[claudiawerner]

He said that he was skeptical of the claim that "voluntary pedophilia" (sloppy terminology on his part, ironically) harms children. There is nothing wrong with skepticism. That skepticism was later revoked. I was once skeptical of the idea that capitalism is inherently exploitative, and after having it explained to me, I am not any more.

[DanBC]

Scepticism requires work. He had done no work before supporting abuse of children. He hadn't bothered to look for any research; he hadn't talked to survivors of abuse; he hadn't spoken to people who work with survivors of abuse. He didn't know what he was talking about, but he still felt it was fine to say that fucking children isn't a problem.

[claudiawerner]

It doesn't necessarily require work; in fact, the default position on many things is skepticism, and he provided at least one reason to be a skeptic in this case (i.e. that the stigma around pedophilia emerges around parents being afraid of their children growing up). He even supported it with some reasoning (discussing how he thinks "voluntary peodphilia" between a child and an adult in a position of power does not count as abuse-free).

I don't need to consult theology to be skeptical of God, I don't need to consult Marx to be a skeptic of capitalism's exploitation, etc. Nobody had hitherto presented him with an argument he found sufficiently compelling. I can probably pick any topic outside of my field of knowledge (or yours) which is well established within the field but we are skeptical of, simply because we haven't heard the argument.

Lets say you publish somewhere saying "I am skeptical that Emacs is the best editor." Are you skeptical that Emacs is the best editor? That requires work. You haven't bothered to look for any research; you haven't talked to users of Emacs; you haven't spoken to people who work with Emacs. You don't know what you're talking about. The issue here isn't that he published it (and you didn't publish your skepticism about Emacs). The issue here is being skeptical whether you express that to others or not. With the amount of things Stallman comments on, it's unreasonable to expect him to research every topic he's skeptical of.