Naming the James Webb Telescope Turned into a Fight over Homophobia
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I was watching Jackass the other day and they have a new disclaimer that it contains outdated social norms.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.
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.
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.
> I've heard a number of Christians talk about how many of them dislike people like Pat Robertson. Why don't they speak up?
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.