Comment by dkersten | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dkersten | Hacker News Reader

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> questioning whether one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims was truly a victim or not.

I’ve never really been much of an RMS fan beyond admiration for what he has done for free software, but this is not what he said, at least according to his words as quoted in the post that initiated his cancellation[1]. I’ve pasted it from that post below [2]. The author of that post quoted this and then somehow inferred this [3]. How she (and everyone reading it thereafter) went from one line to the next from “she PRESENTED herself as willing” (not that she actually was willing), “assuming she was being COERCED by Epstein” somehow got reinterpreted as “she was entirely willing”.

Nothing RMS said stated he thought she wasn’t a victim, just that Minsky may not have known due to how Epstein coerced her to present herself.

But hey, the witch hunters got their burning.

[1] https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec2...

[2] 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.

[3] and then he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”.

I'm an RMS fan overall & think he's been fairly prophetic over the years even and respect him for sticking to his Free Software guns even when his views were unpopular, but these comments of his regarding the Epstein case were stupid. Yes, RMS is correct, the term "sexual assault" is perhaps too vague in this case–the legal term for sex with an underage person is "rape."

The context also make his comments strain credulity beyond the breaking point. "We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing." So this 73 year old man has a 17 year old approach him for sex on one of his patron's famous young-girl-harem flights, and I'm to understand that Minsky can't apply his AI-pioneering genius to figure out what's going on? Like, am I supposed to believe that he thought this girl young enough to be his granddaughter was just attracted to his magnetic personality? Give me a break.

> Minsky may not have known

Can you really look me in the screen and tell me you believe that? Again I say: give me a break.

I think it's better to call a spade a shovel here and concede that Minsky knew what he was doing. The fact is Stallman probably _didn't_ consider Minksy to have done anything wrong, and that's why he spoke up, and he was "cancelled" because it was pretty plain to everyone else that it _was_ wrong.

> because it was pretty plain to everyone else that it _was_ wrong.

I think you’re relying heavily on hindsight here. Yes it’s obvious to us looking in from the outside, but thinking back to any large events/conferences I’ve been at, especially if alcohol was involved, if somebody pretended to be willing because they were coerced to do so, I’m not sure it would have been so obvious and it’s easy to get caught up in the moment and not realise something was off.

But, that’s not the issue here. I don’t necessarily disagree with you and if the argument had stated what you said then it would have been ok to call RMS out.

But that’s not what happened, instead people twisted his words to make him out even worse. Nobody said “how can you believe that Minsky didn’t know something was wrong?” They said “you said she was willing and not a victim! How dare you!”, when he very clearly did not say that.

Fair enough regarding the word twisting.

So you figure 73 year old Minsky was on this plane or whatever, a highschooler offers to have sex with him and he just figured, what, she was caught up in the heat of passion? Maybe high schoolers offer to have sex with him in the normal course of his geriatric affairs?

I think you’re still not really being honest by trying to construct some scenario where Minsky could have not realized this young girl was either paid or ordered to have sex with him. Walk through it in your head and I defy you to come up with a scenario where Minsky could have not known this was a girl being either paid or ordered to have sex with him.

> a highschooler offers to have sex with him and he just figured, what, she was caught up in the heat of passion?

No, I meant he might have been caught up in the moment and ignore his better judgement. Also, I dunno about you, but I iften find it very dificult to tell the difference between a somewhat mature looking highscooler and someone who is 19 — 21 ish. Of course, I also don’t have sex with people in that age group, but my point is that its often very hard to tell if someone is late teens ir early twenties, so, again, in the heat of the moment, especially with alcohol or other substances, its not hard to think that she’s young, but not underage.

I’ve been in plenty of situations where there were “groupies” willing to sleep with much older guys because of fame or oerceuved money or power, where nothing nefarious was going on. So, no, I don’t think its a stretch at all that he could have thought this. I obviously have no idea what the reality was in thus particular situation; neither of us know what Minsky was or wasn’t thinking. I’ve also heard reports that withesses said he turned her down, but I can’t find anything to back that up now, so could be BS.

I’m not saying he’s innocent, he could have been completely willful in the situation, but I do not believe its a 100% clear that he’s definitely guilty either.

And in the context of RMS, I think what he said, in context, wasn’t particularly unreasonable. I think people should have challenged his views and had a conversation like we’re doing, instead if twisting his words to tell a false narrative because they don’t like him and wanted an excuse to attack him.

Agreed that people shouldn't have twisted his words, and agreed that his comments were, at least from a very technical read, not inappropriate.

To be honest you've changed my mind a bit here & I'm a bit more on RMS's side now. Agreed that a witch-hunt was in progress, which caught some "actual witches" and lots of others along the way.

But from an optics perspective, ffs why would you defend an Epstein associate & fellow-traveller at that point in time. I mean he's dead, he's not going to be hurt by the accusations at that point. ️ oh well.

I completely agree. RMS clearly has trouble knowing when something is or isn’t appropriate.

This is exactly what my issue is with many of his detractors. He's brave enough to state his opinions good and bad, and most people don't think beyond the first step of why or the context and continue the myth of it being a fact. It is depressing to see how this is not common news even here and people have every reason to dislike him for other reasons but they just wanted a reason to hate him.

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