[ExI] Update on the Hawaiian observatory shutdown

[Stuart LaForge]

Quoting Rafal Smigrodzki:

> I am sure there are plenty of racists of all stripes but the data does 
> not bear out "sticking it to the haole" as the primary motivation for 
> opposing the telescope. For one thing, your hypothesis does not 
> account for the 34% of "haoles" i.e. caucasians who oppose the 
> telescope.
>
> ## I think whites are trying to get brown points, that is appear  
> less white by championing separatist and racist movements by  
> non-whites. Media and many professors now insinuate it's shameful or  
> at least suspicious to be white, and many react in this way. Also  
> some whites hate elite white pursuits, like pure science, so there  
> is a class dimension to some of the opposition. People are weird.

Pure science is not the "elite white pursuit" you seem to think it is.  
Knowledge is information; it has no color. Science and math are  
syncretic methodologies that have incorporated discoveries by many  
different races over the course of human history. For example,  
chemistry evolved from ancient Egyptian alchemy, and Mayan astronomers  
were easily the equal of any in Europe up until the fall of their  
civilization.

That science is an "elite white pursuit" is a feeble lie concocted by  
the social justice crowd to divorce themselves from intellectualism  
and excuse their willful ignorance.

> I just started reading Amy Chua's "Political Tribes". Interesting so  
> far. Mainstream Americans and people like me, who have difficulty  
> warming up to group causes in general, tend to underestimate the  
> power of ethnic sentiments. It looks like normal people in their  
> natural habitat tend to naturally hate each other over trifles.

I would love to tell you you were being cynical there, but I can't. It  
is so ingrained into us that even in the absence of obvious  
differences like race or culture, artificial distinctions will be  
introduced in order to facilitate hatred. Like the Crips and the  
Bloods in the U.S. or Chelsea and Arsenal in the U.K. We just like to  
divide up into teams, arbitrary if need be, and make war with one  
another.

If this never-ending all-against-all battle-for-everything is our  
common genetic destiny, then the least we can do is recognize that we  
are all in this savage and beautiful game together and exercise good  
sportsmanship by acknowledging that the losers contribute as much to  
the game as the winners.

And there is hope for us, for compared to meerkats or chimpanzees, we  
are EXTREMELY tolerant of one another as a species. I think that is  
due to civilization, cultural evolution, and at least since the pill  
and legalized abortion, sexual selection by women for more  
domesticated men.

> Even if I don't have the capability to develop a national  
> attachment, I realize now that ignoring such propensity is perilous,  
> both at the individual and at the national level. If you don't pay  
> attention in whose neighborhood you set up shop, you may get shot  
> during the next round of riots.

Absolute individualism is something of a libertarian fantasy is it  
not? In modern society, we cannot help but be dependent on factory  
farms and numerous other examples of division of labor and mutual  
interdependence.

Unless you live a primitive Walden Pond-type lifestyle, you are pretty  
much dependent on others for some aspect of your modern life. Even the  
Amish have socialist barn-raisings. And stateless societies like  
Somalia are far from the paradise anarchists imagine they would be.  
There is an evolutionary advantage to socialism, which is why there  
are multi-cellular organisms and social animals in the first place.

Wolves hunt in packs for a reason.

>  If a nation allows too many hostile aliens inside, it
> will be perverted by the hostility they bring and by the hostility  
> they evoke in the host population. Nice neighborhoods get ruined by  
> the wrong neighbors. -------------------

Well I am sure the native Hawaiians and other Native American tribes  
would certainly agree with you. It is a good thing that they can't  
deport us.

Stuart LaForge