Given the ever more obvious case that genocide is going on in Gaza, I had been thinking that Scott Aaronson’s going quiet on the issue meant that he was starting to realize that this had become indefensible. Turns out I was very wrong.<\/p>\n
In his latest blog posting<\/a>, he explains that the current situation in Gaza is analogous to an evil murderer kidnapping your child and strapping her to train tracks before an oncoming train. If you pull a lever to divert the train it will instead kill five of the murderer’s children. This situation provides for him a definition of Zionism:<\/p>\n Zionism, to define it in one sentence, is the proposition that, in the situation described, you have not merely a right but a moral obligation<\/strong> to pull the lever\u2014and that you can do so with your middle finger raised high to the hateful mob…<\/p>\n Zionism, so defined, is the deepest moral belief that I have.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Scott formulates this as an abstract moral dilemma, but of course it’s about the very concrete question of what the state of Israel should do about the two million people in Gaza. Scott’s answer to this is clear: they want to kill us and our children, so we have to kill them all, children included. This is completely crazy, as is defining Zionism as this sort of genocidal madness.<\/p>\n Update<\/strong>: More from Scott<\/a>, it seems that those opposed to what Israel is doing in Gaza are “brain-eaten zombies”. He’s also convinced that the zombie problem is mainly academics in the humanities. I hear that there’s a statement about what is going on in Gaza signed by thousands of prominent scientists that will soon be made public. A lot of very prominent brain-eaten zombie scientists out there, it seems.<\/p>\n Of course he’s still not allowing comments on his blog. For other discussion of his blogposts, see here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Update<\/strong>: I’ve deleted quite a few comments from people who wanted to tell me that there was no genocide going on in Gaza (and if there was, it was the fault of the Palestinians). Yesterday the International Association of Genocide Scholars passed a resolution<\/a> (by an 86% majority vote) characterizing the Israeli actions in Gaza as genocide.<\/p>\n Update<\/strong>: More from Scott<\/a> about how victimized he is, especially by some troll (see here<\/a>) sending him an anti-semitic graphic<\/a> that he then put up on his website as “woitwordview”. He seems to agree with me that he is “psychologically troubled”, but sees the fact that almost everyone is telling him this as indicating that “all the moral progress of humanity depends on psychologically troubled people” like himself.<\/p>\n For some idea of what is going on here as classes start, take a look here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Just saw this from the university<\/a>. Trying to figure out what it’s about, it seems that a couple students walked through campus holding a sign saying “some of your classmates were IOF criminals committing genocide in Palestine”.<\/p>\n I’ve recently decided that, in order not to become as psychologically troubled as Scott, I need to get out of here and detox for a while. Leaving for a week-long trip to Paris tomorrow, now shutting down comments here. Will try to spend more time thinking about Wick rotation, and less about Columbia and things like whether someone in the IDF read Scott’s “Deep Zionism” post and decided to do this<\/a>, or the slaughter going on in Gaza<\/a> that we’re not supposed to say anything about. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Given the ever more obvious case that genocide is going on in Gaza, I had been thinking that Scott Aaronson’s going quiet on the issue meant that he was starting to realize that this had become indefensible. Turns out I … Continue reading
![an anti-semitic graphic<\/a> that he then put up on his website as “woitwordview”. He seems to agree with me that he is “psychologically troubled”, but sees the fact that almost everyone is telling him this as indicating that “all the moral progress of humanity depends on psychologically troubled people” like himself.<\/p>\nFor some idea of what is going on here as classes start, take a look here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\nJust saw this from the university<\/a>. Trying to figure out what it’s about, it seems that a couple students walked through campus holding a sign saying “some of your classmates were IOF criminals committing genocide in Palestine”.<\/p>\nI’ve recently decided that, in order not to become as psychologically troubled as Scott, I need to get out of here and detox for a while. Leaving for a week-long trip to Paris tomorrow, now shutting down comments here. Will try to spend more time thinking about Wick rotation, and less about Columbia and things like whether someone in the IDF read Scott’s “Deep Zionism” post and decided to do this<\/a>, or the slaughter going on in Gaza<\/a> that we’re not supposed to say anything about. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Given the ever more obvious case that genocide is going on in Gaza, I had been thinking that Scott Aaronson’s going quiet on the issue meant that he was starting to realize that this had become indefensible. Turns out I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15191"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15389,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15191\/revisions\/15389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/www.scottaaronson.com\/woitworldview.png\"){kind=link}