Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hawaii Court Rescinds Permit to Build Thirty Meter Telescope

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 53 posts

Re: Hawaii Court Rescinds Permit to Build Thirty Meter Telescope

#31

Post by CamperBob2 »

Steko wrote: post #30
CamperBob2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the (great!) scientific rationale in the world doesn't change the fact that this fits really well into the age-old pattern of Western societies barging in and imposing their will on other cultures (Shrug) I don't see those "other cultures" making investments in time, money, and education to try to understand the secrets of the Universe. In this case, their representatives appear to be doing the opposite. In my bo…

> In my book, that makes the native Hawaiian culture inferior to my own. I'm sure if you took honest stock of your culture there would be no shortage of episodes many times more egregious than this forced permit reevaluation and by your own shoddy reasoning that would make native Hawaiian culture superior to your own.

No, that's a completely irrelevant point that doesn't address mine in the slightest. If we had to be perfect before calling out bad behavior, we'd never be able to hire any police.

Re: Hawaii Court Rescinds Permit to Build Thirty Meter Telescope

#32

Post by Steko »

ekianjo wrote: post #15

> In 2005, a court-ordered environmental impact statement concluded that 30 years of astronomy had had an adverse effect on nature and culture on the mountain. Wow, really ? It's like reading some document from the Middle-Ages or something.

I'm not sure what the disconnect is, this seems like fairly minor language. If you build roads and buildings where there's nothing it's going to have some impact, that's all I read from that.

Re: Hawaii Court Rescinds Permit to Build Thirty Meter Telescope

#33

Post by Steko »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #31
Steko wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my book, that makes the native Hawaiian culture inferior to my own. I'm sure if you took honest stock of your culture there would be no shortage of episodes many times more egregious than this forced permit reevaluation and by your own shoddy reasoning that would make native Hawaiian culture superior to your own.

No, that's a completely irrelevant point that doesn't address mine in the slightest. If we had to be perfect before calling out bad behavior, we'd never be able to hire any police.

Your argument takes the form, 'culture x does a, culture y doesn't do a, a is good therefore culture x is better than culture y'

The argument is clearly ridiculous on it's face and as I said above trivially disproved by any number of direct and inverse examples.

Re: Hawaii Court Rescinds Permit to Build Thirty Meter Telescope

#34

Post by dingaling »

runholm wrote: post #23

Can someone clarify to me why they are insisting on building it on that specific mountain where it has been met with resistance from day one?

Mauna Kea was in competition with a site in Chile's Atacama desert ( already popular for very large scopes ).

Technically they were both very close but in the end the decision went to Mauna Kea mainly for proximity to other facilities.

Re: Hawaii Court Rescinds Permit to Build Thirty Meter Telescope

#35

Post by Steuard »

xiaoma wrote: post #27
Steuard wrote: post #18

I very much understand the frustration on display here about the setback to science from this decision. But (admitting up front that I don't know a lot about the specific cultural context) I'm surprised by the lack of sympathy being shown for the people who evidently hold this space sacred. All the (great!) scientific rationale in the world doesn't change the fact that this fits really well into the age-old pattern o…

>this fits really well into the age-old pattern of Western societies barging in and imposing their will on other cultures >...justified by the Western societies >...the pattern in Western history You should try living in the East. A similar scenario in China would not go down the same way. The telescope would go up and there would be very little hand wringing involved in the decision.

Fair point: Europe and its descendants don't have anything like a monopoly on imperialism (and China in particular has that history going back a long, long time). I'm presumably focused on European imperialism because it's my heritage, and because Europe's age of imperial expansion has played a particularly widespread role in world history for the past few centuries. And also, because it's the one involved in the conflict in question here.

It's probably worth considering how these attitudes evolve over time, too. I'd guess that a hundred years ago, the U.S. wouldn't have done much hand wringing in this case, either.

Re: Hawaii Court Rescinds Permit to Build Thirty Meter Telescope

#36

Post by CamperBob2 »

Steko wrote: post #33
CamperBob2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's a completely irrelevant point that doesn't address mine in the slightest. If we had to be perfect before calling out bad behavior, we'd never be able to hire any police.

Your argument takes the form, 'culture x does a, culture y doesn't do a, a is good therefore culture x is better than culture y' The argument is clearly ridiculous on it's face and as I said above trivially disproved by any number of direct and inverse examples.

All you have to do is imagine what kind of computer you'd be using if it were left up to the culture in question to develop it.

It would probably have wooden beads on wires.

Re: Hawaii Court Rescinds Permit to Build Thirty Meter Telescope

#37

Post by titzer »

dstyrb wrote: post #12
Steko wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because 'science is good' doesn't mean it gets to trump the normal permitting procedures and rule of law.

I don't understand. They haven't been denied a permit, they had the permit. Construction had begun. They were given the go ahead, handshook on a deal with the state of Hawaii-- giving way more than any telescope before. And now, they've been cut off in the middle of full scale production. It's a bit of a sucker punch because, for eight years, survey planning, software programming, building design, etc. have been unde…

I don't disagree with your overall sentiment here; this is disappointing. But if all this is true, then there's been real failures of risk analysis and over-specialization to a particular site. They should have a backup plan, considering how contentious this issue has been all the while. In particular there should be some adaptations that can be made to the main designs that, though not optimal, could make it feasible to relocate, or to replace one of the (many!) existing telescopes on the mountain.

Re: Hawaii Court Rescinds Permit to Build Thirty Meter Telescope

#38

Post by Steko »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #36
Steko wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument takes the form, 'culture x does a, culture y doesn't do a, a is good therefore culture x is better than culture y' The argument is clearly ridiculous on it's face and as I said above trivially disproved by any number of direct and inverse examples.

All you have to do is imagine what kind of computer you'd be using if it were left up to the culture in question to develop it. It would probably have wooden beads on wires.

Following that logic we'd all be running around illiterate if we had to wait for Northern Europeans to invent writing. Something tells me you are not going to embrace the idea that your ancestors are just free riding off the great accomplishments of the Iraqis and Egyptians.

Re: Hawaii Court Rescinds Permit to Build Thirty Meter Telescope

#39

Post by whoopdedo »

Steuard wrote: post #18

I very much understand the frustration on display here about the setback to science from this decision. But (admitting up front that I don't know a lot about the specific cultural context) I'm surprised by the lack of sympathy being shown for the people who evidently hold this space sacred. All the (great!) scientific rationale in the world doesn't change the fact that this fits really well into the age-old pattern o…

Are you being intentionally ironic by bringing up Mount Rushmore?

http://www.economist.com/node/11848993

Re: Hawaii Court Rescinds Permit to Build Thirty Meter Telescope

#40

Post by radio4fan »

dstyrb wrote: post #8

This site outlines the actions that tmt takes to improve Hawaii and science education in general... 300 jobs. 26 million per year in revenue. 1 million per year just in paying a lease, 800k of which is earmarked to pay for conservation of the mountain. The site was deliberately moved to a suboptimal location so that it would be less visible to people. Includes a statement regarding this HSC hearing. http://www.maunak…

> We will in fact “take [our] toys and play in another sandbox,” because some of us actually care about the past and future of humanity as a race and our place in the stars.

Take it to La Palma, please. It needs the investment and construction jobs. Probably a few retired German hippies will complain, but no Palmeros.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roque_de_los_Muchachos_Observa...

Post reply on HN