Renowned MIT Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Defends Epstein

The announcement of the Friday event does an injustice to Marvin Minsky:

“deceased AI ‘pioneer’ Marvin Minsky (who is accused of assaulting one of Epstein’s victims [2])”

The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X.

The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem. (See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jef...) Let’s presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).

The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.

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.

I’ve concluded from various examples of accusation inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term “sexual assault” in an accusation.

Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should describe it with a specific term that avoids moral vagueness about the nature of the criticism.

I often find myself thinking "Stallman was right!" when it comes to FOSS/privacy but there is a zero-percent chance I will ever defend Epstein's organized, systematic, and continuous abuse of children.

And shame on everyone who refers to him as a "disgraced financier" and his victims as "underage women."

This isn't a pearl-clutching instance of "think of the children" so much as a totally human response based on the litany of evidence that child abuse _ruins lives_ (Google 'Borderline Personality Disorder')

The complete Stallman emails cited by this repost-seeming link are at the above link.

Chafing at the idea of a legal age of consent was a favorite theme of his, per his earlier blog posts. In 2003, he said, “I think that everyone age 14 or above ought to take part in sex, though not indiscriminately. (Some people are ready earlier.)”

In 2006, he said it wouldn’t so bad for an adult man who worked for the Department of Homeland Security to have sex with a 14-year-old, as one government employee had allegedly propositioned: “Supposing she had voluntarily had sex with him, presuming that they used a condom and suitable contraception, it would have done no harm to either of them.”