Richard Stallman

Again, what does "cancel culture" mean? Can you define it in a way which isn't politically biased against left-leaning viewpoints from the get-go?

Obama's caution about a "‘circular firing squad’, where you start shooting at your allies because one of them has strayed from purity on the issues" seems little different than "Life of Brian's" caution about doctrinaire differences in opposing the Romans - certainly not some caution about a new sort of cancel culture! And how much might come from Obama wanting to deflect criticism about his support for using US military power - just how many drone strikes did he order? - or handling of the Central American refugee crisis at the southern border?

Do you think Chomsky is correct about everything? I don't agree with him about the creator of 'email' either. I certainly disagree with many of his co-signers.

Changing "blacklist" or "master" is not worthwhile to debate. The effort is simple, the benefits small (but non-zero), so do it ... and realize that it's a weak-sauce paper-thin covering over much harder and more intractable problems. It's a "recycle your paper cups while companies kill rivers" sort of issue.

Concerning 'Philosophy professors', if someone makes a philosophical argument that there are only males and females, and nothing else - clearly contrary to scientific evidence and cultural experience - then why don't they deserve censure the same way they would for making the philosophical argument that the Earth is flat?…

Richard Stallman has been way undervalued, as a whole, in the last couple of decades. He has predicted this and other similar situations and worked his entire career to try to prevent the "tyranny of software companies", or however he phrases it.

If you don't know who he is, or haven't read up on him recently, please check him out.

He gave a talk at my college back in 2007/2008 that I went to, talking about quants and investment algorithms, and how they had directly contributed to the economic collapse. He made the point that, because all of the algorithms were closed source and not open to public review, they were dependent on the market understanding of the individuals who wrote the algorithms. Given the nature of humanity, many of those individuals likely had faulty or incomplete understanding of the markets, and therefore the algorithms also misunderstood the markets. Free (open sourced) code could have prevented that.

Well, i'm not sure I agree with his conclusions about that. I asked him about his thoughts on the recursive effect the algorithms would have on the market (the algorithms were so prevalent that they basically were the market makers, thus changing the market itself to reflect their faulty assumptions about the market before their existence).

He said it was an excellent question, didn't have an answer, and offered me an internship to work on that problem under his direction. I declined for various reasons.

anyways, he was correct about a lot of…

I had emailed stallman about this.

My email:

Greetings Dr. Stallman,

First of all, Happy 40th GNUversary!

I was not able to attend the GNU40 meeting in Switzerland, but I have
heard rumours that you have announced that you have some form of
cancer.

Can you give me some more information about this? And is the cancer
manageable?

I hope you are around for many more years.

---
tusharhero

Stallman's reply:

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I'm glad you are concerned about my well being.
At the same time, I am disappointed that people are spreading
incomplete rumors, instead of passing along all of what I said about this.
That is going to waste a lot of people's time and concern, just as it
has done with you.

My prognosis is good. I can expect to live many more years.

--
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

I hadn't heard of anything he had said on the subject before your comment, so I did a quick search. I don't know if the following is about but one of many problematic views on the subject, or if after this change of mind his views on sex are all fine, but worth knowing that at least on one issue his opinion has improved:

> "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."

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_2019_(Sex_between_an_adult_and_a_child_is_wrong)

(I do agree with your comment overall, anyway.)

RMS' entire post about gender pronouns is weird [1]

> There are those who claim that we have an obligation to refer to someone using whatever pronouns person might choose. I disagree with that position, on grounds of principle and grounds of practice. I think we should respect other people's gender identification, but which pronouns we use for any particular gender identification is a separate matter — a matter of grammar. We do not owe it to anyone to change our grammar according to per wishes.

That's four lines after, saying we should all switch to his personal favourite pronouns:

> Use the elegant gender-neutral pronouns "person", "per" and "pers".

I'd be interested to her when RSM would not use someone's preferred pronoun and instead call them a 'perse'?

1: https://www.stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html

Yes, when you scope a movement to just the thing it's about, you'll get a greater intersection of people who can agree on those ideals (i.e. actual intersectionality). If you check https://stallman.org/ you'll see that he's very opinionated on politics, probably moreso than almost all people (he has multiple things he writes about across the world every single day going back decades and maintains a list of assorted topics that mostly have nothing to do with software where he thinks we should change the law[0]. He's encouraged many boycotts over the years, and goes way further than most people to stick to them), but he wisely kept that movement focused on the thing it was supposed to be about, and in doing so was able to actually accomplish something.

[0] https://stallman.org/there-ought-to-be-a-law.html