[ExI] The Thirty Meter Telescope is now officially dead

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Dec 22, 2019, at 12:07 PM, John Clark via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
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>> On Sun, Dec 22, 2019 at 2:23 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
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>> > First of all, the colonization efforts in Hawaii are much more recent. Recall, the US only annexed in 1898, so about 120 years ago. A few years before that, in 1893, Westerners [...]
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> As I said, explaining that some native Hawaiians are behaving in a stupid barbaric and parochial way today now due to something that happened in 1893 may be true but it doesn't make the current behavior one bit less stupid barbaric and parochial.

As I wrote, 1893 is just one of the early dates. And my point was that this was not literally centuries ago. But it marks an early watershed for colonization. (Actually, the process started a few years — not a few _centuries_ — earlier.) You using “centuries” in your earlier comment shows you’ve done no research on this and seem to want to put it in the same bin as Roman reparations for invading Gaul. (Joking and exaggerating on this last point, but I hope you grasp what I’m getting at.)

> And I still don't understand why westerners learning less about the universe will make up for an injustice committed by them in 1893. I hope you don't think only westerners would have any interest in such things.

I’m not sure it would, but my post was about trying to understand the history and how people might feel when they’re on colonized end of the stick. They might not be as sanguine about how the colonizers plan to disperse with what they (the colonized) believe is theirs.

>> > Hawaiians are still being treated as if they were second class people.
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> What does that have to do with the price of eggs?! What does one thing have to do with the other, how will learning less about the universe make them first class people?

Try to understand this in a different way. Imagine there was a group of people who invaded your region and took your stuff. Let’s say these invaders held philosophical research in very high esteem. They believed that stuff taken from you would be better used to, say, find a new philosophy institute in your area. They might argue when you protest that pushing back the frontiers of ignorance via philosophy was beneficial to all, including to a philistine like you. Given your uniformed opinions about philosophy (what? You read a book by that crackpot Mortimer Adler;), these invaders might go further and class you as a barbarians, part of an ignorant mob who obviously didn’t know what was good for itself, so should be treated with contempt. Would that argument sway you? I’m guessing it wouldn’t.

> There is something else I don't understand, I don't understand why some people seem to have a visceral need to defend the actions of a anti-science ignorance embracing mob, or pretty much any sort of mob provided the mob is not part of their own culture. I don't think westerners are unique in having shameful events in their past and recent events has certainly proven that other cultures can behave in stupid barbaric and parochial ways.

The main issues here for me are the colonization and the justice ones. That seems to be what you’re missing. You’re setting aside, again, as if science is a card that trumps all other concerns. In fact, if you’re going to make it a trump card like that, shouldn’t you be railing against just about anything people do that doesn’t extend scientific research. For instance, why should people have pastimes — unless these can be shown to be marginally better than shifting those efforts and resources over to scientific research? Maybe you wouldn’t go that far, but why wouldn’t you? What would stop from going to that extreme?

 Regards,

Dan
   Sample my Kindle books at:
http://author.to/DanUst
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