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'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.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/business/lessig-epstein-i...