It's not just neurodivergence, but its that he recognizes where he jabs people and pretty much admits he doesn't care. I once had this conversation about with with ESR and I remember him saying "RMS doesn't care about the 'social overhead' of most person to person interactions" and so he kind of does his own normative preferences, thinking that because he finds them ideal, that others shouldn't be offended....but then he seems offended by an infinitely long list of things, and his intellect seems to treat this asymmetry as one big blind spot.
I've listened to him be rude to former co-workers (one seemingly on the basis that she was a woman in a technical role) and an absolute one man clown rodeo at various trade show events.
His philosophical brilliance has always impressed me, his personal presence is like rotting offal in the sun. He doesn't get the benefit of being remembered for the former when he puts in so much effort to broadcast the latter.
> It's not just neurodivergence, but its that he recognizes where he jabs people and pretty much admits he doesn't care.
This is the thing for me. Being neuroatypical and unable to follow typical social cues, or having trouble expressing thoughtfulness or care is just a fact of life. But not being thoughtful and not caring is a choice.
It feels wrong to me to squeeze this tiny little "a" in between the words 'neuro' and 'typical' that flips the combined word's meaning around. The "a" usually goes at the front of a word so that you can tell immediately that it is being negated. I know that "a" is at the front of 'typical' but that's precisely the rub since it is actually in hiding instead of at the front of the combined word.
I would recommend looking into the less pleasant facts about others you consider philosophically brilliant, especially those further removed from us in time, before you denounce Richard Stallman as irredeemable to history.
"I would recommend looking into the less pleasant facts about others you consider philosophically brilliant, especially those further removed from us in time"
I do. How the hell do you think I figured it out for RMS? That same critical filtering can happen not just across time, but across various axes of context.
I didn't say that he's "irredeemable" but that the constant hagiographic/endless forgiveness for his chronic boorishness by his acolytes is annoying and serves no benefit.
> I would recommend looking into the less pleasant facts about others you consider philosophically brilliant, especially those further removed from us in time, before you denounce Richard Stallman as irredeemable to history.
This is illegible and does not seem to follow from the rest of this thread. I'm missing where the GP made a statement about a person's "philosophical brilliance." Did I miss something, or is this meant to infer something else?
I believed I was responding to a comment by the user "zeruch". I may not be using this comment section correctly.
>His philosophical brilliance has always impressed me, his personal presence is like rotting offal in the sun. He doesn't get the benefit of being remembered for the former when he puts in so much effort to broadcast the latter.
> His philosophical brilliance has always impressed me, his personal presence is like rotting offal in the sun. He doesn't get the benefit of being remembered for the former when he puts in so much effort to broadcast the latter.
Stallman seems to be in a similar vein as many of the 'great philosophers'. In that his ideas are challenging and difficult, much like himself. Making the man not one that you like all that much. The phenomenon reminds me of an often misinterpreted Edmond de Goncourt quote:
"Almost no one loves the genius until he or she is dead. But then we do, because now life is better."
The quote is not talking about how the genius made our lives better through their work/effort. Rather, how they were so insufferable.
As to Stallman, only time will tell if he will join the Great Conversation as a loud voice or not.
This checks out. I work with somebody on the spectrum and he's one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I've ever worked with. He doesn't always pick up on cues (though he is pretty good at it at this point), but he asks questions when he's not sure and just generally goes to great lengths to be considerate. Even more so than many people who aren't on the spectrum, in fact.
It was a direct statement he made to a colleague when we both were at VA Research and he berated her for some item related to how we were hosting the FSF at the time. That's where I first saw that he is gracious when it suits him and is otherwise generally a boor. He's done nothing since to change that view.
I also observed him trying to dress people down ad nauseum for a litany of inanities: telling me and several other staff from VA when it changed from VA Research to VA Linus that it should be "VA GNU/Linux" while the rest of us were trying to have a conversation with other people. Or the time he could barely control his irritation at an awards event when Linus Torvalds' toddler daughter upstaged him at an awards presentation. Or when he seemed clueless and/or ambivalent about any number of things that other people felt.
Yes, I have a strong negative opinion about RMS. No, it is not based on tertiary opinions, but direct or near-line observations.
I've listened to him be rude to former co-workers (one seemingly on the basis that she was a woman in a technical role) and an absolute one man clown rodeo at various trade show events.
His philosophical brilliance has always impressed me, his personal presence is like rotting offal in the sun. He doesn't get the benefit of being remembered for the former when he puts in so much effort to broadcast the latter.