[brobdingnagians]

I think it is a reaction to the politicization of society. A lot of people recognize that there is a polarization of society, but they don't want to become involved in a culture war or war of words, so they try to maintain their hobby as a neutral zone. That is a good thing. It is trying to find a way to work together with others who have differing views without letting it get in the way of "being friends" with them in furthering a good cause. You don't have to support the red team, or the blue team, you can just support the tech team and work with very different people without letting that get in the way.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

"Child sex trafficking: good or bad?" isn't political, or really an opinion.

[SkyBelow]

Is it bad enough to ensure all encryption has a backdoor so that government can combat it?

I say yes and that it isn't even an opinion. If you disagree with me, you are helping defend such abhorrent behavior. You wouldn't do that, would you?

[rnernento]

Did you read the original email Stallman sent? Please enlighten me as to how he in any way insinuates child sex trafficking is good.

[vasili111]

Can you please share the link to original email?

[rnernento]

https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21...

From the article:

"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”. The term “sexual assault” is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X. The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem. (See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jef...) Let’s presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it). The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex. 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. I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation. Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism."

[tasogare]

Did RMS did anything like that? From my quick search it seems he just defended by email a dead professor that had sex with a 17 year old. Forced or not, that's hardly what could be called a child, as it's a few years older than the age of consent in most of the Western world.

[darkwater]

Society IS political by its very definition. When you live and act in a society, you're taking a political part, because politics is just how society decides its rules.