@saxnot @dvdl @malin Since the instance you're on looks like the sort where someone might say this unironically...
The idea of "mens rea" or "guilty mind" is one of two elements of a crime: "mens rea" the "guilty mind" or "acus rea", or "guilty act", the actual crime being committed. Often this is called "Intent".
This is an important concept because people should only be punished for actions they intended to take. Chaos theory has been described as a butterfly flapping its wings causing a tornado, if we take the same concept and apply it to a breath of air then you could suddenly punish people for breathing despite that act not being intended to cause any harm and not reasonably being expected to cause any harm.
There's a number of stories about people who visit foreign lands (or science fiction stories about people who visit alien planets) who think they're in a paradise until they accidentally commit a crime and are suddenly on the hook for a disproportionate sentence for something they didn't even intend to do.
I bring up the concept of mens rea because that's pertinent to what RMS said: If you're being deceived and think that some girl likes you, then it turns out later that without your intent or knowledge the girl was actually being coerced to convincingly pretend that she liked you, you shouldn't be responsible for something you never had any intention to do. It's different if someone could prove you knew the woman was being coerced, but that's fundamentally important.
As for your other point, it's true that all freedoms need to be applied to a balancing test. Even a country like the United States with some of the strictest free speech protections on the planet has limitations to that speech in the case of things like fraud, libel, deceptive advertising, lying to courts, and so on, and that's because you can use your rights to cause harm to someone else's rights.
What you said is sometimes true -- we need to protect groups of people without holding the individual as a divine concept. If we worshipped individual rights to the exclusion of group rights, then it would be hard to justify law and order at all, since you could argue that any enforcement of collective norms upon the individual by a government of the majority would automatically be an infringement of that individual's rights. On the other hand, the opposite is also true. We cannot hold the group as a divine concept either. If you did, then it would be justifiable for example in any country that was predominantly white to cause harm to any ethnic group that was not white as whites are the majority, and it would be justifiable for heterosexual cisgendered individuals to harm gay or trans people because they are the majority everywhere by a massive margin.
Hence the balancing test being a necessary approach. We need to look at the balance of harms and determine how we protect everyone to the maximum degree while causing the least harm to people in the process of protecting others.
For me, what we have here is the freedom to express an unpopular political opinion vs. the freedom to not be exposed to an unpopular political opinion. On the balance, this is such an overweighted test it is pretty much textbook. Only the worst authoritarian regimes on the planet would punish someone with a virtual life sentence for expressing an unpopular opinion just because someone more politically powerful doesn't want to hear that opinion.
The idea of "mens rea" or "guilty mind" is one of two elements of a crime: "mens rea" the "guilty mind" or "acus rea", or "guilty act", the actual crime being committed. Often this is called "Intent".
This is an important concept because people should only be punished for actions they intended to take. Chaos theory has been described as a butterfly flapping its wings causing a tornado, if we take the same concept and apply it to a breath of air then you could suddenly punish people for breathing despite that act not being intended to cause any harm and not reasonably being expected to cause any harm.
There's a number of stories about people who visit foreign lands (or science fiction stories about people who visit alien planets) who think they're in a paradise until they accidentally commit a crime and are suddenly on the hook for a disproportionate sentence for something they didn't even intend to do.
I bring up the concept of mens rea because that's pertinent to what RMS said: If you're being deceived and think that some girl likes you, then it turns out later that without your intent or knowledge the girl was actually being coerced to convincingly pretend that she liked you, you shouldn't be responsible for something you never had any intention to do. It's different if someone could prove you knew the woman was being coerced, but that's fundamentally important.
As for your other point, it's true that all freedoms need to be applied to a balancing test. Even a country like the United States with some of the strictest free speech protections on the planet has limitations to that speech in the case of things like fraud, libel, deceptive advertising, lying to courts, and so on, and that's because you can use your rights to cause harm to someone else's rights.
What you said is sometimes true -- we need to protect groups of people without holding the individual as a divine concept. If we worshipped individual rights to the exclusion of group rights, then it would be hard to justify law and order at all, since you could argue that any enforcement of collective norms upon the individual by a government of the majority would automatically be an infringement of that individual's rights. On the other hand, the opposite is also true. We cannot hold the group as a divine concept either. If you did, then it would be justifiable for example in any country that was predominantly white to cause harm to any ethnic group that was not white as whites are the majority, and it would be justifiable for heterosexual cisgendered individuals to harm gay or trans people because they are the majority everywhere by a massive margin.
Hence the balancing test being a necessary approach. We need to look at the balance of harms and determine how we protect everyone to the maximum degree while causing the least harm to people in the process of protecting others.
For me, what we have here is the freedom to express an unpopular political opinion vs. the freedom to not be exposed to an unpopular political opinion. On the balance, this is such an overweighted test it is pretty much textbook. Only the worst authoritarian regimes on the planet would punish someone with a virtual life sentence for expressing an unpopular opinion just because someone more politically powerful doesn't want to hear that opinion.
@saxnot @dvdl @malin Not specifically, but unfortunately in the past year in particular I've seen a lot of people who ought to know better who support cancellations, and a quick run through the user list looked an awful lot like those sorts of people.
I say "ought to know better" because it wasn't that long ago that people we don't think of as "the good guys" were doing the exact same things. We know that people were being blacklisted for sympathizing with communism or socialism, for being gay or bisexual or trans. It was only 1997 that Ellen came out as gay on her show, and she faced a massive movement to cancel her for it from the religious right. Thankfully by then momentum was building and the people who didn't care she was gay or thought it was kind of cool ended up outnumbering the people who did and wanted her career ended for it.
I say "ought to know better" because it wasn't that long ago that people we don't think of as "the good guys" were doing the exact same things. We know that people were being blacklisted for sympathizing with communism or socialism, for being gay or bisexual or trans. It was only 1997 that Ellen came out as gay on her show, and she faced a massive movement to cancel her for it from the religious right. Thankfully by then momentum was building and the people who didn't care she was gay or thought it was kind of cool ended up outnumbering the people who did and wanted her career ended for it.
@saxnot @dvdl @malin Based on press coverage, it appears to me that this one thing was the justification for pushing RMS out of his position.
The whole "Racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic" thing without some serious evidence just sounds like the mantra used by bullies to force people they don't like out of positions pretty much every time. It's the same as accusing someone of being a satan worshipper or a witch or a child molester or a communist or a socialist previously. I've met people accused of those things, and they turned out to be categorically false.
It's been deeply disappointing seeing my generation that was heralded as bringing about a new era of niceness and positivity reverting to the exact same behaviors as our elders. The only thing that's changed is the words we use to attack the people we don't like, the methods are no different.
The whole "Racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic" thing without some serious evidence just sounds like the mantra used by bullies to force people they don't like out of positions pretty much every time. It's the same as accusing someone of being a satan worshipper or a witch or a child molester or a communist or a socialist previously. I've met people accused of those things, and they turned out to be categorically false.
It's been deeply disappointing seeing my generation that was heralded as bringing about a new era of niceness and positivity reverting to the exact same behaviors as our elders. The only thing that's changed is the words we use to attack the people we don't like, the methods are no different.
@saxnot @dvdl @malin What makes you deserving of your life's work?
Should someone arbitrarily put you on trial to take your life's work away from you because they don't like you? Would that be just?
Should the guy who created gnu and the free software movement, the guy who created the gpl, the guy who created the concept of free software as distinct from proprietary software be allowed to run the foundation he created for the advancement of free software? Well, that's quite the resume. We're only all running software he's either written or managed for decades, using the license he created, complied using his compiler suite. He's spent longer than most of us have been alive advancing the cause of free software. You want to take that away from him because he isn't nice?
Some day you're going to get old, and after a lifetime you will have built something. And you'll probably have some young punk come up and start challenging you. "Why do you deserve all the things you have?" and they won't understand the decades of sacrifices, of choosing B instead of A, the hours of work you put into building what you have.
Let me flip the script. What have you done to deserve to take him away from his life's work? Have you created software the entire planet relies on every day? Have you created a movement that fundamentally changed the world for the better? Have you sacrificed a fortune you could have made taking your skills to the proprietary market in pursuit of your ideals?
Should someone arbitrarily put you on trial to take your life's work away from you because they don't like you? Would that be just?
Should the guy who created gnu and the free software movement, the guy who created the gpl, the guy who created the concept of free software as distinct from proprietary software be allowed to run the foundation he created for the advancement of free software? Well, that's quite the resume. We're only all running software he's either written or managed for decades, using the license he created, complied using his compiler suite. He's spent longer than most of us have been alive advancing the cause of free software. You want to take that away from him because he isn't nice?
Some day you're going to get old, and after a lifetime you will have built something. And you'll probably have some young punk come up and start challenging you. "Why do you deserve all the things you have?" and they won't understand the decades of sacrifices, of choosing B instead of A, the hours of work you put into building what you have.
Let me flip the script. What have you done to deserve to take him away from his life's work? Have you created software the entire planet relies on every day? Have you created a movement that fundamentally changed the world for the better? Have you sacrificed a fortune you could have made taking your skills to the proprietary market in pursuit of your ideals?
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@saxnot @dvdl @malin The thing is, I'm the null position here. You're the one saying we need to cancel someone. I want to leave the guy alone and let him run his organization. You're advocating kicking him out.
I don't need to justify leaving someone alone. You need to justify intervening in his life.
I don't need to justify leaving someone alone. You need to justify intervening in his life.
@saxnot @dvdl @malin It isn't a detour, it's the heart of the thing.
The fundamental question here is about cancellation. It's about taking away a person's life work. It's about a punishment like a death sentence. If you want to murder a man, take away his reason to strive forward and you'll kill him as surely as a bullet to the head.
It isn't something to be done lightly. Not if you believe in justice.
Frankly, I don't care specifically about RMS. What I've said could be applied to any of the victims of cancellation.
I do, and have, and will continue to preach tolerance. Tolerance of people of all races, sexes, genders, sexual orientations, and tolerance of opinions we don't like. Tolerance of people we sort of think are jerks. You don't have to like them, you don't have to be friends of them or actively try to advance them, but you should tolerate them, and try to do no harm.
The world isn't, never has been, and never will be black and white. There will be innumerable shades of grey. I learned that growing up and watching the establishment of the time split the world into black and white, good vs. evil, freedom vs. terror. The more you learn about the individual stories, the more you learn the world is more complicated than that. We all wish the world could be simple and there could be good and evil and we just need to strive for good, but even the best good can become evil if we're not careful. I've watched as things I fundamentally agree with and believe are twisted or pushed far past their limit and they stop being something I can believe in, not because the concept changed, but because it became so draconian as to no longer mean the same thing it meant.
The fundamental question here is about cancellation. It's about taking away a person's life work. It's about a punishment like a death sentence. If you want to murder a man, take away his reason to strive forward and you'll kill him as surely as a bullet to the head.
It isn't something to be done lightly. Not if you believe in justice.
Frankly, I don't care specifically about RMS. What I've said could be applied to any of the victims of cancellation.
I do, and have, and will continue to preach tolerance. Tolerance of people of all races, sexes, genders, sexual orientations, and tolerance of opinions we don't like. Tolerance of people we sort of think are jerks. You don't have to like them, you don't have to be friends of them or actively try to advance them, but you should tolerate them, and try to do no harm.
The world isn't, never has been, and never will be black and white. There will be innumerable shades of grey. I learned that growing up and watching the establishment of the time split the world into black and white, good vs. evil, freedom vs. terror. The more you learn about the individual stories, the more you learn the world is more complicated than that. We all wish the world could be simple and there could be good and evil and we just need to strive for good, but even the best good can become evil if we're not careful. I've watched as things I fundamentally agree with and believe are twisted or pushed far past their limit and they stop being something I can believe in, not because the concept changed, but because it became so draconian as to no longer mean the same thing it meant.