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I never actually understood the difference between self-censoring and just deciding to not be offensive, and why deciding not to be offensive is such an unscien

I never actually understood the difference between self-censoring and just deciding to not be offensive, and why deciding not to be offensive is such an unscientific thing. If you can objectively observe that saying something doesn’t accomplish your goals(assuming your goals is to make friends and get along with others) and seems to offend or harm people around you, what are the consequences to simply not saying things? In the specific context of science I’m unsure what self-censoring would even look like. Not only would such conclusions be a relatively small subset (hard to discuss the self-censorship of a graph algorithm) but there is plenty of attention(therefore funding) on both sides to uncover some truth about any political subject.

olleromam91 9y ago
Because sometimes to reach the truth, you must risk being offensive.
Tiksi 9y ago
>I never actually understood the difference between self-censoring and just deciding to not be offensive, and why deciding not to be offensive is such an unscientific thing. ... what are the consequences to simply not saying things? Saying that global warming is real and caused by humans offends a large chunk of people. Saying that vaccines are effective and don't cause autism offends a non-trivial amount of people. Saying that (meat|sugar|fat|veganism|political ideology) is unethical or unhealthy offends pretty much everyone depending on which you pick. So should we seek to not offend by not saying these things? Or should we strive to uncover the truth behind and change the things we don't like, instead of being offended by the acknowledgement of their existence.