[zozbot234]

I'm quite willing to entertain the notion that RMS was a problem in some sense (though, if he has been 'coddled' for decades, one has to wonder if that problem was due to any fault of his own that he ought to have been cognizant of!) But pay attention to what this post is actually saying. It's inappropriate to defend Minsky in the wake of the Epstein scandal? (And there are people, considered reliable by others, who have said that when sex was inappropriately offered to Minsky, he turned the offer down! Of course RMS did not say that, and what he did say was rather tone deaf to say the least. But still...) RMS must go because he is fat and ugly, and thus makes women uncomfortable (the horror!) even when he's simply trying to joke around and be charming? Come on.

[NateEag]

I suggest you read the articles linked in the posted link, and also this story by Steven Levy:

https://www.wired.com/story/richard-stallman-and-the-fall-of...

Threatening to kill yourself if someone won't go out with you is terrible behavior at a bunch of levels: https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... (search for "When I was a teen freshman").

It's clear that Stallman was not just "trying to joke around and be charming".

Even if that were his actual intent, acceptable intent does not justify bad behavior.

[jeegsy]

"The fall of the clueless nerd" indeed. The headline in the wired story linked triggers the hell out of me. I suppose we have come full circle, Nerds suck, then they were cool and now they have been consigned back to uncool again. For the life of me, based on the snippets i've seen regarding his interactions with women, the only advice I can give him and ppl like him if they could have a do-over is stay away from women period. Which causes other problems but I will gladly have those problems than have an icon of an industry/space that I love be exiled in such an ignominious fashion.

[speedplane]

> the only advice I can give him and ppl like him if they could have a do-over is stay away from women period

Stallman could have been a quirky, uncompromising, and passionate personality and still treat women like equals. Being a "genius" is not a good (or even sensical) excuse to treat people poorly. If anything, it shows you're not really a genius after all.

[nessus42]

> If anything, it shows you're not really a genius after all.

Plenty of geniuses have not treated people well. Newton was a complete asshole. Even Einstein, who was a staunch defender of civil liberties at a time when most of his peers weren't, wrote some rather unpleasant things about the Chinese in his personal journal.

I agree completely that being a genius is no excuse for treating people poorly. But unfortunately history is littered with such people.

[speedplane]

> Plenty of geniuses have not treated people well. Newton was a complete asshole. Even Einstein ... wrote some rather unpleasant things about the Chinese in his personal journal. ... being a genius is no excuse for treating people poorly. But unfortunately history is littered with such people.

I suspect that many of these "geniuses" only became difficult personalities after they recieved recognition and had a taste for power. Power corrupts, it allows people to do things without regarding people that may be affected by their actions.

I don't think there's just a simple correlation between people deemed geniuses and them having difficult personalities. Rather, I suspect there's a causal effect between being granted the "genius" title and abusing the accompanying power that leads to a difficult personality.

[faissaloo]

Whenever something like this happens some sort of accusation around this sort of behaviour always seems to emerge, I really have to question the validity of such claims

[jzb]

I guess it wouldn't occur to you that the claims are valid, hence the reason they keep cropping up...

[faissaloo]

I considered that and dismissed it because it's frequently been proven that these accusations have had no merit.

[ZeroGravitas]

On a slight tangent to your comment about it being inappropriate to defend Minsky:

Did RMS think that's what he was doing? He accidentally threw Minsky under the bus by a) believing an accusation that hadn't actually been made in court as far as I can tell b) trying to change the word used to describe the act by inventing "plausible" scenarios that make it seem better.

Why RMS thought it plausible that his friend had sex with a 17 year old as long as there was plausible deniability (stretching the word plausible here) that she wasn't an underage sex slave is a question worth asking.

[foobar_]

> RMS must go because he is fat and ugly, and thus makes women uncomfortable (the horror!)

That's pretty much the definition of a creep. Women still gushing over Ted Bundy. We forgive pretty people for many sins. Let's not forget that Dolores Umbridges among women. I've had to work with one ... would not let around her a million miles from my dog.

[eesmith]

"fat and ugly" is not the definition of a creep. Stallman's "creep" factor comes in part from his way of making inappropriate sexual advances. Here are some examples of people calling him a creep:

"There are many valid criticisms of Richard Stallman: ... he has creeped out some women by making passes at them (or so they tell me). - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2327849 (2011)

There are stories on Twitter like the following from 2018, https://twitter.com/suzanne_hillman/status/99459683376166092.... :

> He flirts with anyone who is female, even if they are underage. He is creepy in person, in a way that I cannot adequately describe. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that he kept women out of open source and free software, and many of his ideas stayed even after he left.

Or https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2019/09/17/rms-resig.... :

> rms was in the whisper network as a creep when I was in undergrad late last millennium, and I wasn’t even at MIT.

[foobar_]

If he was not ugly would you consider his behaviour creeping or mild flirtatiousness?

There was a whole Justin Bieber creeping his followers, where no one seemed to complain.

I'm pretty sure if someone said "No" please stop doing then RMS would stop. Are there cases where he didn't? If so .. I take back my words.

Autistic types or Asperger types whatever you want to call it ... take things very literally. They are visual-oriented and big-picture thinkers. This affects both men and women btw. Verbal thinking is not their strong suit. Body language reading is not their strong suit. Sarcasm and mean communication is not their strong suit. They are blunt and straightforward to a fault. Autistic types will be Autistic even in Rome.

This almost seems like Gallelio being house arrested because the feminist popes couldn't comprehend him.

If the average girl expects psychic powers of body language reading and reading the room before you utter a word ... that's just expecting men to behave like women. It's never going to happen.

[eesmith]

Why have whisper network, as one of the quotes I mentioned, if being "fat and ugly" is all that's needed to recognize a creep?

I do not think Stallman is ugly, so I don't know why that's even an issue. He's had at least one girlfriend, so it's not like his physical attributes are a universal turn-off. Can you find women writing they don't like him because he's fat and ugly? Because finding accounts of women who dislike his creepy sexual advances is not hard.

Do not use 'Autistic types or Asperger types' as a "boys will be boys" type excuse. I'll quote an autistic person, at https://twitter.com/HickeyWriter/status/1172674056828661764

> I'm autistic. I am not good at social cues. I have, in my time, held quite a few shitty, offensive opinions. But when people have pointed out how awful those opinions are to me, I've thought "Oh shit, they're right," apologised, and changed my opinions.

Or from another autistic person, at https://twitter.com/mykola/status/1172685579424817152 :

> Being autistic doesn't make you an asshole, certainly not a pedophile. It mostly makes you a little weird.

Your argument, if it makes any sense, means that Stallman should have been kicked out long ago because he was being surrounded by enablers and yes-men who didn't provide the feedback he needed for his position.

Which, as you likely know, is one of the comments made by the linked-to page:

> I was around for most of the 90s, and I can confirm the unfortunate reality that RMS’s behavior was a concern at the time, and that this protection [by Minsky and the AI Lab] was itself part of the problem. He was never held to account; he was himself coddled in his own lower-grade misbehavior and mistreatment of women. He made the place uncomfortable for a lot of people, and especially women.

How can you meaningfully write "Justin Bieber creeping his followers" if you think "creeping" means "fat and ugly"?

And, "the feminist popes" ... WTF?!

[foobar_]

> Because finding accounts of women who dislike his creepy sexual advances is not hard.

Sexual advances? I doubt it. Women confuse friendly behaviour with sexual intent all the time. Men do too. Friedly behaviour from ugly people is considered creepy. Most ugly people learn to not do that ... but Autistic people present a problem in this regard.

> Your argument, if it makes any sense, means that Stallman should have been kicked out long ago because he was being surrounded by enablers and yes-men who didn't provide the feedback he needed for his position.

It takes two google searches to find feminist popes who support paedophilia and incest. Let's ruin their entire careers, dreams, ambitions and piss on their graves if they are dead.

[eesmith]

Do I take it that you don't want to address any of the other issues I raised?

If you really think that "creep" means 'fat and ugly', then why do you think Stallman is ugly while I don't? A lot of people are fat and ugly. Most aren't considered creeps. You called out Bieber's creeping behavior, so what's your definition of creep that doesn't involve being fat and ugly?

Congratulations on your doubt. What evidence would change your mind?

Are you one of those men who like to leer at attractive women's breasts, give wolf whistles to women walking by, and tell women 'they need to smile more; they are too pretty to be sad", and say it's meant as friendly compliment?

Because if so, you are one of the misogynist problems in this world.

If not, then there's plenty of examples right there of women who do not consider those to be 'friendly behavior' even when the men regard it as such.

Again, "Autistic people" is not an excuse for 30 years of continued behavior in Stallman's position. The vast majority of autistic people are not sexual creeps.

So what? It takes two Google searches to find Nazis living in Antarctica, Flat Earthers, and Moon Landing denialists. As far as I can tell, there have been no pope which advocated for the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes, and especially not at the time of Galileo.

FWIW, I looked and didn't find what you were talking about.

[zozbot234]

> Why have whisper network, as one of the quotes I mentioned, if being "fat and ugly" is all that's needed to recognize a creep?

You think people aren't doing it all the time? Gossiping around folks, calling them fat and ugly behind their back? "Creep" is just the next step in the bullying ladder. (Of course, RMS hasn't exactly made things hard for his bullies. But let's not pretend that this sort of dynamic never happens in such cases.)

[eesmith]

If '"Creep" is just the next step in the bullying ladder' then there should be far more examples of women calling Stallman 'fat and ugly' than there are of calling him a creep.

What limited examples I found of calling Stallman 'fat' appear to come from males who also use, eg, racial or ethnic slurs against him.

The observed evidence therefore is not that there is a single ladder, but that there are multiple ladders, and "creep" is a different ladder than "fat" is a different ladder than "ugly".

Let's also not pretend that Stallman didn't have a decades long history of behavior which most other people of similar weight and beauty don't have.

[foobar_]

There was also this "hot inmate" meme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Meeks

Speaks volumes in how pretty people are treated vs how fat and ugly people are treated.