[ggm]

Well worth reading. Lucid, clear. Didnt make me like Stallman more, but articulated some of the issues well.

On the whole, I think the cancel/trigger thing has got out of hand. People need to be accountable for what they say, not what people believe they think.

[colanderman]

Stallman clearly has issues as many have attested. But reading these specific excerpts of his now... they just read like tone-deaf pedantry. Sarah Mei's response to someone else who pointed this out in a leveled, non-confrontational manner, of

> That means you are also racist, misogynist, and a colonial apologist. Nice job

just comes off as needlessly toxic escalation intended to shut down dialogue.

I have several autistic friends and see this sort of interaction now and then. They will state some observation or make an argument rooted in logical pedantry, not pushing any political agenda (or, supporting certain politics but trying to cast it in a more logical framework). Someone takes offense at this and accuses them of being racist/misogynist/whatever. They are hurt. The conversation is not advanced. Both sides lose. Chalk it up to "normies" just... completely not understanding the autistic approach to the world I guess. I wish political activists were less reactive against those who just want to explore -- and ultimately strengthen -- ideas.

[smsm42]

I think its because the point is not understanding - the point is gaining power, in this case - power over who leads the OSS movement. If you want to use one's words against them, you do not look for understanding, you look for maximally uncharitable and hurtful meaning possible, and declare this is the only meaning that matters. That's why political activists do it - because it gives them power.

[chrisco255]

Nadine's point was that people should not be unduly punished for making intellectual arguments for or against anything. "Being punished for what they say" is precisely what happened to Stallman.

[ggm]

No, I don't agree. He was partly punished for what people THOUGHT he had said, and for past transgressions, and in large part for what people were TOLD he had said. Not for what he actually said.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

*Alleged past transgressions.

[ggm]

Yes. important distinction. Things he said and did in the past, which people got upset about, which are completely unrelated to the current Epstein context.

[sneak]

He wasn't punished, he was fired.

You're allowed to revoke consent to an interaction or business relationship at any time. It's not a punishment to anyone else to say "this situation (employing rms) isn't for me and I don't want to be in it any longer".

Firing isn't punitive.

[moistbar]

Firing is absolutely punitive.

[sneak]

A job is an agreement between two parties.

Revoking consent to a mutually-agreed-upon interaction is not punitive. Consent today does not imply consent tomorrow.

[moistbar]

Revoking that consent in response to something one party disagrees with is the definition of punitive.

[smt88]

If Nadine means this absolutely, she opens herself up to easy counterpoints in the extreme.

Ex:

What if I work at a hospital and make an intellectual argument in favor of eugenics?

What if I have Jewish coworkers and publish statistics about the percentage of media executives that are Jewish?

In these cases, "punishment" may also just mean that you've made people unwilling to collaborate with you, or you've done something that undermines your neutrality in your work.

When working or living with others, there are still social consequences for things that are intellectually defensible.

[SpicyLemonZest]

This argument doesn't seem applicable to Stallman, since his problematic arguments had nothing to do with his work, and since many people were willing to collaborate with him. The argument against him seemed to be that it's wrong, "exclusionary", to have a community figure who anyone finds too offensive to collaborate with, even if the community members are largely okay with him.

[smt88]

I probably should have been more clear that I was commenting specifically on the absolutism of the parent comment, not on Stallman.

[chrisco255]

The point Nadine is making is that society and liberals, in particular, have become hypocritical and extreme in their willingness to "unperson" anyone with an unacceptable viewpoint. Even as they make the argument that criminals should be re-integrated into society over time, they simultaneously will dredge up old tweets or decades old comments and use them to get someone fired from a job. Even in the case of contemporary statements, modern liberals have become almost puritanical or inquisitional in their approach to root out people with unacceptable viewpoints and to shame them until they're forced off a platform, a job, an organization, or sufficiently scarlet lettered to satisfy their bloodlust for all non-compliant thinkers. It is opposite of the classical tradition of liberalism, as Nadine pointed out, and it really doesn't make sense.

Neither of your examples are good ones. Society has become too sensitive and exerts too much energy, counterproductive at this point, into rooting out the impure among us and not allowing colorful personalities like Stallman to 'just be'. Unless Stallman has willful intent to harm someone in particular, and not just that someone has chosen to take offense to his statements, it's a disproportionate response. It's also an impossible slippery slope to satisfy. It's becoming increasingly draconian and regressive and making the world a much more miserable place than just sometimes accepting that some people in the world are going to think differently than you, and that it's generally ok, and you can still get along if you try and if both parties are willing (generally true!).

That's the true meaning of tolerance.

[sneak]

> People need to be accountable for what they say, not what people believe they think.

I disagree. What people believe what someone thinks, even if incorrect, is a legitimate basis for someone's choice of free association.

It's entirely legitimate for someone to avoid someone else (including fire them) on the basis of false beliefs about that person, due to failing to spend enough time understanding the nuance of the situation or person.

I would never hire rms, for example, because he is a drama llama, and I find constantly creating controversy (intentionally or otherwise) to be mostly unproductive, even if all of the things he is saying are accurate and correct and true.

Freedom of association does not require fairness or due process. Our time and attention is our own, to allocate unfairly, incorrectly, or on any other unscientific, inaccurate basis we feel is best.

[moistbar]

So every alleged criminal should be treated as guilty until proven innocent?

[sneak]

Yes, this is entirely permissible by society and people who know them. Violence undertaken by the state to enforce the law is a different matter, where the maxim of the law is "innocent until proven guilty".

The topic of this thread is not law enforcement by the state, however.

There are people I know who have been credibly accused of crimes. No trial occurred. I still treat them as if they were guilty of the crime: I assiduously avoid them.

Such is my right.

[etrabroline]

>People need to be accountable for what they say, not what people believe they think.

This sounds like a very Orwellian way of saying people shouldn't be fired for wrong-think if they profusely apologize afterwards. Is that what you mean?

[salawat]

I think you may have read that wrong.

What the poster is saying is that people should be accountable for what they actually say, not what other people assume they must have meant.

It's subtle, but let me try to highlight the difference:

Take as an example, Stallman saying "...it is entirely possible Minsky could have been unaware of the coercive dynamic [between Epstein and the young womem] going on at the time. We'll call this P.

Also take,

"We should wait for the facts and evidence before jumping to conclusions". We'll call this W.

What Stallman said is just " We don't know if P or not P, therefore W".

There's nothing wrong that was said there. People read things though that were not said; i.e. that since Stallman said P, it must mean he thought that the young women must have been voluntarily doing it. (We'll call this V).

Much of the hulabaloo around the time came from people, (and journalists) adding in context that simply wasn't even there, which a quick perusal of CSAIL quickly made evident. Stallman never said it was the case that anyone involved was doing it of their own volition, merely that Minsky may not have picked up on the fact there was coercion going on, because if someone is being coerced, odds are they have been specifically instructed to hide the coersion. The fact is, one presupposes the knowing complicity of an individual by doing otherwise. Stallman cautioned that one should wait for evidence before coming to a hasty judgement.

Communication is hard. One must transmit, and another must receive, and both people be able to demonstrate they took from the exchange a shared understanding of a common arrangement of circumstance and subject, mapping to the same circumstances and subjects in the real world. The clincher though, is that there is so much low stakes communication that goes on in our lives where errors in reception or coding of meaning don't have readily tangible effects that become apparent within a short enough time for people to recognize a miscommunication happened, or that even if they recognize one happened, that it will adversely effect the outcome of the attempt at communication as a whole. As a result, there is a tendency to chronically underestimate the difficulty of communication overall.

EDITS: wording, punctuation, sentence flow.

[ggm]

Thank you. That pretty much said it, better than I did.

[ggm]

No. That isn't what I mean.

I think your wrong-think is a very big stretch from what I said. Can you show me the chain of thinking which took you there please?

[narag]

Don't shoot me, just trying to make sense of what the other guy wrote.

I believe that he's arguing that even if he said that, he shouldn't be punished. Only doing bad things is relevant.