[Discuss] RMS

[John Abreau]

On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 8:04 PM Derek Martin <invalid at pizzashack.org> wrote:

>
> 1.  Questioning whether Minsky was actually guilty of _anything_,
>     UNDER THE LAW:  [....]  You're still entitled to think it's pretty
> creepy
>     though.
>
> 2. [....]  Statutory rape, for example, involves ONLY whether the
>    participants are beyond some age defined by law in their local
>    jurisdiction.  [....]
>

I'm still hung up on the part regarding Gregory Benford's witness account.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/

> Minsky is dead and can’t defend himself, but physicist/SF author
> Greg Benford, who I know and am inclined to trust, writes:
>
>>     Typical Crap Journalism from NYT:
>>
>>     “In a deposition unsealed this month, a woman testified that,
>>     as a teenager, she was told to have sex with Marvin Minsky,
>>     a pioneer in artificial intelligence, on Mr. Epstein’s island
>>     in the Virgin Islands. Mr. Minsky, who died in 2016 at 88, was
>>     a founder of the Media Lab in the mid-1980s.”
>>
>>     Note, never says what happened. If Marvin had done it, she would
>>     say so. I know; I was there. Minsky turned her down. Told me
>>     about it. She saw us talking and didn’t approach me.
~

If a woman comes on to a man and he says "No, thanks", and then does not
sleep with her, I don't see how that could be considered statutory rape on
his part, even if a third party had secretly coerced her into coming on to
him. And I don't see how telling her "no, thanks" and then not sleeping
with her is in any way creepy.

Of course, if Stallman was assuming Minsky did indeed sleep with the
victim, then Benford's testimony doesn't count in Stallman's favor. In that
case, Stallman's remarks could be considered creepy, but Minsky's turning
down the victim's approach would not be creepy.


-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
Email: abreauj at gmail.com / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0x920063C6
PGP-Key-Fingerprint A5AD 6BE1 FEFE 8E4F 5C23  C2D0 E885 E17C 9200 63C6