[Railsify]

What is puzzling about the media lying to you, either directly or indirectly? Do you really think professional journalists and editors did not know those headlines would be confusing, they have intentionally conflated him speaking in support of a personal friend and defending the ring leader who he never met, that is intentional on the part of those publications, they know what they are doing. The implication of the headline being Stallman supports Minksy, Minsky was allegedly associated with Epstein so RMS defends Epstein, I'm not sure if that is considered a strawman or an abuse of modus ponens but I'm sure there is some term for that sort of misleading statement.

[partialrecall]

In truth, I am not as puzzled as I claimed. However I've found that on HN there is a pathological obsession with giving people and organizations the benefit of the doubt, even when they don't deserve it. Consequently I sometimes understatement matters dramatically instead of saying what I really think.

[salawat]

Eh. I don't think it's necessarily so much giving people the benefit of a doubt rather than being extremely sensitive to the niggling details, and being dead set in the route of "if you're going to ruin another person's life/reputation over it, it had better damn well be consistent in the face of even modest levels of scrutiny".

It's fine to haul injustice into the light of day to be dealt with. It isn't okay to maliciously interpret/misrepresent things because you think someone is weird, or they make you uncomfortable, or because you're getting carried away with the political cause of the week.

>GP: abuse of modus ponens Abuse of Transitivity would be closer to the mark I think.