this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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I thought you didn't believe in bad people? Or was that just a convenient point that can change at the drop of a hat to help your arguments seem more legitimate?
And it's kind of funny that some inappropriately pedantic activist is constantly under fire even after saying Epstein isn't described harshly enough (pedantic again, but useful this time?), but much fewer people seem to care about the tech billionaires with real connections to him. If we should be demanding anyone be disgraced, it should be them.
EDIT: They've expressed no more interest in replying and they don't seem to be being disingenuous, so I'll not leave another reply, but note how that entire post was devoted to the usage of the words "good" and "bad" and addresses nothing about Stallman's actions.
Tl;dr his point was that coercion is coercion regardless of age, and of course sensationalist media spun that. Of course, the younger you get the more easily you are coerced, which is why there's a point where you can reasonably say a person could not have consented. But Stallman was not arguing against that. He was arguing that a year's difference doesn't change the morality of the situation.
And his take is that the situation was immoral ("she presented herself as entirely willing", and noting that she was coerced by Epstein to do that and that it was wrong). Of course people always overlook that part and cut his words short to make it seem like he's defending it.
EDIT 2: I just noticed that they have also said that after being accepted onto the FSF board after a change in opinions (not even back to his original role!), that means that the FSF endorses the opinions he no longer holds? Make it make sense.
Oh boy, I get to argue with you again.
This is way off topic for this thread (sorry to OP), but my take is that "good" (or, being more precise, perhaps something like "pro-social and self-caring" is a better way to put it) is the "natural" way for humans to be and for humans to do "bad" ("antisocial and/or self-destructive", perhaps?) things needs a reason or explanation in a way that people not doing "bad" things doesn't. (As opposed to an opposite view that people are evil and require something (authority, religion, whatever) to make them do good.)
My point in bringing it up in that other thread was that one didn't necessarily have to believe that "Stallman is bad" to believe he shouldn't have been accepted back into a position of authority at the FSF. Even if he's a "saint," giving him a position of authority in the FSF after everything he's said is very problematic. (Harms the Free Software movement's reputation, excludes people, sends an unfortunate message, etc.) It can absolutely be appropriate for an organization to exclude/remove/dethrone/etc people (or refuse to take them back) for bad behavior or for expressing reprehensible opinions especially if doing otherwise sends a message that the organization approves of the behavior or speech. (And I don't feel like Stallman later publicly changing his opinions is enough to make his return to the FSF not be seen as endorsement of his previously-stated opinions.)
In this thread, the person I'm responding to used the term "good person" and I went with it rather than going into something irrelevant to the current discussion. With my previous comment in this thread, I mean that if you're going to take sides, you shouldn't put Stallman and the FSF on opposite sides and that the opposite side that is (at least from everything that I know about things at the moment and don't expect anything to change) worth aligning yourself with is SFC, FSFE, and Bradley Kuhn. (And I'm sure there are plenty of others in the Free Software movement who are also worth aligning yourself with, but these are people and organizations that are leaders in the movement and (more) well known (than most, though that's not saying much -- there aren't many in the movement who are well known like Stallman, Moglen, and Kuhn.))
If I knew you were going to continue this argument in this thread, I would probably have put "good guy" and "bad guy" in quotes (like I did "saint" a couple of paragraphs back. Sometimes people use convenient shorthands.) But going into all of the above wasn't really relevant to this conversation. (Until your response, that is.)
At this point, I doubt there'd be benefit to continuing this conversation here in this thread. If you want to respond again, I guess knock yourself out, but I don't intend to respond here again.
Wait, what? If I remember correctly RMS was talking about his colleague from MIT, not about Epstein.
He was talking about both. The "entirely willing" misquote comes from the email where he's referring to how Epstein made his victims pretend to be willing, and how he believed his former professor was unaware (stupid take imo, but clearly not malicious).