Comment by nextaccountic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nextaccountic | Hacker News Reader

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I actually overall agree with your point, but to be fair the off topic remark probably was targeted at this bit of pseudoscience that unfortunately dominated Soviet politics for decades, and its influence in Soviet and Chinese agricultural policy ultimately contributed to the death of millions of people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko#Repression_of_b...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine#Agricultu...

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/trofim-l...

Note that Nikolai Vavilov, a scientist that preserved the seedbank cited in the Guardian article, was actually purged due to Lysenko's crusade against genetics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov

> Vavilov's work was criticized by Trofim Lysenko, whose anti-Mendelian concepts of plant biology had won favor with Joseph Stalin. As a result, Vavilov was arrested and subsequently sentenced to death in July 1941. Although his sentence was commuted to twenty years' imprisonment, he died in prison in 1943. In 1955, his death sentence was retroactively pardoned under Nikita Khrushchev. By the late 1950s, his reputation was publicly rehabilitated, and he began to be hailed as a hero of Soviet science.[4]

May I please remind you of Turing's fate in the land of Freedom and Science?

Turing was punished (effectively tortured to death) for his sexuality. While awful and indefensible, the difference is that he was not punished for his scientific / engineering work. There are countless examples of soviet scientists exiled or executed because their research agenda or conclusions conflicted with state ideology in a given period. You'd be hard pressed to find similar examples in the West. Although there have been examples in recent decades of scientists being silenced by right wing administrations - particularly around climate change related public communication. Funding can of course be politically directed and denied. But imprisonment or execution for studying the 'wrong' thing? Not one of the many flaws of Western hypercapitalism.

>But imprisonment or execution for studying the 'wrong' thing?

This is extremely simple. Israel openly and proudly kills Iranian scientists, at least 5 were killed in last decades, precisely for the reason of their scientific work.

What, there are other reasons why this is a very right thing to do, am I right? I guess you will present me with lots of reasons why these scientists should have been killed.

We clearly got Good and Bad scientists in this world. The ones that the West kills are Bad. The ones that USSR once killed are Good.

> This is extremely simple. Israel openly and proudly kills Iranian scientists, at least 5 were killed in last decades, precisely for the reason of their scientific work.

Engineers, for their engineering work.

Israel and Iran are antagonistic nations in an active military conflict - this is a really bad counterexample. I'd never defend Israel's actions militarily, but all countries attempt to disrupt the military programmes of their adversaries in secret. Often violently. This is absolutely not comparable to murdering their own scientists for carrying out research.

Side note - the assumption that the opinions of others will neatly fall into a packet of predictable (and hence easily refutable) tribal signifiers, is itself a forms of defensive tribalism. 'See you expressed opinion x, you obviously believe y and z, therefore your perspective is on no value'. This approach avoids engaging with the discussion itself and achieves little.

Specifically to the point you mention - I'm not American, and hence outside the media bubble disguising / legitimating Israeli genocide. That should have no impact on our discussion, as its in no way relevant - except as a tribal signal as described above.

If he was punished for his sexuality while being a genius scientist do you really think that makes the UK/West as an example of being pro science and valuing it? Think about it.

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