He may not have sought a clinical diagnosis, or if he does he may not want to disclose it, which is within his rights.

Nevertheless, he clearly and obviously displays so many symptoms from that spectrum that it would only be charitable to treat his communications under the assumptions that there's something there.

Even if he does, it in no way whatsoever excuses his awful behaviour, abuse and harassment. And it is cowardly and incredibly insulting to those who do suffer from it to claim it is.

It's not a carte blanche, but acting socially inappropriately is a hallmark of Autism-Spectrum disorders. I do believe that does excuse or at least re-frame certain behaviors that might be otherwise construed as "awful" or "abusive". Intent matters.

It really, really does not. I think you should try to first go find out what the behaviours actually are. It's not just having awkward opinions or butting into conversations.

Like, https://twitter.com/grok_/status/1375049417926053894

He also ate ”something” from his own foot, in public. I’m not saying his behavior is not highly inappropriate for an adult man. I simply refuse to attribute malice. He probably thought it was hilarious to lick the arm of someone he just met.

People have been telling him, over and over and over, for years, that his behaviour is not appropriate. He does little to nothing to change it.

It depends. I haven't heard of him licking anyone's arm again. He does change his mind if you can convince him. Otherwise, he is just going to be inappropriate in novel ways, because he can't tell what inappropriate is. Also, if he disagrees that something is inappropriate and you fail to make a convincing argument as to why it is, he will not change that behavior.

Short of calling it a diagnosis, those are all hallmarks of ASD, which you should recognize if you have ever dealt with such people in depth. If you haven't, consider moderating your judgement.

Look. Pretty much everyone who has interacted with him keeps saying, over and over, that he is an absolutely awful person, that he is abusive, and that people keep telling him this and he keeps not doing anything whatsoever to change.

I am going to choose to believe all of those people, and I am going to choose not to insult everyone suffering from ASD by claiming that that is how a person with ASD acts.

Because that is a very awful thing to claim.

> Pretty much everyone who has interacted with him keeps saying, over and over, that he is an absolutely awful person, that he is abusive, and that people keep telling him this and he keeps not doing anything whatsoever to change.

This is a brazenly dishonest statement. You obviously can't know "pretty much everyone" who has interacted with him, nor have all these people given a testimony for you to judge.

I don't personally like RMS either. I have no trouble believing that he is a difficult and sometimes hostile person to work with. What I do have a problem with is the rampant dishonesty exhibited by people who clearly have an agenda going for them, trying to take the man down. To that end, I demand "due process".

> I am going to choose to believe all of those people, and I am going to choose not to insult everyone suffering from ASD by claiming that that is how a person with ASD acts. Because that is a very awful thing to claim.

I have been precise in saying how a person with ASD might act and how that might be misinterpreted as "awful". If you misrepresent what I said as an excuse for anything RMS has ever done, including things that I may be unaware of, that's just more dishonesty on your part.

So are you saying that those who accuse rms of abusive and harassing behaviour are lying?

No, I'm accusing you specifically of being dishonest.

And what does that achieve? Who the fuck cares about me?

You should care.

You do know what hyperbole is, right.

As I've said before, RMS obviously has a flawed understanding of ASD and so his "self-undiagnosis" of it shouldn't be given a lot of weight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26537802

And I agree that nobody other than a professional personally evaluating him should diagnose him with ASD (or anything), but he displays obvious traits of BAP (broad autism phenotype, subclinical ASD) – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26537443 – and that's not a "diagnosis" because BAP is by definition not a diagnosis.

You can't diagnose someone else on the autism spectrum. Applying your bullshit armchair psychology to strangers is harmful to people who actually are on the spectrum.

My sister has Asperger's and is easily able to understand why children can't consent to sex and that it doesn't hurt anyone to use preferred pronouns. I don't see what Asperger's has to do with the issues RSM was/is ignorant about.

> My sister has Asperger's and is easily able to understand [...]. I don't see what Asperger's has to do with the issues RSM was/is ignorant about.

Exactly. And regardless, his (willful) non-understanding makes him a terrible leader, a terrible spokesperson.

Also, even if he did, implying that it is ok to be abusive or a sexual harasser because of it is not just absolutely wrong, but a massive, massive insult to all people with autism.

This is spot on, even though predictably and depressingly you've been downvoted to hell.

Autism does not excuse sexual harassment. Pretending it does is a complete ableist trope. As you say, it's a disservice to everybody with disabilities who have learnt, as necessary, to not sexually harass others.

If I crack a bad joke due to my social ineptness, you may call that sexual harassment. However, due to my social ineptness, I will simply reject your definition of sexual harassment and insist that I was just making a harmless joke.

Perhaps some people with different expressions of that "disability" have the capacity to "learn" that they're "wrong". I don't. To suggest that I should have that capacity because others do is... ableist, I guess?

That is not a thing.

It is a thing.

QED

It‘s not okay to say they are abusive. You wouldn‘t call a child abusive if it shouts out some words that it doesn‘t understand.

>You wouldn‘t call a child abusive if it shouts out some words that it doesn‘t understand.

Are you implying that Richard Stallman is so cognitively impaired that he literally cannot comprehend the meaning of the language he uses, or control his behavior? That he has the mind of a child?

If that's the case, he should be assigned a legal guardian, not given a position of leadership and role as spokesman for the FSF.

>But for some reason people online can't stop themselves from diagnosing him with it.

Doing so makes it easier to excuse Stallman's behavior and demonize his critics by implying their only motivation is hatred of conventionally unattractive and neurodivergent people - an argument designed to strongly resonate emotionally with the tech community and serve as a thought terminating cliche.

It's ironically exactly the sort of bad faith strategy they constantly accuse "the SJWs" of partaking in.