[bluedanieru]

This is absurd. We're not talking about measuring the rate of cellular mitosis in a lab, this is about how persuasive Stallman is as a speaker for his cause. You can follow him around to 50+ speaking engagements meticulously collecting metrics and come to the same conclusion you'd get listening to the buzz after a few of them and adhering to rules of thumb for public speaking developed over the past 5000 years, if you'd like. The difference is if everyone did it your way no one would ever get anything done (and they'd probably do it worse).

And let's not act as though this guy is in some camp that is opposite to Stallman's in the first place. They clearly share a lot of same values.

>How much time should he devote to exploring unsupported ideas from those who disagree, versus his own ideas for persuasion?

Perhaps you should more clearly explain the link between the efficacy of a person's rhetorical strategies and their opinion on a given subject first.

[prodigal_erik]

Same values? When Alexey wrote

> We live in a world where having the technological edge makes the difference between success and failure; asking us to just give up that edge for a theoretical idea of freedom is not going to work.

he embraced pure expedience and pretty much disclaimed having any values he'd go out of his way to uphold in this area.

[ugh]

Hm, that’s not how I read that sentence at all. It doesn’t sound like he is stating any values of his own in this sentence to me. Where do you see his values? I don’t see them.

[_pius]

Where do you see his values? I don’t see them.

I think that's the point.

[ugh]

Ok, so where do you see his absence of values? This reads to me like a value-neutral statement. We just don't know them and shouldn't make any claims about them.

[_pius]

I think Stallman would probably agree with the famous Howard Zinn quote: "You can't be neutral on a moving train."

[ugh]

I don't mean neutral in the sense of "having neutral values", I just mean that he does not explicitly express his values. We do not know his values.

[cicada]

I need to clarify:

* Evidence doesn't mean prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Also, given the sorts of arguments in other matters in the public sphere, and the numbers of adherents, I think you do not realize just what can succeed. 9/11 truthers, for instance.

* The rift between the free software and open source philosophies is well known, especially from RMS's own writings which is something that's especially relevant here. alexey's comments clearly put him in the latter camp.

* It is not disagreeing that makes their ideas unsupported. People who agree can also have unsupported ideas.