I thought about the phenomenon when the monuments of all the great people are taken down, because they were slave owners. And I formulated why I do not like this trend. The fact is that the past will look extremely terrible from the point of view of the future anyway. That is, virtually anyone in the past has done at least one absolutely terrible thing by today’s standards.
If you continue this trend, it is very likely that in the future you will already be considered a monster, for some strange reasons from the point of view of today, such as the fact that you did not cryopreserve chimpanzees, ate the meat of dead animals, buried your mother’s brain in the ground to rot and be eaten by worms, didn’t apply to donate your organs for transplant if you died, didn’t donate to malaria nets, agreed to drive a car, didn’t have biological children, were smarter than average, or got bad grades.
And these are just things that are already discussed today, in fact, it may well be something completely unexpected, which you could not even suspect that this is actually something bad.
Well, you can give other examples of the horror of the past in addition to slavery. Something like Bayes, Newton and a bunch of other scientists were religious. Although, in general, religion is very common to this day, so the entire previous list can already be applied to scientists of the past, if you agree with the specific points.
Based on this, it is obvious that achievements should be valued regardless of today’s moral assessment.
I thought about the phenomenon when the monuments of all the great people are taken down, because they were slave owners. And I formulated why I do not like this trend. The fact is that the past will look extremely terrible from the point of view of the future anyway. That is, virtually anyone in the past has done at least one absolutely terrible thing by today’s standards. If you continue this trend, it is very likely that in the future you will already be considered a monster, for some strange reasons from the point of view of today, such as the fact that you did not cryopreserve chimpanzees, ate the meat of dead animals, buried your mother’s brain in the ground to rot and be eaten by worms, didn’t apply to donate your organs for transplant if you died, didn’t donate to malaria nets, agreed to drive a car, didn’t have biological children, were smarter than average, or got bad grades. And these are just things that are already discussed today, in fact, it may well be something completely unexpected, which you could not even suspect that this is actually something bad. Well, you can give other examples of the horror of the past in addition to slavery. Something like Bayes, Newton and a bunch of other scientists were religious. Although, in general, religion is very common to this day, so the entire previous list can already be applied to scientists of the past, if you agree with the specific points. Based on this, it is obvious that achievements should be valued regardless of today’s moral assessment.