[Discuss] RMS

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 23 Sep 2019 12:55:13 -0400
Seth Gordon <sethg at ropine.com> wrote:

> The English word “cancer” can refer to anything from a skin tumor
> that a doctor can remove as an outpatient procedure, to metastatic
> pancreatic cancer that is certain to kill you within six months. But
> both of these things are still cancer. 

OK, let's go with that analogy. Can you imagine if every cancer,
including a minor skin tumor, were treated with heavy chemotherapy and
radiation?

That's what we have when we define everything from taking a leak in a
woods where, unknown to you, a child was watching, to jumping out from
behind bushes and raping an 80 year old woman, are defined as sex
crimes, and the sheep like public is inclined to having a zero
tolerance policy on sex crimes. There are plenty of people forever on
the sex offender registry whose crime was having sex with their 1 year
younger than them girlfriend.

Doctors are smart enough to see beyond the broad "cancer" label and
remediate appropriately. The voting public and those they vote into
office are not.

If you're the father of a teen age boy, you might want to explain this
to him early and often. Imagine if 20 years from now, your son is
legally prevented from accompanying his child at the school bus stop,
and he's even legally prevented from intervening if he sees his child
talking to a known repeat pedophile at the bus station, because your
son is on the sex registry, because 20 years ago, with the complete
support of everyone including the two families, he had sex with his
girlfriend, who was three months younger than he. All because 1) An
incredibly broad range of activities fall under one label, and 2) the
dumb ass public cannot perceive distinctions within the label and the
vote-hungry politicians legislate accordingly.

My response has nothing to do with the Stallman situation, it's simply
a response to the assertion that "cancer" covers a broad spectrum, and
the all too often one-to-one correspondence of such a spectrum name to
a single remediation.

SteveT