How to Topple a Statue Using Science | Hacker News Reader

How to Topple a Statue Using Science

popularmechanics.com

23 pointsKoshkin33 comments

I think it would be great if they just replaced all statues with holographic projectors so it would be easy to change the statue to whatever the people wanted at the moment. They could even use augmented reality glasses to make it so you only see exactly the 'statue' that you want to see. I think it would make public places more inclusive.

Satirical? I would +1 either way.

The best description of the AR-based future that I've seen is in The Golden Age by John C. Wright.

I have to wonder what %% of statue-topping motivation is refusal to see those objectionable artifacts vs. attempts to deny others their object of worship.

Already the activists demand that you state your (conformant) position or be damned as <bad words> for your silence. I can imagine in your AR world there will be activists demanding to see what's in your personal AR.

The joke would be on them because I would set my statue AR glasses to Spongebob.

That word, inclusive, is taking on a totally differing meaning which is nearly the opposite of what it originally meant. The type of inclusivity it indicates leads to divisiveness, the splintering of society in a multitude of factions battling for a place on the agenda of inclusivity. The way to get a place generally lies in finding a common grievance and starting a drive for society to address it. Where statues were once meant to bind the people together through a shared history, these inclusive statues serve to split people into factions. Instead of realising that these monuments are not to be taken as literal examples of holiness but as symbols of some common cultural ancestry in time and space they will now be turned into egocentric billboards of the individual's personal mood of the day.

I suggest replacing all toppled statues with one of emperor Nero playing a harp while watching the city of Rome burn since that is what the evisceration of history will lead to. History, good and bad, is there to learn from. You can not glorify the good parts without criticising the bad parts, however:

You can not criticise the bad parts without at least acknowledging the good parts. Doing so is just as intellectually dishonest as doing the opposite.

Original Twitter thread with instructions from an Egyptologist: https://twitter.com/indyfromspace/status/1267271817439346689

Populisticmechanics.com

How to topple a statue using science, for real:

Using the scientific method it has been noticed that the increased prevalence of the divisive ideologies which follow the general path of critical theory has led to less social cohesion, lower personal satisfaction, a dramatic lowering of educational outcomes, an increase in the number of suicides and a bevy of other negative outcomes. It is therefore concluded that critical theory, the practice of deconstruction and the ideologies these have brought forth need to be toppled from their pedestals in order to restore a semblance of normalcy in the academic world and the affected communities. The longer these ideologies are allowed to thrive and spread, the more damage there will be done and the longer it will take to guide society back towards a path which does not lead to chaos and dissolution.

I have mixed feelings. On one hand the Taliban tearing down statues is a bad thing, on the other hand the science part is intriguing.

Is there such a thing as "responsible statue-toppling recreational activity"?

yes it's called interacting with your local government through the proper channels to get the statue removed

This post is disgusting and should be removed. Encouraging destruction in chaos is not democratic discourse.

One may practice consensual statue toppling if one prefers.

I find it hard to imagine that you'd sneer in "disgust" and accuse people of "destruction" and "chaos" if they were knocking over a statue of somebody who murdered your family. This accusation is extremely easy to make, and it's always hypocritical on a long enough timeline.

Favorite meme I've seen about the confederate statues goes like: "If someone kidnapped your child and sold them, where would you want us to put a statue of that person?"

The one for Thomas Jefferson could be "if someone did more for the freedom and prosperity of the world than anyone else ever, where would you like the statue?"

"If". I would suggest, for freedom, that Abraham Lincoln did more to increase freedom by directly emancipating millions of slaves; for prosperity, I'd choose Albert Sabin, one of the vaccinators against polio. What, exactly, did Jefferson do that is comparable?

Wrote the declaration of independence and the US constitution, which created the first government based on the concept of unalienable human rights and was a great inspiration for later democracies.

You mean the same constitution that allowed slavery and counted slaves as 3/5 of a person?

I know this is a very tricky point so Ill use short words: people who have done great things can also have done bad things.

So yeah. It’s a great thing to create a “democracy” that was only democratic for White Males. Even women didn’t have the right to vote. Let’s just gloss over that. Why not? That’s what the entire US educational system does.

Did you know martin luther king was a plagiarist and a philanderer in addition to being a great civil rights leader? Should we bring down his statues?

Even so are you really comparing that to slavery?

I bet his slaves would beg to differ....

You think they're going to stop after the Confederate statues?

We may even start replacing streets named after European explorers with people who killed them like Lapu-Lapu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapu-Lapu

A decision to topple a statue should be made by the consensus of the people, not by the voluntaristic actions of the few. To sidestep the people's consensus is to undermine the democratic principles of governance, and with it the foundation of our society.

There is a lot more at stake here than the statues. Today you support a lawless action of the few because they satiate your vengeance, tomorrow someone else will undermine the law to your detriment because it benefits them. Where does that leave us?

Hypothetically, and without rancor, please consider what "consensus of the people" would look like if "democratic principles of governance" (as a system) were failing or not serving the governed.

I'm not harmed by a toppled statue. I don't have to look at this statue in my community every day. For me these are really hypothetical questions I can look at from some distance.

What strikes me as close to home is this: "All lives can't matter until black lives matter" (protest sign on Instagram). This is happening n o w. This is history in the making.

I think the author was being facetious. It’s welcome humor for those of us who are upset that 150 years after the civil war, the soldiers who fought to preserve the system of slavery are still glorified in our public spaces. But, if someone takes the article seriously and and brings down one of those awful edifices? More power to them. Those monuments are truly hideous.

I do not think that this is encouraging destruction, but rather encouraging science - and also safety in statue-removal scenarios. The writers/editors of Popular Mechanics (and similar) often try to relate what they want to teach/say to contemporaneous news/events.

Do you live in the US? The country with the largest military in the world where we go around spreading destruction and chaos to “bring Democracy” to other countries?

Agreed, we should also ban all articles I don't like.

We must establish the new customs, new culture, new habits, new ideas of the proletariat.

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