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Comment by systemvoltage | Hacker News Reader

This gets brought up on every single JvN post on HN. Can we please let the man rest in peace? Someone tried to cancel Feynman the other day.

Hell, even James Webb was on the chopping block until NASA administration pushed back on the cancel culture nonsense from Scientific American.

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If the article's glorification of the man is acceptable, then so is criticism. And the fact that the term "cancel culture" is applied to a person that has been dead for more than half a century tells you that the term has become even more useless than it ever was.

This culture, whatever it is, has had a personal impact on me. Many great people that I truly and deeply admired growing up, the reason why I am the person that I am today is because of historical figures. People need to learn how to forgive, look for the best in people and let go of decades old misgivings of a person. They changed the world. They inspired a whole generation. Anything that they did in their personal lives pales in comparison. If you want to go with this route, literally every person's great great grandfather was sexist in 1920s by today's standards. People need to understand the era, the context under which they operated. I am pretty sure my thoughts today are going to be outdated after 50 years. This is a dangerous slippery slope of wokeness that needs to be strongly codemned IMO. It's one thing to raise awareness, another to deflate historical figures because of some shit they said 70 years ago. It is toxic, futile and against your cause.

"That's not activism" - President Obama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM

Absolutely. If we have to throw away the work of anyone with moral failings, then all human culture must be destroyed.

I wonder how much this modern tendency to want perfect people and flat history can be related to things like the popularity of comic book films. People seem to really be craving simple absolute black and white fables with cardboard villains fighting superheroes these days.

As a German, I am used to the idea of my Grandparent probably being immoral assholes.

The point is that it is trivial to find character flaws from people of the by-gone era and it only satisfies one's need to ostensibly feel morally superior. It wasn't too long ago that women weren't allowed to vote in Switzerland (1991).

But have you taken down their photos from your walls because of that?

That’s exactly what happens with cancel culture. Nothing is off limits and context of a person’s actions and works is lost and scrutinized as if it were now.

What did Scientific American attempt to do?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasa-needs-to-ren...

Accusation was not even direct, it was James Webb's complicitness for LGBTQ issues 70+ years ago!:

> James Webb. Prescod-Weinstein and other critics argue that Webb was complicit in the discrimination of LGBTQ employees in the ’40s, ‘50s and ‘60s — both as undersecretary in the U.S. Department of State and as the top administrator at NASA.

Response from NASA:

> “NASA’s History Office conducted an exhaustive search through currently accessible archives on James Webb and his career,” NASA spokeswoman Karen Fox said in a statement to The Post. “They also talked to experts who previously researched this topic extensively.

> “NASA found no evidence at this point that warrants changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope,” Fox added.

I despise these people (Scientific American). At this point, I will never see Scientific American magazine in the same light - it is completely derailed.

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