this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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im saying you can't really judge a non-expert for being the kind of shitty guy that was in vogue to be shitty at the time, especially if it's not a primary thing. nicola tesla doing a eugenics? yeah whatever. his approximate contemporary, margaret sanger, you can give a lot more shit on the topic, because she was a fucking doctor.
this doesn't just apply to history! as someone who has generally been on the right side of history, I have lived through this. several times. A current example, aside from the obvious nazi shit and transphobia, would be the whole push to equate large language models with "AI" and orient all of our society's productive capacity towards making them like we're a giant god damn paperclip machine. I can't give any lay person who was into the tech in 2023 too terribly much shit about it-but if you were in any sort of information science, math, IT, or neuro-anything, and you were in favor of how it was being pushed for more than five minutes, I will mock you mercilessly until the day one of us dies, and then if it was you, ill graffiti the mockery on your fucking grave.
how strongly was he in favor of eugenics? did he have any ability to push the needle? did he care emotionally, or was it just a quick glance 'yeah that sounds close enough and I trust the experts. anyway, back to stuff I actually care about' kind of opinion?
It's not about "judging," it's about not feeling sorry for Tesla's name being attached to a shitty eugenicist since he himself was a eugenicist
I think being a shitty eugenicist non-expert in 1900 is a lot less egregious than being a shitty eugenicist who claims to be an expert in everything in 2025.
also, there's plenty of other stuff for him to be ashamed of with this association.