> I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.
2013: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-nov-feb.html#04_Janua...
> There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
Wading in with commentary on the Epstein case with those quotes on record is simply not a good look.
Also he was making the statements in the context of having read this article from the Guardian which says petty much the same thing:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jan/03/paedophilia-...
From a scientific perspective, the level of harm caused by sex with minors and even the classification of pedophilia is something we are still gathering evidence on. Does that mean it doesn't harm children - absolutely not, of course it's harmful. However, it's still fair to make the point that we don't have a scientific case for it yet.
There's a lot I don't agree with about Stallman, but I do appreciate his contributions to computing and freedom - and I certainly don't approve of this new trend towards social media mob justice.
That injustice of this social media mob justice can be seen in the fact that all Stallman's historical statements from many years, even ones that he has recanted, can be taken out of context and used against him.
Worse, it's completely without reason. I mean there were a group of US prosecutors that characterized Epstein's child victims as prostitutes to justify releasing him so that he could continue raping children. Why are we going after MIT scientists instead of those prosecutors and Epstien's associates. I think the reason is because there was a popular NY Times article that focused on MIT rather than the US prosecution service and Epstein's rich powerful friends like Trump and Clinton. These mob events aren't based on reflection, they're based on whim and whatever the media (consisting of companies some of which are owned by Epstein cohorts) and some random influencers on twitter are saying.
To be fair to his critics, he only said that two days ago, which is after the CSAIL mailing list postings were made public.
> Why are we going after MIT scientists instead of those prosecutors and Epstien's associates.
I'd hope we go after both.
The implication here seems to be that just because he thinks there is no harm he is endorsing it as ok, that is getting dangerously close to straw-man territory.
Seems sort of hypocritical to me that people who seem to be arguing for the freedom of intellectual debate do the exact opposite if facts don't line up in their favor.
"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing."
