[robocat]

There are plenty of examples where somebody who has influenced the world was an idealist, out of touch with societal norms. RMS has serious faults, but his virtues have an immense value in my opinion.

‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’.

[watwut]

Tho, those unreasonable men also fairly often cause quite a lot of damage to their own causes and to world in general.

Also, I think that looking at history, claim that all progress was due to unreasonable men is false.

[e3bc54b2]

> Also, I think that looking at history, claim that all progress was due to unreasonable men is false.

This is because the definition of 'unreasonable' is relative. For Edison, wasting thousands of hours of lightbulb experiment was quite reasonable.

For most people before him, it was squarely in the unreasonable territory, and hence it took Edison for lightbulb to happen.

[halostatue]

Except that Edison didn’t invent the electric light bulb (first invented in 1806).

https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/or-not-thomas-edison-ligh...

[pydry]

Hard to argue that Stallman has done that. The perpetual character assassination attempts (e.g. the failed cancelation attempt from a year or two ago) merely serve to underscore this.

[peoplefromibiza]

> Tho, those unreasonable men also fairly often cause quite a lot of damage to their own causes and to world in general

did they?

I think that in history those that caused quite a lot of damage to the World are those that laughed at unreasonable men, thinking they could not achieve anything substantial.

Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead or wearing toothbrush moustache, is purely coincidental

[zeruch]

"RMS has serious faults, but his virtues have an immense value in my opinion."

And I wouldn't disagree with that as an abstraction, but being in direct contact/proximity with him is an utterly dreadful form of masochism.