• HiddenLychee@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    Have you ever been to a niche scientific community conference? It’s always been 90% politics.

    The Magellanic Cloud community collectively decided that they didn’t want to study objects named after someone who had subjugated the ancestors of the communities studying it, so they agreed to call them the Milky Clouds. A pop science article went out about it and people complained that it wasn’t science, it was politics. But unless you’re a part of that community, you don’t get to decide on the names of the objects that these people understand better than literally anyone else alive or dead. They’re doing more science regarding these objects than anyone else has ever tried, they get to decide what’s best, even if it appears political.

    • fishos@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      “unless you’re a part of the community fuck you”

      I can see why it got heated…

      • HiddenLychee@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Well yes, generally that’s how jargon is developed. Typically people who don’t contribute to the knowledge base of a field don’t have any say in how that field uses language.

      • HiddenLychee@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        I see it as the exact opposite. If we let the professionals like cartographers and historians hold the reigns rather than people who don’t have anything to do with it, eg. some pedophile politicians, nothing would have been changed.

        • fishos@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          Wtf are you going on about? I’m talking about changing the name of a plant because it’s discoverer was a racist. Nothing about politicians or pedophiles. Ffs, some of you have brain rot as bad as the MAGA. I’m literally saying that history should remain accurate and not try to whitewash away the negatives.

      • fishos@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        Remember, it’s only “revisionist history” if it’s the history you don’t like. Otherwise it’s “because totally valid reasons”.