Comment by devwastaken | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devwastaken | Hacker News Reader

Even if they had participated in the lavender scare, they are a product of their time. The governments themselves did it, which is funny why we somehow now trust those systems today.

We can both condemn the actions of a historical figure and also respect them for their achievements that did good. By trying to erase history we cannot learn from it.

There are significantly more important issues affecting us. Who cares about the name of a telescope when homelessness and socioeconomic inequality prevents many from even having a decent quality of living?

Our lives are not infinite, public action is not infinite. choose what you're going to spend it on. Twitter doesn't count.

While I respect your opinion, I'd like to offer another perspective.

Renaming a (recent) symbol of human progress is not the same thing as erasing history. That would be removing James Webb's name from the wall of NASA's former leaders, removing him from history books, etc. No one is proposing that.

Instead, it is holding our symbols to a high standard. We should pick those who truly stood out and above. There are plenty of historical figures that made great contributions to humanity at NASA. I doubt they would struggle to find an alternative.

That being said, based on the conclusions of the report, I think the name should stay.

Props for being able to articulate coherent and reasonable principles, independently of your own final determination.

Most great people are not good persons

Expecting every historical great person to have zero skeletons in the closet based on todays political perspectives is unrealistic and irrational anyway.

Of course there are degrees of malice but social media loves this sort of zero-effort cultural gatekeeping where they get to pearl clutch and feel like they are improving the world from the keyboard.

Renaming JWT (even before it was found to be mostly baseless) is just another slacktivist exercise with little real value to society.

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