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Parsons is a very interesting character. I think the same character traits that cause scientists to produce new theories also causes them to go into "weird" dir

Parsons is a very interesting character. I think the same character traits that cause scientists to produce new theories also causes them to go into "weird" directions. You have to have a high level of stubbornness and fearlessness to go against the shared wisdom of the time. In general I love to read about famous persons who had a lot of on the surface contradictory facets to their personality. There is a tendency in the media to view people as one-dimensional. People don't seem to be able to compute that people are not all-good or all-bad. A famous people would be Newton who was kind of an ass and also spent a lot of time on alchemy and other stuff. A while ago I saw a British TV show about Hitler and there they had a scene where Hitler shot his dog out of anger. From whatever I know he loved dogs but somehow the show creators thought Hitler has to be portrayed as a totally bad guy.

api 8y ago
Oh totally. There are lots of other examples. Issac Newton was into occultism and alchemy too, and Thomas Edison tried to build a machine to contact the dead using radio waves.
firethief 8y ago
I'm not sure Newton is an example. Alchemy wasn't fringe at the time, was it?
cc439 8y ago
"A while ago I saw a British TV show about Hitler and there they had a scene where Hitler shot his dog out of anger. From whatever I know he loved dogs but somehow the show creators thought Hitler has to be portrayed as a totally bad guy." One of the greatest self-inflicted wounds in the modern world is the propensity to portray Nazi Germany and its major figures in a completely cartoonish fashion. Godwin's law be what it may but the long term ramifications of pointing to Nazis as inhumanely evil to a point that breaks all logic has blinded people from being able to accurately understand exactly what led to their rise to power, what drove their decision making process, and how they managed to direct an entire country toward supporting the very goals currently portrayed as the actions of a handful of mad hatters divorced from all laws of human behavior. Everyone knows the colloquialsim that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, well here's a perfecf example of that in action. Disingenuous representations and false accounts of history eliminate the possibility of developing a true understanding of how things actually progressed in reality. If you can't understand how things progressed, you have no hope of countering that progression until things have developed too far to be reversed through peaceful means.
- omeid2 8y ago
  > One of the greatest self-inflicted wounds in the modern world is the propensity to portray Nazi Germany and its major figures in a completely cartoonish fashion. Godwin's law be what it may but the long term ramifications of pointing to Nazis as inhumanely evil to a point that breaks all logic has blinded people from being able to accurately understand exactly what led to their rise to power, what drove their decision making process, and how they managed to direct an entire country toward supporting the very goals currently portrayed as the actions of a handful of mad hatters divorced from all laws of human behavior. > Everyone knows the colloquialsim that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it... Whatever self-inflicted or by design, a nation that understands Nazi Germany will not put up with the direction that most nations are going in regards to totalitarianism recently, so it may be working as intended.
- bitexploder 8y ago
  The book Ordinary Men covers this. It is quite fascinating. Regular people became the Nazis. People on HN could become Nazis. This is an uncomfortable truth not many people are willing to confront. I’ll give HNers some credit, but still, the way it progresses is subtle and nefarious. (It being Authoritarianism into Totlitsrianism with a dictator$
  - gaius 8y ago
    People on HN could become Nazis. Some already have - they just call themselves “antifa”, the same way deranged regimes always seem to call themselves “democratic” or “people’s”.
    - Angostura 8y ago
      I'd be interested in seeing evidence of anyone on HN self-identifying as antifa. I mean, I'm anti-fascist, but 'antifa' seems like a pejorative label at this point.
      - smcl 8y ago
        I haven't seen it either. In fact when I saw that the parent comment was flagged I thought that it probably called out the HN crowd for being too right wing. I've seen far more right-wing comments than left-wing - particularly when the James Damore stuff was hitting the news. And re "antifa" as a pejorative - I think it's only really used that way among the Fox news or Infowars crowd. If those guys want to come out as "anti-anti-fascist" then there's a much simpler term they can use ...

api 8y ago

Oh totally. There are lots of other examples. Issac Newton was into occultism and alchemy too, and Thomas Edison tried to build a machine to contact the dead using radio waves.

firethief 8y ago

I'm not sure Newton is an example. Alchemy wasn't fringe at the time, was it?

cc439 8y ago

"A while ago I saw a British TV show about Hitler and there they had a scene where Hitler shot his dog out of anger. From whatever I know he loved dogs but somehow the show creators thought Hitler has to be portrayed as a totally bad guy." One of the greatest self-inflicted wounds in the modern world is the propensity to portray Nazi Germany and its major figures in a completely cartoonish fashion. Godwin's law be what it may but the long term ramifications of pointing to Nazis as inhumanely evil to a point that breaks all logic has blinded people from being able to accurately understand exactly what led to their rise to power, what drove their decision making process, and how they managed to direct an entire country toward supporting the very goals currently portrayed as the actions of a handful of mad hatters divorced from all laws of human behavior. Everyone knows the colloquialsim that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, well here's a perfecf example of that in action. Disingenuous representations and false accounts of history eliminate the possibility of developing a true understanding of how things actually progressed in reality. If you can't understand how things progressed, you have no hope of countering that progression until things have developed too far to be reversed through peaceful means.

omeid2 8y ago
> One of the greatest self-inflicted wounds in the modern world is the propensity to portray Nazi Germany and its major figures in a completely cartoonish fashion. Godwin's law be what it may but the long term ramifications of pointing to Nazis as inhumanely evil to a point that breaks all logic has blinded people from being able to accurately understand exactly what led to their rise to power, what drove their decision making process, and how they managed to direct an entire country toward supporting the very goals currently portrayed as the actions of a handful of mad hatters divorced from all laws of human behavior. > Everyone knows the colloquialsim that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it... Whatever self-inflicted or by design, a nation that understands Nazi Germany will not put up with the direction that most nations are going in regards to totalitarianism recently, so it may be working as intended.
bitexploder 8y ago
The book Ordinary Men covers this. It is quite fascinating. Regular people became the Nazis. People on HN could become Nazis. This is an uncomfortable truth not many people are willing to confront. I’ll give HNers some credit, but still, the way it progresses is subtle and nefarious. (It being Authoritarianism into Totlitsrianism with a dictator$
- gaius 8y ago
  People on HN could become Nazis. Some already have - they just call themselves “antifa”, the same way deranged regimes always seem to call themselves “democratic” or “people’s”.
  - Angostura 8y ago
    I'd be interested in seeing evidence of anyone on HN self-identifying as antifa. I mean, I'm anti-fascist, but 'antifa' seems like a pejorative label at this point.
    - smcl 8y ago
      I haven't seen it either. In fact when I saw that the parent comment was flagged I thought that it probably called out the HN crowd for being too right wing. I've seen far more right-wing comments than left-wing - particularly when the James Damore stuff was hitting the news. And re "antifa" as a pejorative - I think it's only really used that way among the Fox news or Infowars crowd. If those guys want to come out as "anti-anti-fascist" then there's a much simpler term they can use ...