Paul Graham's essay What you can't say was one of the most enlightening pieces I've ever read. It makes a strong case that whatever your current ethics are, som

Paul Graham's essay What you can't say was one of the most enlightening pieces I've ever read. It makes a strong case that whatever your current ethics are, some of them will look strange or even barbaric to people in the future, just as the beliefs of many compassionate rational people living 100, 500 or 1,000 years ago do to you. Then it talks about root causes of moral fashions and what you can do to discover what heresies you might unconsciously believe but be unable to speak without serious repercussions. From this vantage point 13 years later, there are specific parts of the essay that are objectionable now, and yet that reinforces rather than refutes the core thrust of the essay. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html