[medguru]

Maybe it's that I'm not rested right now but I find it hard to follow this train of thought because your reasoning is kinda wide, lofty and out there but I think OP means that it's irrational to throw Bill Gates entirely to the side based only on -another person- he associated with. Like how picky and fussy people refuse to touch something clean and unspoiled just because it sat next to something else that happened to be gross and smelly. I know it's clean but eww, icky. That kind of guilt by association.

Epstein's lawyers and his realtor, his tailor and his golf partners also associated with him but they don't appear at all to be desirable targets to debase with the same treatment and that's probably because they aren't rich or powerful or influential. And I'm certain that's what's tripping you. It's not just OK but maybe even preferential and encouraged by you to take a dump on certain people when a tiny vague chance presents itself only because the person is powerful.

I found this earlier comment from you on this topic which is a bit funny given your statement. To me youre kinda describing yourself.

  HN is pretty divided about Stallman. Bringing up the things he actually at one
  time said, even if later he said something different, results in a lot of
  downvoting and toxicity. You can't talk about him without it devolving into
  binary thinking and binary debates. Same as everything else in 2023 I guess.

[alex_lav]

> I think OP means that it's irrational to throw Bill Gates entirely to the side based only on -another person- he associated with.

Why is that irrational?

> Epstein's lawyers and his realtor, his tailor and his golf partners also associated with him

Surely we as reasonable people can acknowledge the societal difference between Bill Gates and his tailor, no?

> It's not just OK but maybe even preferential and encouraged by you to take a dump on certain people when a tiny vague chance presents itself only because the person is powerful.

Powerful people's decisions deserve to be scrutinized at a higher level than societally irrelevant people, yes.

> I found this earlier comment from you on this topic which is a bit funny given your statement. To me youre kinda describing yourself.

That comment is in response to a person saying they simply asked "Why" and were downvoted. The answer is because rational thought is thrown away in favor of binary thinking with regards to people like RMS.

To be direct, my comment is almost not about RMS at all. Simply, every human is allowed to decide what they are or are not okay with. If you think what RMS did was wrong, you're welcome to hate him for it. This is not the same as a jury deeming a person guilty of a crime, and relating the two is a strawman.

[8note]

> Powerful people's decisions deserve to be scrutinized at a higher level than societally irrelevant people, yes.

I think the opposite, at least as far as this is concerned. To Epstein's tailor, Epstein is very replaceable, whereas to Gates, the tradeoff for ditching Epstein would be something like millions fewer people getting vaccinations

[alex_lav]

I do not buy this narrative you're selling.

[howinteresting]

Yes, of course powerful people need to be held to higher standards! This is plainly obvious to even a child.

For one, powerful people generally have advisers whose job it is to prevent people like Gates from associating with sex criminals like Epstein.

[lib-dev]

Get some sleep. This is utter nonsense.