> I want to respond to the misleading media coverage of messages I posted about Marvin Minsky's association with Jeffrey Epstein. The coverage totally mischaracterised my statements.
> Headlines say that I defended Epstein. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've called him a "serial rapist", and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him — and other inaccurate claims — and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said.
> I'm sorry for that hurt. I wish I could have prevented the misunderstanding.
> I didn’t follow the story. Was Stallman taken out of context?
Yes. This statement of Stallman's:
> We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that
she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was
being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her
to conceal that from most of his associates.
has been reported in several places as Stallman saying Epstein's girls were "entirely willing", completely ignoring that he was not saying they were willing--he was saying that Epstein would have required them to say they were willing.
If you have sufficient power over someone to force them to have sex with whomever you want them to, you almost certainly also have sufficient power over them to tell them to pretend to be doing it of the own free will. Epstein was massively evil, but he wasn't massively stupid, so almost certainly would have exercised such power.
Stallman was talking about Marvin Minsky's sex with a girl at Epstein's island retreat in 2001, which was a few years before Epstein's sexual atrocities became known. Stallman was arguing that from Minsky's point of view, he probably had no reason to suspect that he was not dealing with a consenting girl.
Except for the part where he got taken to a remote island by a billionaire and was presented with a very young woman who immediately wanted to have sex with him.
You mean the island that Epstein regularly invited numerous people to in order to discuss assorted legitimate things, like supporting their charities or their research?
Epstein's island wasn't some stereotypical villain lair where anyone who steps foot on it must be up to no good. It was a place that he conducted the normal business that any entirely legitimate billionaire would conduct, in addition to the villain stuff.
Based on the girl's deposition, it looks like she was there on the record to provide massages to guests, and off the record was forced to make those erotic massages including sex. It is not clear which, if any, recipients of those massages plus sex knew that the sex was something she was forced into. There are no details given on her sex with Minsky other than it happened.
Minsky was included in a list of people that Epstein's assistant asked one of his victims to have sex with (the deposition didn't ask if sex actually occurred). In the deposition the victim couldn't remember the date they received that request, but a third party reported that they saw the victim approach Minsky in 2002 and that he turned her down and complained about it ( https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/ ).
It may be the case that the witnessed event and the content of the deposition were unrelated and at different times, but if not-- the victim was also 18 at the time...
But no one really cares about the facts, this is almost entirely a ceremonial battle over who has the sickest imagination. Because there are essentially no clear details, not even a concrete allegation, everyone is essentially making things up in order to fight over them.
> Epstein’s former neighbor, the psychologist and computer scientist Roger Schank, describes another such event that he attended: a meeting of artificial-intelligence experts, organized by Marvin Minsky and held on Epstein’s island in April 2002. “Epstein walks into the conference with two girls on his arm,” said Schank. The scientists were holding their discussions in a small room, and as they talked, “[Epstein] was in the back, on a couch, hugging and kissing these girls.”
Hindsight is 20/20, scrutinizing our understanding of past events instead of making grandios assumptions is the key to realising justice. Misinterpretting the words of a man because you don't like the way they think is an injustice.
> Stallman was arguing that from Minsky's point of view, he probably had no reason to suspect that he was not dealing with a consenting girl.
"Consenting girl" is a contradiction. A child cannot legally give consent for sex. If he knew she was underage and if he had sex with her anyway, that was criminal.
She wasn't underage. The age of consent was 16 at the time there. It was raised to 18 later, in the Child Protection Act of 2002.
If you are traveling, and there is any possibility you will engage in any sexual activities outside your home area, it is a good idea to check the destination's laws. If you forget this and just assume they are the same, you can get screwed (no pun intended), regardless of if the age of consent is higher or lower at your destination.
If it is higher, you might inadvertently commit statutory rape with someone who is clearly old enough back home and so doesn't trigger your "do an age check" alarm.
If it is lower, you might run afoul of laws back home against against sex tourism.
(Pay attention to recreational drug laws, too. Sex and drugs are both things that are taken vary seriously. Most other things tourists might do aren't nearly as risky--nobody except maybe Singapore is going to make a big deal of it if you, say, improperly dispose of a food wrapper or something like that. Oh, and also be careful with religion).
The age of consent is 16 in 31 US states and the DC (including Massachusetts). It s 17 in 8 states. It is 18 in the remaining 11 states.
It's 18 in Mexico, 16 in Canada, ranges all over the place from 14 to 18 in South America, 13 to 21 in Asia, 14 to 18 in Europe, and 11 to 18 in Africa.
It also varies widely whether or not places have close-in-age exceptions (also known as Romeo and Juliet laws). Such an exception might, for example, might say that in a place with an age of consent of 18, a 16 or 17 year old can consent to sex if the other participants are under 21. Don't assume that because you are young that you don't have to worry about other young people's age.
Finally, it also varies widely by what kind of sex. There are places where they have close-in-age exceptions, but only for heterosexual acts, and so a 17 year old girl with a 17 year old boy is fine, given an age of consent of 18, but a 17 year old boy with another 17 year old boy is statutory rape by both of them because the close-in-age exception doesn't apply.
> Anyway, he probably should have know better than to weigh in.
That's the problem with the internet today. It's too toxic to hold any meaningful public discussion.
I'd bet that RMS was open to discussing the point he expressed. Because that's what you do on an old-fashioned mailing list. But apparently he got no response to his email. Instead Selam jumped the gun and started, essentially, a shaming campaign on medium.
This kind of attitude essentially hushes people who can actually hold a meaningful online discussion, and perhaps revising their starting opinions after one. Instead we only get to hear the voices of people that are righteous about their opinions—be right or wrong.
Internet has transformed from an open forum to a shouting contest; if you can't join a big enough shouting group, no need to waste your energy participating.
He wasn't attempting to have a meaningful discussion though, was he?
He was defending a 70 year old who had sex with a coerced child by trying to say that the word "assault" shouldn't carry either its everyday English meaning or its more specific legal meaning, but should instead have some other meaning that he created.
I sense a generation gap here. csail-related is a closed mailing list. If you disagree with a point, you are expected to come back with some arguments. Not to leak emails out with zero effort in making a discussion. That's the established mailing list netiquette for almost 30 years.
It's also funny that you complain about RMS twisting the "everyday English" meaning of "assault" while at the same time you call "child" someone who you'd most definitely call a "teenager" or "youngster" if you met in person.
This urge to abuse words in order to sensationalize an already perfectly valid argument is what RMS was pointing out in the first place.
At least in the case of the Daily Beast article by Blake Montgomery, enough context was included that a plain reading of the quoted material makes clear that the surrounding text and headline were radically incorrect. Journalistic malpractice if not deliberate libel. The author has since doubled down. I, for one, won't be believing a damned thing written by the man in the foreseeable future. I encourage you to make your own determination.
Stallman defended Minsky. Judge him for what he said. Don't judge him for a defense of Epstein - he unambiguously condemned Epstein with the rest of us.
Someone emailed an event for protesting Minsky, and Stallman accused her of wrongly inflating the term "sexual assault" when using it to refer to Minsky and Epstein. Stallman bends over backwards for Minsky, saying that he shouldn't be automatically to blame if Epstein forced someone to have sex with him.
It's little different than the absurd pretzel that Lessig bent himself into when trying to defend his friend Joi Ito [0]:
> Q: Doesn’t it make sense to you that people would say someone who is taking money from and cozying up with a guy who is a pedophile and who is targeting young women, maybe he shouldn’t lead an institution that includes women?
> Lessig: I’m not sure it describes the case, and more importantly, what about the institution?
> Q: What do you mean it doesn’t describe the case?
> L: I don’t know about the “cozying up to.”
> Q: Going to his house, being socially in his orbit, taking money from him.
> L: In the context of raising money — just like you would go up there and meet with him in the context of an interview...
> L: When you say that he is cozying up to him, that’s something very different from what I understand actually happened, which is: Joi, in the context of his job for the M.I.T. Media Lab, built a relationship with one of the people he’s raising money from.
I don't begrudge Lessig and Stallman for attempting to apply what they think is logic and rationality in approaching these topics. I absolutely despise them for their hypocrisy in the way they refuse to acknowledge how they themselves are tainted by irrationality when defending their friends.
> It's little different than the absurd pretzel that Lessig bent himself into when trying to defend his friend Joi Ito
It's massively different, because Joi Ito's interactions with Epstein were after Epstein's sexual atrocities were known. Minsky's were in 2001, which as far as I have been able to find is before Epstein was known to be evil.
I wasn't clear. I didn't intend to suggest that Minsky had nothing to do with Epstein after 2001.
Before Epstein was known to be evil, Minsky accepted support from Epstein for science, and also had a sexual encounter with a girl who was ostensibly a masseuse in Epstein's employ but was actually being forced by Epstein to have sex with his guests--it is not clear which of those guests, if any, knew that she was being forced to do more than just give them massages.
It is this sexual encounter that Stallman was defending, and that the poster I was replying to compared to people defending Ito's dealings with Epstein.
After Epstein was known to be evil, both Minsky and Ito did accept support from him. Minsky, as far as I can tell, did so publicly with no attempt to hide it, and I haven't seen any suggestions that he continued to do so after MIT decided to stop accepting donations from Epstein. Ito, on the other hand, appears to have continued to do so, and appears to have tried to keep it secret.
Can you please provide a reliable source for this claim? Last time I checked there is at least one witnessing of him turned down offering of sexual favours in that Epstein case context, and none of the opposite.
You should really read that court deposition. I did and it is not un-ambiguous on the matter, there is plenty of room left to argue there that Minsky never had sex with the girl and one eyewitness who claims he turned her down.
I find this whole thing absurd. How could a Stallman that leverages a US military contractor to do good in one area of rights, exist if he could not bend his own logic into a pretzel in a way that accepts evil money and redirects it based on pragmatic logic?
The US is engaged in finding an equal hated group among the left and right and then attacking anyone who is remotely associatable with them or willing to make any argument that implies a defense of someone associated with them. We have seen this behavior before and it does not ever end well.
It really seems like his real 'sin' is not being neurotypical.
Should he try to have more tact? Sure, of course. But failing that, the correct response is compassion and gentle correction, not a witchhunt. Not driving him out of his jobs.
Matthew Garrett, who served on the FSF board of directors, wrote about the "not being neurotypical" hypothesis two days ago: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/52587.html
In particular, he says he did try to do the compassion and gentle correction work, and Stallman had no interest in it.
Stallman's job has a job description - leading the Free Software Foundation. If he's not leading it effectively, it is important for his own cause that he step away, and it is important that the FSF Board do their job by finding someone more effective at it. If he's not suited for it for reasons outside of his control and never will be, that's all the more reason that we should compassionately and gently get him to find another job.
(Also, I think this argument is deeply unfair to the many neuroatypical people in this world who still manage to not say the things Stallman does - which is in most cases not merely a matter of "tact," but even so, many of whom put conscious, learned effort into having tact. I have friends with all sorts of things going on in their brain who are wonderful people and in many cases also wonderful free software authors, and I think this argument does them a disservice.)
Anyone who knows who Richard Stallman is, much less cares about his opinions, could probably be classified as 'neuroatypical' in some regard. I don't think there's any point to discussing the utility of 'neurodivergence' in the context of this scandal.
I'd agree with Matthew Garrett here. Some of Richard Stallman's statements in the past have bordered on being outrightly indefensible for various reasons. Not necessarily indefensible as the opinions of an individual, as controversial as they may be, but certainly inappropriate as the opinions of a person representing an organisation. I doubt that Stallman's various eccentricities have done much to hamper the FSF's mission, but Stallman himself would certainly do little to endear it to anyone.
Sure. I know people "on the spectrum," I know people with various forms of PTSD, I know people with bipolar, I know people with ADHD, I know plural folks, etc., and none of them act like RMS. I know very friendly, conscientious, and kind neuroatypical folks. I know brusque and tactless neuroatypical folks with whom it's draining to interact in certain ways. They still don't act like RMS.
So the (implicit) argument "This is just what you expect with neuroatypical people" / "If we want to be welcoming of neuroatypical people, we have to be welcoming of people who act like RMS" is even less true because of how diverse the category is. We know RMS isn't being excluded because of his (hypothetical) neuroatypicality because there are so many neuroatypical people who aren't and wouldn't be excluded.
If you want to argue that the problem with RMS is he is in the narrow category of people who act like RMS (and I would say that not even Linus Torvalds is in this category), that's a fine argument to make, but it's a bit circular to defend his inclusion on such grounds. Is this category the sort of category, like race or class or neurological makeup, that is beyond (or mostly beyond) one's control and has little correlation with whether you can do good work? Or is this a category like "asshole"?
I know a lot of people who's actions, quirks, opinions and beliefs are unique. Stallman is the only person I've ever known to eat toe-cheese, let alone do it in public. The fact that other neuroatypical people I know don't eat their toe cheese does not suggest to me that eating toe cheese isn't behavior attributable to neuroatypicality.
I expect CSAIL is bristling with non-neurotypical people who didn't take this as a good time to come to the defense of Marvin Minksy in such a frankly bizarre way. It's one thing to say I don't think he did it, but to say "if he did it, it would not have been bad, and in this essay I will-" and to then distribute that to the entire CSAIL mailing list!
I'll grant that some of the headlines about what RMS wrote were overblown, but still. You don't have to look outside the four corners of what he wrote to see why it wasn't an excusable thing to blast out to a departmental email. Once you expand from those four corners to his prior comments on pedophilia it gets way worse.
At a certain point, if you have lived as long as RMS has, you should have some knowledge of your own limitations. It would take an absolute master of rhetoric to make his argument and not have it taken badly. He is not one, and he should (at this point) have the barest humility to not subject the entire CSAIL mailing list to his half-baked ideas on how Minsky might be exonerated.
I think Stallman is tactless, and I've thought that for years. That email didn't change anything I thought about him.
I also think that being tactless is not a moral crime. It's aesthetically offensive and counterproductive from a leadership perspective, but being a bad leader doesn't make somebody a bad person.
It's always hard when people who built things you love have flaws. I remember my own reaction to hearing just how bad his behavior was. It's beyond the bounds of acceptable for anyone. Using his position to proposition women, handing it business cards to women he was interested in even in professional settings, defending pedophilia on his website as two consenting people when children can't functionally consent. Do I think he's a bad person? No. I disagree with a lot of what he's said and done and he's definitely pushed boundaries but I've never heard of him breaking boundaries, though it's highly possible. He was completely delightful when I met him in person. He's not the right person to be leading the free software movement anymore. He hasn't taken the steps required to develop the social skills needed for the role. He hasn't learned that there's a time for PR people to do the talking. He hasn't learned that there's appropriate times to not have a debate. These are all logical qualities of a leader that he doesn't have. Logically he should step back, reevaluate, and let what he's built continue to grow. It seems like he's doing that. He'll always have people willing to support him and work that he does.
I was genuinely surprised myself. I've heard many of the same stories, but he was completely patient with me as I gushed my appreciation to him as he got off of a train and treated me with the utmost respect. I am not able to pick up on social cues easily myself but have worked very hard to become good at it. This is why I know it's possible to learn this skill of one puts in the effort.
If it comes down to whether RMS's position at CSAIL amounted to a leadership position or not, I'd venture that it did. Professors have institutional power that everyone else on the CSAIL list who isn't one don't have. Someone who abuses their name and position to blast screeds like that, I can see why CSAIL might not want him around anymore.
He was not a professor. He quit his job at MIT (as some sort of staff researcher/programmer) in 1984 to start the GNU project. He was an unpaid visiting scientist and had an office, although he was rarely in it (he spends a lot of time traveling). He did not have any institutional power beyond his participation as a rando on the mailing lists.
Being a leader of any sort makes it worse, but I don't think it's a necessary condition for justifying his removal.
Each person contributes to the flavor of the community in which they participate. It is within the right of those who lead the community to curate its flavor by adding or removing people when necessary.
In this his case, his removal was well-justified for the cause of keeping the community welcoming and safe-feeling for members of all genders.
MIT is allowed to use whatever behavior criteria MIT likes when determining who gets to participate in MIT.
Also don't be surprised if lots of disparate organizations agree that certain behaviors are inappropriate.
RMS and others are free to say or do whatever they please, but they aren't free from experiencing the consequences (social or otherwise) of their choices.
If Stallman's email made anyone feel 'unsafe', either that person has serious mental issues for such they should seek therapy, or they are pretending/self-generating these emotions as a way of gaining political leverage and power.
In fact, your message here makes me feel unsafe right now. Something needs to be done, call the mods.
From another comment of mine, the specific relevant passage is on page 7. Copied verbatim - line with a '>' is Stallman quoting another e-mail in the thread.
"""
> Giuffre was 17 at the time; this makes it __rape__ in the Virgin Islands.
Does it really? I think it is morally absurd to define "rape" in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.
I think the existence of a dispute about that supports my point that the term "sexual assault" is slippery, so we ought to use more concrete terms when accusing anyone.
His argument in this specific email- as I read it- was a variant of "Your Honor, I had no idea she wasn't willing and 18!" ie that Minsky didn't know and must therefore have been blameless.
I think it's an immoral argument too- Minsky should have known something was going on, and would be culpable. And it's very possible he did know.
But paired with RMS' prior pedophilia apologia, the combination is horrendous.
I downvoted you because both the neurotypical and neuro-atypical suffer from myopia, sentimentalism, favoritism, deficits of empathy, and methods for introducing and justifying moral lapses.
I’m also just sick of hearing about how old nerds just don’t know any better even when people are literally telling them to stop. That the topic is a bad idea. That they will make themselves look bad.
And it’s deeply unfair to people who have issues to simply blame gross behavior in being “neuro-atypical”.
Sure. He recanted those comments two days ago (after espousing them on his website at least between 2006 and 2013), and after his comments on the Epstein case started getting attention, which makes it look more like damage control than a genuine change in opinion.
I'd say recent statements more accurately reflect somebody's current beliefs than old statements. Considering how badly he's been recently slandered by media outlets leaving out context and mischaracterizing his remarks, I am disturbed by your willingness to exclude that context from your previous comment.
As a general rule, I tend to give more credit to consistent and freely offered opinions espoused over years than a sudden conversion immediately after a PR crisis. There's a famous saying: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
There's a difference between "unpopular but everyone knows I'm quirky" and "this might be an existential threat to my ability to keep running the FSF etc.".
1. Stallman already has a lifetime of of examples of somewhat poor leadership within the GNU project, resulting in decisions that have compromised GNU and FSF's trajectory (compared to their potential), so once again, these are not new circumstances
So you believe Stallman's statements indicate he's a pedophile, not merely somebody with a long and established history of being tactless? Because I'd say there is a hell of a lot more evidence that he's tactless due to being neuroatypical. Maybe that makes him a bad leader, but it surely doesn't make him evil.
i believe stallman's statements indicate he thinks sex with a consenting child is okay. why does he have to have committed a crime to condemn that view?
"Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it.
Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why."
I assume that if he was a pedophile we all would knew it yet. If there was anything remotely naughty in the computer stolen from him in Argentina the thief would have reassured that even Santa Claus will hear about that, for a reasonable sum of money.
Absence of of evidence is not evidence of absence, but philosophizing about murder does not make you a murderer
Tact and decorum are how ideas are presented. No amount of tact or decorum would make it possible to defend somebody for sleeping with an underage girl.
He's attempting to find some remotely plausible scenario where the actions of his friend are morally acceptable.
No amount of tact makes that okay, and complete lack of tact just makes it worse.
It was taken directly as the girl being “willing” when what he actually said was that she may have been coerced by Epstein into appearing to be “willing” to Minsky.
It doesn’t help that he has a documented history of fucked up comments in this general area.
Should news outlets and social media personalities who do purposefully take this comments out of context (and I think there can be little doubt that it is done on purpose [1]) be punished?
Clearly. This is a false accusation that damaged his work and reputation. At the very least, these news outlets and media personalities must be compelled to apologize publicly.
Would that somehow absolve Minsky? A "willing" obviously young girl seems to want to have sex with somebody she doesnt know.
If Minsky suddenly find himself in the plot to a porno, and just went along with it, then trying to defend his moral culpability is probably a lot out of the bounds of acceptability.
He was dancing on a tightrope. Whether or not his statements were taken out of context requires a mind-reader to intuit what exactly he, uh, meant by them.
It's not an interesting defense, and given his prior statements on the subject of statutory rape, I'm having a hard time taking it seriously.
> I want to respond to the misleading media coverage of messages I posted about Marvin Minsky's association with Jeffrey Epstein. The coverage totally mischaracterised my statements.
> Headlines say that I defended Epstein. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've called him a "serial rapist", and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him — and other inaccurate claims — and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said.
> I'm sorry for that hurt. I wish I could have prevented the misunderstanding.
Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...