Stallman: Thousands Dead, Millions Deprived of Liberties (2001)(news.slashdot.org) |
Stallman: Thousands Dead, Millions Deprived of Liberties (2001)(news.slashdot.org) |
He's not predicting that thousands will die because of mass surveillance--he's saying that the deaths of thousands in the 9/11 attacks are going to let the government deprive millions of their civil liberties.
It's hard to conceive that up until 2008 you could cross the border both ways without a passport. We treated them like the culturally and economically linked neighbors they are. Now it feels like a pointless, hostile interrogation in both directions.
Tor, Tails, Bitcoin, TLS each give freedom. These tools still exist, and still work, and there's a plethora of other tools, too. Something else: security.txt and ethical hacking took off, too.
Patriot Act, Snowden revelations each made us lose freedoms.
Yes, I'm aware of Trump's efforts in this regard, but GOP was rotten ever since Bush. Even before that, right-wing populism existed, too. But WWII was still too fresh for fascism to rise in the West.
Also, law isn't very useful if it isn't applied. For example, copyright law regarding LLMs.
Even though I agree with the premise of the essay, this is absurdly false today. Computers are really good at this type of thing now, scarily so.
These days, government surveillance is just a drop in the bucket. Surveillance by private companies and private citizens dwarfs it.
I frankly dismissed the idea of "a group of extremely powerful and rich pedos" under a pizza store... and yes there were none under any pizza store.
Source: https://www.stallman.org/notes/2021-jul-oct.html
"Meanwhile, I think that the proposed vaccine mandates for federal workers, military personnel, medical personnel and the work force of some businesses will help. They are a small fraction of the population, but in the delusional states they will help break through the anti-vax pressure."
"Addressing those who call [vaccine mandates] attacks on personal freedom, one doctor said that "people also have a right to be able to go to work and not get infected and not get sick and not die."
Hear, hear. We all have a duty to get vaccinated, except for the small fraction that medically can't do it."
Some previous discussion:
... Slashdot still exists?
Ironic given that I left Slashdot for HN so many years ago.
According to this source[1], RMS wrote:
> plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190913103059/https://medium.co...
Doesn't mean he's wrong.
He's not neurotypical.
Once you deal with it, he stops being problematic.
And the striking thing is Cassandra syndrome: Virtually everything he has said:
a) Proves right, decades later
b) Sounds crazy to most people, at the time
It may be a correct message, but him delivering it makes it DOA.
Now that we have an actual conspiracy involving the elites of the world in a child sex trafficking ring, the people previously pushing the pizza gate narrative are nowhere to be found. They can't accept that their guy was Epstein's best friend for decades and the second most cited name in the files (after Epstein himself).
Haven't seen a single republican distance themselves from Trump because of his deep ties with Epstein.
In this context, his comments tend to be:
a) Correct, if you read them precisely (which is how RMS writes -- precisely)
b) Horrible, if you read them with the subtext implied in mainstream culture (which is how people read what RMS writes)
That combination results in "with the terrorists" in 2001, "with Epstein" in 2026, and a lot of similar things in between.
Coincidentally, it's highly unlikely Minsky did anything wrong. All the people thrown under the bus by MIT were either the people who acted ethically and came forward or, like Minsky, were dead. All the people who did unethical things didn't come forward, and are in the Epstein files. Not all the MIT folks in the Epstein files did unethical things, but many presumably did....
The MIT transparency report is worth reading in the light of the release. MIT had most of that information about its faculty at the time.
Virginia Giuffre said that she had sex with Minsky when she was 17 and he was 73. I think no matter how you look at it (even if she was technically above the age of consent in the jurisdiction of Epstein's island), it is still wrong and he absolutely should have known that.
I am a big fan of Stallman's work and his views considering computer science and its role in society, but his views are not precise or correct in this matter.
This statement is factually false.
She said she was asked to offer herself for sex to Minsky. People inferred from this that sex happened, but Virginia did not say this. Read the full file.
Accounts from Minsky's wife say that Minsky declined. Accounts from Minsky's friends say he was very monogamous. No one close to the situation supports an account of Minsky having sex with Virginia Giuffre.
The natural next step should not have been to indict Minsky's reputation, but to ask Virginia Giuffre the natural follow-up: How did Minsky react when you made the offer?
The views he expressed re sexual assault were abhorrent
I have huge respect for RMS. Being this wrong once shows the bad way (we) men of a certain age were raised. The idea that sexual assault must involve violence or the threat of violence is old, out of date, and at one point RMS held it along with society at large
Times change, and as we get older we need to change with them.
I guess it is marginally relevant; it just seems odd to drop a marginally relevant link unaccompanied by further comment. Usually people seem to mention what brought it to mind, or which part they found particularly interesting.
Stallman predicting that a technical capability could be abused and then somebody eventually abusing it is not Cassandra syndrome, it's just threat modeling run amuck. It gets old after a while (I should know, I remember classic Slashdot lol). The actual question is whether his proposed cure(s) were worth the cost, and that has very much not been "proven right" (if anything, LLMs/agents are rapidly eroding some of the practical premises his arguments depended on, IMO)
As someone who also remembers classic Slashdot, it's staggering how many of the things Stallman was writing about back then came true. Software is centralized and subscription based, and largely not under the consumer's control. I fail to see how LLMs make any of these situations better, care to elaborate?
Is it really though? I'll grant that you might have a point with iOS/Android and things like banking apps (no problem with the apps existing, it's when there's no web-based alternative is where the real issue lies). But there's more (F)OSS code out in the wild then there's ever been, more (F)OSS alternatives to most major software, Steam runs on Linux, major companies like Google and Nintendo putting licensing notices where you can read them). Not to mention the rise of open source hardware, the whole makersphere, etc.
> I fail to see how LLMs make any of these situations better, care to elaborate?
By driving the cost of software to zero. I've had great success over the past year or so constructing a whole range of system software, the original "no driver for this printer" complaint Stallman had would be solved with an evening of Claude/Codex/etc usage now (and to prove my point, we just had someone crank out a Linux GPU driver for M4 Apple Silicon using LLMs)
E.g. the reaction to free software in the nineties was communist/anti-capitalist/idealist/unrealistic.
It was an extreme fringe movement.
Now, Linux powers every Android phone, most servers, most routers, and is probably more broadly adopted than all other operating systems, combined.
That it seems normal speaks volumes to his accomplishments.
> "I should know, I remember classic Slashdot"
It's still a fringe movement even now, at least the turbo fanatic, FSF disciple kind. It was normal companies like Google adopting Linux that drove adoption, not something Stallman did.
Oh, well, time to link stuff again, I guess:
(also I don't think Tourette's is fair to include in that set but whatever)
He might not have picked a good time and place to share his terminological views, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them per se.
That expresses an extreme obtuseness about human behavior and a lack of nuance. A 17 year old is a child.
Legally, a 17 year old may be a child in many jurisdictions, but that fact alone has little bearing on their appearance and maturity, so how is it relevant to the topic here? Had she been several months older at the time, would that have had any bearing on her interactions with Minsky, given her situation?
This expresses an extreme inability to properly communicate subtext, which is common for autistic individuals, or ones autism-adjacent.
Stallman's comments, if read logically like a computer, are generally strictly correct. Stallman's comments, if read inferentially like a human might, often imply abhorrent things.
This is called a miscommunication.
> The views he expressed re sexual assault were abhorrent
Hi, yes, I think we agree- I was using those terms because that was what the commenter above was claiming
That's not true. I understand the drive to categorize it as such, but if you look at the context of what he said, which is even mentioned in that article, you will realize that this is not a "definitional" issue or have anything to do with strict precision of terms.
That is a red herring that you are getting stuck on and using to defend him. I don't care about whether or not he thinks they are applying a word that he disagrees on the definition. I will cede that if you wish, because it is besides the point and not what he is actually arguing.
He (like you) is making the claim:
> Coincidentally, it's highly unlikely Minsky did anything wrong.
That is demonstrably an incorrect statemet. We may not a definitive morality that I can point to you and we both agree to the letter, but a 73 year old man should have the wisdom to recognize that sleeping with children is damaging to children even if they appear willing.
I will grant that Minsky's participation was probably not the most damaging thing in her life, but he chose to participate and he harmed her, contrary to what you and Stallman are claiming. It is unfortunate that we have many men (and women) who believe and like Stallman and Minsky. It shows that we need to address this and train ourselves better, so that everybody is on the same page when it comes to how we let children develop in our culture.
I can write "EA-3167" and "pedophilia" in an article 100 times. Congratulations! You're now associated with pedophilia. That's a classic smear campaign.
Unless someone can cite something Stallman specifically said or did which implicates him, I'm passing on this as part of a smear campaign. I will not accept:
- An article reporting on an article reporting on a misquote of Stallman
- Subtext you read into something he wrote (his flaw is he doesn't get subtext to what he writes)
There's infinite communications from him. He has no filter. Go on. Find something. If you can't, accept you're wrong. The alternative is that I'll accept you're being malicious.
https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-agai...
> “In 2006, Stallman published a controversial comment about the intention of pedophiles in The Netherlands to form a political party[1]. He wrote, I am skeptical of the claim that voluntary pedophilia harms children. People today don't think that a prepubertal human being—a child—is capable of understanding all the implications of sexual activity (in some cases this may be so even after puberty). So in widespread social opinion, the concept of “voluntary” does not apply.
In the same article, Stallman writes, [...] stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. This is not totally improper, it encompasses the immense diversity of beliefs about age of consent and morality across cultures.
As for laws, in the United States the criteria for determining age of consent and related issues differ across jurisdictions, some of them have raised the age of consent as recently as 2017 and 2019. Furthermore, the United States seems to have a double standard when it comes to these laws, since marriage of a child with an adult—even much older—is allowed under certain circumstances; we believe that this seriously disregards children's wellbeing in favor of some other “convenience.” Lastly, it may be surprising to some that age of consent in the US is 16 in 34 States”
Then the actual “defense of Stallman” bit is that he changed his mind or at least said he did… thirteen years later:
Whatever the reasoning that led Stallman to write those statements, the fact is that later he changed his mind:
> “14 September 2019 (Sex between an adult and a child is wrong)
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.”
Note the date and remember this VERY late “change of heart” coincidentally took place one month after Epstein died and became the current sensation he remains.
That’s from an attempt defend him, and ironically the site is full of documentation of the hideous things he says and believes.
For reference, an original source is something like:
https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...
The so-called "article" is a one-line comment on a post in what looks like a 2006-era Twitter-style feed. I think one would see a similar amount of crazy from virtually anyone posting this much, without a filter.
Read it.
Do you believe Stallman is a pedophile on the basis of this comment?
I do not.
I've seen similar comments in academic texts, in the context of cultures where this happened and was acceptable (e.g. Greek pederasty in ancient Athens). From what I know of Stallman's communication style, I read this comment in a similar, if much less informed, light. He's making an incorrect but academic point, poorly.
THE EXACT SAME QUOTE on the page you linked. I get it. Do yourself a favor and stop making excuses for him, you can still support the points he makes about FOSS without defending the rest or the man himself. His problem isn't communication style it's the content of what he says that's a problem.
I also never said "Stallman is a pedophile" I said he supports pedophilia. That comment alone, never mind the others, is more than enough to make that claim. Have a lovely weekend.