Re:ESR: Abusing Alan Turing
by scott_s on Monday June 25, 2012 @06:16PM
(#4159032)
Apparently. I feel that if someone suffers due to a bigoted policy, then that person is the victim of oppression. He seems to think that it is not "oppression" if the person who suffers had an out. The mental gymnastics bit come in when he tries to gel that with what demonstrators suffered during the civil rights movement, which he does classify as oppression.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Was Einstein the victim of oppression? How about Feynman?
If "No", how does that jibe with your definition?
If "Yes", is being a victim of oppression necessarily that big a deal? (Both Einstein and Feynman seemed to do OK for themselves.)
(Note that nothing here excuses or condones the antisemitism that affected both Einstein and Feynman.)
They were both also victims of oppression, in different ways and to different degrees. A large number of people were and are.
More attention is paid to the oppression that Turing underwent because it seems likely that it was a major factor in his death. If Einstein's life had been ended at a young age, but after he had made contributions to physics that made clear what had been lost, his death and the circumstances around it would be a large part of what we remember about him.
Einstein fled Europe because of it. That seems like "a big deal" to me. That he "did OK" for himself afterwards does not somehow make having to leave your home continent less of a big deal.