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Comment by abhayhegde | Hacker News Reader

He was certainly having fun! A refreshing peek through his mind.

Whenever I mention the likes of Newton and their works, I frequently get attacked by some people. Their argument is that Newton was a terrible human being and despite his contributions to Science, Mathematics, and the process of discoveries in general, he does not deserve praise since appraisal implies we would be condoning his behavior.

To that I usually reply, we would never accept some of his behaviors now and that does not mean his contributions are worthless. They believe we can never separate the "works" from a "person", to which I always disagree.

EDIT: Grammar.

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I'd never have thought cancel culture would extend to Newton.

The thing is if we were only taking into account the contributions of saints according to contemporary moral standards, we would have empty libraries. If we're into building some comforting society in which human beings aren't complex, don't have flaws, don't make mistakes and there's an inherent morality in whatever you accomplish just because it's you who's done it (this decade's favourite non sequitur), well I'd say that's teen brain modal logic if I ever saw one and then excuse me, but I'll be protecting those libraries brimming with stuff written by evil evil people, because a world where that exists is more valuable to me than any project of safe paradise where it doesn't.

“Whenever I mention the likes of Newton and their works, I frequently get attacked by some people. Their argument is that Newton was a terrible human being and despite his contributions to Science, Mathematics, and the process of discoveries in general, he does not deserve praise since appraisal implies we would be condoning his behavior.“

I lament atheism, even as an atheist, for the idea that only the Gods (or God) can pass judgement on the human soul is a useful idea. When nothing is sacred, every thing and person is subject to useless and pointless posthumous destruction for there is nothing to naturally curtail the hubris that we can pass judgement on all who ever lived even when we are in fact, not objectively morally superior to our forebears and even if we were, we don’t possess the means to make that determination. The dead are gone, but we still use them to distract us from our lives rather than take what is useful and discard what is not.

What part of his life was terrible ?

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