gotten by with a simple apology, but that wouldn't be enough at this point.
There is also a history of controversial stuff related to his time at the FSF which meant that probably wouldn't settle for a simple apology either (not that RMS seemed willing to give one).
As organisations change over time, what they need in leadership also changes. In this case, they didn't need an ideologue with a history of generating controversy, they needed someone who can keep the ship going forward so that the projects they are overseeing don't lose enough talent that they become irrelevant.
If it was as simple as a disagreement, that would be fine. But it's not just simple disagreements anymore. It is costing people their livelihoods and futures because they're not toeing the ever shifting line.
That’s why I mostly use pseudonymous channels these days, like this one. I treat everything I say with my real name like I’m publishing it on the front page of the New York Times and submitting three copies to the Library of Congress.
Many fewer of my current associates hear any real thoughts of mine compared to 20 years ago. I used to get into all kinds of arguments like Stallman’s, on public email lists, which thankfully haven’t surfaced online (yet).
> it's rather interesting how all the information technology (social media, etc...) is slowly moving our culture towards increasing self-censorship.
It's not. Take it from me, a guy who predates social media by decades.
If you go back and look at what Gary Hart dropped out of the 1988 presidential race for, and compare it to what Donald Trump said on social media before, during, and after being elected President, there's just no comparison.
Racial, misogynistic, derogatory, offensive sentiments you can easily find being published on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or most other social media platforms would not have passed muster in any mass-media channel or public conversation 30 or even 20 years ago.
On the positive side, social media has been a tremendous boon to marginalized communities like gay/lesbian/bisexual, transgender, heck, even furries. It has allowed like minds to find and support each other, and allowed the rest of us normies to see these communities for the constructive, positive forces so many of them are. I am convinced that social media aided in their growing public acceptance.
In fact, I'd say that social media has opened up the discourse so much that even the resignation of a powerful figure over controversial remarks about pedophilia--an outcome which would have been expected and commonplace for at least the past 70 years of U.S. society--are taken as somehow problematic.
In other words, things are so de-censored now that even the most anodyne and obvious objections to gross statements by powerful figures is taken as censorship. The Overton Window has moved way over to one side, but people still complain when they hit the edge of it.
It's an interesting dynamic. I would agree that on the whole, you're probably correct that there is less censorship in the society.
However, it seems that the political division is greater than ever. It is almost as if there are two Overton windows now, one for liberals and one for republicans (roughly).
The republican one shifted to much less self-censorship, while the liberal one shifted very slightly to more self-censorship.
And RMS seems to be caught in the liberal one. He has held his opinions for a long time, and nobody really cared that much.
He is also not a particularly powerful figure. If anything, FSF is weaker than it has been in the 90s. That's also an interesting change in dynamics, the shifting of both windows now affects powerful and powerless alike, where in the past, it was I believe considered less decent to have "wrong opinions" if you were powerful, and the wrong opinions of the powerless were tolerated much more. (Basically, the difference between elites and proletes, and agreement who is what, is now morphing into a difference between liberals and republicans.)
I agree the internet is getting locked down, it'll end up like daytime tv if we're not careful. But I'm two clicks away from access to Nazi and extremist content right now. The internet still is the wild wild west version of a library, in terms of access to content, but now there's laws and archiving of everything typed and read applied on top of that too.
This Stallman case is edge-case fallout from a massive political movement. He could have probably discussed the age of consent in public pre-2013 and maybe get a few disgusted reactions but generally be fine. The political control of internet arguments is more obvious than ever, and the quest for advertising money.. but I'm fairly sure I can start and run a website/subreddit/blog for whatever niche idea and be left alone.
"Taboos" is an oddly mild way to put this. Why shouldn't a person who approves of raping children have to pause and consider "staying quiet" one wonders.
Please read Richard's actual words again. Read them carefully --- and read his actual words, not just someone summarizing them or stitching fragments out of context. Richard said no such thing.
Not unexpected, but I'm surprised it happened so soon after he resigned from MIT/CSAIL.
Earlier today the director of the GNOME Foundation requested that RMS resign from the FSF, and said severing ties with the FSF could happen if he didn't step down.
I think there was more social pressure for him to resign from FSF, and more institutional pressure for him to resign from MIT/CSAIL. The institutional pressure probably wasn't as painful, but was more forceful. I think he'd probably been holding back the pressure he felt to get the FSF thing over with for a while, but hoping for the controversy to die down, but when he was forced (or practically forced) to resign from MIT/CSAIL it became clear he wasn't going to win, and he decided to get it over with. Perhaps he'll be sleeping better tonight.
Before jumping to criticize Stallman, be aware: there is a big difference between what today's round of headlines claim Stallman wrote, and what he actually wrote. Given the relatively clear-cut nature of the lies the press has told about him, I think he ought to be suing for libel.
What is the counter argument for what Stallman wrote? I've seen that the "press is going too hard on him", but, honestly, I think they were justified. What is the "big difference" to you? If someone, personally, said to me that that someone be absolved of a crime, because the other, coerced, party was "willing" at that moment, I'd seriously question their morals.
Stallman wrote: "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."
These headlines do not match what Stallman wrote. They wrote awful words, and put them in his mouth, in order to support a narrative in which he said something which he didn't. That's not okay.
Stallman conjured up a thought experiment where Minsky is innocent because the minor was "entirely willing." That was the defense Stallman decided, even if those aren't his exact words. His exact words aren't any better then whatever the media decided to run with, at the end of the day his intent was identical. The headline could have been "MIT scientist says you shouldn't get punished for raping minors as long as they present themselves as entirely willing." Do you believe I have gotten that wrong? And if not, can you argue why that is any better than what the media put out?
If Minsky could show up to court for his crimes and he said "Your honor, I didn't know she was 15", he would still go to jail.
Having sex with someone who is underage (in this case, 17, in a jurisdiction where the legal age is 18) is a strict-liability crime, meaning the prosecution doesn't have to prove that you knew. But be aware that, while Minsky is dead and unable to defend himself, there is apparently a witness who claims that Minsky is innocent--specifically, that Giuffre was directed to have sex with Minsky but Minsky turned her down. Since dead people can't have trials, we will probably never learn the facts of the matter.
He explicitly does not think she was willing. He thinks she was unwilling but was coerced to give the appearance of willingness and that the appearance of the two from Minskys point of view were the same.
This isn't a subtle difference. You think he said almost exactly the opposite of what he said
That’s not his defense. Stallman never disputed the lack of consent of the minor. He’s saying the minor might have been coerced by Epstein to “present herself as entirely willing”, i.e. she _looked like_ she’s willing when she’s really not. Minsky would have no way of knowing.
You are making the same defense that you are claiming "that's not his defense." You both are making the same statement that "its ok, because he didn't know.", just in a very roundabout manner.
If Minsky were tried in US, he would be convicted. Ignorance is not a defense.
> If Minsky were tried in US, he would be convicted. Ignorance is not a defense.
This is correct, at least for many US states (22, according to Wikipedia’s article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_liability_(criminal) ) . You can meet someone under the age of consent in a bar, see them drinking alcohol, even have them show you their license and be fooled by a fake ID, and still be liable under the law to go to jail for statutory rape.
According to that Wikipedia article though, in some other U.S. states ignorance would be a defense. Whether that’s the case for the U.S. Virgin Islands isn’t clear.
>If Minsky were tried in US, he would be convicted. Ignorance is not a defense.
He would be convicted if he had sex with her. The evidence that he had sex with her is that she was sent to his room and he didn't report that to the authorities. That doesn't seem overwhelmingly persuasive.
I’m not saying it’s ok because he didn’t know. It’s certainly still rape, but I’d say the criminal in that case would be Epstein, not Minsky. If he sincerely thought she was a sex worker who’s over 18 and willing, why is he at fault? He might have done everything right and have gotten (what looked like) informed consent, for all we know.
You don’t have to agree with this idea (it’s not like we have any evidence after all), but I hope we can agree that it’s not entirely unreasonable.
Whereas 15 is a more extreme example, the law is absurd if that is also the case for 17 and a half vs. 18. Obviously there is no way to know the difference, so is the actual intention of the law to simply prevent people under 30 from having intercourse?
Disclaimer: I am definitely not defending the whole sex dealership thing, I am just wondering about what a 19 or 20 year old college student is supposed to do to behave legally.
Edit: as a comparison, in Germany the age of consent is 14 afaik and there exist several additional laws to protect, e.g. 15 year olds from older people that have some kind of power over them (e.g., teachers).
I'd say the big difference is that the press is accusing him of defending Epstein when in fact he's defending Minsky. Of course people may think that's still problematic, but that's not what the headlines are accusing him of doing.
I mean, let's put aside whether the person might have reasoned the other party was willing. This line of reasoning is ridiculous. If someone appears 100% willing to you, and there's absolutely nothing different from a genuinely willing person, why should you be at fault because somebody else put that person under duress, or because they were lying (under duress or otherwise).
If someone does a 100% legal thing according the information they know, and is not otherwise negligent, there is no crime they should be charged with. As it happens, in the US, statutory rape is the only one I'm aware of that does not follow this criterion; even manslaughter requires negligence (although I'm not making a point about that).
Even if the person who commited the crime had no knowledge that the other party was coerced? Why are they at fault because they were lied to and tricked into commiting a crime?
There are certain crimes for which intent doesn't matter, legally. This is one of them.
And likewise from a moral perspective: Minsky did harm her. Regardless of his knowledge of the situation at the time, I would expect him (were he still alive) to apologize and do whatever he could to try and heal the pain he caused.
However, I do also think it would reflect much differently on his character if he knew all the details of the situation he was in vs. if he did not. That, from what I've seen, is still unclear.
First, claiming ignorance isn't a strong defense. It wouldn't hold up in any court in America, so I have no reason to buy it as an argument.
However, if it did, to be fair, you would have to seriously consider if it is reasonable to assume that person was ignorant. For example, if you know your friend is a drug dealer and he asks you to "drop off a bag at another house", you would get the book thrown at you even if you didn't know they were drugs in the bag.
Having sex with a minor is a crime, regardless of coercion, because a minor is not capable of giving consent to sex with an adult, because of both cognitive differences and power imbalances.
If someone Minsky's age went out and started dating and having sex with high schoolers, he would go to jail. Period. Regardless of the exact social dynamics.
There's minor, and there's minor. Age of consent differs by state and country, quite a lot, everything from 14 y.o. to 21 y.o. plus special case exceptions by court.
Remember that before making absolute statements about mental powers.
By the way, coerced sex (sometimes rape, sometimes assault, sometimes pimping, in some places prostitution) is illegal among adults too. You can keep it extra illegal for minors.
Minority should not be an absolute but treated as a high bar. (The younger, the higher.)
Unfortunately legislatives are black and white in most countries, and people accede to it.
Mens rea ("guilty mind" aka criminal intent) is an important element for many crimes. People - generally - are inconsistent with regard to how much they think impact matters for a crime and how much they think intent matters. The law is also inconsistent, with itself, and with the opinions of the citizenry. In this case, US law (but not the laws of all countries) makes sex trafficking and statutory rape strict liability laws - only impact matters, not intent.
Stallman raised the question of Minsky's mens rea, suggesting that Minsky might not have had any criminal intent at all. To people who feel that mens rea should always be a criteria in criminal and moral judgement (such as myself), the existence or lack of existence of mens rea matters to Minsky's moral culpability.
With all that in mind, I'm dubious that Minsky could have been approached by a young woman and not had some degree of mens rea. At the very least, Minsky must have assumed the woman was a paid sex worker and recognized at least some possibility that she was trafficked and/or underage. I can't abide the notion that a old man would have mistaken the invitations of an uneducated young girl as genuine attraction.
>With all that in mind, I'm dubious that Minsky could have been approached by a young woman and not had some degree of mens rea. At the very least, Minsky must have assumed the woman was a paid sex worker and recognized at least some possibility that she was trafficked and/or underage. I can't abide the notion that a old man would have mistaken the invitations of an uneducated young girl as genuine attraction.
Lots of famous men of all ages are approached by groupies. Some accept their advances, some don't. I've never heard of any of them reporting the fact to the authorities.
He'd have a very hard time winning. In many jurisdictions there is a "substantial truth" doctrine: if a statement gives an impression that's substantially close to the truth, it's considered OK, even if technically false. Once you add in how many people typically react to this sort of thing...
I’m allowed to criticize him after reading what he actually wrote, right? Because I did and came away from it with the conclusion that he’s evil and shouldn’t be anywhere near anything resembling a leadership position.
He is many things, and shouldn't have been in a leadership position for a long time, but he is definitely not evil.
I have a hard time even imagining how you reach the conclusion that he might be evil. Even the worst out of context headlines on his recent quotes just put him in the "gross" category.
I say this, and I'm very glad he stepped down. I've argued for years that he should have stepped down a long time 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.
>Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why.
Evil is fundamentally a lack of empathy and I see no empathy from this man. He’s not a cackling crazy Hitler figure, but he seems to have a difficult time figuring out just what the problem is with having sex with children and with child slaves, and chooses to dedicate a great deal of mental energy defending the more powerful people in this scenario.
The definition of evil is always … a heated topic, but the common theme usually is that the suffering evil inflicts is not accidental.
In your reply here, you're describing sociopathy. I wouldn't describe Stallman as a sociopath but I could definitely see the arguments for it. But even the most repulsive things I've seen this man say/do never got me to think "Yeah, this dude wants others to suffer".
Edit: And no, I don't think he has a difficult time "figuring out what the problem is".
I think that’s a facile Hollywood idea of evil. People like that exist, but plenty of evil people don’t care about suffering.
A psychologist assigned to the Nuremberg trials put it better than I ever could. “In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
Fair. Putting aside the word itself though, I don't think Stallman lacks empathy.
What he does lack, IMHO, is a huge amount of basic, day-to-day understanding of how the world works. Such as the power dynamics of teenagers in the modern world. Things he's completely incapable of understanding because he chooses to isolate himself and live in an absurdly eccentric way. For fucks sake, have you seen how he browses the internet? [1]
He chooses to live that way because, for him, every single issue seems to be a hill he's ready to die on. It was only a matter of time until the hill was bad enough for this to happen.
Still, I maintain he's not evil, neither by your definition nor mine.
Thus, American justice system is evil? Law knows no empathy. Politics is even worse. Media didn't consider it worth it a split second of thought to gauge impact on life of this man.
What he said was stupid and disgusting. People sometimes over-estimate the amount of latitude the organization they work for will give them to do this.
The technology industry is taking baby-steps towards actual inclusivity and diversity of thought -- and not this dumbass "I want to be free to say stupid offensive shit with impunity" flavor of "inclusivity" that people around here seem to champion. That is a Good Thing and organizations like MIT and the FSF need to be very careful about whom they let represent them.
As far as I'm aware Stallman has neither been arrested nor has his website been torn down, so he's welcomed to continue to make whatever good and bad points he feels like and the rest of us are welcomed to judge him as we wish: smart, stupid, ignorable, or maybe even abhorrent to the point where maybe he shouldn't be representing a place like MIT. Or the FSF.
It is clear RMS was stunningly clueless to write anything about this, but surely we all know of similar engineers that would make a similar error? If everyone were held up to the same moral standard, we wouldn't have many people left in power! Just to be clear: I'm definitely not supporting hurting children (directly or indirectly) - I hope I'm not falling into the same tar pit.
I certainly respect RMS for what he created and his idealism (although last time I saw him talk he spent about half the time negatively pontificating about Linus and Linux, which seriously damaged his credibility IMHO).
It must be devastating to be on the receiving end of such ire.
Because RMS isn't just another socially awkward engineer. He is a leader and a part of a larger community and is therefore held to a higher standard. The reason for the higher standard is simple, leaders are entrusted with power and need to wield that power better than others. RMS has failed that test today.
> He is a leader and a part of a larger community and is therefore held to a higher standard.
I see plenty of political and tech leaders set extremely low moral standards. Why is RMS being used to set an example? Do you think RMS actually hurt any children?
His comments are tragically inept - but this seems to boil down to being targeted by breaking headlines such as the New York Post: "MIT scientist says Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre was ‘entirely willing’".
I think the news (and many others) are misunderstanding what rms said (or they intentionally misrepresented his words).
The way I understand what rms said is that the victim would've acted ("presented herself") as willing to Minsky, while being coerced by Epstein. That does not imply she was actually willing in any way shape or form.
I think you're misunderstanding it too, based on your statement: "RMS doesn't seem to understand what willing means."
The way I see it, what rms did was (strategically) dumb and tactless, but not unethical at all.
It's a useful deflection from further examination of the slimy tentacles of Epstein's influence throughout tech and academia. Stallman is not terribly well-liked, and made the mistake of shooting off his mouth and grabbing onto the third rail hard with both hands at an inopportune time. He's a useful scapegoat to sacrifice up to Molloch.
This wasn't a witch hunt. This should have happened a long time ago. He is a creep, and has been problematic for years. “He literally used to have a mattress on the floor of his office. He kept the door to his office open, to proudly showcase that mattress and all the implications that went with it. Many female students avoided the corridor with his office for that reason…I was one of the course 6 undergrads who avoided that part of NE43 precisely for that reason. (the mattress was also known to have shirtless people lounging on it…)” — Bachelor’s in Computer Science, ‘99 All this and more https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix...
I think that targeting a "creepy" social misfit is one definition of a witch hunt.
We can mostly defend against men that give out creepy social cues. Guys that are not creepy are far harder to defend against or get justice against: a guy that knows how to present himself understands social signals (almost self defining) and they can often get away with a lot because of that.
Plenty of guys hit on young women (I saw a study that showed that men of any age say they want a 21 year old). Are we surprised to find out "teen" is a major keyword on porn sites? Many men with a social standing (or money) use that to their sexual advantage. Go to the pub and listen to some drunk bro's: there is a large number what a lot of men say is extremely disturbing. I think they are highly immoral; but the attitudes are common and we usually avoid the moral argument and simplify it with a legal argument (statutory rape laws which rightly protect our weak and vulnerable).
I don't doubt that RMS has been an arsehole, and his workplace, voluntary workplaces, friends, family and acquaintances should definitely make him accountable, and take action against arseholery.
However, what seems to be happening here is that Richard is getting publicly shamed and publicly tried and judged guilty for being creepy - no accountability required.
What’s truly remarkable is that you spent several paragraphs admitting that men tend to make offensive, sexist remarks and gestures, and then you use this to justify Stallman’s behavior. This is exactly why the tech industry NEEDS to do better.
He slept in his office, and had ever since his house caught on fire, some years before I met him. I met him in 1984. When he moved his office to a rebuilt floor at tech square, he had a wall dividing the office into two halves. One half was his sleeping space, and the other, which was accessible from the hallway, was his working space.
He slept in his office, and had ever since his house caught on fire
Yeah. This is true.
He was intermittently homeless while developing the free software stuff. It was kind of homeless lite because he was a hacker and often slept at work.
He was unable to register to vote at one point because he listed his work address and described himself as a squatter. He got his right to vote when some interview in some national publication came out stating the same thing. At that point, the registrar of voters accepted his work address on his application.
Saying we wouldn't have anyone left in power of they were held up to this standard seems more damning to our current power structure than the moral standard at play here
1. If you are attacked by the media, you will lose in the court of public opinion (I expect we wouldn't know about this at all except for the egregiously misleading "news" headlines).
2. Never ever discuss toxic topics (particularly if you are either a little odd, or politically weak).
3. If you publically question anything about a witch hunt, you too will be branded as a witch.
4. Beware of getting poisoned by association (Epstein -> Minsky -> Stallman -> anyone defending RMS).
From what I can tell, the actual morals of RMS don't seem to be the actual issue here.
There is surely a modern Grimm parable in all of this.
Your garden-variety human being with even the slightest social wherewithal would know better than to say some of Epstein’s victims were “entirely willing”.
This is not the fault of the media looking for witches to hunt. This is the result of a massively intelligent man deciding to spit into the political wind.
There are so many judgements on both sides, both in these comments and in the articles on the subject that have been submitted, but very little quoting of what he said in context.
Where can I find what he said? Why is everyone talking about what he meant without quoting what he said so I can decide what makes sense for myself?
Vice has the full transcript and it's long, which is part of why people aren't quoting snippets. Quoting snippets is not better in this case than talking about what you think he meant.
The pressure against him has been going for at least ten years, and his most recent comment was made last week. So yep, apparently they sleep on things for at least ten years.
So you're saying there's been pressure for him to resign for years? And that this incident is just one example of a long list of unacceptable behavior? Do you have any sources for that?
He may be talking about the blog post on Medium by Selam G.? The one where she launched a personal attack at him, publicly, because she was "too angry to work right now".
RMS was defending Minsky, awkwardly. As someone who has a history of social awkwardness, he should be forgiven for this. He's been a good steward of the FSF, which has doing important work in the service of free (read: non-backdoored) hardware lately. I know there are good people still at the FSF, but I can only hope they are as incorruptible and dogged as RMS.
The way this attack came suddenly out of the depths makes me suspect something coordinated. It's too similar to how Tor was seized, and how Linus was almost dethroned. There's something nasty afoot, and I don't like it one bit.
Yeah all he really wanted was a platform to disseminate his ideas. The open source community has been a great place for that to happen, and I hope the legacy of his ideas related to freedom of information, etc. get the honored legacy that they deserve.
But now that he has an audience there's nothing stopping him creating an independent non-profit to tackle these issues philosophically. There's no need anymore to be the gatekeepers of the actual code. It should be free, after all.
So that's where I'm putting my money: Stallman announces a new organization to philosophize freely, not involved directly with code, and the FSF becomes more elastic on certain topics (integrating with other toolchains, etc.).
"Accountability" for an awkward statement? You'll have to excuse me if I don't think someone deserves a public flogging for poor phrasing and awful timing.
When you're talking about organizations that are CRITICAL to software freedom, I'd much rather have an incorruptible but thoroughly awkward ideologue in charge than an unknown quantity. Who comes next? Will they compromise on things that shouldn't be compromised? It's another thing to worry about.
Sometimes yes. Leaders are always accountable, but not always responsible for outcomes, RMS was responsible for his actions, now he must be held accountable.
Why not leave that to the justice system instead of an angry mob? Why should people be held accountable by a mob? That's a horrible state that I had thought civilization had finally climbed out of, but it's back again with internet mobs and people being fired as punishment for failing to correctly adhere to the mob's arbitrary preferences. If you really think he did something wrong, then try to get the law changed so future people won't repeat the same offense.
He didn't break the law, nor did he do something worthy of judicial punishment, but that does not mean that he can not or should not be held to account. RMS lost a leadership position, that's all.
And Let's be clear, that is lawful is not necessarily moral, that which is moral is not necessarily lawful.
If it was just a one-off thing isolated from other recent events, you might be correct. But due to Epstein's association with MIT and his other history of controversial statements and actions with FSF, they couldn't just let him make an apology and hide out for awhile.
The fact that this is a more friendly forum than the general public, and yet the majority of people who are sticking up for him here seem to be anonymous conspiracy theorists and people who want to advocate lowering the age of consent, seems to be pretty damning in itself for his prospects.
A history of bad behavior isn’t a reason to excuse bad behavior: it is a reason not to excuse bad behavior because the person has had many chances to change that behavior and decided not to.
And he didn't "Have his wang cut" - He sincerely apologized, he chose to step away from the kernel for a period to work on.. well not being such an asshole.. and now he's back being a good community steward. Which seems like a fine outcome?
The pendulum has swung from "we give powerful, highly skilled, or accomplished people a carte blanche license to be total assholes" to a mentality where we're willing to ostracize people for certain types of assholery.
Has it swung too far? Perhaps. I have a rule: "society always over-corrects."
Should it swing back? No. Some moderation might be in order, but I'm not interested in going back to the time of "but Michael Jackson was so talented!"
(I'm not comparing Stallman to Michael Jackson, just using the latter as an example of a mentality.)
I don't personally have a dog in this fight, but I do get the sense that perhaps this was not an isolated incident but more of the straw that broke the camel's back.
Sure there is. How about: "the deposition never actually accuses Minsky of having sex with anyone in the first place"? Or how about, "Greg Benford says (https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/) he was personally present at the incident and witnessed there was no sex"? Wow, who knew it was so easy to defend 'a child molester' for whom there's 'no way to defend' them.
1. The deposition that's been made public doesn't allege sex with anyone as it was in a lawsuit against Maxwell for trafficking activities. That's outside its scope.
2. I don't find Benford credible.
3. Minsky kept taking Epstein's money and holding conferences on Epstein's island for over a full decade after the events Giuffre and Benford describe took place. Is there any benign explanation for that?
The benign explanation is that he didn't know Epstein was a monster (few outside the DA's office did until 2018) and that he accepted funding for AI research.
Literally any Google search of the man's name would show that he's a fucking monster. It was never a secret, much less after he was convicted of trafficking an underage prostitute in 2008. That's not something you accidentally plead guilty to.
Excuse me? There is precisely zero evidence suggesting that MM did anything whatsoever wrong, or, in fact, had sex with an underage woman. There is an accusation by a different woman who calls the woman claiming to have had sex with MM a 'liar' in court testimony.
But he's a freethinker, and freethinkers necessarily exist outside the mainstream. So, despite not liking him, I also don't like this turn of events.
It does seem arbitrary to me that the same sexual encounter is classified as rape in Arizona and not rape in Virginia. I suppose we have to draw that line somewhere arbitrary. But I wonder if it was a mistake to classify what is called "statutory rape" as "rape" at all. We can make it illegal without calling it rape.
That said, to me, this doesn't seem like a hill worth dying on. But then Stallman is not known for being picky about hills. People like him (or loathe him) because he's principled, and therefore no hill is too small.
He can continue to be a freethinker all his life, which is his right. What isn't though, is having unconditional support from two powerful industry organizations. They can choose their own values, same as him.
> That said, to me, this doesn't seem like a hill worth dying on
I don't think he saw it as a hill worth dying on, just a random hill he happened to be shot on. It's part of a random scattering of thoughts he makes public.
Either way, I'm cancelling my FSF donations for caving into this witch hunt. It's long demise will be helmed by people that stand for nothing less they offend someone.
It's the problem now, but specifically this tendency of Stallman is why the FSF exists at all, and why there was a compiler and a complete, freely available Unix userspace already available for Linus to bundle with his kernel, and voila, free Unix.
It's also the reason we have an Open Source movement, that being the watered down and more corporately palatable version of Stallman's idealistic vision.
Yes, he's totally uncompromising, has no sense of pragmatic tradeoffs or weighing one thing against another or deciding what is a good hill to die on. That's not the way I think is best to live my life, and it's probably best that most people don't live theirs that way either. Still, there should be a place in the world for people like him to have the freedom to be able to create and run their own organization with their own ideals.
> Either way, I'm cancelling my FSF donations for caving into this witch hunt.
If the FSF experiences a drop in donations couldn't they interpret that as people trying to distance themselves with Stallman, and he's basically synonymous with the FSF?
The "turn of events" in this case is losing his job because he made the organisations associated with him look bad. And I think it's completely fair for them to kick him to the curb in this case. No one person too important to lose if they turn into a liability. And in this case, I think RMS was well past that point.
Freedom of speech means that people are free to defend what other people find morally objectionable. The idea that the "leaders" should be morally pure is understandable, but ultimately very elitist.
And what of all of the qualified developers who are excluded from the community by ignorant or bigoted people in positions of power? What of their technological ability?
You are talking about a brilliant man actually getting fired, vs some hypothetical what-if that hasn't been proven.
Why not go after actual occurrences of discrimination, rather than assuming anytime some speaks out in a non-PC manner, that it means they are also going to discriminate against others? This is arresting for murder before it happens. It's the canonical example of "thought crime".
"Waded in" is exactly the right phrase. RMS is neither a legal expert nor a moral philosopher. Commenting on the definition of assault and the nature of consent is outside his field of expertise and he should have just replied with a curt "I will not be attending".
My personal takeaway is that it's important to understand the limitations of your own knowledge before succumbing to the urge to comment on something.
The man is known for not keeping his mouth shut when he sees something that bothers him. While I may not like his politics I agree that he should speak his mind.
Well, I'm now going to be following Stallman without the FSF around. His (admittedly) iconoclastic views are important, and I appreciate what he says about technology and privacy. His legal views are questionable, yes, but I don't accept the idea that he should be removed from the FSF.
Knowing how stubborn and aloof Richard tends to be, it is a huge surprise that this has happened at all, let alone so quickly. I can only imagine there was an immense amount of pressure from the board, partner projects, and sponsors.
Very unrelated issue - he resigned after the flamewars regarding PEP 572 (the addition of an assignment expression ':='). After it had gone on for a while, he finally used his BDFL authority to shut down debate and approve the PEP, and then resigned shortly after. In particular, he felt that the Python Code of Conduct's requirement for civility was being completely ignored in attacks on him in social media.
Something about Minsky that seems to have gotten lost: Minsky appears to have turned Epstein's girl down, according to Gregory Benford: https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/
More information on‒what I guess‒is the relevant backstory (RMS making reprehensible statements related to the Epstein scandal) can be found (among other places) in this blog post [1] by Matthew Garrett (original source referenced in the post is [2]).
1. It totally ignores the fact that it's possible to be highly respectable for some things and not for other things. Stallman has always been a jerk, but he's also always been trying to fight the good fight. Washington had slaves, that doesn't mean we should hate him.
2. You don't get to call out people for indicating that men are better at some things, and then point out that women are better at some things. Either you're allowed to believe in differences based on sex or you aren't.
I've never been a big fan of Stallman because I think he's a little to far into the realm of zealot. However, he is good for society as a whole because, in general, he's fighting for the right things. I don't think it's right to condemn him, throw the baby out with the bath water, because he's an idiot about some things.
> Washington had slaves, that doesn't mean we should hate him.
Counterpoint: yes it does.
Judging Washington by the standards of his time and his peers, slavery was abhorrent. Take the case of Quock Walker, who sued for his freedom in 1781, for instance. The chief justice of Massachusetts (and later Washington's own nominee for chief justice of the US) wrote:
> As to the doctrine of slavery and the right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude, and sell and treat them as we do our horses and cattle [...] nowhere is it expressly enacted or established. It has been a usage -- a usage which took its origin from the practice of some of the European nations, and the regulations of British government respecting the then Colonies, for the benefit of trade and wealth. But whatever sentiments have formerly prevailed in this particular or slid in upon us by the example of others, a different idea has taken place with the people of America, more favorable to the natural rights of mankind, and to that natural, innate desire of Liberty, with which Heaven (without regard to color, complexion, or shape of noses-features) has inspired all the human race. And upon this ground our Constitution of Government [...] sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal [...] and in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves. This being the case, I think the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and Constitution; and there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature [...]
As recorded by Washington's contemporary James Madison, Washington's contemporary Gouverneur Morris denounced the three-fifths compromise during the 1787 constitutional convention:
> He never would concur in upholding domestic slavery. It was a nefarious institution. It was the curse of heaven on the States where it prevailed. Compare the free regions of the Middle States, where a rich & noble cultivation marks the prosperity & happiness of the people, with the misery & poverty which overspread the barren wastes of Va. Maryd. & the other States having slaves. [...] Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them Citizens and let them vote. [...] The admission of slaves into the Representation when fairly explained comes to this: that the inhabitant of Georgia and S. C. who goes to the Coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections & damns them to the most cruel bondages, shall have more votes in a Govt. instituted for protection of the rights of mankind, than the Citizen of Pa. or N. Jersey who views with a laudable horror, so nefarious a practice.
We should not so facilely dismiss the difficult challenge that Washington is seen as the father of this nation and yet owned slaves. Other founding fathers understood that the American norm of liberty was clearly incompatible with holding slavery in anything other than contempt. Other founding fathers called his behavior "repugnant" and "nefarious" - why should we shy away from criticizing him? It seems far more sensible to me to worry that Washington (along with many others) led our nation into believing a compromised, twisted view of liberty and the natural rights of man, with lasting consequences for the country which hardly ended in the Civil War.
I'm not saying that Washington thought he was right to have slaves. He was wrong to have slaves and it reflects poorly on him that he did. Rather, I'm saying the amount of good he did for this country far outweighs his wrongs.
I'm making a subtler point: the good he did for this country was inescapably intertwined with his ownership of slaves.
One view you can take, which seems defensible, is that he grew to agree with the anti-slavery view late in life, yet as a calculated measure to hold the country together when half the economy was dependent on slavery, did nothing about it, and also was too weak to give up his own station in life which was similarly dependent on slavery. Yet he freed his slaves in his will, both for their own sake and in the (ultimately vain) hope that he would inspire others to do the same.
The other view is that he never actually believed it, or he would have made freeing human beings a political priority. He was embarrassed into freeing his slaves after Martha's death, but he fundamentally thought that it was more important for himself and Martha to live their last years in comfort than for his slaves to live in freedom, and that the negative peace of the new country holding together was preferable to the positive peace of meaningful liberty. And that therefore the "good" he did for this country was to set us up for the Civil War and for many more decades of viewing certain people as not fully deserving of human rights.
And relevantly to RMS and the free software movement - if Washington hadn't been there, if instead William Cushing or Gouverneur Morris had been in a similar role, what would they have done? Or even if Washington were still there but he did not use his leadership position to say, "I don't like slavery, but we have to keep it for now," what could Cushing or Morris have accomplished? Washington presided over the convention where Morris made his ultimately ineffective argument.
Washington wasn't the only founding father, nor the only skilled military leader among the revolutionary forces. In a world without him, would the US still have won and would it have been better set up to fight slavery? (Would the revolutionary forces have allowed black soldiers in earlier, and moreover had more morale among the black soldiers, thereby leading to an earlier victory?) If such a scenario is plausible, then the good he did didn't outweigh his wrongs.
You're speaking as if love and hate should cancel out, like weights balancing. But having a love/hate understanding of a person is extremely common. If I were teaching a person who could not understand both (such as a young child) I would start with only the good things about Washington, because that's more accurate if you absolutely had to choose. But, we're all adults here.
>Again, this mailing list has undergraduate students on it. It is likely some of them are “18 years old or 17”.
What a horribly asinine point. If you’re an undergraduate student and unable to deal with uncomfortable opinions, you are too immature to be a university student. The further infantilization of college students, and worse, college staff, never ceases to amaze me.
Is there an original source anywhere? Was this a private mailing list thread? I’d just like to see the content on its own not surrounded by a medium blog or vice commentary.
There is a mailing list thread that was copied and sent to VICE.
Note, the headline and article body of this post contain lies to make the story more clickable, but if you scroll to the bottom there is a widget that contains the 20 page mailing list thread. The other participants’ names besides RMS were redacted. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-sci...
RMS's definition of pedophile doesn't include people who feel sexuall attraction on person who has puberty and is sexual maturity.
I think that's a fair definition.
He also argues that 17 years old has ability to consent.
Since I'm from a country of consent age of 13 years, I agree.
RMS don't encourage to violate the law, merely presenting the opinion. This opinion isn't blaming certain group like James Watson and his comment on race and intelligence.
I guess some people aren't civil enough to discuss theoretical problems.
Except your opinion is as an anonymous person on the Internet, while his was the director of the FSF and a trusted member of an academic community in a public forum. He has to be willing to think about the people and organisations he represents before he opens his mouth and makes them look bad. If he isn't willing to do that, then he should get sacked.
Now he no longer belong to MIT/FSF, he can enjoy his freedom of speech I guess. RMS is and always is consistent. He never bend his opinion and he throw out all the career if necessary for his freedom.
I find the volume of the noise being made over whether or not the "entirely willing" bit was quoted out of context by the media for sensationalist purposes — which it 100% was — quite curious. To me, the place Stallman screwed up was in trying to quibble over terms in defense of a man who we have reason to believe had sex with an woman of an age in a jurisdiction where that might have constituted rape.
Because that's what it's about: he said, "But is it really?" — literally, in fact — about something which, for legal purposes, his opinion is irrelevant. To wit:
> Does it really? I think 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 said that. He went there. He quibbled over whether something constituted rape, as if the Virgin Islands cares one whit what rms thinks of their laws. That's where he screwed up, and people in the thread said so at the time, too. So people now can try to make this shit-show about his being quoted out of context about "entirely willing" — which, again, it was — as much as they want, but that just won't make it so.
This is entirely about Stallman having quibbled over rape, not whether he was selectively quoted in the course of quibbling over rape.
Hell yes he did. Wouldn't you? If I made my own country where "rape" was defined as "sex without first doing twenty jumping jacks," wouldn't you "quibble"?
>everyone admits knowingly slept with an woman of an age in a jurisdiction where that constituted rape.
So what? I drove 37 in a 35 today, who cares? You can't outsource your morality to the legal system like that.
If Minsky did something bad, say he did something bad. But don't launder your outrage through the VI's laws.
> If Minsky did something bad, say he did something bad. But don't launder your outrage through some country's laws.
It's hard for anyone to do that because virtually everything on this is speculation. The whole thing about Minsky stems from a single sentence in a recently unsealed enormous deposition ( https://twitter.com/_cryptome_/status/1159946492871938048 ) where one of Epstein's victims included Minsky in a list of people that epstein's assistant directed her to have sex with. She wasn't asked if sex actually happened with Minsky, and didn't claim it did, she was asked about the dates and couldn't recall.
A witness who claims to be present reported Minsky turning her down and complaining about the advance, additionally on the date that conference was held-- in 2002, Epstein's victim was 18. ( https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/ )
But since there are essentially no facts, not even concrete allegations-- people seem to feel free to make up their own version of events which are exactly as awful or harmless as they want them to be.
.... God save you if your imagination comes out different from the angry mob's and you dare share it with others.
Because Minksky has been dead for a few years there doesn't seem to be much interest in actually setting the facts straight, but there seems to be a lot of interest in using it as an excuse to be abusive to fellow humans.
It's not that simple. There are plenty of places where the sets "things that are legal" and "things that are moral" don't intersect. Those are some of the most interesting, challenging questions we will face.
EDIT: And I would submit the offered example illustrates that. Doing two miles per hour over the posted speed limit may not be legal, but it's hardly immoral. Similarly, lying to someone to sway their opinions in an argument isn't illegal, but I don't think that's particularly moral, is it?
> the place Stallman screwed up was in trying to quibble over terms in defense of a man who we have reason to believe had sex with an woman of an age in a jurisdiction where that might have constituted rape.
This is where you jump to conclusions and become a part of this charade. All we have are unsubstantiated allegations that do not even say definitively that sex took place. And just based on that, your and the mob's conclusion is "we have reason to believe" ?
I'm 100% with Stallman and everyone else who is extremely skeptical and advises caution. Alas, the mob is out for blood.
You know what, dude? I really, really hope it is just an allegation. I want desperately for it not to be the case that Minsky got sucked into Epstein's shitty web. But the deposition we've seen so far is just that: the only one we've seen so far.
That said, and this is key, this isn't about whether or not Minsky did the thing. Assuming he did, it isn't even about whether it was with a minor, or a woman of legal age. It's about Stallman having decided that was a prudent moment and subject about which to "Well actually..." at the world. The whole point is Stallman's behavior, not Minksy's.
In all seriousness: what the actual fuck does Richard Stallman's opinion on what does or doesn't constitute rape matter? Why would he think that was a point that needed his quibbling?
The Internet doesn't forget, so everyone can be branded mysogynist/mysandry/pedophile/etc.. just by making mistakes or having taken quotes out of context. People have limited attention and the media profits on showing the ugliness of others. This is not how it should be but I don't know how to fix that...
The internet _does_ forget though. Brendan Eich was forced out of Mozilla, a project he co-founded, and now nobody seems to bat an eye at him being at Brave.
In my original post, 'making mistakes' was put before 'out of context', the Internet doesn't allow anyone to have a 2nd chance of doing anything. Once you are branded as something, it will stuck with you forever, erasing any previous achievement or contribution you have done. And I don't like that.
He has had hundreds of chances. He was first called out ten years ago. It took a really long time for him to convince this many people that he was a pox upon our industry.
Yeah, his comments were absolutely disgusting. People here are acting like the media is railroading him. No, he was quite literally defending child rape.
I've seen some online cheering Stallman's resignation from MIT. I suspect they'll also be cheering about this resignation as well.
But this is nothing to cheer about.
Regardless of what low regard the man might be held as a person, he's being persecuted for having expressing ideas, demanding proof of claims, advocating for objective standards, and asking questions. These are all hallmarks of scientific inquiry.
It sets a precedent that will absolutely lead to self-censorship on a topic that really requires the disinfecting power of sunshine.
This strengthens the power of those who have no use for scientific inquiry and are more interested in inquisition.
I too, am a fan of Stallman's accomplishments and I am sad that debate on this topic essentially can't happen.
That said, I think Stallman's position really is fundamentally wrong and problematic.
Legally, sex with underaged people is rape regardless of consent. Morally, that stance really is justified in the most common circumstance - when the non-underaged person has more power and experience than the underaged person. In the case under discussion, you have that in spades, double spades.
The sad thing is that individuals interested in freedom, who make serious contributions to some things called free, don't notice that the massive imbalances of wealth today have produced a situation where simple "free choice" is made a mockery of.
And yeah, the thing about inquisition atmosphere, imo, is that it doesn't reveal the rot behind all the "mere" abuse of power.
He seems to have expressed a couple distinct arguments:
1. It isn't pedophilia if the person is sexually mature. Pedophilia is sex with prepubescent children.
2. He draws a distinction between statutory rape (can't legally say yes according to the law, but otherwise willing and sexually mature) and forcible rape (when someone says no). He made a point about how statutory rape wouldn't be considered rape if it happened in a different location (e.g. Italy) or if the person's birthday were slightly adjusted.
I agree with you that in the Epstein case you have a situation with a dramatic power imbalance. Stallman seems to consider Epstein a serial rapist (possibly for that fact?). He seems to be more pushing back on the pedophilia accusations.
Also - there seems to be a thread lost. It really looks like Epstein was a US Intelligence Officer filming powerful people having sex with young women (including foreign officials) to obtain leverage on them for the United States. This whole aspect of the conversation seems to have melted away in the various other controversies.
> Also - there seems to be a thread lost. It really looks like Epstein was a US Intelligence Officer filming powerful people having sex with young women (including foreign officials) to obtain leverage on them for the United States.
I agree that the reporting silence on this aspect of the case is odd. The federal prosecutor who worked out Epstein's plea deal (Alexander Acosta) appears to have told the press that the deal was done because he was told "Epstein belonged to intelligence". This was widely reported in July (https://www.google.com/search?q=acosta+epstein+intelligence), and then this revelation was almost completely dropped when Acosta resigned from his position as Secretary of Labor due to fallout from his involvement with the plea deal.
I'll note though that Acosta did not explicitly claim that Epstein was working for the US intelligence services...
> making it hard to accept your view that "it really looks like" that's the case
I didn't use those words, the parent poster did.
Personally, I think the possibility that Epstein was working for a government agency (domestic or foreign) merits further investigation, but is far from a certainty. I agree that Acosta might have been lying. But if this is the case, I find it doubly odd that there has been so little follow up reporting.
> He made a point about how statutory rape wouldn't be considered rape if it happened in a different location (e.g. Italy) or if the person's birthday were slightly adjusted.
I understand what RMS is trying to say, but this strikes me as an incredibly weak argument. All laws are arbitrary, but pointing that out isn't a meaningful defense of someone who broke one.
It's like contesting a parking ticket by saying "well if parking had been allowed on that street at that time then I wouldn't have done anything wrong."
That is a poor analogy, because if you can't park where you want that is a moderate inconvenience at the very worst. If you find yourself "in love" with a 17-and-a-half-year-old, it's not so easy as finding another spot.
The point of an analogy is to be similar in some single illustrative way, not to be similar in all ways. If someone finds themselves "in love" then they could make some kind of argument based on that, but it wouldn't make the "but it would be legal somewhere else" argument any more compelling.
Thank you for making this point. It's somehow been mostly lost in the noise of this thread that the main reason RMS's comments are so unacceptable is because he gave this defense (theoretical or not) of someone accused of having sex with a child trafficking victim. Not because he happens to have socially unacceptable opinions about certain corner cases in consent laws. Fortunately in this case, there's a very very bright line, and RMS was way over it.
While I don't know about this case, a common problem with people arguing right/wrong and legal/illegal is that one side picks right/wrong and the other picks legal/illegal and they talk past each other. If the law happens to agree with somebody's opinion, they'll use that to justify that they're "right" and if it doesn't, they'll use some higher moral standard and disregard the law.
Sometimes it's obvious which the sensible choice to make is. If you're arguing whether the GPL allows linking to a proprietary library or not, then it's the law that's more important. But if you're arguing if sex with children is OK then it's some higher moral standard that's important and appeals to the law are essentially appeals to popular opinion as support of some moral standard.
Luckily, people usually agree on what the law means, so they just have to make sure they're arguing about the same point that their opponent is actually making.
I'm not going to argue one way or the other. But for those saying legally it's one way or the other.
In Germany (and I find this disturbing) the legal age under which a grown up (over 21 years) can have sex with a kid is 14[1][2]. Of course a judge can find that the child or their legal representative not having been capable of giving consent in which case it's still considered child abuse.
Western societies themselves have such vastly different legal definitions of consent. To be honest I find germanies version to be the weirdest I've seen although I don't know much about the other european countries.
> Germany (and I find this disturbing) the legal age under which a grown up (over 21 years) can have sex with a kid is 14[1][2].
It is not.
The general legal age of consent in German is 16 years. § 182 (3)
The special legal age is 14 and it's only legal if the other party is under 21.
Even then there are a lot of further exemptions that would make sex with a minor illegal. Prostitution and/or pornography involving minors is always illegal.
People's opinions and what they say have weight and actually affect people (not to mention they affect people's actions). He isn't defending pineapple on pizza, he's defending the victimization of women.
Whether or not this case crosses it there clearly is a line where expressing an opinion isn't okay. If he was spouting off racist stuff you would have very few people defending him being fired.
By "having an incorrect opinion" I'll assume you mean "having and voicing an incorrect opinion."
Yes. There are laws against workplace harassment. Harassment may include repeated voicing of discriminatory opinions. The harasser may be fired to prevent the workplace from being a 'hostile environment'.
Even when the law does not require action, someone may be fired even after a single conversation with incorrect opinions (and I mean 'incorrect' in the factual sense here). Take Jimmy Snyder, a.k.a. "Jimmy the Greek". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Snyder_(sports_commentat... .
> On January 16, 1988, Snyder was fired by the CBS network (where he had been a regular on NFL Today since 1976) after making several questionable comments about African Americans during a lunchtime interview on January 15, 1988 with Ed Hotaling ...
More directly, if it's the 1950s and I call my stridently anti-Soviet Union boss "a pinko Commie" to his face, that's voicing an incorrect opinion -- and I might easily be fired for it. (It's not hard to come up with modern-day examples, but I felt it best to use phrases which no longer have the emotional power they once did.)
None of these apply to what happened with Stallman. I instead wanted to address your broader topic of being fired for expressing an opinion.
>None of these apply to what happened with Stallman
That’s the point. If it were harassment, false accusation of a colleague, etc, it would not be merely expressing a bad opinion. But as you say, none of those apply.
And I think it’s clear I was not raising an issue of what is legal, but of what is right and just, and desirable for a university, for a workplace, for a society.
I gave two examples, one real ("Jimmy the Greek"), and one hypothetical ("pinko Commie"). Do you really want to get into a discussion of how it was not "right and just" to fire Jimmy the Greek for his racist comments?
To defend Minsky and Prince Andrew, there’s no evidence they knew she was underage. She also appeared in a photo with Andrew and Ghisline Maxwell. Perhaps he knew she was underage but for a member of royalty to fly to a private island and have underage sex with 8+ girls at once is a serious allegation which is what she claimed. Maybe it’s true but at least one of the accused by her (the famous lawyer involved) has claimed to have evidence that she is lying — or more precisely, exaggerating her story.
My ex-girlfriend dated Prince Andrew (she was in her late 20s). I’ve been around some of these people in South Florida and LA. A lot of allegedly good people will ignore red flags but people openly targeting underage girls seems to be isolated to only one or two principals.
Of course, all of this is wrong —- even this concept of pleasure parties where young (over 18) girls are brought to billionaire parties often by younger guys. Turning regular girls into “sugar babies” or prostitutes is a major problem.
> Maybe it’s true but at least one of the accused by her (the famous lawyer involved) has claimed to have evidence that she is lying — or more precisely, exaggerating her story.
Ah, Dershowitz. The one who says, yes, he got a massage at Epstein's Palm Beach place, but it was from a 52-year-old woman named Olga and he kept his pants on the whole time.
I'm sure we'll see his exculpatory evidence any day now.
> Legally, sex with underaged people is rape regardless of consent
Yes and no. With a 17 year old, in some jurisdictions, it's rape in such and such degree, but in other jurisdictions, it's a separate crime, and in other jurisdictions it's not a crime at all. I think the stronger argument is that it's illegal/immoral, rather than getting stuck on a single word.
So if I have sex with a consenting 14-17 year old on vacation (the actual legal ages of consent in Europe) people in USA can just call it rape/sexual assault?
Stallman has a point, even though he should've steered clear of this by 100 miles. People who don't travel internationally probably have a huge blind spot on this issue...
Yes, in fact, federal law makes it a crime for Americans to go to a foreign country and have sex that would be legal in that country, even Western European countries with typical laws. It's considered "sex tourism"
> a situation where simple "free choice" is made a mockery of.
I'm not so sure. "Free choice" today as defined by those on the left is "free to make choices independent of constraints imposed by personal capacity or personal resources", whereas it has historically been interpreted as "free to make choices independent of constraints imposed by other humans".
The problem with the former definition of free choice is that it requires encroaching on the latter definition of free choice.
If you have two people that are equally poor, both are equal in terms of having free choice under both definitions.
If one of those people becomes wealthy, they continue to be equal under the latter definition of free choice, but are unequal under the former definition even though nothing has changed in the circumstances of the one that became neither richer nor poorer than he was previously.
>That said, I think Stallman's position really is fundamentally wrong and problematic.
So you have the default opinion anyone in our society will have. I'm interested in what the heretic has to say why we are wrong.
However with what has happened to Stallman I doubt I ever will. A shame because something has gone hugely wrong when half of all children are thinking of suicide.
Er, sorry, no. A public mailing list is not the correct venue for this discussion. Supposing as you do that society currently holds the wrong opinion on "does sex with minors constitute sexual assault?", the right answer is unlikely to be hashed out on a MIT list for CS activities.
You also lend Stallman more weight than he deserves. His resignation will go unnoticed by all outside of our specific tech sphere and certainly will not "set a precedent that will absolutely lead to self-censorship" (???).
Should we cheer his resignation? It's undoubtedly a sad moment for him and his supporters, but Stallman's behavior quite likely has held back the FSF for some time. He's an ideologue, not a leader.
1. His post was not an out of context rant on an unrelated school mailing list. He was criticizing the words used by MIT students in connection with a protest at MIT, and that mentioned his ex-colleague. The MIT students posted this in the first instance, and it was a direct response to them. It seems to me like an appropriate forum.
2. Stallman's argument was simply to call a spade a spade, and not a defense of Epstein or Minsky. If you told 10 people (each unaware of any of the facts alleged) that Minsky sexually assaulted a girl, and then asked them to describe what they imagine occurred after hearing he sexually assaulted some, many might assume he violently assaulted someone. The degree of differences in guesses that you might receive makes the word functionally prone to tarnishing someone with a reputation for a different crime than the one they committed.
Stallman therefore asked for the incident to be described in unambiguous terms; for example, that Minsky had sex with a sex trafficked 17-year old 50 years his junior on Epstein's island. That does not mean he defends that scenario -- you can still view it as reprehensible, and condemn it, but at least you are not engaging in "accusation inflation", where you are condemning someone for a potentially worse crime than they committed.
3. I agree that Stallman is unnoticed outside this sphere, but this is part of a continued trend of threatening people's reputations and livelihoods for stating an opinion. I created a throwaway for the first time ever simply for this comment (which I think is relatively benign), so yes, I think this trend will continue to lead to self-censorship.
I think you should be aware that all non-consensual sex is sexual assault, and all sexual assault is violence. Sexual assaulters have committed violent crime.
How old were you when you first had sex? How old was your partner?
If you were both under the age of consent, as is often the case, in many jurisdictions [0], neither of you were able to give consent, and your sex act was technically non-consensual on both sides. This is not just theoretical -- there are many cases of prosecutors charging consensual underage couples with statutory rape, or with child pornography charges for sexting a picture of themselves to their boyfriend/girlfriend, and often using these laws in unjust ways (e.g. charging only the black boyfriend with statutory rape, but not equally charging the white girlfriend).
Let's assume you and your first love grew up in California, had sex for the first time just days prior to your 18 birthdays (when you both became legal), and are now 30 and have been happily married for 10-years. By your definition, you both committed violent sexual assault, and I'd be correct to go around your workplace saying things like "oh zzzeek? you know he's committed violent sexual assault. Some sort of rape. I don't know the details, but just wanted you to know."
This is a contrived example, and I'm in no way equating this with Minsky or Epstein. I'm not defending either of their actions whatsoever. But I think that Stallman is correct that using words in this type of manner, deliberately ignoring such qualitative differences in degrees, is unfair. It doesn't matter what the legal or dictionary definition might be -- it's creating a misleading impression in someone else's mind as to what you are guilty of, rather than simply stating in clear terms what you did and letting that person decide for themselves how culpable or abhorrent you are.
That definition isn’t so cut and dry (different depending on jurisdiction). Violent crimes frequently depend on use of physical force or threat of physical force.
... No? Well, at the very least Stallman wrote that he doesn't think 'sexual assault' is a meaningful term. He uses the wrong (by which I mean, not the legal) definition for 'sexual assault' and implies that there are no other definitions by rejecting the idea that that phrase can be used in an accusation.
>but Stallman's behavior quite likely has held back the FSF for some time. He's an ideologue, not a leader.
On this last point, We have to agree to disagree. His firm and unwavering stance on many issues is a flag planted in the sand - "This is how things should be" (whether or not its practical). It is a point of reference which countless engineers, designer, entrepreneurs in tech (including in big companies in FAANG, etc.) have been influenced by (whether or not they were able to live upto his ideal) when building their systems and companies.
Everyday, living in the dystopian nightmare that the modern world (both real and virtual) is becoming, oftentimes enabled by OSS, 'Stallman was right' is something that keeps coming back. Its not just a glib meme.
> ... Supposing as you do that society currently holds the wrong opinion on "does sex with minors constitute sexual assault?", the right answer is unlikely to be hashed out on a MIT list for CS activities.
I expressed no opinion either way on that topic. I don't even consider the topic relevant to my position, which is that once we agree that merely asking some questions will result in harsh punishments, we're hosed as a society.
Today, it's the question you hate that gets punished. Tomorrow it will be the question you hold most dear.
The punishment is not the result of asking questions. The punishment is for his poor judgement of where to ask those questions - namely a mailing list owned and operated by MIT on which he served as a representative of while posting to that list.
So your premise is flawed and thus your position is (ironically) irrelevant to the topic.
Who decides which are the questions that a representative of the university can ask and which will lead to punishment?
As far as I can tell, the discussion was on-topic given that a former professor, Minsky, was being accused of "assault." Stallman's questions and statements revolved around the use of that term and the trouble that its lack of specificity brings.
The university is (ideally) full of scholars holding controversial views, asking uncomfortable questions, and being accused of all manner of crimes. If one of them (Minsky) can be tarred and feathered without a trial, any of them could be.
I don't know what kind of world you want to live in, but I enjoyed my university experience where most of my professors were scholars holding more or less banal views and, to the best of my knowledge, not a one being accused of "all manner of crimes." I don't think professors being accused of crimes is either common or beneficial to the spirit of learning and scientific inquiry.
>but I enjoyed my university experience where most of my professors were scholars holding more or less banal views
If their views are banal, then there is likely nothing novel academically coming out of them. That’s literally the opposite point of professorship, tenure, and academic inquiry.
I recommend you look up the definition of “banal” because you either used it wrong or you don’t know what the point of tenure is.
Technically we don't know for sure what the punishment was for. Especially given that he's said much worse things in the past without resigning, it's possible that these resignations were forced because of some yet worse comments which haven't become public. And even if all of the relevant material is public, it seems likely that this is just the culmination of many issues and the FSF board and supporters simply ran out of patience for rms's antics at last, and that the tone-deaf and bizarre defense of Minsky was just the last straw.
>>I expressed no opinion either way on that topic. I don't even consider the topic relevant to my position, which is that once we agree that merely asking some questions will result in harsh punishments, we're hosed as a society.
Imagine a person emails a large distribution group at their office with the following question: "I notice we have many black employees: does anything think it might be beneficial if we return to chattel slavery and own them? Could lower our bottom line"
Would that person be fired? Should that person be fired? Are there questions that shouldn't be asked? Is everything fair game?
It's crazy to see people taking this stance on a public forum for tech companies. He's talking about Minsky just like you're talking about Stallman. What makes this the correct venue for you but not that for him?
In its most literal form I don't know if I would say I disagreed with the core of what Stallman was saying in the email (that "sexual assault" should perhaps be revised in its usage), but Stallman was tone-deaf at best to have pontificated on such a comparatively minor (and highly arguable) matter when he did and where he did. Worse, with what he wrote, there is a reading of the email where the subtext is that Stallman was trying to mitigate Minsky's culpability. I won't comment on whether I think that was indeed what he was trying to do, but it's not a good look, regardless of whether that is indeed what he was trying to do.
Many people will acknowledge the value of Stallman's stubborn, iconoclastic opinions. I'd count myself among them, and it's a little sad to see Stallman go from his pulpits. But on the other hand, I'm relieved: it might be in Stallman's constitution to be at all times a rational reasoning machine, impervious to emotion and sentiment, but this is not how most people are, and on many occasions Stallman has shown that he either doesn't understand or doesn't care about this. There are times when one should refrain from saying something that is merely correct because of the symbolic meaning it would have, or the emotional responses it would elicit.
> In its most literal form I don't know if I would say I disagreed with the core of what Stallman
You qualify this, but that is basically the core of what Stallman supporters are looking at.
Saying something that is literally true, in an industry which is known to be stuffed with some very literal minded people, should not be grounds for anyone resigning. It should be grounds for doing nothing, apologising or clarifying depending on what was said.
It is risky to punish people for what they did not literally say. Particularly if they are the sort of person who is well known for striving to be literally correct.
> Saying something that is literally true, in an industry which is known to be stuffed with some very literal minded people, should not be grounds for anyone resigning. It should be grounds for doing nothing, apologising or clarifying depending on what was said.
If you think this industry still has anywhere near the room for "literal minded people" that it once had, think again. Even proper participation in Scrum ceremonies requires nuance and a capacity to read a room.
Stallman's political views have always been a little weird and sometimes gross, but he said what he said because his autism is weapons-grade and with that comes a fixation on "hobgoblin of little minds" tier logical consistency. And with all that sweet, sweet corporate money, the normies, who prioritize the feelings of their peers over logic, have effectively taken over open source and installed normies in key positions, the better not to have to deal with icky nerds who say embarrassing things and don't know how to "play the game".
And really, that's part of what this is all about. This is the new guard purging the old guard. It's also why Linus was subjected to a struggle session last year and why he may yet get the axe from the Linux Foundation.
It is rather hard to support his statement of his "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."
Forget about the content of the statements for a moment.
Imagine a person expresses skepticism of an idea you consider "settled." Do you:
1. demand the person be let go from his/her current position
2. provide evidence that counters the skepticism
If the correct response is (1), then you yourself are at risk of a Stallman exit. Every one of us holds at least one point of skepticism that one or more groups will be deeply offended by.
The liberal idea, under assault form all shades of the political spectrum, depends on (2) being the correct response.
This may be an appealing idea in the abstract, but there are people who sincerely hold the view others are subhuman and deserve to be raped and killed, and there are people who believe it’s fine to have sex with kids.
Society can absolutely decide not every point of view is worth debating.
If there is a belief that is backed up by evidence (and in this case there is) then the first response should always be to provide that evidence.
Just because someone sincerely believes that others are subhuman doesn't mean the conversation ends immediately. We could try providing evidence and clarifying whether they are dead-centre wrong or just dealing with a technical detail before turning to exclusionary tactics.
I mean, seriously. If the choices are (1) end the conversation, try and get someone to resign and (2) try and convince someone to take a different view through conversation over a few days then (2) is far superior. We have a lot of people working in, eg, law and the upper echelons of business who are fantastic contributors to the general good despite having extremely questionable moral stances.
Is that also the second response? And the 100th? It isn't like Stallman provided new arguments or new evidence here. This wasn't the first response. It was the 100th.
> Just because someone sincerely believes that others are subhuman doesn't mean the conversation ends immediately.
Holocaust deniers used this very tactic under the banner of "skepticism".
They wrote books, they gave speeches. They participated in "academic debate" as if the authenticity of the holocaust was something to be debated.
And they caused a lot of pain to those that did live through the holocaust -- only to hear from someone making false claims that it did not, in fact, happen.
Thanks to people that instead of refusing to debate the deniers choose to show proof of why they were wrong, nowadays, 74 years after the horrors, we have readily available proof to counter the lies of whom, with malice, try to deny it again. If people had chosen the first tactic of refusing to debate the most probable thing would be that we wouldn't have this amount of proof to counter them today.
We should always explain why something is wrong and try to convince to avoid future trouble.
If someone using a tactic in bad faith means we can't use the tactic any more, we're going to be in a lot of trouble. People talking about things they don't understand and being in need of correction goes a bit deeper than "well, Holocause deniers ask questions too!".
Stallman is not a serial Holocaust denier. He is a software philosopher.
And insofar as he is an agitator, on most of his pet topics time has proven him to be right rather than to be a troll.
> Society can absolutely decide not every point of view is worth debating.
We could have decided that three hundred years ago too, in which case the divine right of kings would still be a thing.
EDIT: A lot of people seem to think that the divine right of kings would not have been a thing worth strongly defending back in the early 1700s - and certainly far more than they would have defended the rights of people in the west indies or far east to not be "raped and killed". Do you have any argument to back this up? Would bumping things to five hundred years change that?
If banning discussion of things outside the overton window wouldn't have had results you'd like then, why would it do so now? There might be reasons! But I haven't heard people bringing them up.
Maybe some ideas are in fact so "settled" that anyone being seriously skeptical of them is either trolling (and not worth our time) or frighteningly unethical (and should not be in a position of power).
For example:
1) Men should be dominant over women. Women should have no rights, and be little more than property.
2) Certain races are inferior and should be put back into chattel slavery.
3) Eating toddlers is fine, actually.
Would you bother trying to counter those ideas in good faith? Or should the people expressing those views maybe be fired/punished/etc.
Well, if their job involves serving female customers, managing sub-human employees or providing day care, then yes they absolutely should be fired. Otherwise, no, of course not. Because while it may be "obvious" to you that eating toddlers is bad, it is self-evident that large numbers of people can be convinced that e.g. blasphemy is just as bad. What protects us there is this principle that people can mostly say whatever they want without fear of punishment. What you're suggesting is that only popular ideas should be protected. Popular ideas do just fine even without protection, so this is tantamount to not protecting any ideas at all.
Most of us are at risk for losing our jobs over far less. Our boss can decide he doesn’t like the way we dress, and we’ll be looking for a new job before the end of the day.
Millions of workers labor under threat of starvation just for standing up for themselves a little bit. Expressing a straightforward opinion like “it is illegal to work off the clock” or “a 30 minute lunch break is mandatory in this state” can be enough to provoke retaliation.
Why are people so eager to spend so much energy defending a guy who, at the very least, wrote a bunch of inappropriate things in a completely inappropriate place?
What’s the slippery slope here? “If a man can’t rant about the unfairness of statutory rape laws on a computer science mailing list, then....” I don’t know how that sentence is supposed to end.
There are so many more important things to worry about. A kook is losing his platform. He’ll have to shout into the void like the rest of us. Oh, the horror!
It's not just about free speech, it's about his position of leadership in those organisations. He needs to either moderate his public viewpoints in order to look out for the best interests of the people there, which is what a good leader would do, or he needs to resign because he clearly doesn't understand his job.
When you're the head of the FSF, or any other organisation really, you can't just be some kind of agitator, throw out a bunch of controversial nonsense, and then expect it to not look bad for the people you're supposed to represent. It's not an "assault on free speech" to get kicked to the curb for making your organisation look bad, it's cause and effect.
How would you respond if someone said something like:
"The literal-minded personalities we often encounter in the engineering profession are just not cognitively capable of handling leadership positions. They suffer from autism, a form of mental illness, and while they are fit for highly logical and problem solving tasks are not fit for tasks that involve social or political decision making. It's important that they be kept away from positions of influence or outward-facing communication and properly managed."
Would you call for that person's resignation? I sure as hell would.
If Stallman thought UFOs were clearly alien spacecraft or that Bigfoot was a real surviving prehistoric hominid, I don't think anyone would care. If he took some positions that were more politically charged, like denying evolution or climate change, people might get mad or call him names but I doubt they'd call for his resignation from the FSF or MIT over it.
There is no broad based "witch hunt" against divergent opinions, but there is a new-found extreme intolerance for a certain narrower set.
The opinions in question are those that denigrate other human beings or deny them equal rights or dignity, such as the choice to engage in pedantic hair splitting to defend the sexual exploitation of children.
Other well known cases of "cancel culture" follow the same pattern: Brendan Eich apparently funding campaigns to deny rights to homosexuals, a Google engineer taking the time to write a wall of text explaining why women are "on average" less suited for engineering work, and so on.
So the question becomes: do you think it's right for society or our peers to react so strongly to those kinds of opinions? Is there value in debating them?
P.S. As for the extreme reaction: sexual abuse of children and adolescents is fairly prevalent. Statistically it's pretty likely that at least a small double-digit percentage of free software authors and people involved in the free software community are victims. Seeing Stallman go out on a limb to defend or at least apologize for that kind of thing probably angered quite a few people for reasons that are entirely understandable, especially in the context of his past comments about pedophilia. Sometimes it's tough to see what the big deal is when it's not about an issue that directly relates to you, hence the artificial example I wrote up above.
I've argued couple of people into doing things my way; the typical pattern is that they disagree vehemently in conversation for a few hours and then a few days later start doing what I asked them to do. On rare occasions it takes a few months. And I've occasionally been on the receiving end of that treatment.
Minds don't change in seconds, particularly around what language to use to describe an issue; it usually takes a few days of thinking.
It might be damage control, but realistically this whole blow up is absurd for a few emails on an academic mailing list. Academic mailing lists are supposed to be the best place in the world to encounter views that will change people's minds.
He does it using his alternative to singular they: "Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically." Doesn't really seem sincere when he's grinding another axe at the same time. https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html
Another variant of his invented nomenclature besides per is perse which I'd rather not be called. It sounds like a child of purse and hearse.
you must not be very familiar with rms if you think he's not being sincere for "grinding another axe at the same time". stallman has been grinding all of his axes, at all times, without exception.
this is the only time to my knowledge that stallman has ever gone back on one of his fundamental positions.
Perhaps the "issue at hand" can be as simple as software for you.
Most people kinda rank pedophile apologia--and, yes, I did read what he wrote, and yes, the chinstroking "most plausible scenario" is pedophile apologia--above that, though, and I would hope that you would at minimum grant that the level of understanding you seek to demand of everyone else.
> Perhaps the "issue at hand" can be as simple as software for you.
Ok. You're actually right. I regret saying that software is the only important thing.
Honestly, I guess that part of my comment was a post-rationalization, but what actually bothers me is the hypocrisy of the media and society in general, because they don't apply the same rigor when an institution or person does or says much more despicable when they like those things. But that has nothing to do with this specific issue.
>the chinstroking "most plausible scenario" is pedophile apologia.
Nope, it isn't. Many of his comments actually are, but if you analyze the "most plausible scenario" quote, it has nothing to do with it.
The FSF is foremost about community, and only incidentally about software. He is, to put it absurdly nicely, not the sort of people person who should be leading such an organization.
> The FSF is foremost about community, and only incidentally about software
I fear that this has become true, but the only reason anybody gives a damn about the FSF and the only reason this is even newsworthy is because of the software and licenses produced by the FSF.
If you take the software away the FSF is nothing, so I don't understand how you can claim it's primarily a community.
Ironically if everybody had done that, things wouldn't have played out this way.
When at work, confine it to work stuff folks. There's a genius to it. It automatically renders you incapable of things like gossip, harassment, gaffes like this, and most other trouble. The only trouble left for you to get into is saying stupid things about the work itself, which I can't help you with. But remember you're working in a complex world with different people who don't share your opinions and ideally aren't your friends and you ideally don't need them to be, because you've got a vibrant life outside of work, and you go to work, to work on work, and talk about work, and when the work's done, you leave.
I don't know if I want to live in that world, a full day around people with which any kind of normal conversation is strictly forbidden.
In the majority of my career I've been in workplaces with colleagues, many like-minded but plenty not, to whom I felt I could say more or less whatever the fuck I want. That seems much better to me, but who knows.
Did I say forbidden? I'm talking about self-discipline. The ideal would be to be so engaged and absorbed with work, that that's the thing you want to talk about. Ideally you're enjoying it. And anyway, just because some Angry Poo-Poo Face Boss Guy made me mad by telling me to focus on the work long ago, doesn't mean it's a bad idea for me to do it now, on my own, for my own reasons. Kind of like how lifting a heavy-ass weight, which sucks, actually is a good idea because it makes me stronger.
I also feel like your saying whatever you want, and having it be fine, depends on certain things, like both people being okay with it. For example (and I'm not saying this is you), a lot gets said and taken for granted between white males in software, that wouldn't be okay for non-white non-males and shouldn't be taken for granted. What's normal conversation for one person might not be normal for others. That is absolutely what happened with Mr. Stallman here. Questions of right or wrong should be hashed out with people you trust and share a foundation with, and upon whom you don't depend for rent money. Because everybody else is too fucking crazy now. AND, anyway, more to my main point, ideally you're too busy getting shit done!
Edit: Again, that's until work's over, at which point you make a clean break and go do whatever else. I'm a fan of the dividing line.
'Nuther edit: This case is actually more of a gray area because the Epstein thing affects the Media Lab and the whole Institute. It's all intertwined. So, ironically, it's a quasi-work-related conversation. But you can still say that the topic was more thrust on everyone, as opposed to being and having always been a natural part of the work. In fact, whoever caused the two things to mix in the first place [Epstein's money and MIT] done fucked up. Which is what everybody's saying, obviously, but they're saying it because of the moral murk of it, whereas I'm saying, my simpler philosophy about not mixing things, also would have prevented it just as effectively. My objection can simply be that Epstein and his horseshit have nothing to do with the work and have no place at the Institute. Somebody smart could've seen that right off, of course, but they were tempted by the money. Upton Sinclair bla bla "...when his [gittin' PAID] depends on his not understanding it."
I don't think the many people who have experienced his abuse directly, or the victims he is trying to minimize, would agree with your assessment of what's important.
"Asking questions" that deny people's humanity over and over isn't exactly a positive intellectual exercise.
We pretty conclusively decided that race based chattel slavery was wrong a while ago. But why? Can we keep expressing ideas and demanding proof of these claims? Can we do it forever? Can we do it while holding positions of power at institutions that are attended by black students?
Because the abolition of slavery is one of the greatest achievements of our civilization.
New generations of humans are constantly being born, and until we teach them, they don't know why this is. They don't know why slavery was such a black mark on our history. They don't understand what it does not just to the people involved, but to a society. They don't know why it proliferated so easily (and this is still very relevant today; when our society turns a blind eye to illegal immigrant labor, it's an echo of the same economics that made slavery easy for past generations to accept).
You should be able to sit down with a 9th grader and explain to them, this is what slavery was, this is how common it was for most of history. This is why it was so tempting and these are the benefits people reaped from it. But this is how we realized that the costs outweighed the benefits, and how we created a better world at a great cost to many people.
Crucially, it's important to explain to someone how slavery would be bad for them and their community, even if they themselves were not a slave.
It's important to teach all of this to the new humans we raise. "It was bad, end of story" is not enough. The best way for them to learn is to reason through the arguments on both sides, explore the history, see how we got to where we are, and draw their own conclusions. Because you can't force a belief on someone. They need to get there themselves.
If you ban the discussion they are going to reach their beliefs without guidance. And the isolated, the lonely, the angry will end up with some very dark beliefs. It's happening now as a direct response to censorship culture.
I completely understand that slavery is a difficult and very personal topic for a lot of people. These are hard conversations to have. But for the sake of future generations we need to have them. Beliefs are stronger when they're justified. They are strongest when they are challenged, defended, and the challenges are defeated. We should never stop doing that.
Explaining why slavery is wrong and why its proponents were monstrous is not the same as "lets have a continual public debate about my right to own you until the end of time".
Not only does this distract from productive intellectual discussion, it carries an implied threat that if a historically oppressed population ever slips up and fails to defend themselves that they'll be forced back into oppression.
> We pretty conclusively decided that race based chattel slavery was wrong a while ago. But why? Can we keep expressing ideas and demanding proof of these claims?
Obviously yes? How else would we know that we are right?
> We pretty conclusively decided that race based chattel slavery was wrong a while ago.
Unfortunate that you should use this example since slavery was finally abolished precisely because people kept "asking questions" contrary to the prevailing zeitgeist about why slaves did not enjoy the same rights as other humans.
Never has then been a clearer demonstration of why the "stop asking questions" stance advocated by progressives is intellectually bankrupt.
Demanding the same standard of evidence we demand in court and science to disrupt human power structures helps those with power retain it and use it against those who have less power.
Also what he said is fully public, so I don't understand what you, or he, is objecting to.
> Demanding the same standard of evidence we demand in court and science to disrupt human power structures helps those with power retain it and use it against those who have less power.
Okay sure, but you're talking about loosening a standard for accuracy of conviction... This means that you can decrease failures to convict truly guilty people—but in equal proportion you will also increase convictions of innocent people.
This does not sound like a well thought out strategy.
The standard of evidence is lower in civil cases than criminal ones. Taking away someone's bodily autonomy is different than saying you can't have a prominent role at a prestigious institution. You don't (or shouldn't) have an inalienable right to power.
> The standard of evidence is lower in civil cases than criminal ones.
That's probably because the standard of accuracy is tied to severity of punishment (they're will to pay more for a higher standard in cases where it's more damaging to be wrong). Are you arguing that someone losing their job or other position of influence is low-enough severity that we don't need a high standard? That seems reckless to me.
> Taking away someone's bodily autonomy is different than saying you can't have a prominent role at a prestigious institution.
Agreed. Putting someone in jail is more severe than taking someone's job. I don't think this is controversial.
> You don't (or shouldn't) have an inalienable right to power.
Nobody has claimed this.
> And, again, the facts aren't even in dispute.
This entire thread is a massive contradiction of that claim.
Their exact words are "court and science"—and the bigger point from the gp comment was about evaluating these things in the spirit of "scientific inquiry".
Yes — they are saying that we should require a lower standard of evidence to disrupt human power structures (e.g. ask someone to resign) than we should for court and science (e.g. convicting someone of a crime or accepting a scientific theory).
The comment they are replying to isn't requesting a similar standard to that for accepting a scientific theory—it was pointing out the danger of punishing people for assessing controversial events with an attitude of scientific inquiry.
> he's being persecuted for having expressing ideas, demanding proof of claims, advocating for objective standards, and asking questions. These are all hallmarks of scientific inquiry.
And the reply to this is that we shouldn't have such high standards for deciding to punish people in power? If nothing else it's a non-sequitur.
Any my original comment still stands: if you do that, you're going to punish more innocent people too.
> Any my original comment still stands: if you do that, you're going to punish more innocent people too.
Is this a bad thing? Different courts also have different standards of proof. Are you saying that you should have to prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt in civil court? If your friend tells you an acquaintance said something mean to them, are you going to gather evidence and do cross-examinations before you'll believe them?
There is some optimal standard for any class of cases. (At the very least varying the standard will produce better/worse results in relation to particular classes of cases.)
So, no—
> are you going to gather evidence and do cross-examinations before you'll believe them?
—that would be a very bad choice of standard.
I have not claimed to know what the optimal choice of standard is (I will claim that no one else knows it either though), but I do think that changing the standard would have a huge societal impact, and so it shouldn't be done on the basis of a hunch that the outcome would be better. I pointed out one possible complication (convicting more innocent people), though of course the possibilities there are endless.
So to be absolutely clear: I am not advocating for a tighter standard, I'm suggesting that there are complications entailed in lowering it, so it should only be done on a much firmer grounding than some vague notions about catching more bad guys.
> It sets a precedent that will absolutely lead to self-censorship on a topic that really requires the disinfecting power of sunshine.
This incident doesn't change anything since much more chilling precedents have been set so many times before. RMS's position is way too extreme here, 99.9% of people would probably find it despicable. Meanwhile, lives (including at least one Nobel laureate's) have been destroyed for contentious, merely politically incorrect statements (or less). The ship has long sailed, RMS just didn't get the memo, maybe due to the peculiar way he uses the Internet.
> This incident doesn't change anything since much more chilling precedents have been set so many times before
Your not wrong, but in this case he is 2 degrees of separation away from someone that we know was guilty. It feels like the witch hunting has moved onto those who are guilty by association.
> RMS's position is way too extreme here, 99.9% of people would probably find it despicable.
Bypassing for now the merits (or not) of his arguments, which will certainly get a deep philosophical treatment on a site where long comment threads are impossible to navigate and are really only active for a day or less anyway...
RMS's de facto role in the FSF has been spokesperson and public figure. This isn't the first time he's put his foot in his mouth [1][2][3] (figuratively or literally, according to some accounts). That's simply not a role to which he is suited, and that at least should be an argument most can agree with, if reluctantly.
We all make allowances for bad behavior from our favorite people, as long as that bad behavior isn't too repugnant or doesn't undermine the role we appreciate them for.
In RMS's case, at the very least his behavior keeps distracting people from the issues that the FSF was formed to address.
Let RMS return to roles for which he is better suited, and like Eric S Raymond's frequent bouts of insanity, we can all go back to appreciating that at least he manages to stay out of the news cycle.
I'm not cheering. I would much rather live in a universe where Stallman didn't "I'm just saying" himself out of his own organisation. I don't even like him that much, but I think he represented an important voice in software. It's not good that he's out, but I think it is right.
I am dumbfounded anew every time I see a smart and analytical person twist themselves around to the point that they become too smart to believe in analysis. Saying Stallman was persecuted for "expressing ideas" is about as sophisticated as "my program crashed because the electrons were in the wrong place". You wouldn't be satisfied with an understanding that shallow in any other circumstance.
Meaning. Words have it. Questions have it. Ideas have it. "Etsy for houseplants" is an idea, as is "figuring out your home address from information available online and breaking in to your house tonight while you're sleeping". Why is one of them creepier than the other? I can't believe I'm being persecuted for just having ideas!
The meaning of Stallman's argument is that he doesn't think Minsky did anything wrong. Why doesn't he think Minsky did anything wrong? Probably because he was a friend, a good guy, a peer, who knows. Because of these entirely scientific feelings, he makes a series of arguments:
1. She only said she was directed to have sex with Minsky, not that she actually did
2. Even if she did say she had sex with Minsky, she may have been confused and answering the wrong question
3. Even if she did actually have sex with Minsky, she probably made it appear consensual
4. Even if she was not legally capable of consent, that is not morally equivalent to rape
5. Thus, it is "injustice" and "wrong" to say Minsky is accused of sexual assault
Is this your science? Is this the altar of rationality you're worried will be torn down by the rabid inquisitors of the new dark age? Because to me it sounds a lot more like The Dragon in My Garage. How far must our credulity stretch to believe that Minsky foresaw most of modern AI, only to fall for "hot willing 17-year-olds in your area"?
And how does a man like Stallman look at open source and see politics, look at dynamic linking and see politics, look at javascript and see politics – and look at science and see nothing but science? Like you, I do not believe Stallman is malicious. I believe he is naive. That is a fine quality in a revolutionary, but not in a leader.
he's being persecuted for having expressing ideas, demanding proof of claims, advocating for objective standards, and asking questions.
I don't think it's quite that simple. Most likely, the real issue is he failed to know when to shut up about a sensitive topic after being basically told to shut up.
A crux of the issue is that men expect to be deferred to. They expect to have privilege and rights. They expect their views to be respected. They expect to have a right to express themselves.
And women generally cannot expect the same. Which is a foundation stone of what gets called "rape culture."
There are a lot of subtleties here and I'm sympathetic to some of Stallman's points, but I suspect the thing that people are bristling at is that his failure to shut up is a failure to genuinely respect the feelings and boundaries of women.
This is the real problem women face in life. This is the essence of the disregard that culminates in sexual harassment and rape.
Without that baseline fundamental respect, women have no choice but to quibble about bullshit details like legal age. Because it's all we've got to say "He shouldn't have done that to me" in a world that seems hell-bent on utterly ignoring baseline respect for women, especially when trying to demand it from a powerful and wealthy man.
Good luck with that sister. The exceptions are very few and far between.
I want to agree with you in some aspects of this, but the history of this topic has been so severely lopsided that the current cleansing was due and is helping. As a man, I can only imagine the shit women put up with on a daily basis.
It's 2019. Social justice and "cancel culture" are intrinsic values to open source now, at least as much as sharing code and collaboration.
The situation with Brendan Eich shows that if you have the wrong political views, you are not considered fit to serve as the leader of any open-source organization or project. especially not one with corporate backing. It's too much of a risk of PR disaster.
So be careful. Coraline Ada Ehmke and Sage Sharp are watching you. They will find and expose your crimes.
Here's a direct quote from one of his recent emails:
> “I think 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.”
Is this really a topic that "requires the disinfecting power of sunshine"? Do we really think we've gotten the topic of statutory rape so wrong that we need to rethink it from first principles?
His point, as far as I can tell, is that in different countries legally define rape in different ways, but that shouldn't change what we find morally wrong.
To extend on what I think he is saying, he thinks it should be possible to say a thing was morally wrong regardless of which country it happened in.
If we're discussing if we think a person did something morally wrong, I'd rather talk about why we think that rather than pointing out there is a law against it (especially when the laws are different in different places).
>Regardless of what low regard the man might be held as a person, he's being persecuted for having expressing ideas, demanding proof of claims, advocating for objective standards, and asking questions. These are all hallmarks of scientific inquiry.
Defending the rape of trafficked children is not a "hallmark of scientific inquiry".
I read the full thread, and I didn't see anything that I would consider "defending rape". It seemed pretty clear that he thinks Epstein was a bad person and that what happened to Giuffre is not good. The closest thing to defending rape is him trying to give Minsky the benefit of the doubt (e.g. stating that Minksky may not have known Giuffre's age or situation, and IIRC in her deposition she was careful to avoid saying whether or not she actually had sex with Minsky, only that Epstein wanted her to).
Because it is not the definition of rape. I see it's a hard concept for you to grasp but looking its definition might help you understand the difference.
Are sexually mature underage people prepubescent children now? It's ridiculous that people continue to willfully conflate the two just because they want to continue to have the moral high ground.
I guess I'm not up to speed and haven't read everything he said, can you quote his exact words he said on Thrusday that led you to conclude he was "Defending the rape of trafficked children"?
Stallman has just said he's having to resign after being accused over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations, is this an example of a mischaracterization of what he said or did he really say he defended raping trafficked children?
I concur with your thinking on this. I'm no fan of Stallman, and I think both the FSF and CSAIL are probably better of without him ghosting around, but the way in which this happened is deeply problematic. Stallman's opinion in this case was clearly a bit out of whack, but the tone and style of the message was completely on point for his character. And therein lies the problem here, I'm fairly sure Stallman's points could have been formulated in a way that would not have provoked such a visceral reaction. Stallman tends to be unable to empathize with his interlocutors (or at least unable to express such empathy in writing), turns everything that happens into a case study in moral philosophy, and is a bit terse and snippy in his emails. All that makes him not a pleasant debater for sure, but are we as a society really willing to take somebody's livelihood because of their poor rhetoric style?
The next thing that happened was that the news picked it up, but got most of the details wrong, taking the problematic statement out of context, mischaracterizing his relationship with MIT, mischaracterizing what he did exactly, etc and as a result whipping up an angry mob demanding his firing.
Now, of course many people have wanted Stallman gone for all sorts of reasons of his general unpleasantness for many years, so this seems to have been as much a convenient excuse to rally those efforts as anything else. Nevertheless, one must ask at what cost - the blade of public outrage is sharp and hard to control. At no point at no point in this process was their any room for fact finding or reasoned debate among the people aggrieved and affected by this.
We've let Stallman spam csail-related for many years to the point that it was a common joke for it to be called stallman-related in the lab ("Where'd you find your aparment?" "Oh, I posted on stallman-related - I half expected to get a moral lecture from him about the immorality of private ownership of real estate, but looks like he was busy"). Was it a mistake to let that happen so long on a list that everybody at CSAIL is automatically subscribed to, especially the new incoming students? Probably. Because of aforementioned rhetoric challenges his emails are not the best first impression of the lab community. I think banning Stallman from csail-related could have been a perfectly proportionate response here (as well as making him take down that stupid door tag). This all-or-nothing witch hunt, deeply concerns me.
It's funny seeing all the Stallman apologists coming out of the woodwork trying to justify what he said and decry this as a form of censorship. As if having more people dumping their opinions on every subject is a good thing. Sometimes it really is better just to shut up. Otherwise if you're going to air out your thoughts on touchy subjects, be ready to find yourself up against others who disagree in a profound way. Now he can make his career in social political issues instead of technological ones.
"So much depends on your reputation. Guard it with your life."
He’s being forced to resign from an advocacy organization for being a shithead who defends child rape. It sets the precedent that you can’t defend reprehensible acts and still be considered a community leader. We are all better off for it.
That precedent creates a stigma when discussing such topics. Let's say that you don't quite understand a particular viewpoint (doesn't have to be this - another good topic is racism & discrimination). Where do you go to learn more about the topic? Especially when you're aspiring to be a leader, this stigma incentivizes holding on to half-baked ideas that you simply can't discuss with anyone. That, in turn, creates a culture of double-speak.
So, in other words, good first-order effects, but bad second-order effects.
> he's being persecuted for having expressing ideas, demanding proof of claims, advocating for objective standards, and asking questions.
> The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky: “deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims [2])” The injustice is in the word “assaulting”.
Saying that sexual assault isn't assault is scientific inquiry?
It's also unjust to say that he was accused of assaulting one of Epstein's victims, when the only accusations are from people who inferred from "she was sent to Minsky's room" that "he said yes".
For what it's worth, those are also hallmarks of crankery. A creationist will happily express ideas, ask questions, and demand proof of claims until the Second Coming. An anti-vaxxer will argue for more research and more caution and advocate for what they themselves regard as objective standards before letting their children be vaccinated - and all the time be effectively telling people that it's better to be dead than autistic. Supporting them for their apparent scientific interests is merely supporting their message. A homeopath has an entire field of professional associations, licensing, and regulation to point to.
What determines whether you're advocating for scientific inquiry is whether you're arguing in good faith for positions that are in genuine need of inquiry, not whether you have the trappings of scientific research.
Because it's applying the terminology of scientific discourse to casual conversation, kind of like nitpicking a minor spelling, typographical, or grammatical error and using that as an excuse to negate an otherwise substantive comment.
Demanding a certain level of precision when the loose terminology isn't being used in bad faith comes off as an attempt to exert control over the terms of the conversation like a teacher or debate judge. It's insensitive at best and obnoxious at worst.
Obviously if the conversation is an actual legal or scientific debate precision and rigorous consistency are more acceptable, but that's by mutual agreement of all participants.
I understand that it's annoying if someone does this all the time but I don't see how it would be offensive. I'm pretty sure RMS is autistic, and he's known to be obsessed about using words as precisely as possible.
It’s pretty clear to me that the subtext of his “precision” is to make it clear that one is less bad than the other. Just look at literally every other person on twitter/hn/Reddit who has made the same helpful clarification.
Also, even if I’m willing to accept that precision is the reason he made that point (and I’m not), it adds nothing and at best serves to show how smart he is.
Like I mean honestly what changes once you realize it’s technically hebephilia and not pedophilia?
> It’s pretty clear to me that the subtext of his “precision” is to make it clear that one is less bad than the other. Just look at literally every other person on twitter/hn/Reddit who has made the same helpful clarification.
True, I'm not sure I really agree with that either. Pedophilia or any other sexual attraction isn't something you can control, as far as I'm aware, so as long as you don't actually act on it, they are not really better or worse than another.
> Like I mean honestly what changes once you realize it’s technically hebephilia and not pedophilia?
Actually, I had forgotten which term meant what, I was thinking of ephebophilia.
There isn't a lot of point distinguishing the categories unless you want to bang minors (or defend people banging minors, or defend/consume certain subsets of child pornography, etc, etc), so arguing about the category difference just makes you look like a pedophile or at best an idiot.
He's being pushed out for decades of being creepy, and especially so to women. At some point you have to say "enough", and that point is always going to look somewhat arbitrary. It's too bad MIT had to wait so very long to do this.
I'm sorry, did you read his blog post? It was disgusting. He was trying to argue the subtleties of child rape. There are no subtleties. Minor's cannot consent.
Ok. I am not sure that I should be writing this response...but with the madness prevalent in the world today, I don’t care anymore that this is on some random online nook..because I want to heard.
To say that minors cannot consent is absolutely horrifying to me. I would have felt ‘raped’ of my free agency to choose if I had been told as a minor that I ‘cannot consent’.
I was a minor. I consented. I was a sexual being just as I was a human being. Minors have to do non sexual adult things ALL the time. I still see adults well into their 40s and 50s who are immature compared to me when I was a minor. So age is a non-factor.
While I DO acknowledge that child sexual abuse occurs as does trafficking and that paedophiles exist out there, when my thoughts and actions and consent when I was a minor is ERASED and my decisions deemed irrelevant, I don’t know how to feel about it.
Reactions in the exact order of how I felt when I read ‘Minors cannot consent’ : Confusion. Anger. Understanding. Annoyance. Anger.
Some minors do adult non sexual things and make adult non sexual decisions all the time..sometimes because they don’t have a choice. Why is it that when it comes to sexual consent, the same minor does not have any agency?
I am trying to understand. It is difficult for me to accept that I am a non-being as a minor.
Please don’t start a flame war. I really want to understand why this is so and communicate as to why the blanket ‘minors cant consent’ is disempowering and has not really made the world a better safer place.
I also want to know what is a better and more effective solution to child sexual abuse(or any kind of sexual abuse) to replace ‘minors cannot consent’.
Minors cannot consent because they, in general, have a mental deficiency called "being young". They also, in general, are in the lowest power position of any potential relationship.
It isn't that minors are non-beings - it is that they're not fully developed yet, so they need protections. Where we draw that line is up to the law and culture of any location, but it exists.
It sucks to be the female of this species, let me tell you.
When we are minors, we are mentally deficient to be sexual beings. When we are adults, we are also told that we have no control or reproductive choice over what we do with bodies.
I hate to sound like this..because I don’t think of myself as a vocal feminist..I have always considered myself a rational being.
With that hat on, it seems to me that the female human being has no choice or agency and their physical bodies are mere vessels for the male of the species to fornicate, procreate and to be generally unobtrusively abiding by the rules made by the opposite gender.
The power and experience imbalance on average is the problem. Minors can't consent not because there aren't intelligent, mature minors, but because on average they are less mature and experienced than an adult.
I could tell a five year old that if they do something Santa will bring them gifts. That could be something completely reprehensible but they have no sense of right and wrong besides what I might tell them at that age.
At age ten, they are more capable of deciding that on their own. As you get older you become better at that and more autonomous. But at a young age the only things you know are what adults tell you is true. That's an extreme amount of power the adult has.
At some point we call people adults because we expect them to now have this responsibility and decide for themselves what they think is best for them because at a certain age we believe a majority of those young people should be autonomous. But that age is a guess and fairly arbitrary. Is it 17? 18? Probably somewhere around there. Is it 5? Nope.
So you have to draw the line somewhere. It sucks if you're an incredibly mature 16 year old, but if you are, then waiting two years to have sex with someone much older than you shouldn't be an overwhelming burden if the social benefit is greater for those less mature or in potentially abusive situations.
Minors cannot consent because they, in general, have a mental deficiency called "being young".
Being young is not a mental deficiency. There are 17 year olds smarter than a legion of 70 year olds will ever be. Saying all young people have a mental deficiency has no bearing on reality.
I don't event want to weigh in on the age of consent debate here, I've just always hated the constant shitting on young people and their intellect just because their young. I hated it when I was young and grown adults who weren't that smart were clearly threatened by me, and I still hate it now that I'm older.
As a layperson I know no better than what I get in popular articles, however, my understanding is that the state of the art in neurology now says you are actually not fully formed mentally until your mid twenties. See: prefrontal cortex.
So you can say that 17 year old exceeds some adults and it may be true, but current neurological science suggests that 17 year old has not yet reached their full mental capacity.
I'm not saying some is fully developed mentally as a teenager. But people constantly dismiss ideas or suggestions from people younger than them... because they are younger. I really wish I hadn't let 'grown ups'(family, public school teachers... people who were neither very smart nor successful) brow beat me into thinking I was stupider than I actually was.
You are right. I guess the ideal is a bit of a balancing act. To embrace the advantages of youth - you are not so solidified, you can try things your elders might not dare or consider - but to remain humble and know that you have a lot of growth ahead, admitting that you haven't yet reached the peak.
Suddenly I remember why teenage years were so hard.
Nearly all of human history people were having sex, getting married, and having children while still being considered minors in the US today. Please let's not be ridiculous here.
Minors cannot consent because they can be convinced by someone more mature. Here's a simple example: let's say a 20 year old wants to have sex with a two year old. Would you accept that the two year old consented because the 20 year old got them to say "yes"?
The natural next question is, "where's the line?" A 20 year old and a two year old is obviously wrong, but a 25 year old and a 75 year old seems okay, if a bit weird. And yes, not every person the same age has the same amount of experience and maturity.
But here's the thing: the law can't take that into account. The law needs a bright and clear line, so you can know how not to break it. And so even though there's not really a difference between 17 years 364 days vs. 18 years, one can consent to sex with an adult while the other cannot. Just like one day makes the difference between being able to vote, or drink, or get a driver's license.
Right. I hear you with the 20 year old wanting to have sex with a 2 year old.
Is a measure of puberty sufficient to give consent? I am not saying that it is..but perhaps it’s closer to a better situation.
Older societies had coming of age ceremonies and welcoming pre pubescents into young adulthood. Perhaps there was more value in the old traditions and rituals that we have given up in our modern times. It clarified to a young adult the changes that happen physically and hormonally..an opportunity to talk about things and take personal responsibility. A responsibility that means freedom as well as risk.
I am just throwing this out there..we have handed over societal bonding over to the state and legal system. It has certainly made us weak. And allowed more predation of the truly vulnerable while curtailing the freedom of those who are aware of risks and responsibilities.
Cool, we're on the same page with "minors cannot give consent" for at least some definition of "minor".
> Is a measure of puberty sufficient to give consent? I am not saying that it is..but perhaps it’s closer to a better situation.
The problem is, how do we measure "sufficient"?
If we just mean people's opinions, we can be more nuanced — for example, I think a grown person who has sex with an 18 year old is just as gross as one who has sex with a 17 year old, but I don't have an exact line in my head as to when it would become okay. Everyone's exact line will differ, and that's okay too!
On the other hand, if the law is trying to measure "sufficient", then we need something objective because people need to know when they would be breaking it. "Puberty" is pretty squishy — for example, do we count when a boy's voice deepens? When he starts growing facial hair? Whereas if we measure an objective fact like age, then if I know that fact I can be 100% sure whether or not I'm allowed to have sex with this person.
I agree with you that age an imperfect measure of maturity, which is what we really care about. But it seems to be the best measure we can come up with that's both objective and correlated.
You didn’t address the case where two kids of the same age had sex. If the law cannot take that into account, both are responsible of a crime. Also many states have age difference exceptions as well (so an 18 year old can have sex with a consenting 17 year old); the federal government most definitely has this (4 year delta).
Here, two 15 year olds can have sex, legally. 15 year old and 17.9 year old can have sex. 15 and 18 can't, but do, because the law is demented - if you have two partners, say 15 and 17, as they age, they will first be able to legally have sex, then for a few years they will not, until again, they will.
I'm not trying to comprehensively define what does and does not qualify as statutory rape, just explain the general logic behind "minors cannot consent".
I'm sure there's plenty I've omitted; again, I'm explaining why "minors cannot consent", not trying to comprehensively describe statutory rape laws in the U.S.
> The law needs a bright and clear line, so you can know how not to break it.
But that isn’t true in reality for kids/adults close in age, nor is it a fixed line for every jurisdiction in the states. You actually have to know the law.
>> The law needs a bright and clear line, so you can know how not to break it.
> But that isn’t true in reality for kids/adults close in age, nor is it a fixed line for every jurisdiction in the states. You actually have to know the law.
Of course you have to know the law. But the law is well-defined, and you can figure out with 100% certainty whether you'd be breaking local statutory rape laws given your age and your partner's.
I suppose it's possible that there exists an unclear statutory rape law somewhere in the world, but most laws are written to avoid ambiguity. Can you cite a U.S. statutory rape law where it would be ambiguous whether or not sex qualifies as rape given the parties' ages?
Many states have exceptions for people who are married, also age isn’t the only factor that is taken into account (mental ability is as well). There are a lot of little things like that in these laws, but the biggest one is if you go inter jurisdictional (or even extra territorial) and federal law becomes involved (must be under 16, 4+ year age difference).
Anyways, given that the girl Minsky allegedly slept with was 17, I’m not sure why the underage argument came into play at all given what I know about federal law, at least. But then IANAL. Anyways, all the articles I’ve read about Minsky in this affair say trafficking was involved but not specifically child trafficking, so I wonder if the fed’s case was based more around the trafficking and coercion aspects and not the ages of the girls involved
Also, another thing to consider: age of consent is often different when prostitution is involved, so guy could have legal consensual sex with a 16 year old, but not if they or someone else paid for it.
This doesn’t really have anything to do with the discussion we’re having, which is that given a specific set of facts about two person it is possible to objectively deduce whether or not they are allowed to have sex.
If you have an example of a set of ambiguous statutory rape laws, please cite it. Otherwise, I think this conversation has reached a stalemate.
It should have been "Minors cannot consent, with few limited exceptions", or "minors below the age of consent for the sexual relationship they are having cannot consent."
Two common exceptions are: 1) similarity in age, and 2) sex with spouse, if married.
Exceptions can have their own exceptions. For example, if a 17 year old has sex with a 25 year old, it may be legal for an exception based on similarity in age. However, the law may also prohibit that exception if there is sex between a teacher and a student in the teacher's class.
So martinky24 was wrong in writing "Minor's cannot consent". It's an understandable wrong, as those exceptions aren't really that relevant to the topic at hand.
But jelliclesfarm is also wrong in thinking the argument is that minors are "non-beings". Minors are beings with fewer freedoms than adults. Depending on their age, they can be forced to attend school and to follow juvenile curfew laws. They can be prevented from purchasing alcohol, and from driving vehicles, or having a full-time job.
All of these remove some of their free agency. Just like restrictions on who minors are free to have sex with.
> But here's the thing: the law can't take that into account.
Why?
> The law needs a bright and clear line, so you can know how not to break it.
Why does that need a "bright and clear line"? There are plenty of things that are illegal where there is no "bright and clear line" in that same sense, and that seems to work just fine, and actually even better in many cases. Like, I dunno, tax fraud is in principle tax fraud even at a single cent, but it's absolutely not "you paid all the taxes you owed, you are fine, you under-reported one cent of your income, now you lose your job and go to jail".
> And so even though there's not really a difference between 17 years 364 days vs. 18 years, one can consent to sex with an adult while the other cannot.
Which seems to be the case. Now, why is that a good approach?
> Just like one day makes the difference between being able to vote, or drink, or get a driver's license.
So, maybe we should fix those as well? Why shouldn't you get a fractional vote starting at age 10, increasing linearly to a full vote at 18, say?
> Like, I dunno, tax fraud is in principle tax fraud even at a single cent, but it's absolutely not "you paid all the taxes you owed, you are fine, you under-reported one cent of your income, now you lose your job and go to jail".
There is absolutely a bright and clear (albeit very complicated) line for tax fraud. The IRS probably won't go after you if you underpay by a penny — but you're still breaking the law if you do it intentionally.
>> And so even though there's not really a difference between 17 years 364 days vs. 18 years, one can consent to sex with an adult while the other cannot.
> Which seems to be the case. Now, why is that a good approach?
Because — with regard to statutory rape — if I know someone's age I can be 100% sure whether or not I would be breaking the law by having sex with them.
> There is absolutely a bright and clear (albeit very complicated) line for tax fraud.
In other words: There isn't a bright and clear line?
> The IRS probably won't go after you if you underpay by a penny — but you're still breaking the law if you do it intentionally.
In other words: There isn't a bright and clear line?
Like, you are claiming that there is, and then provide the evidence that there isn't. All you are showing is that there is something that you want to call a "bright and clear line", but then you don't show anything in reality that actually matches that description in any meaningful sense.
> Because — with regard to statutory rape — if I know someone's age I can be 100% sure whether or not I would be breaking the law by having sex with them.
OK, so suppose we were to make the rule that if you under-report your income by any amount, whether intentionally or not, whether knowingly or not, you go to jail for ten years. That would be a bright and clear line, right? If you know that you reported all your income, you can be 100% sure whether you are going to jail. Why wouldn't that be a good approach? Or would it be?
I think your response is very self centered at best. Feeling of being "`raped` of your free agency" is not enough to make a law unjust. It certainly doesn't outweigh the actual exploitation that was what led to these laws to be written to begin with.
The bottom line is that your agency wasn't removed as a minor, you were just left with the same choice as many other minors, to obey the laws regarding drinking, smoking, pornography, etc. Or to break them in order to gain whatever you felt you were being denied. The laws were written to punish people who exploit minors, and the consequences of those crimes pretty much always fall on the adult in the situation (for good reason).
When I was 17, and unable to vote or see certain movies, or 20 and unable to legally buy alcohol, I definitely felt like my freedom was abridged, but it didn't make the laws behind those immoral, it just made them slightly unfair. And that was for some low stakes stuff compared to sex trafficking or adult exploitation of children.
1. I don’t want anyone to be ‘raped’ by ‘free agency. I was speaking of consent. Can someone be raped while being a minor? Of course. Age has nothing to do with whether one can be raped. One can be raped as a minor just as a 50 y/o ..dare I say..male can be raped. Age also has nothing to do with sexual desire or urges either. A 12 year old boy can be horny and a post menopausal woman can snap shut at the rumor of sex.
Rape should be about consent. Not age.
2. It is infantalization of young adults and taking away their instincts and consequently the ability to provide consent that is confounding to me. Biologically, sexual instinct begins way before puberty.
3. Creating ‘laws’ is a symptom of a society failing to manage itself. Shame and shunning used to work before. Every law automatically includes a legal loophole. Laws make society weaker, not stronger. It is the mass handover of power to the state..power we should have over ourselves as citizens and society.
Human beings may be holding super computers in the palms of our hands, but our instincts are still cave man instincts. The human instinct that seeks sexual pleasure also seeks justice and revenge and disgust.
How many rape victims have been screwed over by the ‘system’ that the law is supposed to uphold?
4. So something is wrong with the legal system that lets more people slip through the cracks by ‘failing’ them. I am not condoning rape.
I am just saying that it is wrong that minors should be deemed ‘mentally deficient’ to give consent.
5. When my body says that I am ready for sex and the law says no, I am being denied my right.
6. Jewish infants are circumcised without their consent. Is that sexual assault or rape? Young girls suffer genital mutilation in the same name of religion. Why doesn’t the law step in and make it illegal?
7. Voting or alcohol consumption are not biological imperatives. Children are..to an extent..property of parents until they can fend for themselves. To curtail freedom to consent by law is actually also curtailing freedom of ownership of their instincts. When did the courts and the state start taking over the role of parents?
8. Let’s take Greta Thurnberg. She is a child instructing adults. Some of us are ok with that. Others aren’t. The same girl if she had consented to have sex with a non-minor while she was a minor in the USA would have been considered ‘mentally deficient’ to give consent.
9. I am not..for even a second..condoning rape. I am just concerned that the advent of an biological instinct when it is earlier than the age of consent is a handicap to a young adult.
What are you thoughts and I hope I had clarified my position.
Laws are made to apply to everyone, not the exceptional person who is sexually mature well in advance of her peers.
Your argument might well be that the age of consent is too high. That's fine, it's arbitrary. But there does need to be one to prevent all sorts of horrible things from happening.
And no, the laws don't prevent everything but that's not an argument that they shouldn't exist at all.
There are no laws against minors having sex. There are laws against non minors having sex with minors.
I am not arguing that.
I am just saying that a minor not being able to consent due to their alleged ‘mental deficiency’ due to age(as suggested by another poster above) is dodgy.
Ok. Let’s take an example of an actual ‘mentally deficient’ person...even an adult. Don’t they have sexual urges and biological needs? Are they capable of consent? What does the law say about that?
Sexual urges are no different than hunger or thirst. I want to know why sex has a more special status than food or water?
I feel like your position would have more traction with me if we as a society were better about enforcing the existing laws regarding sexual assault and consent. Adults in that situation are willing to go on the record and state that the acts were not consensual and no one is willing to believe them. At least not enough to investigate and put their rapist away in a majority of cases. I can't imagine a child would have an easier time of this no matter how mature they seem, but at least with the consent laws, they wouldn't be forced into the same thing that seems to happen with a number of victims where a lawyer puts them on the stand and tries to make them look like they are lying about everything.
Wow, wait. I get what your point is, but minors will continue doing it, and it is only with adults who they can’t consent with. Obviously minors can consent in some contexts, otherwise it would be a huge mess morally and legally (if two 14 year olds have sex, do they both go to jail because neither can consent? Also see the mess we’ve got into with kids sexting each other).
Let’s not criminalize kids being kids because of some strict morality code.
Alternatively, the 2 14 year olds can’t consent to the act, but are also not liable for the act?
I think this way of describing it expresses more the position that the occurrence is unfortunate, and all else being equal, best avoided.
To say “two 14 year olds had entirely consensual sex with eachother” seems to possibly express that the occurrence described is not unfortunate.
Also, If a 12yo and a 15.5 yo did, I think we very well might say that the 15.5 yo committed rape, even though neither person was an adult, Yet if both were 12, people wouldn’t call it that.
So, I don’t think it is only if one party is an adult. Also if one party is substantially closer to being an adult.
> To say “two 14 year olds had entirely consensual sex with eachother” seems to possibly express that the occurrence described is not unfortunate.
Isn't that just a misreading though? You're applying a connotation that isn't there. Many of us don't associate "consensual" with "A-ok" (e.g. I'm anti-pornography).
Except it is also possible for a 14 year old to actually rape another 14 year old, so there is a difference between “cannot consent” and “did not consent” if you believe a 14 year old actually cannot consent.
Minors having sex with themselves is basically out of scope here. Yes, it varies state by state and some states punish kids for things they absolutely should not be punished for. But we don't need to litigate the nitty gritty details of statutory rape laws.
The case under discussion was a minor and some guy at least a decade older; not two minors.
You pulled that quote out of context; preceding it is:
> He was trying to argue the subtleties of child rape. There are no subtleties.
Virtually everyone knows there are subtleties around statutory rape in general! But you're missing the forest for the trees here. We're not discussing statutory rape in general but the specific instance that Stallman was defending. You're technically correct in that the very last sentence of martinky24's comment was literally inaccurate, but you are wholly incorrect in your understanding of the spirit of the comment and subsequent dismissal of the rest of it.
The subjects Stallman was discussing are not ambiguous first principle pseudo-persons of nebulous or similar ages. They are an old guy and a coerced, underage girl. Period. There is no subtlety here.
I admitted to getting the spirit of the comment in my first one. But the path the comment went down by being so general exceeded the context if Stallman’s point.
If one of those 14 year olds sends nude pictures to the other one, is that not distribution of child pornography? I've certainly read that minors have been charged as such, but I'm not capable of verifying the veracity of those charges (I just honestly don't want to Google for this shit).
I don't have answers or solutions, I rarely do. I think this particular debate lives in water that is far too murky for me to want to wade into. All that I'll say is that I think my answer to your question is something close to, "No. Maybe? I don't know. It depends..."
All that I really know is that I am grateful, once again, to have been a teenager in an age before the proliferation of smart phones and social media.
This is an interesting topic that has become more prevalent with rise of smartphones, but has absolutely nothing to do with an adult statutory raping a minor.
There are subtleties about what constitutes a minor. The age of consent varies from 12 to 21 depending on the country [0]. That appears to include variation even in the US.
On the one hand, the law is very clear because there needs to be a clear line in the sand to decide if people get sent to jail or not. On the other hand, there are clearly open cultural questions about what we should get angry about. Pick any standard you like, and the majority of the world currently disagrees.
In my country of Australia we seem to be using 16. So in Australia maybe there was no crime at all. I dunno, I havn't looked in to this sort of law very deeply.
I mean, the assault in question was non-consensual trafficking in addition to being statutory rape. So like, maybe we don't need to first principle this quite so hard? Don't rape people?
I get what you're saying, but minors can and do legally consent under various close-in-age laws, and the age of consent is usually lower than the age of legal majority anyway. I certainly don't agree with Stallman's comments, but the law is subtle.
A 'minor' is a societal construct that varies over cultures and time. In Biblical Jewish cultures this was set at puberty ~ year 12. In some modern Islamic cultures its may be ~ year 9. In japan it used to be 13.
Minors cannot consent because society has removed that right from them.
Now I suspect we may agree on the general outcome of these rules, but I do find these 'religious' arguments distasteful, regardless from which camp they get issued.
> A 'minor' is a societal construct that varies over cultures and time.
Agreed. And if a war, plague, or comet wipes out 80% of the population tomorrow, suddenly "minors" will be 13, and no one of these people so adamant here will bat an eye.
Here's a chance to have a reasoned debate about an important issue, where constructive conversations and solutions could be devised. But instead, the conversation devolves into a flame war.
If anyone is interested in spitballing some type of new novel restrictive grammar to enable having constructive conversations about hot-button issues, I'd love to help: https://github.com/treenotation/jtree/issues/52
That being said, the way that that happened is absolutely terrifying. Fact, that people rather crucify someone instead of argue, explain or prove him wrong is the sign of our times.
End of free speech is here. It’s free only if it doesn’t offend group powerful enough to destroy you, and it’s narrowing every single day. We’ve seen many instances of this happening both on personal, unpopular views and gossips and false accusations.
Want to keep your career? Best you can do is to steer out of the social media and don’t share your thoughts with anyone. Not only controversial ones, because what might not be controversial now, might be controversial in 10 years, and you will suffer because of it.
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