Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT

Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by vkou on Monday September 16, 2019 @08:43PM (#20990048)

It has been my experience that the people who most loudly defend rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of reprehensible ideas are often not interested in rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of how, say, their right to speech or, say, liberty should be restricted.

It's an odd twist of irony. Everyone seems to be able to be rational, intellectual, and level-headed, when the issue they are debating does not personally affect them.

Edit: Judging by the karmic sentiment, we are probably unable to have a rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of such a topic. Pity.

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by esotericn on Monday September 16, 2019 @08:44PM (#20990059)

I don't really have an opinion on this, but I found your sentence interesting:

> rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of how, say, their right to speech should be restricted

Isn't that a contradiction in and of itself?

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by vkou on Monday September 16, 2019 @08:45PM (#20990065)

Only from the perspective of one of the two sides in the debate.

The other side thinks that it's perfectly good and proper to not have a rational, intellectual, level-headed discussion of reprehensible topics, and would rather the first side not pull them into it.

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by partialrecall on Monday September 16, 2019 @08:52PM (#20990091)

Are you referring to a particular debate, or debates in general? If the later, I strongly disagree. There are many debates in which both sides argue rationally in good faith.

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by meowface on Monday September 16, 2019 @08:57PM (#20990122)

Your comment is kind of confusing and ambiguous. Could you give an example of what you're referring to? I think any downvotes are probably more due to the crypticness than anything else.

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Re:Richard Stallman resigns from CSAIL at MIT by vkou on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @12:33PM (#20997146)

The new RMS thread is a poster child of this. His supporters do not seem particularly interested in a rationed debate about whether or not someone who is bad at public speaking should continue to be employed after being bad at public speaking. Instead, they are busy accusing their opponents of witch-hunting, and of being SJWs.

Odd, that.

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