Open thread, Sept. 29 - Oct.5, 2014

polymathwannabe

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

It reveals a distinctly right-wing refusal to assign any responsibility to the colonizer for the plight of the colonized (aka victim blaming), which can often be extrapolated to ascertain the subject's stance on other inequality issues.

a distinctly right-wing refusal to assign any responsibility to the colonizer for the plight of the colonized

Heh. And in this context where we are talking about a moon base, who are the colonized? The Native Moonies?

0gjm12y

Interesting. I'm definitely on the left rather than on the right, which is consistent with what you say; but I have to admit that I don't see where Lalartu says or implies anything about whether Earth will actually deserve any blame for the colonists' misery. (And, not so consistently with what you say, my own opinion is that if the colonists freely chose to be colonists and the home civilization on Earth didn't do anything terribly awful to them, then if they're miserable they shouldn't blame Earth.) I'm mystified by some other features of Lalartu's speculation, though. I don't see why we should expect any colony's existence to be miserable, at least once it's past the earliest struggling-to-survive stages that it might well face; I don't see any good reason to expect that the colony -- especially if it's struggling to survive -- would want to nuke Earth; I see still less reason to think they could nuke Earth hard enough to cause anything like extinction.