12 ms·
How two men survived a prison where 12,000 were killed
- trhway 11y agoit is interesting that when such things happen, the society at the time thinks it is ok, while later it comes to understanding that it was evil. Which begs the question - which things happening today will be considered evil tomorrow, and we or our descendants will be appalled at our implicit or explicit approval of those things today.
- bostonpete 11y agoI suspect eating meat will someday be viewed in this way. I say this as someone who eats anything that moves... ;-)
- infogulch 11y agoPerhaps far future, but I don't see this happening in < 100 years.
- infogulch 11y agoExpanding... meat:vegetarianism :: gas:electric cars Meat is a dense carrier of protein and other nutrients (energy) and we need to build up infrastructure, break down inertial barriers, and have some technological breakthroughs before the current things secedes to the better thing.
- jules 11y agoIt will take exactly as long as it takes for lab grown meat to become viable. When that happens it becomes very easy for the general population to view eating meat from animals as evil.
- JTon 11y agoMorally speaking, I don't see a difference between eating plants and animals. Both are alive. Just because plants express their distress in ways that don't trigger an emotional response in humans doesn't make it morally superior. Environmentally speaking, yes I agree, eating plants is a more sustainable practice /rant
- _dark_matter_ 11y ago>Morally speaking, I don't see a difference between eating plants and animals. Both are alive. Really? I mean, people are alive as well. Is that on the same moral level as well? This just seems like a very specious argument...
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoYou made it specious, putting words in their mouth. They claim that, of the things they eat, plants and animals are morally equivalent. You added "but People!" There is a HitchHikers Guide restaurant that doesn't server vegetables - because intelligent vegetable people outlawed it. They just eat sentient meat animals that offer themselves to the patrons. They even kill themselves.
- sooheon 11y agoThe argument was that because both are alive they are morally equivalent. This is specious because humans are also alive, and are clearly not equivalent to either unless you accept that it would be acceptable to kill and eat humans. It's not as stupid an argument as "but People!", it's pointing out that they are neglecting other variables, such as the capacity for experience.
- pyre 11y ago> They just eat sentient meat animals that offer themselves to the patrons. They even kill themselves. If a human were to do this today, we would question their mental health. If it were a sentient cow, most people would see no problem with it. These views seem at odds with each other, no?
- JTon 11y agoThat's a good point. Reflecting, my moral compass frowns upon cannibalism, but I haven't fleshed out the reasons why. Hat tip for punching a hole in my argument
- coderzach 11y agoEquivalently moral or immoral? Put another way, do you find both to be wrong, or both to be equally acceptable.
- phy6 11y agoMaybe one day we'll be eating meat grown from trees...or 3D printed meat.
- schoen 11y agoIt's already been demonstrated that meat can be grown in vitro, and it's a very active area of research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_meat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_meat
- infogulch 11y agoMy guesses in the US: the war on drugs. The incarceration rate. Discriminatory profiling by authority figures (by race, class, etc). Lack of universal health care. Lobbying/the ruling that corporations have the same rights as people.
- benologist 11y agoThe treatment of illegal immigrants/refugees by EU, AU, USA etc. Ignoring genocide and slavery.
- happyscrappy 11y agoOr any private property at all. I mean why does someone have the right to say I can or can't go somewhere.
- wernercd 11y agoWhy do you have the right to say you can or can't do something? Where do you get the right to go or stay? Why would your right to go wherever you want... override someone else's right to have a private space that excludes you?
- kleer001 11y agoBecause on the whole we (culture/country/city) all agree that it's more important to keep strangers and unwanted people/property out of our private areas (and back it up with the righteous use of the state's monopoly on violence) than it is to give everyone free reign. It's a matter of sovereignty and community and fear really. It would be great if everyone could be trusted to have good intentions, but we've had to learn the hard way that that strategy doesn't pan out when you have hundreds of millions of people all crammed together.
- noselasd 11y agoIn my home country, which isn't cram packed with hundreds of millions people though, everyone has the right to go/travel/camp anywhere on private property as long as that area is designated as wilderness (meaning pretty much anywhere that isn't a developed or agriculture area). - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam
- wvenable 11y agoCertainly Gitmo -- I mean we know it's evil now and yet it is still on going.
- perfTerm 11y agoThankfully, while awful, the scale isn't too staggering.
- shit_parade2 11y agoWe don't know the full scale of such things because it is considered a state secret.
- enraged_camel 11y agoNot sure why you were downvoted because you're absolutely right. People forget that Gitmo isn't the only place the US keeps prisoners extrajudicially. The CIA operates numerous "secret sites" around the world where all kinds of terrible shit happens.
- happyscrappy 11y agoMost countries are too weak to oppose the US so you can't really expect them to protest death camps on their soil.
- njloof 11y agoIncluding Cuba.
- happyscrappy 11y agoAnd Poland. Who else? Germany?
- phy6 11y agoMy prediction, based on personal interest: Unregulated machine learning implementations and AI R&D will one day be viewed the same as human and animal testing of yore. That is, crude and potentially very dangerous. Elon feels the same way. I'm basing my startup on this notion.
- phy6 11y agoAlso this line of hypothesizing reminds me of this old HN link: http://kk.org/thetechnium/2019-unthinkabl http://kk.org/thetechnium/2019-unthinkabl
- currentoor 11y agoOne could be the we treat the homeless. I just walk by them, in a first world country, everyday knowing they are living in horrible conditions and I am aware that many of them are mentally handicapped, therefore unable to take advantage of the society in which they live.
- yetanotheracc 11y agoThe modern notion of work. Only a notch away from the feudal system and slavery that we look down on. Capitalism based on the idea that "Profits go up; shit goes down.", in which those doing the hardest work and taking the biggest risks get the smallest reward.
- davidgerard 11y agoThe society at the time was appalled. Just not the bits of it in power.
- nwatson 11y agoI'll be downvoted ... abortion. Most precipitating causes for the procedure are now completely avoidable. The other small portion of uses of the procedure are excusable. To 2010-era ears, to many this sounds like heresy. In 100 years, who knows?
- infogulch 11y agoAbortion could be framed as a side-effect of the healthcare system not providing sufficient access to birth control. This actually sounds very reasonable especially if there were a few more birth control options: any kind of male birth control that doesn't require surgery; female birth control with fewer/different adverse side effects.
- nwatson 11y agoBirth control and related education are pretty much accessible and relatively cheap for everyone today, at least in the U.S. The costs of prevention are so much cheaper than the eventual end-user cost of an (even subsidized) abortion.
- anon012012 11y agoI'd say the spread of democracy. Viewing it as superior to fundamentalism, or whateverism, and going to other nations, changing their way to be, maybe even just supporting the change... It's colonialism, revisited. It could well be that putting an end to Pol Pot was evil in itself... Maybe his utopia would have succeeded, but we'll never know. I'm going to make people angry, but it's the way it is. Maybe it would have been more viable, long term, than our free capitalism. Maybe, for him, it was for the greater good. Actually, I know little about the story, or politics, I'm just thinking out loud, and inciting people to think. His utopia reminds me of the Unabomber's manifesto. Anyway, I don't believe in utopias. It's all black and white, and it's all trade-offs. All I know is that we're very careful not to contaminate Mars, when we send a robot, but when it comes to other nations, it seems we contaminate as much as we can.
- jeroen94704 11y agoI visited Tuol Sleng in 2007. It was very disquieting to walk past row after row and room after room filled with boards holding thousands upon thousands of pictures, and realize that every single one of those people was murdered right there, in that building.
- cuongvt101 11y agoWithout the help from China at that time, no way Polpot could get that far. After Vietnamese troops helped capture Phnom Penh (and gave back to Kampuchean United Front), China decided to invaded the Vietnam-China border in order to "punish" Vietnam. Yet so far, only Cambodia publicly supports China in their claim of almost the whole East Sea. Disclaimer: I am Vietnamese!
- yufeng66 11y agoThis post is somewhat misleading. China invaded Vietnam (1979) AFTER Vietnam invaded Cambodia (1978). The genocide was pretty much done by that point. Polpot was on friendly term with North Vietnam during the Vietnam war, so it is unfair to blame China for the raise of polpot on China and make Vietnam the good guy in the whole mass.
- bcgraham 11y ago> An estimated 90% of artists, intellectuals and teachers were killed This is having the longest-lasting reverberation through the country - Pol Pot all but eliminated the local human capital. 50% of Cambodians are under 22 years old. There aren't enough teachers for this population boom. Kids go to school part-time in shifts - half in the morning, half in the afternoon. There are no jobs waiting for them after their schooling is completed. They have a wave of people getting older who they can't educate and can't employ.