4 ms·

Does this have something to do with the article? It reads like a random "mining is racist" rant which has set off some fighting.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
542354234235 3y ago
The subtitle of the article is "A mine in the Northwest Territories provided much of the uranium used during the Manhattan Project—unbeknownst to the indigenous people who worked there." So broader commentary on uranium mining in other places using indigenous peoples is relevant and using history to compare to modern day is relevant.
mandevil 3y ago
Mining isn't racist necessarily, but it is definitely done by exploiting people, and in ways that line up with the power structure at that place and time. My wife did her (pharmacy) residency at a hospital in West Virginia, which is both incredibly poor, exploited heavily for coal mining (until the recent fracking boom surge in natural gas killed it), and very white. She definitely spent a lot of her time treating black lung and other mining diseases that didn't involve mining for uranium. Mining exploits the land, it exploits the people who do it, and our civilization is built on it and absolutely requires enormous quantities of it. I don't have a larger point, just that I try to live with it.
- TechBro8615 3y ago
  So does a community that allows a mining operation to "exploit" it have any say in the matter? Is it possible that the operating brings new jobs to the community that wouldn't have existed otherwise?
  - mandevil 3y ago
    Complex question, one of personal morality and judgement, the sort of thing that everyone has to answer for themselves. For myself, the concerns I have are about consent: how well are the risks explained to and understood by all parties involved, and what happens if one of the parties says no (especially the less powerful group). It should in theory be possible to mostly resolve those issues with consent, though in practice, even among adults it seems we have trouble with it, as the original article makes clear. There are some philosophers who point out that a lot of the suffering from these sorts of trade-offs are actually felt by people who aren't even born yet- those who grow up amid the dust and debris, those exposed in utero, etc. which raises all sorts of even more difficult questions about consent. Again, I have no answer for this, but I think it is good practice for humans to at least regularly think about these sorts of moral trade-offs being made by our civilization, because we each have our own point where we have to be the one who walks away from Omelas.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

542354234235 3y ago

The subtitle of the article is "A mine in the Northwest Territories provided much of the uranium used during the Manhattan Project—unbeknownst to the indigenous people who worked there." So broader commentary on uranium mining in other places using indigenous peoples is relevant and using history to compare to modern day is relevant.

mandevil 3y ago

Mining isn't racist necessarily, but it is definitely done by exploiting people, and in ways that line up with the power structure at that place and time. My wife did her (pharmacy) residency at a hospital in West Virginia, which is both incredibly poor, exploited heavily for coal mining (until the recent fracking boom surge in natural gas killed it), and very white. She definitely spent a lot of her time treating black lung and other mining diseases that didn't involve mining for uranium. Mining exploits the land, it exploits the people who do it, and our civilization is built on it and absolutely requires enormous quantities of it. I don't have a larger point, just that I try to live with it.

TechBro8615 3y ago
So does a community that allows a mining operation to "exploit" it have any say in the matter? Is it possible that the operating brings new jobs to the community that wouldn't have existed otherwise?
- mandevil 3y ago
  Complex question, one of personal morality and judgement, the sort of thing that everyone has to answer for themselves. For myself, the concerns I have are about consent: how well are the risks explained to and understood by all parties involved, and what happens if one of the parties says no (especially the less powerful group). It should in theory be possible to mostly resolve those issues with consent, though in practice, even among adults it seems we have trouble with it, as the original article makes clear. There are some philosophers who point out that a lot of the suffering from these sorts of trade-offs are actually felt by people who aren't even born yet- those who grow up amid the dust and debris, those exposed in utero, etc. which raises all sorts of even more difficult questions about consent. Again, I have no answer for this, but I think it is good practice for humans to at least regularly think about these sorts of moral trade-offs being made by our civilization, because we each have our own point where we have to be the one who walks away from Omelas.