I agree, which is why it's fortunate that no one is or has suggested "cancelling" anyone for "discussing" things.
The report's author(s) are advocating for removing RMS from positions of influence and authority from the free software community because he's advocating for child sex abuse and bestiality, harasses women, and is a shitty human being.
Pretending that anyone ever has been jettisoned from their position or public life for "discussing" something - or that that's what's happening here - is insanely disingenuous.
> It seems like there is no evidence of untoward behavior, just a bunch of gross opinions?
I don't think you actually read it then, because a significant portion of it is about his untoward behavior (as a boss, to random women at conferences, as a Voting Member, etc.)
> But the FSF is an American organization, and in America we have something close to free speech.
Free speech has absolutely nothing to do with this (as you note, the foundation has every right to get rid of him because of his abhorrent views). You don't generally want advocates for child sex abuse representing your foundation, regardless of what sort of foundation it is.
> We have several uncorroborated testimonies of women, including minors, being overtly sexualized during this routine, some without consent. In the course of our research we discovered that one of these routines was recorded, in which Stallman brings a 13 year-old girl on stage and makes sexually suggestive remarks about her in front of a crowd at FKFT 2008 in Barcelona.
Exactly! For $300 and a few hours of time, I could easily find a handful of people willing to feed this kind of narrative to any journalist looking for a hit piece. The fact that most people don't instinctively question the veracity of these claims just shows how staggeringly uncritical and poorly educated we've become as a society. Unless you're bound by specific legal obligations, there's no rule demanding that you tell the truth. Journalists are barely held to any standard of factual reporting because the bar is proving "actual malice".
And before anyone jumps to cry "fraud," let's be clear: fraud is obviously illegal, but the legal definition is specific and detailed.
>The only way that this works is to exert total control of the content of all communications.
Not true! Just being banned from significant swaths of social media has frequently forced many prominent Nazis/alt-righters out of business. Before Kiwifarms recently had all of their major issues, they were already finding it difficult to keep the site running as a result of continued pressure on every host they switched to.
Regardless of the accuracy of your classification of KiwiFarms, they aren't gone, just moved into the onion. And for conspiracy-minded people that's not a negative sign.
It also introduces readers to the entirety of the uncensored internet all at once, the most 4-chan thing imaginable, which is somewhat counter to the "limit exposure to disinformation" goal being claimed by the original deplatformers.
>There is a robust empirical difference that's seen between races.
There's not an objective/standardized way to even measure intelligence, so you'll forgive me if I treat the claim that there's an empirical difference in intelligence between races with a mountain of skepticism.
The OP said IQ. That's a specific measure that may or may not be related to intelligence. It does have strong correlations with academic and life success though.
So your focus is on what "camp" someone falls into, not whether their arguments have merit or their statements are factual?
No wonder you think there's nothing wrong with Wikipedia. As long as your "side" controls the narrative, you'll nod your head and clap like a trained seal no matter what lies and "misinformation" they spread.
The talk page, and Quillette article, are proof that Wiki entries needs to contain the discredited sources too, and the properly sourced criticisms of them of course, rather than simply deleting them.
Wiki rules are tools to build better content, not absolutes we must die on. If 90% of readers of an entry find it lacking or untrustworthy because it doesn't mention well-known studies or even fields of endeavor then it's not a useful article.
> despite what a number of skull-measuring right-wingers would like you to believe
Do you believe that acceptance of the theory that genes impact IQ is split along communist/non-communist lines? That communists are less likely than average to believe this? These broad statements and the identities around them are the partisanship behind much of the politically-motivated editing going on in Wiki now.
Quillette articles are rarely proof of more than the ability of deranged conservatives to get nonsense published.
>Do you believe that acceptance of the theory that genes impact IQ is split along communist/non-communist lines?
Maybe. I think the idea that genes impact IQ and that IQ actually usefully measures anything - certainly anything that could be described as 'intelligence' - is probably split that way.
The Quillette article was cited as tautological proof of how "those people" feel about the wiki entry. They don't find it convincing and are explaining the citations they feel it lacks...
The point of Wiki is to educate and that means reaching the uneducated who are going to have those nasty uninformed opinions. Even if I agreed with your assessments of the people involved I'd want to improve them, not crap on them for where they are. If Wiki is only for those who already believe the right things, why even have Wiki?
> split along communist/non-communist lines?
Why would a support for a scientific concept be split across groups by economic philosophy? Is there anything inherently capitalist or communist about these ideas or are these ideas conflated with identities?
> [IQ being] anything that could be described as 'intelligence'
That it's related at all, or that it's a perfect match? Because of course we'll always have subjective views of the definition of intelligence and no one test will satisfy everyone.
> the idea that genes impact IQ and that IQ actually usefully measures anything
Unlike intelligence, IQ is definable, stable, and correlates highly to job performance. (Of course, because the tests resemble many work-skill tasks...)
Why would IQ be the only trait that isn't genetic at all?
I have no desire to see any given racial group maligned, even with "correct" data, but I feel the discussion about genetic traits is limited for fear of this, and that this censoring falls exactly along the lines of the USA's post-slavery racial lines. To me this suggests that this is a you (the USA) problem, not an us (the rest of the anglo-sphere) problem, and that it should be treated with racial sensitivity training and honesty, not with demonization and censorship and quashing research.
Personally I'd be more concerned that people don't know that IQ tests are not a measure of intelligence, and that anyone who's claiming that differences in IQ across racial lines are evidence of racial intelligence differences is attempting to launder some racist bullshit.
>The idea that the only cure for discrimination is discrimination is akin to saying the only cure for violence is violence. It’s abject insanity that such a notion is being advanced in society.
Absolutely not. The idea that any of this is fixable with 'forgiveness' is far more insane. You can't undo hundreds of years of systematic disenfranchisement and subjugation with forgiveness - you have to discriminate in the opposite direction.
To quote LBJ, "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." That's what Kendi is saying, and he's completely right.
> You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair."
It's not fair. Neither is discriminating in the other direction because these people are not at fault for what their ancestors did, not to mention that affirmative action policies divide people along racial lines rather than the factor more relevant to today, class lines.
Ask yourself whether a black student with wealthy parents should benefit from preferential admissions to colleges over a white student from a poor background.
Similarly when immigrant minorities gravitate to particular localities for their shared culture and background, this is a wonderful example of diversity.
When white people do this, its called white flight and is akin to nazism.
> To quote LBJ, "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." That's what Kendi is saying, and he's completely right.
My problem with this quote is it intentionally ignores the plight of anyone who has nothing and isn't African American. Kendi's approach is an inherently selfish one and that's what makes it so polarising.
The answer to the societal issue of wealth disparity is not to give the poor of one racial group an advantage over the poor of another. It's to actually address the source of the problem in a manner agnostic to race. Doing anything else only serves to stoke division and racism.
Where Kendi and I (appear to, I haven't read his book) disagree is the idea that your antiracist policies must be _explicitly_ discriminatory to work. You can implement universal social goods like "everyone gets housing and health care" which in practice give far more to black people (because on average they're starting further back) but which apply to everyone and get the right outcome.
Certainly I wouldn't argue for a second that we should implement policies that ignore or exclude poor white people.
if you care more about what happened hundreds of years ago (racism against group A) than what is happening now (racism against group B). you are part of the problem!
The outcomes have been underwhelming because we (at least, the US) haven't actually been doing this, and we've just found new and arguably worse ways to maintain deeply racist policies.
If what you say is true, books like “how to be an antiracist” would include examples of these “arguably worse” mechanisms to maintain inequality. They don’t contain such examples. Indeed, a central premise of Kendi’s book is that affirmative measures are required because simply “not being racist” doesn’t work.
Nothing's changed. I think Kendi is an ideological grifter. It's frustrating to see "normie" anti-racism, of the "BLM lawn sign" variety, tainted by association with him.
I don’t think he’s a “grifter.” Kendi thought is just the logical combination of three mainstream progressive ideas:
1) (a) The history and experience of Black people in America is sui generis and (b) justifies responses that don’t need to be generalizable or measure up to ordinary standards of procedural fairness.
2) the “bootstraps”approach of Kendi’s parent’s generation has failed.
3) bureaucratic institutions operated by well meaning credentialed people can solve every problem.
Really, the only area where I substantively disagree with him is (3)—the white people in charge of bureaucratic institutions will inevitably use any special powers given to them to advance their own economic and cultural interests.
But how convincingly does he make that case? It seems to be that while we're obviously a long way from a truly race-blind world, someone belonging to a minority ethnic grouping has a much better chance of succeeding in most careers in the average Western country today than they would have 50 years ago. I struggle to believe that's largely due to the weird sort of "anti-racism" Kendi promotes.
