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Comment by ixtli | Hacker News Reader

You're describing life in every single society that has ever existed. Do you really believe that any of these things don't happen today or that there's been a place where they didn't happen?

Further, all of your "options" sound amazing if what the person is doing is calling human trafficking victims "willing." It turns out that there is a difference between good and bad things. AND it's actually possible to determine which is which!

This notion that a social technology such as public opinion can be used in a negative way is not some sort of revelation. Weapons only have the morality of those that deploy them. Just as we must decry immoral use we must also celebrate moral use, otherwise we'll be living in a society where people can claim that victims of sexual violence were "willing."

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> what the person is doing is calling human trafficking victims "willing."

Please stop spreading this misinformation. As explained in this thread countless times, Stallman never called the victim "willing" -- he just said she might have been threatened into looking like she is.

I understand what you're saying and i'd like to point out, as i have done in other places, that I am a real fan of RMS and his works and have been for years. I'm not on a witch hunt here.

But.

I think its really important for people making this sort of argument to deal with the fact that public people who make public statements do not get to control how those things are taken. In much the same way that your production as an artist isn't entirely yours when you release it to the public, RMS' actions have consequences outside of what he may have meant. I for one dont think for a moment that he means to justify human trafficking. But what he did do what make a statement that can be taken as victim blaming. This is very, very dangerous and there should be consequences.

I still do not see how it can be taken as blaming the victim. Here's the exact quote from my inbox:

> 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.

It's pretty clear to me that he acknowledges the victim to be a victim, who has to deal with threats and coercion __in addition to__ sexual assault. He just argued that Minsky might not have known what was going on, which has nothing to do with what the victim actually felt.

The only people who interpreted this as victim-blaming are the media outlets who straight up lie in their headlines. Here's Vice:

> Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'

Stallman does have a responsibility to ensure he cannot be reasonably misinterpreted, but this headline is a blatant lie.

We cannot allow the norm of "people are responsible for all possible interpretations of what they said". This is completely untenable. The misquotes in Vice etc amount to extracting a single adjective phrase "entirely willing" and adding non-existing context around it. There is no protection against that kind of malicious misquoting.

In a world where wilful misinterpretation was not somehow weaponised I would agree with you, but that is not this world. This norm would leave every PR person completely at the mercy of any enemies they are unlucky enough to make.

I'm purely arguing against the idea of there being serious consequences for merely expressing an unpopular opinion.

And what im saying is that

1) there are material consequences for "expressing an unpopular opinion." some of which aren't up to the person expressing them. 2) those determining the consequences, such as the organizations that let RMS go, are and should be allowed the freedom to self-govern in this way. they are well within their right to refuse to be associated with people who say these things.

Yes, and I'm arguing that a rational mature society should be capable of allowing people to express their opinions and then engaging with them if their opinion is perceived as wrong or incorrect. If, after a reasonable discussion in which everyone is able to clarify their thoughts and opinions, they are still deemed to be too extreme (and I mean genuinely extreme, not simply contrarian) then they can cut ties.

But that isn't what is happening. There is no reasonable discussion. There isn't even any attempt to understand the complexity and nuance of a situation. It's simply: you're gone. It's mob politics 101 and anyone familiar with political history has seen it time and time again.

The main consequence of this mentality will be that organizations like MIT will be filled with yes-men/women and those that toe the intellectual line. And subsequently the real losers will be society and MIT.

What about a harmful one? What if the CEO of a company went around the office telling anyone that’ll listen about how women are just dumber than men and really they should stay in the kitchen. I sure hope there would be consequences.

So they are arguing for an logical improvement upon the way things work as opposed to your desire to keep things at the status quo.

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