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  • Also pretty darn hard to find a Richard Stallman fanfiction.

    sigh - Cracks open Notepad.

  • edited September 2019

    I looked through the leaked emails. I didn't feel like reading them slowly and carefully, so I might have missed something.

    The gist of the notes seems to be Stallman defending his late friend, Marvin Minsky. People have been accusing Minsky of sexually assaulting a seventeen-year-old girl. Stallman points out that the teenager in question didn't say that she actually had sex with Minsky. She said she was directed to have sex with Minsky. Some of the witnesses present said that Minsky turned her down.

    Furthermore, he points out that sexual assault implies violence. If any illegal sex between Minsky and the teenager actually did take place, violence wasn't involved. The girl in question would have been a willing consenting participant. Note that if a crime had taken place, which remains an unresolved question, it wouldn't have been rape with violence; it would have been statutory rape. Minsky, if guilty, would have had sex with a seventeen-year-old in a jurisdiction in which the age of consent was eighteen.

    This appeared to have annoyed Stallman's correspondent who was in a burn-the-heretics mode rather than in a let-us-reason-together mode. Stallman was mainly concerned with defending the memory of his friend. His corresponded was mainly concerned with purifying the taint that had polluted the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    In my opinion, Stallman's points in the emails are valid. It's fair to point out that the girl in question never said that she actually had sex with Minsky. It's fair to point out that the alleged sex had never been proven to actually have happened. It's fair to point out that if the sex actually had happened, underage sex with a seventeen-year-old is a much less serious crime than violent rape. His correspondent -- and presumably the reporters who have been citing these emails without careful explanation of their context and content -- was in no mood to read any of this.

    Now, aside from the emails, Stallman is accused of making MIT an uncomfortable environment for female students. By all accounts, Stallman is an aging nerd. By all accounts, he is also an aging hippie. He appears to be somewhat anti-capitalist, pro free love, and have a strong "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" bent. In short, he is an old techno-hippie. He appears to be socially awkward and fervently support ideals that have never been mainstream but that are especially out of fashion right now. He probably did make the environment uncomfortable.

    In summary, Stallman has been driven out because he is an old creeper who is out of step with the current academic environment.

  • Bill, I've followed this reasonably closely and almost everything you wrote is incorrect.

    @Bill said:
    In my opinion, Stallman's points in the emails are valid. It's fair to point out that the girl in question never said that she actually had sex with Minsky. It's fair to point out that the alleged sex had never been proven to actually have happened.

    RMS doesn't make those points. His only arguments were premised on the assumption that they had sex.

    Stallman's correspondent who was in a burn-the-heretics mode

    Nothing like that is in the emails. The harshest things said to him are pretty much "let's listen to the victim" and "when this gets out you're going to sound insensitive".

    In summary, Stallman has been driven out because he is an old creeper

    The dude wasn't writing code or doing research or teaching classes. His gig was basically leading the FSF and giving speeches and inspiring people and whatnot. Being a creeper who makes women uncomfortable is reasonable grounds for losing that position.

  • @eod said:

    Also pretty darn hard to find a Richard Stallman fanfiction.

    sigh - Cracks open Notepad.

    Use vi, it's what he would have wanted.

  • Unfortunately, the format the emails are in make them difficult to quote. Pages 19 and 20 of the emails looks like a burn-the-heretics mode to me. Also, see the statement saying debating the definitions of rape and sexual assault isn't productive. Given the accusations against Minsky and Stallman's intent to defend his late friend, it certainly is productive, obviously so. Assuming that Minsky really did commit a crime, there is a huge difference between being a violent pedophile rapist and being an old man who had the lapse in judgment of having sex with barely illegal jailbait. Both are crimes, but the severity of the crimes differs. Someone saying that such a point isn't "productive" is trying to focus the discussion into just one direction, presumably that mentioned in pages 19 and 20.

    RMS doesn't make those points. His only arguments were premised on the assumption that they had sex.

    The redaction of names and the nested quotes lead to confusion. It's possible that Stallman didn't say those things, but someone in the email thread certainly did, and Stallman made his comments in that context.

  • @fenomas said:
    @eod said:

    Also pretty darn hard to find a Richard Stallman fanfiction.

    sigh - Cracks open Notepad.

    Use vi, it's what he would have wanted.

    Nice

  • edited September 2019

    @Bill said:
    Pages 19 and 20 of the emails looks like a burn-the-heretics mode to me.

    Those bits are attacking MIT officials who took money from and cultivated friendships with Epstein.

    Also, see the statement saying debating the definitions of rape and sexual assault isn't productive.

    It wasn't productive, and the rest of that comment proved similarly prophetic. You're imagining ulterior motives, but the parsimonious way to read that comment is "hey guys, the research lab mailing list is not the place to debate whether statutory rape is really rape or not", which is probably the sanest comment in the whole thread.

    It's possible that Stallman didn't say those things, but someone in the email thread certainly did, and Stallman made his comments in that context.

    It's also possible to read the emails carefully, and someone in this thread did that. And he is telling you: not only did Stallman not make the arguments you're claiming, he was plainly unaware of them when others brought them up.

  • Bill, scroll down to the early comment where someone dismisses Stallman's critic as a "mischling" - to general accord from other commenters - and think for a minute about where you get your media.

    We humans are what we eat, both in food and in information, and while I know you don't consider yourself a white nationalist you sure as fuck hang out with them.

  • edited September 2019

    Despite frequent backsliding, I've sworn off this stuff. Nevertheless, I'll try yet again. Consider the Lee Kwan Yew quote:

    In multiracial societies, you don't vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.

    I believe the late prime minister of Singapore was correct in his observation. He is backed by history.

    More non-white babies are now being born in the Unites States than white babies. To make the situation worse, the non-white babies are mostly being born to populations that show lower average mental ability than the white population. Closing this gap in mental ability has proven an intractable problem. No one had ever replicated any purported method of solving it.

    Economic productivity is closely linked to mental ability. This implies that as the white proportion of the population shrinks, white individuals, on average, will be shouldering an increasing economic burden supporting the welfare state. This is bound to increase inter-racial resentment on top of the inborn human suspicion of the Other. Worse, whites will be a market-dominant minority, which will increase the resentment even more.

    I conclude, and I would love to turn out to be wrong, that as today's children grow up and enter adulthood, one will see an increase in race-based coalitions and bloc voting. One can already observe (one example, among many) the coalitions forming. One political party, whatever its name ends up being, will be the white party. The other party will be the non-white party. Leftist whites, for lack of a better term, will continue to join the non-white party for a while, but most of them will eventually find it an unwelcoming place.

    It remains to be seen with which party Asians and Jews ultimately align. Right now, they appear to be joining that non-white party. That might change, however, if the United States quits bribing Asians to declare themselves oppressed minorities. In some places, including California and New York City, we are already seeing anti-Asian resentment from blacks and Hispanics.

    In any event, I predict things will get uglier than they already are. At the very least, I expect more riots, more race-motivated murders, and more insane elections. Whites increasingly will vote as a bloc. Most will do so in self-defense, even if they hate their fellow coalition members. Like it or not, a significant fraction of those coalition members are going to be white nationalists, separatists, supremacists, etc. The number of white whateverists in U.S. society is going to grow. As the interracial resentments increase, it will be inevitable.

    Steve Sailer is no kind of white whateverist. He allows correspondence by them on his weblog. He is intellectually, morally, and strategically correct to do so. One must learn how one's inevitable allies think. One must do one's best to ameliorate their worst tendencies and correct their worst ideas. I'm grateful that persons like Steve Sailer -- brave, observant, and clear headed -- exist. Those who run away and refuse to sully themselves with association are accruing a short-term gain at the expense of a long-term loss.

  • that post reminds me of rudyard kipling

  • I'm pretty confused. Bill, what you wrote there was a set of emotional arguments justifying white nationalist positions. Nothing you said is falsifiable, none of it has any persuasive power to someone who doesn't already agree with it You get that, right? Talking about e.g. the dangers of minorities voting as a bloc only makes sense to someone who who already sees minorities as threatening and homogeneous; the mind trick doesn't work on anyone else.

    Also: I humbly retract my suggestion that you don't consider yourself a white nationalist.

  • "To make the situation worse"

    Yikes. :-(

  • Speaking of "white whateverism", the Dilbert guy is currently on twitter threatening to sue someone who called him "the louis farrakhan of incel white nationalists" 😁

  • Heh. "Now I get why Dilbert didn't work in a law firm"

    For once a twitter thread that didn't make me want to run head-first into a tree.

  • I've been avoiding reading this thread, knowing that it would probably cause me distress.

    Fenomas, I'll be glad if none of what I think is going to happen comes to pass. I am not optimistic.

  • @filious said:
    that post reminds me of rudyard kipling

    Rudyard Kipling was an optimist.

  • I understand why you frame it that way, but what you wrote wasn't really predictions, so much as apologetics.

    E.g. on the "minorities voting as a bloc instead of for their own interest" thing. Have you considered that the political rise of white nationalism merges those two things into one?

    The comments on that one are funny. "It's awful how the woke SJWs have wronged this great man, this stalwart, blameless champion of all that is ... ok I just read his website and he's nuts"

  • @fenomas said:
    I understand why you frame it that way, but what you wrote wasn't really predictions, so much as apologetics.

    I disagree. The rise of a white party and a non-white party is a prediction. Increased bloc voting is a prediction. It should be noticeable in every election from here on out, increasing a little each cycle.

    Increased transfer payments is a prediction. More racial conflict, including riots, is a prediction. These won't be monotonically increasing, though. You will see them more in non-white administrations and less in white administrations.

    E.g. on the "minorities voting as a bloc instead of for their own interest" thing. Have you considered that the political rise of white nationalism merges those two things into one?

    Non-whites are being told that all of their problems are caused by whites. They are victims of racism or the historical legacy of slavery or the historical legacy of Jim Crow or something of the like. Mostly, their current problems have nothing to do with the purported causes. Nevertheless, if they seek to punish whites politically, whites increasingly will resist.

    Whites currently are being blamed for all of the ills in Western society. The increase in white nationalism is a symptom. Nevertheless, most whites aren't white nationalists. I doubt if most whites will become white nationalists, but I predict that they will increasingly vote in a bloc with white nationalists. As the relative number of whites decreases, whites will band together.

    This, of course, will lead to a feedback loop. How can it not?

    I do not believe multicultural societies are stable. I think history shows that they are not. Perhaps I'm wrong. We'll see.

  • edited October 2019

    @Bill said:
    I disagree. The rise of a white party and a non-white party is a prediction. Increased bloc voting is a prediction. It should be noticeable in every election from here on out, increasing a little each cycle.

    That's a narrative. Every election result correlates with race to some extent, and doesn't to some extent. There will never be an election where somebody couldn't find data to argue the claim you're making (or its reverse).

    I mean, if these are really predictions, try choosing one of your premises and phrasing it specifically enough that we could come back after the 2020 election and unambiguously say whether it happened. It's going to be harder than you think.

    I do not believe multicultural societies are stable.

    And I think you define "multicultural" partly as a function of stability. If you were presented with an American city that's 50/50 divided between, say, Italian immigrants and Polish immigrants, and they voted as blocks and fought over everything, you'd see a multicultural city that validates your premise. If they two groups got along, you'd see a harmonious bunch of white people who validate your premise.

    We'll see.

    I disagree here as well. It implies gaining new information, but that can't happen unless you have a premise that could be falsified by future events.

  • Sailer has written an article in which he summarizes a lot of his beliefs.

  • I'm not sure if this is so much a summary of his beliefs as much as a hit-sheet of the critiques that have bothered him.

    His summary doesn't always line up with his articles, that's for sure. Just his assertion that citizens should be treated the same regardless of race can be argued when you look at his articles about education or policy based on IQ.

    Also I love the bit asking people to google citizenism. I can barely remember an article that he has used the term... which would make a better point than trying to argue a one word phrase extrapolates to his impact.

    ...wait, is this still about Richard Stallman? I lost track.

  • tl;dr: "I, Steve Sailer, am definitely not a white nationalist, because I say I am not, and the fact that I sound like one and that my supporters all seem to be white nationalists is not something I will be commenting on at this time."

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