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In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

nytimes.com

431–440 of 484 posts

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And in fact, for this reason, the (current) government needs to get major kudos! From the article: 'The 15 postdoctoral students he worked with were transferred to other research groups, taking their knowledge with them. “We are all losers, right?” Dr. Chen said. “My reputation got ruined. My students, my post-docs, they changed their career. They changed to other groups. M.I.T., the country, the U.S., we lose. I ca…

I made my comment in light of my recent education about how the government actually functions, specifically its criminal justice system. On the spectrum of outcomes this is actually pretty good, considering the alternatives. Countless men are wrongfully convicted, spend their entire lives in prison, and are eventually exonerated. What do they get? They get released.

I've read similarly from the Marshall Project's Innocence Project [0] about wrongful convictions, so I see more of where you're coming from.

My view of justice, however, is that a government should treat its citizens fairly. Taking into account prior behavior of the government, this is extraordinary, but I personally differ in that praise should be reserved when a government acts fairly independent of prior performance.

In this case, the government should officially apologize to neuter any stigmatization he might have had for his prior arrest, and help him catch up in his research projects, where he might now be struggling due to a loss of talent caused by the unjust arrest and accusations.

[0] https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/473-innocence-pro...

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#432
post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethnic cleansing apologism on HN? Really? > By the end of the 20th century most scholars gravitated toward an estimate of around 50 million [prior to colonization]—with some historians arguing for an estimate of 100 million or more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_Indige...

To be clear, those 50 million and 100 million numbers are for America as a whole, not North America.

Sure, peoples in South America also suffered some ethnic cleansing but not as bad as North America. At any rate it's millions of people and entire cultures exterminated.

Less than 1% of US population is classified as (pure) Native American, whereas it used to be 100%. A staggering example of ethnic cleansing/replacement.

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure that is the right takeaway. The US espouses freedom. Unless someone is actually spying, their personal beliefs and political affiliations shouldn’t be subject to government scrutiny.

That statement is nigh ungrammatical, anyway illogical. "is actually spying" is a present tense. "shouldn't [unless]" is either a past tense, thus an illogical consequent to the present tense, or it is a hypothetical, irrealis or desiderative subjunctive in which case it merely implies that someone should not be "spying", in effect. This offers no objective criterion for the government's scrutiny, and the article doe…

> "shouldn't [unless]" is either a past tense, thus an illogical consequent to the present tense, or it is a hypothetical, irrealis or desiderative subjunctive in which case it merely implies that someone should not be "spying", in effect.

Could you explain this a bit more to a non-native speaker like me? I'm assuming it's not a past tense for certain. From the second definition in [1] (used in auxiliary function to express obligation, propriety, or expediency) and the examples, it seems to me "shouldn't" here could mean that "be subject to government scrutiny" is the opposite of "obligation, propriety, or expediency". I understand the sentence as: if someone is not spying, subjecting their personal beliefs and political affiliations to government scrutiny is not the correct thing to do. Then why would it

> implies that someone should not be "spying"?

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/should

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#434
post #371
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Don't forget that we put Japanese people (including US citizens with Japanese ancestry) in concentration camps during WWII. "Internment camps", we called them... what a euphemism. And unfortunately our record isn't great on forced sterilization either: https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/forced-sterilization-policies-us... https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilizat... https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2020/11/04/ame…

'Concentration camp' started as a euphemism too. The Nazis actually borrowed the originally English term.

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#435
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

There are two aspects to this: 1. There is a massive amount of propaganda around the situation in Xinjiang. While the Chinese government is extremely harsh in going after separatism and what it views as religious extremism, there is also a huge amount of lying, exaggeration and misrepresentation from Western governments and media on the issue. The Trump administration tried to spin Xinjiang as some sort of modern-day…

> The US' unprovoked (and illegal) invasion of Iraq [...]

What do you mean by illegal specifically? I am fairly sure it was against Iraq's laws. Not sure it was against American laws, or at least not in the sense that 'can you get a court to convict'?

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true and that's unfortunate. At the same time, how do you balance national security versus avoiding situations like this one? One of my takeaways from studying the McCarthy era was that there really were a lot of spies and communist sympathizers in America at the time. It wasn't some figment of someone's imagination. Likewise, I think we have good reason to proceed under the assumption that China is trying to…

[Impact per unit of spying] X [number of spies caught] - [impact per unit of innocent person being impacted] X [number of innocent people falsely accused] = net impact to society Typically, the first part of the equation is wildly overestimated because by stopping spies in 1 area, they just find another way to do what they want to do and the impact happens anyways. Or the threat evolves over time but the policies do…

The “impact per unit of spying” buries a big term in there. It effects 330 million Americans, while a wrongful accusation affects just a few.

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Impact per unit of spying] X [number of spies caught] - [impact per unit of innocent person being impacted] X [number of innocent people falsely accused] = net impact to society Typically, the first part of the equation is wildly overestimated because by stopping spies in 1 area, they just find another way to do what they want to do and the impact happens anyways. Or the threat evolves over time but the policies do…

The “impact per unit of spying” buries a big term in there. It effects 330 million Americans, while a wrongful accusation affects just a few.

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Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is absolutely nothing noble about it. The cause, not the execution. I never said that the execution was noble. The phrase “noble cause” is used to describe this exact kind of situation, where the ends don’t justify the means. That they botched the execution was my entire point. Rounding up homos was easy and made themselves look good in the eyes of the public. Much easier than identifying and rounding up actu…

All countries have spies and all fight foreign spies all the time. If you find this fight noble, so be it, but it's not really relevant. McCarthyism was really just a total abuse of power, a witch hunt only several times amplified through the power of modern media. And it destroyed the lives of thousands of people for no reason at all. So sorry, but I don't like it being mentioned in any kind of a positive context. T…

Where do you see it being used in a positive context? I used it as an example of something that’s bad, how is that “a positive context”?

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#439
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not. Why on earth would you want to have a bunch of Soviet or communist Chinese spies running around?

This still sounds like sarcasm tbh.

No, I don’t like to use sarcasm, I prefer plain language instead. Especially in writing where sarcasm is harder to detect.

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#440
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not. Why on earth would you want to have a bunch of Soviet or communist Chinese spies running around?

Was mass incarceration of the Japanese Americans a noble cause? Nobody wants a bunch of hot-war enemy spies running around, after all. I'm not trolling you, I want to know where you draw the line (if at all). 9% false positive? 99%? 99.999%?

Yes, that’s also an appropriate use of the idiom.
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