But the coercion is very true, and hence my explicit callout. The question becomes did Minsky know that? Did he have any reason to suspect it?

Would they tell you?

I suggest you turn down any offers from billionaire convicted sex traffickers to go to their private island and meet young women then.

To be honest, you should probably turn down that sort of offer even if you're really good at telling how old people are.

For me, it would be too much like romancing my nieces, so I doubt I would take up the offer. In 30 years, who knows.

The crux of Stallman's argument is that in that case you would be unable to tell if the woman was lying because Epstein would have coerced her. You can't trust what she says.

However, where you and Stallman differ is that you're suggesting is that Minsky probably said yes and did sleep with the woman, and therefore broke the law.

And he shouldn't even be held morally wrong in this case either, if we assume that he did his due diligence and had what he viewed to be legal and consensual sex.

Rape is a crime that carries strict liability (under US law); ignorance is not a valid defence.

I don't know Minsky, I don't care about Minsky. All I'm really trying to do is re-inforce how and why Stallman's exploration is reasonable and rational. And, since it's brought up repeatedly in this exploration, why even the courts consider the spirit of the law alongside the letter of the law.

And Stallman being his usual amicable self he managed to do so in a way that a reaction was inevitable. If he wanted to do right by his friend he should have pointed out the flaws in the accusation, not to try to find some contorted way to argue that assuming it was true his friend should have walked without consequences.

Lessig falls into exactly the same trap, the fact that it is your friend who does something stupid or despicable does not make it any less so and in cases like that your friends would be better friends if they pointed this out to you. Preferably at a time that it would still make a difference.

Minsky may not be guilty of anything, and Stallman has shifted the debate over whether what he assumes Minsky has done should be legal or not (it shouldn't, let's be 100% clear on that) over whether or not it happened in the first place. And that is not helping at all.

I've stated elsewhere I wouldn't be interested, but (not speaking of the Epstein/Minsky debate for a moment) who am I to judge someone for their consensual activities?

I've seen this same argument like 4-5 times now in this thread.

I agree, being able to tell the difference between 17 and 18 is difficult, however a line must be drawn and it seems that 18 is that line.

If a girl is 18 years and 1 day old, vs a girl who is 17 and 364, is there a big difference? No, however that is where society has drawn this line.

If you use the argument 18 looks like 17, then eventually people may say 17 looks like 16, 16 looks like 15 etc and is a slippery slope.

Also chances are the girls in question were most likely sex trafficked (Modern day slave trade by another name).

It's quite rare that someone who did due dilligance and were criminally mislead to are charged for the crime.

The women in question (those in contact with Epstein) were, in no way, a representation of chattel slavery, which is (i presume) what you mean by "modern day slave trade". They were neither 'owned' nor 'inheritable', they were also (by all reports) paid. Slaves are not paid.

The phrase "Modern Day Slave Trade" as it refers to sex work denigrates those who were forced into slavery by men with guns, as well as the subset of women and men who chose to participate in the sex work economy willingly, whether full-time or on-the-side.

If morality is relative, only the legal framework is something that we can evaluate. Laws are crafted from the relative morality in that jurisdiction.

Ignoring those morals which are dependent on location, today's american applies the same set of morals against those on american soil as well as those on chinese soil.

They also apply those morals across time, such judgment on Ancient Greek behavior.

In the same fashion, we do not alter our moral judgement based on the jurisdiction the event takes place in. At least, we do not do so naturally, without additional effort. If this occurred in the open seas, would we hold our tongue? In a country where no such laws exist?

Legality is also hardly a strict mapping of morals to rules, with complete coverage of what we're trying to express -- if it were, there would be no need for judges; we could simply feed the evidence into an algorithm and spit out the result. And the arbitrary flip from legal to illegal, by virtue of a day, is hardly the concept we're trying to morally express through the law. But for practicality, a strict deadline was given.

Hell, what's your argument? That because morals are relative, there cannot be any discussion of it? Morality precedes the law; You don't make a moral judgement by referring to the law.

China is a great example where the morals are very different. Barring a few extra territorial laws (corruption, child prostitution for Americans), the jurisdictions are disjoint.

It is valid, and normal, to discuss morality of actions occurring in different places, without including the morality of that place itself; in this case, stallman isn’t talking about the remote island’s morals, but the morals of where he is and how it applies to events elsewhere