It’s the typical problem of judging past people by todays standards. If Webb had been some kind of exceptional raging bigot for his time that’d be one thing but he wasn’t.
The idea that all human beings should be treated with dignity regardless of race, creed, or things like sexual orientation is an exceptionally recent modern idea… at least as a mainstream attitude. You can find people in the past who held it but it was very much a fringe idea until the last 50 years at best.
Historically almost all humans tended to think the people in their tribe represent the Platonic ideal of a perfect human and everyone else is to varying degrees inferior or weird or evil. If we were bugs God would have an exoskeleton.
If you read the article, you will find that the allegations against Webb were based on a mistaken identification. The odd revelation in the story is that when a physicist made this known, those objecting to the name did not withdraw their objections but if anything raised the volume. And they went looking for information to discredit the physicist.
There is nothing odd about this. The purpose of attacking Webb and the telescope is to mine controversy and social status out of other people and other accomplishments. This is the MO of culture war activists.
By being publicly rebuked and told they were wrong, the attackers were embarrassed and therefore needed to double down to continue their gambit.
Right or wrong has little to do with it, it only supplies the pretense.
Once you understand this, culture war makes a lot more sense. There is no objective wrong being righted. There are only ever more new grievances to be invented to continue the zero-sum racket.
People doing unsavoury things to get attention is one thing, but that I find odd how serious it's taken. Some may be "media whoring" or (ab)using the controversy to fight out personal grievances, but overwhelming majority of people and organisations supporting this are undoubtedly well-intentioned decent honest folk just wanting to do the right thing.
When an argument about history accuracy is countered with "you are marginalizing a black queer junior scientist" – as seems to be happening here – then how is this person not eye-rolled out of the conversation? How can you possibly take someone like that serious? Even if we assume their position is the historically correct one here, these kind of statements are exceedingly toxic and have no place in any serious good-faith conversation.
It’s those magic words “I am an XYZ…” that prevent any eyes from rolling. Those words provide an untouchability and radioactivity around the speaker that we have yet to integrate into modern discourse. As OP said, the good faith nature of argument is turned on it’s head by identity, not merit, based logic.
I disagree with cynicism of the OP however. Many people are just tied up in a movement, without a conniving pathos driving their support. If you look at the historical context identity arguments arrive from, it is very much reactionary to past oppression. And society tolerates reactionary swings for only so long before seeking homeostasis. It is possible (likely, even) that the junior professor behind the vitriol is doubling down due to self preservation. However, I don’t think her supporters are as interested in her self interest so much as they are interested in supporting the movement as a whole. She’s more or less an ideological soldier; yes she may have violated her enemies in atrocious ways, but she is fighting for home team, and thusly retains support regardless of abuse of basic logic.
Hopefully we out grow this phase soon because the ignorance inherent in that support does seem culturally toxic.
«Several prominent astrophysicists in interviews supported Dr. Oluseyi but declined to talk publicly. “People err on the side of prudence, which is to say they don’t speak up,” Dr. Gates noted.»
Not so different from what happened in those bad old days, only the acceptable targets have changed.
It’s unfair to lump in all activists with dishonorable, lying ones. There will always be parasites who glob onto any movement purely for the status, but that shouldn’t alone discredit the movement.
Not until these supposed "good activists" loudly and vociferously throw these toxic people out, and under the bus (and very publicly). Until that happens, they are mucking around in the same mud as the pigs, which makes them indistinguishable.
I've heard a number of Christians talk about how many of them dislike people like Pat Robertson. Why don't they speak up? Sometimes they do, but they don't have media empires.
Lunatics and fanatics and grifters are always the loudest and their messages have the highest virality. They maximize engagement.
After all, here we are talking about them. We're not talking about the sane people.
> I've heard a number of Christians talk about how many of them dislike people like Pat Robertson. Why don't they speak up?
Couldn't tell you, I'm not a religious person. But I agree that these "warriors" for social justice are grifters just like the Pat Robertson's of the world.
... and just like LibsOfTikTok and Tim Poole and all the rest of those kind.
They're all professional trolls that farm controversy for money. They've always existed but social media has just opened up the professional troll career to a lot more independent entrants.
Why is “good activists” in quotes when the entire NYT article is about these good activists (and indeed, the very act of getting such an article published in the NYT is as close to “throwing them out” as we have in our society)..
How does it go? Silence is violence or something? They didn't call it out from day one, then the purity test they would apply to others applies to them.
It sucks for people who sincerely want to endeavor for good, but I don't see any of that happening in the culture war sphere. The entire thing runs on invented grievances, word games, abusive power plays and historical original sin.
I also don't see any evidence that it's actually helping the people that activists invariably speak on behalf of.
A movement doesn't have to consist of mostly dishonorable liars to be invalid. It can simply be based on terminally bad epistemology. Like the idea that the only reason people would disagree is because they are privileged. It creates self reinforcing loops that become allergic to facts.
(Funny example: the idea of racial reparations recently popped up again in the Netherlands... except... the country already paid reparations when Suriname became independent.)
>“The entire thing runs on invented grievances, word games, abusive power plays and historical original sin.”
You’re talking about modern conservative ideology here, right? Fits Trump and DeSantis to a perfect T. I agree, it’s based on terminally bad epistemology that exists to justify existing biases and keep us fighting with each other instead of taking on the wealthy oligarchs who “own” everything.
There were agencies at the time that did not cooperate with the lavender scare[1]. Completely false to argue that no one treated gay people with dignity before modern times.
1. "The Hoey committee records also show that a small number of agency officials were initially not entirely forthcoming. Investigator James Thomas grew exasperated with John Shover, director of personnel at the National Labor Relations Board. "His attitude at the time," Thomas writes in a July 20 memorandum summarizing a telephone interview, "did not appear to be too cooperative." When Thomas proposed an in-person meeting to discuss two cases of homosexuality in the department, Shover balked. According to Thomas, "he more or less refused to receive me for this purpose and said rather bluntly: 'I am not going to let you see any of our files.'" This occasional resistance and the subtle variations of opinion evident in the committee’s records suggest that, at least at the start of the scare, each agency may have had its own nuanced stance toward homosexuality." https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/l...
> Completely false to argue that no one treated gay people with dignity before modern times.
They literally said the exact opposite, emphasis added:
> The idea that all human beings should be treated with dignity regardless of race, creed, or things like sexual orientation is an exceptionally recent modern idea… at least as a mainstream attitude. You can find people in the past who held it but it was very much a fringe idea until the last 50 years at best.
Ironic that the woman who seems to be the driving force behind a smear campaign also complains that the man she's smearing “is writing poorly researched articles that are basically hit pieces on me.”
Feels like the standard 'I will be so objectionable and obnoxious that people will stop fighting me just so I'll go away' move.
By these standards we shouldn't celebrate the NASA moon landings because the people who did this in the late 50's and 60's were mostly white men of which a good percentage were racist homophobes. I remember in the Navy there was a hushed rumor that one of our officers had been dismissed because he was caught wearing a dress. There were no women in the Navy and a black officer was a rarity. You'd better not be gay, because that was a dishonorable discharge. The thing about institutionalized discrimination is that you kind of have to go along with it if you want to have a career and then slowly try to change it, which is difficult, but half a century later we have. That is rightly be celebrated along with the Moon landings.
Those things you mentioned are indeed not worth celebrating. And you can still celebrate major historical achievements and not name new things after certain people.
I am pretty sure they were talking about the discrimination aspects that should not be celebrated, as they referred to the OP's "By these standards". Then adds "can still celebrate major historical achievements". So no, I do not believe they were saying we should not celebrate the moon landing, instead we should probably not make personal heroes out of people that may not have had great character that may have been a part of those great efforts.
> I am pretty sure they were talking about the discrimination aspects that should not be celebrated
Except no one is arguing that we should be celebrating discrimination. The original poster said, "By these standards we shouldn't celebrate the NASA moon landings because [NASA probably had racists back then]". He's not suggesting we should celebrate racism, he's suggesting we should celebrate the moon landings and acknowledge those who achieved it despite the racism. The person I replied to literally said, unqualified, that those things are not worth celebrating. Since the only thing the original post suggested we celebrate is the moon landing, the conclusion is obvious.
Yes, my point is precisely that you can celebrate one thing (moon landings) without celebrating other things (all those bad things the commenter listed that were closely associated with the moon landings).
If Webb's crime is working in a homophobic system without actively fighting against it, then all people working at NASA* during the moon landings should not have things named after them. Nor, presumably, should they be held up as examples to follow.
Stop naming things after people. We’re just going to find out later that they were secretly against Android-human marriage or w/e and everyone will get mad.
Or do what my university did for a sports hall and tack on a black athlete’s name to the racist’s name and call it a day.
> “We are deeply concerned by the implication that managers are not responsible for homophobia.”
So now you're no longer just responsible for your own prejudice and your own actions, but also responsible for other people's prejudice and other people's actions.
It's also funny that scientists are often quick to criticize non-experts for weighing in on their area of expertise, but seem comfortable claiming authoritative knowledge of the historical facts and ethical arguments in this case, while ignoring the judgment of actual historians.
> It's also funny that scientists are often quick to criticize non-experts for weighing in on their area of expertise, but seem comfortable claiming authoritative knowledge of the historical facts and ethical arguments in this case, while ignoring the judgment of actual historians.
These people are reprobates, regardless of whether they're scientists or not; being an erudite person sadly doesn't come with principles out of the box.
I realise you didn't mean scientists as a group, btw. I just think we need a politically neutral term for these people. Whether crazy woke or crazy alt-right, these people have a neurosis that manages to poison any discussion, and we need to deplatform the idiotic reprobates ASAP, on both sides of these discussions. All they do is "infuriate" the other side, and this just ends up in both sides being pushed deeper towards extremes/absolutes.
Also comments like "I don't care about the X canon/agenda" just means they don't care about the issue at all IMO. So what do they care about? Fuck knows. Maybe they're communal narcissist. Maybe they can't make a name for themselves so they go for contemporary low hanging fruit, it just happens to be the diversity issue currently (in the past this was witch trials). I think this is anything that fits into the category of heresy, and there's a lot of that going around[1].
I'm unsure if supporting reprobates makes you a reprobate by association. That might be a slippery slope, though, as certainly vulnerable people will try and cling to any support they can get (as a queer person, I find that understandable, and I also probably fit that category's before realising the mutual and raging bullshit flinging around theses discussions).
Anyway, I've kinda muddied my own points (by having too many probably), so this turned out a of an unintentional gishgallop. I just care about the issues discussed here, and wish people took them more seriously by taking them less personally.
I wonder which modern heroes will have their statues torn down by future generations.
I was watching Jackass the other day and they have a new disclaimer that it contains outdated social norms. I like this approach but at the same time, why does anybody need to be told this? Nobody is perfect and social norms change with time.
Why do people need to be told that we are celebrating achievements, and not political beliefs?
There is a severe deficit of autonomous thought in the modern US.
I might show my bias but: I think that social media makes it difficult to think for yourself. You're rewarded for going with the crowd, the crowd decides your opinions for you, and you take that mentality offline.
In 1,000 years humanity is going to look back on everyone alive today and think we are all backwards monsters for our conservative acceptance of the 40-hour work week, mistreatment of Earth's ecosystem, factory farming of animals, and society's dismissal of people who want to legally marry their computers.
"The vegans didn't take up arms against the oppressors? Silence is violence!"
If the definition constantly changes, no one gains the confidence to challenge the people enforcing the definition; they can change it at will to suit their needs, and revel in being hypocritical because they know there's no consequences to it. The demoralization takes hold that the system cannot be questioned or fought against, and any resistance fails.
Just as dishonesty can be used to tear down every statue of heroes from our past, even those who did nothing wrong, dishonesty can be used to glorify every villain who should be vilified. For example, statues of Confederacy “heroes” went up in the South in a racist backlash to rights that blacks were gaining in America. Those statues should be torn down, they exist as middle fingers to the Black community in those areas.
Where does one draw the line? I think the NYT article did it pretty well. Webb was not part of the efforts to remove homosexuals from NASA, indeed it was federal law at the time, and to expect him to be a radical activist is at total odds with his administrative post. He was progressive for his time and helped move society forward.
I've always found banking things after people to be kind of silly. Far prefer a name like HMS Formidable over USS Nimitz.
But should we name it after someone it's obvious what we're doing: removing the complexity of the individual to reference the aspects we desire. Suppose John Muir were a racist. Suppose he liked dogs and his eggs fried and writing poetry about unrequited love. His statue might have a plaque that references none of this.
And that's because we don't care about this fellow in his whole sense. That Muir is forgotten and irrelevant. He is useless to us.
But a fictional Muir who we invent based on this Muir - his soul removed and turned one dimensional - is what we'll remember.
The only danger, of course, is that people might mistake our glorification of this fictional man for the real man.
This brief update from the UK's Royal Astronomical Society, which is mentioned and linked to in the article, is pertinent. It was posted on 22nd December 2022.
"The RAS recently wrote to the UK Space Agency, ESA and NASA to express its concerns about the original JWST naming process, the apparent failure to investigate James Webb’s background and the dismissal of requests to rename the telescope.
NASA has now published the findings of an investigation into Webb by its official historian. The Society welcomes this report, and notes that it finds no evidence that Webb took an active part in the ‘Lavender Scare’, the purges of gay men from the United States federal workforce in the 1940s and 1950s."
We are a screwed up world, even as we attempt to improve things and grudgingly admit our problems in the past. I was reminded of the uk's own struggles with destroying the life of Turing in the 1950s. I'm not blaming the UK, the US was pretty terrible and you can add in our own racism, sexism, genocidal actions against native Americans. The little compassion we have for each other today will probably be seen as unbelievable in the future - I hope compassion will increase.
The UK has a very deep, dark history that we have to work to recover from, and ensure never happens again. History that must not be forgotten, if this is to be the case.
> In the light of this, the RAS will now allow authors submitting scientific papers to its journals to use either James Webb Space Telescope or the acronym JWST to refer to the observatory, should they wish to do so. Authors can spell out the acronym at first mention if they wish.
In witch trials, suspected witches were thrown into a body of water. If they sank to the bottom, they were presumed innocent (albeit still dead). If they floated, then they were presumed guilty - and burned at the stake.
As other people have said, there's almost no one who will stand the full test of time. Washington/Jefferson owned slaves for instance. There are people who did bad things but also accomplished things. Perhaps we allow things to be named after them but have to say for __ ie being named after James Webb for his work on the lunar landings. Perhaps also when naming buildings/etc after people, have a plaque that mentions some of the controversies around the person. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-might-change...
Or we move away from naming things after people.
58 comments
[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadThe idea that all human beings should be treated with dignity regardless of race, creed, or things like sexual orientation is an exceptionally recent modern idea… at least as a mainstream attitude. You can find people in the past who held it but it was very much a fringe idea until the last 50 years at best.
Historically almost all humans tended to think the people in their tribe represent the Platonic ideal of a perfect human and everyone else is to varying degrees inferior or weird or evil. If we were bugs God would have an exoskeleton.
It wasn't novel that people should be treated with respect. What's changed is who is included in that group of people.
By being publicly rebuked and told they were wrong, the attackers were embarrassed and therefore needed to double down to continue their gambit.
Right or wrong has little to do with it, it only supplies the pretense.
Once you understand this, culture war makes a lot more sense. There is no objective wrong being righted. There are only ever more new grievances to be invented to continue the zero-sum racket.
When an argument about history accuracy is countered with "you are marginalizing a black queer junior scientist" – as seems to be happening here – then how is this person not eye-rolled out of the conversation? How can you possibly take someone like that serious? Even if we assume their position is the historically correct one here, these kind of statements are exceedingly toxic and have no place in any serious good-faith conversation.
I disagree with cynicism of the OP however. Many people are just tied up in a movement, without a conniving pathos driving their support. If you look at the historical context identity arguments arrive from, it is very much reactionary to past oppression. And society tolerates reactionary swings for only so long before seeking homeostasis. It is possible (likely, even) that the junior professor behind the vitriol is doubling down due to self preservation. However, I don’t think her supporters are as interested in her self interest so much as they are interested in supporting the movement as a whole. She’s more or less an ideological soldier; yes she may have violated her enemies in atrocious ways, but she is fighting for home team, and thusly retains support regardless of abuse of basic logic.
Hopefully we out grow this phase soon because the ignorance inherent in that support does seem culturally toxic.
«Several prominent astrophysicists in interviews supported Dr. Oluseyi but declined to talk publicly. “People err on the side of prudence, which is to say they don’t speak up,” Dr. Gates noted.»
Not so different from what happened in those bad old days, only the acceptable targets have changed.
Lunatics and fanatics and grifters are always the loudest and their messages have the highest virality. They maximize engagement.
After all, here we are talking about them. We're not talking about the sane people.
They're all professional trolls that farm controversy for money. They've always existed but social media has just opened up the professional troll career to a lot more independent entrants.
Simple as that, right?
I also don't see any evidence that it's actually helping the people that activists invariably speak on behalf of.
A movement doesn't have to consist of mostly dishonorable liars to be invalid. It can simply be based on terminally bad epistemology. Like the idea that the only reason people would disagree is because they are privileged. It creates self reinforcing loops that become allergic to facts.
(Funny example: the idea of racial reparations recently popped up again in the Netherlands... except... the country already paid reparations when Suriname became independent.)
You’re talking about modern conservative ideology here, right? Fits Trump and DeSantis to a perfect T. I agree, it’s based on terminally bad epistemology that exists to justify existing biases and keep us fighting with each other instead of taking on the wealthy oligarchs who “own” everything.
1. "The Hoey committee records also show that a small number of agency officials were initially not entirely forthcoming. Investigator James Thomas grew exasperated with John Shover, director of personnel at the National Labor Relations Board. "His attitude at the time," Thomas writes in a July 20 memorandum summarizing a telephone interview, "did not appear to be too cooperative." When Thomas proposed an in-person meeting to discuss two cases of homosexuality in the department, Shover balked. According to Thomas, "he more or less refused to receive me for this purpose and said rather bluntly: 'I am not going to let you see any of our files.'" This occasional resistance and the subtle variations of opinion evident in the committee’s records suggest that, at least at the start of the scare, each agency may have had its own nuanced stance toward homosexuality." https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/l...
That claim wasn't made. This is a strawman.
But in keeping with the article.
They literally said the exact opposite, emphasis added:
> The idea that all human beings should be treated with dignity regardless of race, creed, or things like sexual orientation is an exceptionally recent modern idea… at least as a mainstream attitude. You can find people in the past who held it but it was very much a fringe idea until the last 50 years at best.
Feels like the standard 'I will be so objectionable and obnoxious that people will stop fighting me just so I'll go away' move.
Edit: slight discussion yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34133388
Landing on the moon is not worth celebrating? Wow.
Except no one is arguing that we should be celebrating discrimination. The original poster said, "By these standards we shouldn't celebrate the NASA moon landings because [NASA probably had racists back then]". He's not suggesting we should celebrate racism, he's suggesting we should celebrate the moon landings and acknowledge those who achieved it despite the racism. The person I replied to literally said, unqualified, that those things are not worth celebrating. Since the only thing the original post suggested we celebrate is the moon landing, the conclusion is obvious.
* with, possibly, a few exceptions
Or do what my university did for a sports hall and tack on a black athlete’s name to the racist’s name and call it a day.
So now you're no longer just responsible for your own prejudice and your own actions, but also responsible for other people's prejudice and other people's actions.
It's also funny that scientists are often quick to criticize non-experts for weighing in on their area of expertise, but seem comfortable claiming authoritative knowledge of the historical facts and ethical arguments in this case, while ignoring the judgment of actual historians.
These people are reprobates, regardless of whether they're scientists or not; being an erudite person sadly doesn't come with principles out of the box.
I realise you didn't mean scientists as a group, btw. I just think we need a politically neutral term for these people. Whether crazy woke or crazy alt-right, these people have a neurosis that manages to poison any discussion, and we need to deplatform the idiotic reprobates ASAP, on both sides of these discussions. All they do is "infuriate" the other side, and this just ends up in both sides being pushed deeper towards extremes/absolutes.
Also comments like "I don't care about the X canon/agenda" just means they don't care about the issue at all IMO. So what do they care about? Fuck knows. Maybe they're communal narcissist. Maybe they can't make a name for themselves so they go for contemporary low hanging fruit, it just happens to be the diversity issue currently (in the past this was witch trials). I think this is anything that fits into the category of heresy, and there's a lot of that going around[1].
I'm unsure if supporting reprobates makes you a reprobate by association. That might be a slippery slope, though, as certainly vulnerable people will try and cling to any support they can get (as a queer person, I find that understandable, and I also probably fit that category's before realising the mutual and raging bullshit flinging around theses discussions).
Anyway, I've kinda muddied my own points (by having too many probably), so this turned out a of an unintentional gishgallop. I just care about the issues discussed here, and wish people took them more seriously by taking them less personally.
[1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/heresy.html
I was watching Jackass the other day and they have a new disclaimer that it contains outdated social norms. I like this approach but at the same time, why does anybody need to be told this? Nobody is perfect and social norms change with time.
Why do people need to be told that we are celebrating achievements, and not political beliefs?
There is a severe deficit of autonomous thought in the modern US.
Because of the fragility of the American mind.
"The vegans didn't take up arms against the oppressors? Silence is violence!"
Everyone's a critic.
Where does one draw the line? I think the NYT article did it pretty well. Webb was not part of the efforts to remove homosexuals from NASA, indeed it was federal law at the time, and to expect him to be a radical activist is at total odds with his administrative post. He was progressive for his time and helped move society forward.
But should we name it after someone it's obvious what we're doing: removing the complexity of the individual to reference the aspects we desire. Suppose John Muir were a racist. Suppose he liked dogs and his eggs fried and writing poetry about unrequited love. His statue might have a plaque that references none of this.
And that's because we don't care about this fellow in his whole sense. That Muir is forgotten and irrelevant. He is useless to us.
But a fictional Muir who we invent based on this Muir - his soul removed and turned one dimensional - is what we'll remember.
The only danger, of course, is that people might mistake our glorification of this fictional man for the real man.
https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/update-ras-and-jwst
"The RAS recently wrote to the UK Space Agency, ESA and NASA to express its concerns about the original JWST naming process, the apparent failure to investigate James Webb’s background and the dismissal of requests to rename the telescope.
NASA has now published the findings of an investigation into Webb by its official historian. The Society welcomes this report, and notes that it finds no evidence that Webb took an active part in the ‘Lavender Scare’, the purges of gay men from the United States federal workforce in the 1940s and 1950s."
> In the light of this, the RAS will now allow authors submitting scientific papers to its journals to use either James Webb Space Telescope or the acronym JWST to refer to the observatory, should they wish to do so. Authors can spell out the acronym at first mention if they wish.