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To answer your question: yes. Yes it is a bad thing. Things that are untrue but you can't question for the sake of societal cohesion are called "religion", not
by riehwvfbk 2y ago
To answer your question: yes. Yes it is a bad thing.
Things that are untrue but you can't question for the sake of societal cohesion are called "religion", not "science".
- zug_zug 2y agoI'm just not convinced it really is a problem that 1% of topics are taboo. I think taboos exist for a reason, and it's mostly good for us as a species to collectively wall-off certain categories of behavior/thought/speech.
- riehwvfbk 2y agoCorrection: you think taboos you happen to agree with exist for a reason. For example, say you lived in modern-day Russia where it is taboo to say that Putin can make a mistake and that the West is not all-evil. Still a good taboo? Even if it is accepted by the majority?
- lazide 2y agoOr if we go back pre-Putin in Russia, Lysenkoism [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism], a truly bizarre ideology where it was taboo to discuss natural selection - getting 3000+ academics sent to the gulag, many outright executed, and leading to large scale declines in crop output contributing to famines. Including contributing to the Great Famine in China which killed 10’s of millions [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine]. Or, as the wiki article quotes - “Lysenko claimed that the concept of a gene was a "bourgeois invention", and he denied the presence of any "immortal substance of heredity" or "clearly defined species", which he claimed belong to Platonic metaphysics rather than strictly materialist Marxist science. ”
- kelseyfrog 2y agoWhose taboos? Whose society?
- krispyfi 2y agoAnatomy (and medicine in general) would have stagnated if not for people willing to violate the taboo against desecrating corpses.