17 ms·

What You Can't Say (2004)

191 points by Blahah 13y ago

diminish 13y ago
tlwrl; Now that pg has more time to dive into the meta-er layers, guess we'll see some progress with the Arc language.
- robobro 13y ago
  This article was published in 2004.
  - sirkneeland 13y ago
    But it is no less true now. If anything the explosion of ubiquitous and instantaneous social media has only exacerbated the tendencies towards branding unorthodox thinking as Thoughtcrime as a twittermob of snark and hatred can be summoned in hours if not minutes.
    - mattgreenrocks 13y ago
      Yeah I was thinking the same thing. Social media, at it's core, glorifies groupthink, rewarding you handsomely with stars and likes when you say the right thing. In time, you start thinking of what you should be saying, and then you start wondering what you should be posting so that you're perceived as a certain type of person. And when you start down that path, it feels like you become a bit more intellectually subservient. If your concern is always how to please people, how can you be expected to explore heresies? How can you plumb the depths of the unknown to explore and discover things when you concern yourself with safety? The immediacy of the medium rewards snark and off-the-cuff remarks instead of analysis, insight, and distance. It incentivizes heated discussion (as it garners more pageviews!) and cheap, "me too" posts. It generates a fear of missing out, which is used to manipulate visitors into consuming more and more content for less and less value, exactly like any addictive substance.
      - joyeuse6701 13y ago
        one would hope that granting an upvote/plus vs a downvote/minus would be objective. It is obviously not, and you're exactly right, it rewards group think.
      - jack-r-abbit 13y ago
        This happens here too. The downvote is a pretty big deal for such a tiny button. I'll admit to writing comments I never posted because I knew people would eviscerate me for going against the groupthink. It doesn't change my thoughts... I just don't say them "out loud".
        mattgreenrocks 13y ago
        I admit I enjoy inciting things on here sometimes, especially in the face of groupthink, perhaps so I can self-righteously claim that the groupthink exists without giving time to fully think through the opposing side. It can come off as aggressive, for sure. I do think a healthy community needs skepticism and introspection to remain that way. But I do think people unintentionally reinforce the notion of the status quo needs to be reinforced/destroyed, which can affect the types of thoughts you'd think about sharing with a group.
        jack-r-abbit 13y ago
        > I admit I enjoy inciting things on here sometimes Yes... there are times I do just say fuck it and post it anyway. HNKarma is pretty worthless after all. :)
        sirkneeland 13y ago
        Same here. Someday when I have a HN Karma score in the bazillions I will feel free to say what I really think. Until then I feel compelled to largely hew to the HN party line.
        declan 13y ago
        I hope this is tongue in cheek. Disagreeing with the majority your peers (as I've done frequently here) could still lead you the minority who agrees with you to upvote you. Unlike politics, it's not a winner-takes-all system. But more to the point, and the reason I hope this is tongue in cheek, I hope nobody here actually optimizes for or cares about a "HN Karma score in the bazillions." Last I checked you can't cash in HN Karma for a fiat $$$ check or happiness. There's a bigger world out there, folks.
- drcode 13y ago
  As someone foolish enough to build a production-grade tool with arc back in the day, I'd say that Clojure has taken most of the best ideas from arc already. I think arc still had few good tricks related to code brevity though that never got adopted by Clojurists (they would require a custom sexp reader to be bolted into Clojure to port them) but almost all of the other good stuff from arc made it into Clojure, and Clojure had many fantastic ideas that greatly improved on arc.
deleted 13y ago
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robobro 13y ago
Do you think you'll raise your children to believe in Santa, HN?
- gnaritas 13y ago
  I didn't; I've always showed my child the non-sense others believe without cause. Now 20, she has a solid grasp on reality and a firm bullshit detector.
  - jmj42 13y ago
    We did (see above). Both of my children (13 and 18) also have a solid grasp on reality and firm bullshit detectors. I suspect belief in Santa, as a child, has little to do with it.
    - gnaritas 13y ago
      It's good that they turned out OK despite being misled by their parents; you may find that OK because tradition, I find it simply a form of lying, regardless of whether you actively said anything or not.
      - deleted 13y ago
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  - jules 13y ago
    Letting your kid believe in Santa for a while is far more powerful learning experience than showing it that others believe in this nonsense: not only can't others' beliefs be trusted, your own beliefs can't be either.
    - gnaritas 13y ago
      There are better ways to teach that than by showing them you're a liar. Telling them Santa is real is IMHO wrong; that's not a debatable point, that's my opinion. I don't support teaching delusions to kids whether it's Santa or God.
Pxtl 13y ago
I was going to post a comment but I deleted it.
- chippy 13y ago
  We are your peers. Do not be afraid!
- incompatible 13y ago
  Well, Paul did suggest that you should keep your ideas to yourself. Why give the NSA a list of all your subversive thoughts anyway? They can and will be used against you, if the situation requires it.
skylan_q 13y ago
This is a great article. If you believe everything you're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s-- or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have. This is lost on most people. You'll just hear "of course it was wrong!" and this point won't be given further thought. But if it was obvious that it was wrong, why did masses of people agree to this? They wouldn't have done it if they also saw it as wrong. So why are we the exception today? Couldn't we be just as gullible or misguided? You have to move your own ego and preconceived notions aside to seriously address the question.
- cryoshon 13y ago
  It's difficult to overstate the power of propaganda. I think an apt comparison here is the public's opinion of the Iraq war during the build up. The media told people what to think, and, by and large, they thought what they were told, or were cowed into silence. Not that it mattered-- millions protested anyway, and were ignored. To be blunt, the majority of people didn't even have the capacity to say "but this is wrong!" whether behind closed doors, in their mind, or in public. They have no agency. I think a good rule is that people who are handed their worldview from the mainstream media are going to be gullible/misguided by default. It's harsh, but I haven't found any examples to the contrary yet.
  - wozniacki 13y ago
    I can't help but intrude here. The point made in the italicized line [1] above is much much larger than the typically-trite debate over the consumption of mass media narratives. Reducing it to a talking point - about the power of mainstream media to silence skeptics - cheapens the vast and profound meaning embedded in it. This is not about doves vs hawks. This is much larger than that. That statement is not just about propaganda or consensus, at the societal level. It is also about personal convention and the nature of agreeableness in itself. [1] If you believe everything you're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s-- or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have.
whyme 13y ago
I find pg's earlier writings, like this one, to be the best.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
I find that in engineering circles theology and the notion of the existence of God is one of those 'moral taboos.' And advocating more nuclear power stations or private gun ownership. It is fascinating that were you to advocate gun control in the late 19th century, it seems nearly everyone would have laughed you out of the room. But that sentiment has reversed here in the 21st century. Always interesting to think about.
- mattgreenrocks 13y ago
  Here's another one that will incite HN: Personal ambition is overrated, and we're actually just buying into the lies of Western culture that we have to become the Ubermensch to be happy. I struggle with this.
  - paulbaumgart 13y ago
    Personal ambition can be redirected into an ambition to improve the world around you, which is pretty healthy and utility-promoting on balance.
  - marvin 13y ago
    Yes! I love the heresy :D I wish there were more frank expressions of beliefs that go against the status quo. I strongly agree with you, even as my core moral values and ambitions line very well up with the chase of my personal ambitions.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    >Personal ambition is overrated, and we're actually just buying into the lies of Western culture that we have to become the Ubermensch to be happy. Completely agreed. In actual fact, most such people aren't even real ubermenschen. They have no mission, no true values of their own that they will impose on the world. Their ambitions are not only the small beer of rising in wealth but the zero-sum nonsense of rising in social status. Their dreams are forever confined to the cage of the established capitalist system. What's another dollar? Many so-called ambitious professionals are just more self-deceiving pigs in human clothing. </grimdark>
- 13y ago
rubiquity 13y ago
This is probably my favorite essay from PG. I think about it at least once a week. It's easy to get caught up in a world of professionalism, which is just a fancy word for acting like you aren't human, and go through every day doing social norms just because they are social norms. This essay reminds me to stop and think about the things that I do and see other people doing.
loourr 13y ago
"To launch a taboo, a group has to be poised halfway between weakness and power."
scoofy 13y ago
I don't really understand this article. What is the point of an empirical approach to taboo. I was a student of philosophy for years, and ethics is essentially a top-down way of finding the exact things he's looking for. Whether it be Kant's categorical imperative or Singer's expanding circle, it seems to me this taboo chasing is missing the bigger picture of finding a justifiable ethical framework, and then everything he's asking about falls out simply, and easily.
- bal00ns 13y ago
  You're right, this article is missing the bigger picture, but I don't think that was ever its target. It's simple, accessible, and piques peoples interest into something much bigger. I don't see it as an attempt to directly contribute to any specific field.
  - scoofy 13y ago
    But it's just plane incorrect. It conflates ethics with aesthetics. >What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. It may appear that morality behaves like fashion, but it's doesn't, or at least it shouldn't. The key ingredient here is that in fashion, there is no wrong, only taste. Thus, you can pull back the curtain on any would-be wizard trying to force you to conform. In ethics, on the other hand, screaming a bunch of hurtful crap at people, just because you're "not supposed to do that" isn't cocksure cleverness. It's wrong. It hurts people. There are good, justifiable, reasons why you shouldn't say them. Do we have taboos we shouldn't have? Sure, but if we are going to talk about them, they should be within a moral framework, not in some empirical mess of hey-that-shouldn't-be-that-way.
mef 13y ago
Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers? If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think whatever you're told. The other alternative would be that you independently considered every question and came up with the exact same answers that are now considered acceptable. That seems unlikely, because you'd also have to make the same mistakes. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If another map has the same mistake, that's very convincing evidence. Is it a possibility that someone has controversial opinions but could be unafraid of expressing them to a group of peers?
- cryoshon 13y ago
  It's possible, yeah, but you have to be particularly insensitive to both verbal and nonverbal rejection cues in order to be willing to do it more than once. Ever pitched a controversial opinion to a group of peers? You'll find that a lot of people look down at their hands, or away from you, or at each other with a blank/expectant/fearful face.
  - clarry 13y ago
    Or downvote you to hell.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    This can depend a lot on the particular peer group and the opinion holders position within it. Plenty of people will state proudly that they hold certain controversial views (often borderline racist etc) but they tend to surround themselves with people who either hold those views themselves or by people who are meek enough to accept the views without resistance so the social penalty doesn't apply.
  - dec0dedab0de 13y ago
    you have to be particularly insensitive to both verbal and nonverbal rejection cues I think that might be me. I have to figure out a way to test this.
brd 13y ago
"Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?" I think this test is fascinating when applied to the Musk vs. Gates debate from yesterday. How taboo is it to say forget charity? I know I feel uncomfortable with saying: 'forget the poor, we can fix them after we've figured out how to create a sustainable form of first world living' and yet that seems like a far more rational strategy to act upon.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  Why does it seem like a far more rational strategy to act upon?
  - brd 13y ago
    Because its a fact that we cannot, with current technology, support 7 billion people living a modern lifestyle. We simply can't produce enough energy in a clean enough fashion to attempt anything of the sort. Because technology is a force multiplier and will pay larger dividends than charitable endeavors. Because “On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club *Keep in mind I'm making this statement as if we're only able to pursue one course of action (charity or technology). In reality we should, and are, pursue both solutions at once.
- hobs 13y ago
  I had this thought this morning, though of a slightly different tone. The radio talking head mentioned that they were going to interview an anti-civilizationist, someone who apparently thinks that developed society is unsustainable and will be the end of us all. Apparently he advocates for a return to pre-civilization? I immediately thought, "We need to be able to leap forward, not backward. If this involves some sacrifice of human lives, it will save trillions in the long run. Pre-civilizaiton is just waiting for the next asteroid to impact the planet." I don't understand how someone could be against civilization.
  - gus_massa 13y ago
klochner 13y ago
The prohibition will be strongest when the group is nervous. Hence the behavior you see inside many startups - non-founding members questioning the mission/purpose/intention/success of the company is typically taboo.
B-Con 13y ago
> It would be a remarkable coincidence if ours were the first era to get everything just right. I love this kind of insight. I think that we, as humans, are very egotistical by nature. The time we're living in is surely the time we have all the answers and everything important figured out. We simply can't live with the feeling of "eh, it'll be way better in 100 years". We always need the feeling of certainty and ownership. Throughout history, we have always been certain of what we thought, regardless of how much reason we had to believe it. > If you believe everything you're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s-- or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have. Here's a similar thought: "What are the odds that a huge percentage of the people with a certain position were born together in the same geographic location at the same time?" If that doesn't make you scared of being morally brainwashed, I don't know what will.
onmydesk 13y ago
This all rather reminds me of the thinking that brought about the female founders conference. I have faith that at some point in the future this form of sexism will become less fashionable !! What were we thinking you will all say. And no-one will remember the dissenters.
- camelite 13y ago
  So sexism is bad then. I guarantee you this is not something "you can't say", or goes against today's moral fashion.
  - onmydesk 13y ago
    What you get a reaction to is not sexism is bad. It is that sexism in favour of women is bad. You're not allowed to say that.
    - meric 13y ago
      The only mention of this taboo on this thread, and it is more dangerous to say this in today's society than everything else suggested by everyone. Congratulations. I have more to add: It is either extremely difficult or impossible for a society to treat its men and women equally. Though it is possible to grant them equal respect, the experience of living as a man and living as a woman is, and always will be, different. Assigning target ratios of men/women in various industries makes as much sense as making sure each man have an equal number of sexual opportunities. There are some jobs that, in general, one sex is better at, and so it may be perfectly possible for one sex to, on average, be the majority of those doing that job, as well as, on average, attain a higher wage in that role, achieved without the interference of some male authority past or present. That would only get us started on the list of things we aren't allowed to say.
    - camelite 13y ago
      Yes, that's obvious now I've re-read your comment.
Jun8 13y ago
"What can't we say? One way to find these ideas is simply to look at things people do say, and get in trouble for." I was thinking of this very essay when pg "got into trouble" for his comments about female founders, whenever I see vicious backlash to dissent here whenever some of these issues are discussed. I think (haven't read anything to back this, absolutely my own personal feeling) that debacle may have had just a little bit in his decision to step down. Read the section headed Why once again, it's gold. This piece ranks in my personal top ten pg essays. It's so interesting that the piece mentions Summers, albeit one year earlier than the famous speech (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_between_the_sexes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_be...). I would so love to sit down with pg and have his honest opinions on this subject. Of course, not probably he cannot afford to deviate from ""i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto."
anaphor 13y ago
It reminds me of this blog post by Moxie Marlinspike, basically people should be allowed to dissent otherwise we will never have any progress because nobody considered any alternatives. http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have-something-to-hide/ http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have-somethin...
ggreer 13y ago
Here are some things I think future societies will condemn us for: 1. Prison. Almost every modern penal system focuses on punishment rather than rehabilitation. I think that as our understanding of the brain improves, we'll be able to find the causes of violent behavior and cure them. Punishment will become cruel and unusual. 2. Eating meat (and other animal rights issues). Even if they're not conscious, most tasty animals can suffer just as much as we can. They have desires and kin. Some even mourn the passing of their brethren. But few eyes are batted when our microencephalized cousins are abused and killed by the billions. Cheap in-vitro meat is probably a prerequisite for this change. 3. Banning assisted suicide for the elderly and terminally ill. See http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/ I doubt I'll be right on all of these, but I'm hopeful. Now for something I really can't say: I think all three of these atrocities share a root cause. Some of you will probably guess what I'm getting at.
- staunch 13y ago
  Those are not things we cannot say though. Most people I know well think US prisons are a human rights crisis, eating meat is ethically unjustifiable (but delicious), and choosing to die is plainly a human right.
  - jbooth 13y ago
    I bet if you polled the US national population, you'd find the opposite and by a strong margin.
    - deleted 13y ago
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      - 001sky 13y ago
        A "higher standard" would imply we hunt to extinction all non-vegetarian animals. Methinks that is a paradox. But YMMV.
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deleted 13y ago
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tempestn 13y ago
A fairly minor but prevalent one is speed limit laws. I personally feel most speed limit laws in North America are ridiculous. In almost every situation it is safe to drive significantly faster than the posted speed, so it seems fairly obvious that there's something wrong with the law itself. Now, in this particular group I expect that isn't terribly controversial. But it can be a very unpopular opinion in some circles for two different reasons. 1) It's the law. You want to break the law? And the somewhat more reasonable one: 2) Nothing is more important than human life. If driving slowly can save even one life, it's worth it. By advocating an increase to speed limits, you're valuing a few minutes of your time over people's lives. Now, for one thing, it has been demonstrated by numerous studies that increased speed limits do not necessarily result in increased accident rates (in fact, often the opposite). But even leaving that aside. Say that an across the board increase to speed limits of X%^ results in a Y% increase in fatal crashes. For some sufficiently (very) small Y/X, would that not be worthwhile? It's callous, but it seems to me that it must be true. (I mean, look at the extreme case. Driving at any speed is much more dangerous than walking, but we do it anyway since it gets us places faster.) I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable saying so in a lot of peer groups though, nor without all the preamble. ^Not that that would be the most logical way to do it of course. Edit: I should clarify that I'm speaking of main arterial roads and highways here, not residential streets. At least in most of Canada, almost all non-highways have speed limits of 50km/h, regardless of whether they're a residential side-street or a major 4 or 6 lane road. Most highways have limits of 80km/h, a few 100, and the highest I've ever seen is 110. In good conditions, most highways could easily be safely traveled at at least 120km/h. I don't think it makes sense to set speed limits for the worst case scenario, and ignore all the efficiency that could be safely gained in most driving conditions. I haven't done a ton of driving in the US, so it's possible the situation differs there more than I was aware.
- deleted 13y ago
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- maxerickson 13y ago
  I don't think you are correct about speed limits. Most limited access roads can probably support higher speeds (Except when there is a lot of traffic entering and exiting), but the majority of 2 lane roads don't have the visibility to support much higher speeds (More developed roads probably do, but they are small fraction of the total mileage). Roads that see much pedestrian use certainly don't need higher limits (they don't necessarily need lower limits either, just some better sharing system).
DickingAround 13y ago
This article actually makes me think of something I first liked about hacker news: I noticed that posts which went against widely accepted views tended to be up-voted. Seriously, even now when I'm writing something people like it'll generally ok on any site. If I write something I think is well founded and people will not agree with, it'll probably do better on hacker news. I guess that reminds me to read and up-vote things that I didn't initially like...
applecore 13y ago
Previous discussion (1789 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581050 Today's discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443420 Interesting.
crististm 13y ago
Wow - It's ten years already... Time flies.
Russell91 13y ago
The true genius of this essay is that it gives to the reader a sense that every controversial idea they believe is indeed correct.
- mwfunk 13y ago
  That's what I'm seeing here. Very little discussion on the article, lots of people posting lists of things they feel persecuted for believing, with the implication being that they're sitting there drumming their fingers and waiting to be validated by history. Oh, and other people arguing with them about those things. Hooray for the Internet I guess? :)
  - ivanca 13y ago
    And of course there is the meta discussion where they feel superior for analyzing the behavior of the crowd and pretending that discussing random controversial matters is a childish behavior. Hooray for internet I'm sure (not guess).
- ivanca 13y ago
  Nope, every one already had a sense of that because otherwise they wouldn't have them; plus controversial ideas are harder to hold on to.
whyme 13y ago
I have to say, while I really like this article, I think it goes too far with the statement: "Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot." He prefaces that statement with a very black and white example of people who ban the color yellow. Using that example every reader can agree they are idiots, but in truth these issues are never that black and white. So calling them idiots, and suggesting you would become one by entering the debate goes a little too far - IMHO.
dreamfactory2 13y ago
> "most physicists could, if necessary, make it through a PhD program in French literature, but few professors of French literature could make it through a PhD program in physics" This is simply an embarrassingly stupid and ignorant comment. The rest of it is fine if stating the obvious/sophomoric. I'd have like to have seen him take the interesting nuggets on fashion being political in nature and run with it (already well understood by fashion students but might deserve wider exposure).
- waterlesscloud 13y ago
  I'd be surprised if PhDs in either of those fields genuinely disagreed with that.
  - slvv 13y ago
    Well, I don't quite qualify - I have a BA in French and I'm working on a PhD in another humanities discipline - but I disagree pretty strongly with the idea that a physicist could do what a French literature specialist does but not vice versa.
woofuls 13y ago
Capitalism.
sfx 13y ago
I'm glad this was submitted here for discussion. The first time I read this essay I had trouble coming up with ways our society behaves that "people in the future will find ridiculous." Many of the ones in the comments are just ways our society is backwards, but not many taboos. 1. America's devoted support for our military. A support so unquestioning that you can be beaten up for saying otherwise. Polar opposite from the Vietnam war. Strange how much this has changed in less than forty years. 2. Eugenics, while not totally taboo, it's hard to talk about it without being labeled a bigot, racist, etc. 3. I also think it's difficult to have a discussion on pedophiles that doesn't involve advocating locking them up forever, it might be worth having a more empathetic discussion on such crimes. (I almost didn't include this last one for fear of getting in trouble, I rewrote it a dozen different times, but it's such a taboo subject that it should be examined.)
- namenotrequired 13y ago
  I'm happy you did include 3. While I can normally discuss absolutely anything with my girlfriend, my opinion on this matter is one of the very few things she refuses to discuss with me.
dbbolton 13y ago
>It could be that the scientists are simply smarter; most physicists could, if necessary, make it through a PhD program in French literature, but few professors of French literature could make it through a PhD program in physics. I think this is a pretty unfair generalization, and furthers the stereotype that STEM majors are smarter/harder-working/generally better than liberal arts majors. It is not inconceivable to me that most people choose to major in something they are passionate. I think people who choose a major just because they perceive it as easy are a small minority of students. Aside from that, I personally believe academic success is primarily due to hard work, rather than intelligence. I imagine almost all PhDs are reasonably intelligent and could in fact make it through a physics program, provided they were willing to put in the time and effort.
- MatthiasP 13y ago
  Academic success is based on hard work, intelligence and to know exactly what not to say.
barce 13y ago
In the future, people will not be measured by how productive they are. They will see that human organizations greater than 150 people are divorced from reality. Productivity will be considered a shared delusion held during the Age of Work. Managers often ask me how they can make their workers more productive. What I cannot say is, "There is no productivity." There is a book that goes into deconstructing productivity. It's called "How to Survive in an Organization" by James Heaphey. It's based on a generation's worth of study on organizations like corporations.
Exenith 13y ago
I'm pretty disappointed in most people's responses. Here's two real, actual taboos that no one wants to touch with a 20ft stick: 1. consensual incest 2. consensual pedophilia All of these things are just utterly shunned. It would be unspeakable for me to argue in support of these in real life, except with very close friends and in a very detached manner. In fact, this has probably put me on some sort of list (especially considering the stuff I saw on 4chan last night...). The interesting thing is that I would never want to do any of those things. Yet I know that my own repulsion is based on irrational disgust, and the reason for our shunning is also based on irrational disgust. When we take universal moral baselines -- empathy, compassion -- none of these taboos, assuming the sex is protected and consensual, harm anyone. We've also got eugenics and polygamy, but I could probably argue for those without being shot. Oh wow, and consensual cannibalism. I'm usually the devil's advocate, but even this shit is starting to make me feel dirty.
iopq 13y ago
Stretching before running increases your risk of injury. This is because you inhibit the pain response and increase your mobility.
AgathaTheWitch 13y ago
If I made known my views on a number of issues to my coworkers, I would quickly be looking for a new job and may even be shunned in the greater tech community. I've made peace with that knowledge.
bjlorenzen 13y ago
1. War and conflict are desirable 2. Unfit/unintelligent people should be sterilized 3. Sex with children is ok mad yet?
dghughes 13y ago
Even something like a person's name change change within a generation, names once considered male becoming primarily associated with females. Swearing seems more commonplace now even in my workplace people casualy saying fuck is as common as hello, even in front of small children. Not so long ago you wouldn't dare say such a thing in a workplace.
deleted 13y ago
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whatevsbro 13y ago
This seems timely in light of the new "pending comments" system. What it boils down to, is comments being censored by default, until they're possibly uncensored by group-think. As if the community needed a narrower focus on supporting Basic Income and other misguided but popular ideas. The effect will be silencing unharmonious views, which seems like something the author of "What You Can't Say" would see. Maybe silencing dissent is the goal here. I don't expect (m)any of my own comments to get uncensored.
juliendorra 13y ago
I see Sexism, Racism, Islamophobia (and speed limits !) mentionned as taboo and unspeakable several times in this thread. I'm not sure we live in the same era. There is mainstream politicians all over Europe and the US saying sexist, racist and islamophobic things. They usually win votes by saying them. (And there is motorist groups still openly advocating for no speed limits ;-). There is a confusion here between unspeakable and "currently fought by a sizable active minority".
hippoman 13y ago
I'm surprised peadophilia and bestiality haven't come up. These are often victimless but you can say "I want to have sex with children".
nwenzel 13y ago
Ask pg: What does the pg of today (the pg with kids) think about what the pg of the past (circa 2004) wrote about the parts of the essay related to kids? If there's something interesting to diff, it's the ideas people have that pertain to taboos and taboo subjects before and after kids. I suspect if more developers and engineers had kids, iPads would have a kid mode. I wonder how thinkers and writers (and painters?) would think and write and paint differently with/without kids.
bigd 13y ago
Living longer is a problem, not a solution Cars are a problem, not a solution Religions are a problem, not a solution Democracy is broken. Weighted democracy may work slightly better: (you take a test on the voting matter and the weight of your vote is proportional to the score) this feels good...
onetwofiveten 13y ago
Maybe future societies will condemn us for always being so opinionated on subjects that we don't know much about, instead of just accepting that no-one knows for sure yet.
joerich 13y ago
If you know two or more languages you may realize that you cannot say the same things with each language, actually there are some words that doesn’t exist in some languages. For example, I’m from Spain, there are some adjectives that doesn’t exist in English and the other way around. That is why I met English people who have not the behavior of that adjectives (which doesn’t exist) and Spanish people that don’t have the behavior of some adjectives I learned in English which doesn’t exist in Spanish. I think cultures depend on the adjectives they have, how are you gonna expect a behavior that you cannot qualify with your own language with an adjective? As he says at the end”How can you see the wave, when you are the water?” you have to go to other waters (countries) to learn/absorb/feel about other waves(language, culture, behaviour… or whatever) and at the same time you learn about the previous water you were.

191 points by Blahah 13y ago

diminish 13y ago

tlwrl; Now that pg has more time to dive into the meta-er layers, guess we'll see some progress with the Arc language.

robobro 13y ago
This article was published in 2004.
- sirkneeland 13y ago
  But it is no less true now. If anything the explosion of ubiquitous and instantaneous social media has only exacerbated the tendencies towards branding unorthodox thinking as Thoughtcrime as a twittermob of snark and hatred can be summoned in hours if not minutes.
  - mattgreenrocks 13y ago
    Yeah I was thinking the same thing. Social media, at it's core, glorifies groupthink, rewarding you handsomely with stars and likes when you say the right thing. In time, you start thinking of what you should be saying, and then you start wondering what you should be posting so that you're perceived as a certain type of person. And when you start down that path, it feels like you become a bit more intellectually subservient. If your concern is always how to please people, how can you be expected to explore heresies? How can you plumb the depths of the unknown to explore and discover things when you concern yourself with safety? The immediacy of the medium rewards snark and off-the-cuff remarks instead of analysis, insight, and distance. It incentivizes heated discussion (as it garners more pageviews!) and cheap, "me too" posts. It generates a fear of missing out, which is used to manipulate visitors into consuming more and more content for less and less value, exactly like any addictive substance.
    - joyeuse6701 13y ago
      one would hope that granting an upvote/plus vs a downvote/minus would be objective. It is obviously not, and you're exactly right, it rewards group think.
    - jack-r-abbit 13y ago
      This happens here too. The downvote is a pretty big deal for such a tiny button. I'll admit to writing comments I never posted because I knew people would eviscerate me for going against the groupthink. It doesn't change my thoughts... I just don't say them "out loud".
      - mattgreenrocks 13y ago
        I admit I enjoy inciting things on here sometimes, especially in the face of groupthink, perhaps so I can self-righteously claim that the groupthink exists without giving time to fully think through the opposing side. It can come off as aggressive, for sure. I do think a healthy community needs skepticism and introspection to remain that way. But I do think people unintentionally reinforce the notion of the status quo needs to be reinforced/destroyed, which can affect the types of thoughts you'd think about sharing with a group.
        jack-r-abbit 13y ago
        > I admit I enjoy inciting things on here sometimes Yes... there are times I do just say fuck it and post it anyway. HNKarma is pretty worthless after all. :)
      - sirkneeland 13y ago
        Same here. Someday when I have a HN Karma score in the bazillions I will feel free to say what I really think. Until then I feel compelled to largely hew to the HN party line.
        declan 13y ago
        I hope this is tongue in cheek. Disagreeing with the majority your peers (as I've done frequently here) could still lead you the minority who agrees with you to upvote you. Unlike politics, it's not a winner-takes-all system. But more to the point, and the reason I hope this is tongue in cheek, I hope nobody here actually optimizes for or cares about a "HN Karma score in the bazillions." Last I checked you can't cash in HN Karma for a fiat $$$ check or happiness. There's a bigger world out there, folks.
drcode 13y ago
As someone foolish enough to build a production-grade tool with arc back in the day, I'd say that Clojure has taken most of the best ideas from arc already. I think arc still had few good tricks related to code brevity though that never got adopted by Clojurists (they would require a custom sexp reader to be bolted into Clojure to port them) but almost all of the other good stuff from arc made it into Clojure, and Clojure had many fantastic ideas that greatly improved on arc.

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robobro 13y ago

Do you think you'll raise your children to believe in Santa, HN?

gnaritas 13y ago
I didn't; I've always showed my child the non-sense others believe without cause. Now 20, she has a solid grasp on reality and a firm bullshit detector.
- jmj42 13y ago
  We did (see above). Both of my children (13 and 18) also have a solid grasp on reality and firm bullshit detectors. I suspect belief in Santa, as a child, has little to do with it.
  - gnaritas 13y ago
    It's good that they turned out OK despite being misled by their parents; you may find that OK because tradition, I find it simply a form of lying, regardless of whether you actively said anything or not.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- jules 13y ago
  Letting your kid believe in Santa for a while is far more powerful learning experience than showing it that others believe in this nonsense: not only can't others' beliefs be trusted, your own beliefs can't be either.
  - gnaritas 13y ago
    There are better ways to teach that than by showing them you're a liar. Telling them Santa is real is IMHO wrong; that's not a debatable point, that's my opinion. I don't support teaching delusions to kids whether it's Santa or God.

Pxtl 13y ago

I was going to post a comment but I deleted it.

chippy 13y ago
We are your peers. Do not be afraid!
incompatible 13y ago
Well, Paul did suggest that you should keep your ideas to yourself. Why give the NSA a list of all your subversive thoughts anyway? They can and will be used against you, if the situation requires it.

skylan_q 13y ago

This is a great article. If you believe everything you're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s-- or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have. This is lost on most people. You'll just hear "of course it was wrong!" and this point won't be given further thought. But if it was obvious that it was wrong, why did masses of people agree to this? They wouldn't have done it if they also saw it as wrong. So why are we the exception today? Couldn't we be just as gullible or misguided? You have to move your own ego and preconceived notions aside to seriously address the question.

cryoshon 13y ago
It's difficult to overstate the power of propaganda. I think an apt comparison here is the public's opinion of the Iraq war during the build up. The media told people what to think, and, by and large, they thought what they were told, or were cowed into silence. Not that it mattered-- millions protested anyway, and were ignored. To be blunt, the majority of people didn't even have the capacity to say "but this is wrong!" whether behind closed doors, in their mind, or in public. They have no agency. I think a good rule is that people who are handed their worldview from the mainstream media are going to be gullible/misguided by default. It's harsh, but I haven't found any examples to the contrary yet.
- wozniacki 13y ago
  I can't help but intrude here. The point made in the italicized line [1] above is much much larger than the typically-trite debate over the consumption of mass media narratives. Reducing it to a talking point - about the power of mainstream media to silence skeptics - cheapens the vast and profound meaning embedded in it. This is not about doves vs hawks. This is much larger than that. That statement is not just about propaganda or consensus, at the societal level. It is also about personal convention and the nature of agreeableness in itself. [1] If you believe everything you're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s-- or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have.

whyme 13y ago

I find pg's earlier writings, like this one, to be the best.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

I find that in engineering circles theology and the notion of the existence of God is one of those 'moral taboos.' And advocating more nuclear power stations or private gun ownership. It is fascinating that were you to advocate gun control in the late 19th century, it seems nearly everyone would have laughed you out of the room. But that sentiment has reversed here in the 21st century. Always interesting to think about.

mattgreenrocks 13y ago
Here's another one that will incite HN: Personal ambition is overrated, and we're actually just buying into the lies of Western culture that we have to become the Ubermensch to be happy. I struggle with this.
- paulbaumgart 13y ago
  Personal ambition can be redirected into an ambition to improve the world around you, which is pretty healthy and utility-promoting on balance.
- marvin 13y ago
  Yes! I love the heresy :D I wish there were more frank expressions of beliefs that go against the status quo. I strongly agree with you, even as my core moral values and ambitions line very well up with the chase of my personal ambitions.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  >Personal ambition is overrated, and we're actually just buying into the lies of Western culture that we have to become the Ubermensch to be happy. Completely agreed. In actual fact, most such people aren't even real ubermenschen. They have no mission, no true values of their own that they will impose on the world. Their ambitions are not only the small beer of rising in wealth but the zero-sum nonsense of rising in social status. Their dreams are forever confined to the cage of the established capitalist system. What's another dollar? Many so-called ambitious professionals are just more self-deceiving pigs in human clothing. </grimdark>
13y ago

rubiquity 13y ago

This is probably my favorite essay from PG. I think about it at least once a week. It's easy to get caught up in a world of professionalism, which is just a fancy word for acting like you aren't human, and go through every day doing social norms just because they are social norms. This essay reminds me to stop and think about the things that I do and see other people doing.

loourr 13y ago

"To launch a taboo, a group has to be poised halfway between weakness and power."

scoofy 13y ago

I don't really understand this article. What is the point of an empirical approach to taboo. I was a student of philosophy for years, and ethics is essentially a top-down way of finding the exact things he's looking for. Whether it be Kant's categorical imperative or Singer's expanding circle, it seems to me this taboo chasing is missing the bigger picture of finding a justifiable ethical framework, and then everything he's asking about falls out simply, and easily.

bal00ns 13y ago
You're right, this article is missing the bigger picture, but I don't think that was ever its target. It's simple, accessible, and piques peoples interest into something much bigger. I don't see it as an attempt to directly contribute to any specific field.
- scoofy 13y ago
  But it's just plane incorrect. It conflates ethics with aesthetics. >What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. It may appear that morality behaves like fashion, but it's doesn't, or at least it shouldn't. The key ingredient here is that in fashion, there is no wrong, only taste. Thus, you can pull back the curtain on any would-be wizard trying to force you to conform. In ethics, on the other hand, screaming a bunch of hurtful crap at people, just because you're "not supposed to do that" isn't cocksure cleverness. It's wrong. It hurts people. There are good, justifiable, reasons why you shouldn't say them. Do we have taboos we shouldn't have? Sure, but if we are going to talk about them, they should be within a moral framework, not in some empirical mess of hey-that-shouldn't-be-that-way.

mef 13y ago

Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers? If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think whatever you're told. The other alternative would be that you independently considered every question and came up with the exact same answers that are now considered acceptable. That seems unlikely, because you'd also have to make the same mistakes. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If another map has the same mistake, that's very convincing evidence. Is it a possibility that someone has controversial opinions but could be unafraid of expressing them to a group of peers?

cryoshon 13y ago
It's possible, yeah, but you have to be particularly insensitive to both verbal and nonverbal rejection cues in order to be willing to do it more than once. Ever pitched a controversial opinion to a group of peers? You'll find that a lot of people look down at their hands, or away from you, or at each other with a blank/expectant/fearful face.
- clarry 13y ago
  Or downvote you to hell.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  This can depend a lot on the particular peer group and the opinion holders position within it. Plenty of people will state proudly that they hold certain controversial views (often borderline racist etc) but they tend to surround themselves with people who either hold those views themselves or by people who are meek enough to accept the views without resistance so the social penalty doesn't apply.
- dec0dedab0de 13y ago
  you have to be particularly insensitive to both verbal and nonverbal rejection cues I think that might be me. I have to figure out a way to test this.

brd 13y ago

"Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?" I think this test is fascinating when applied to the Musk vs. Gates debate from yesterday. How taboo is it to say forget charity? I know I feel uncomfortable with saying: 'forget the poor, we can fix them after we've figured out how to create a sustainable form of first world living' and yet that seems like a far more rational strategy to act upon.

enraged_camel 13y ago
Why does it seem like a far more rational strategy to act upon?
- brd 13y ago
  Because its a fact that we cannot, with current technology, support 7 billion people living a modern lifestyle. We simply can't produce enough energy in a clean enough fashion to attempt anything of the sort. Because technology is a force multiplier and will pay larger dividends than charitable endeavors. Because “On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club *Keep in mind I'm making this statement as if we're only able to pursue one course of action (charity or technology). In reality we should, and are, pursue both solutions at once.
hobs 13y ago
I had this thought this morning, though of a slightly different tone. The radio talking head mentioned that they were going to interview an anti-civilizationist, someone who apparently thinks that developed society is unsustainable and will be the end of us all. Apparently he advocates for a return to pre-civilization? I immediately thought, "We need to be able to leap forward, not backward. If this involves some sacrifice of human lives, it will save trillions in the long run. Pre-civilizaiton is just waiting for the next asteroid to impact the planet." I don't understand how someone could be against civilization.
- gus_massa 13y ago

klochner 13y ago

The prohibition will be strongest when the group is nervous. Hence the behavior you see inside many startups - non-founding members questioning the mission/purpose/intention/success of the company is typically taboo.

B-Con 13y ago

> It would be a remarkable coincidence if ours were the first era to get everything just right. I love this kind of insight. I think that we, as humans, are very egotistical by nature. The time we're living in is surely the time we have all the answers and everything important figured out. We simply can't live with the feeling of "eh, it'll be way better in 100 years". We always need the feeling of certainty and ownership. Throughout history, we have always been certain of what we thought, regardless of how much reason we had to believe it. > If you believe everything you're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s-- or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have. Here's a similar thought: "What are the odds that a huge percentage of the people with a certain position were born together in the same geographic location at the same time?" If that doesn't make you scared of being morally brainwashed, I don't know what will.

onmydesk 13y ago

This all rather reminds me of the thinking that brought about the female founders conference. I have faith that at some point in the future this form of sexism will become less fashionable !! What were we thinking you will all say. And no-one will remember the dissenters.

camelite 13y ago
So sexism is bad then. I guarantee you this is not something "you can't say", or goes against today's moral fashion.
- onmydesk 13y ago
  What you get a reaction to is not sexism is bad. It is that sexism in favour of women is bad. You're not allowed to say that.
  - meric 13y ago
    The only mention of this taboo on this thread, and it is more dangerous to say this in today's society than everything else suggested by everyone. Congratulations. I have more to add: It is either extremely difficult or impossible for a society to treat its men and women equally. Though it is possible to grant them equal respect, the experience of living as a man and living as a woman is, and always will be, different. Assigning target ratios of men/women in various industries makes as much sense as making sure each man have an equal number of sexual opportunities. There are some jobs that, in general, one sex is better at, and so it may be perfectly possible for one sex to, on average, be the majority of those doing that job, as well as, on average, attain a higher wage in that role, achieved without the interference of some male authority past or present. That would only get us started on the list of things we aren't allowed to say.
  - camelite 13y ago
    Yes, that's obvious now I've re-read your comment.

Jun8 13y ago

"What can't we say? One way to find these ideas is simply to look at things people do say, and get in trouble for." I was thinking of this very essay when pg "got into trouble" for his comments about female founders, whenever I see vicious backlash to dissent here whenever some of these issues are discussed. I think (haven't read anything to back this, absolutely my own personal feeling) that debacle may have had just a little bit in his decision to step down. Read the section headed Why once again, it's gold. This piece ranks in my personal top ten pg essays. It's so interesting that the piece mentions Summers, albeit one year earlier than the famous speech (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_between_the_sexes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_be...). I would so love to sit down with pg and have his honest opinions on this subject. Of course, not probably he cannot afford to deviate from ""i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto."

anaphor 13y ago

It reminds me of this blog post by Moxie Marlinspike, basically people should be allowed to dissent otherwise we will never have any progress because nobody considered any alternatives. http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have-something-to-hide/ http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have-somethin...

ggreer 13y ago

Here are some things I think future societies will condemn us for: 1. Prison. Almost every modern penal system focuses on punishment rather than rehabilitation. I think that as our understanding of the brain improves, we'll be able to find the causes of violent behavior and cure them. Punishment will become cruel and unusual. 2. Eating meat (and other animal rights issues). Even if they're not conscious, most tasty animals can suffer just as much as we can. They have desires and kin. Some even mourn the passing of their brethren. But few eyes are batted when our microencephalized cousins are abused and killed by the billions. Cheap in-vitro meat is probably a prerequisite for this change. 3. Banning assisted suicide for the elderly and terminally ill. See http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/ I doubt I'll be right on all of these, but I'm hopeful. Now for something I really can't say: I think all three of these atrocities share a root cause. Some of you will probably guess what I'm getting at.

staunch 13y ago
Those are not things we cannot say though. Most people I know well think US prisons are a human rights crisis, eating meat is ethically unjustifiable (but delicious), and choosing to die is plainly a human right.
- jbooth 13y ago
  I bet if you polled the US national population, you'd find the opposite and by a strong margin.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - 001sky 13y ago
      A "higher standard" would imply we hunt to extinction all non-vegetarian animals. Methinks that is a paradox. But YMMV.
- 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

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tempestn 13y ago

A fairly minor but prevalent one is speed limit laws. I personally feel most speed limit laws in North America are ridiculous. In almost every situation it is safe to drive significantly faster than the posted speed, so it seems fairly obvious that there's something wrong with the law itself. Now, in this particular group I expect that isn't terribly controversial. But it can be a very unpopular opinion in some circles for two different reasons. 1) It's the law. You want to break the law? And the somewhat more reasonable one: 2) Nothing is more important than human life. If driving slowly can save even one life, it's worth it. By advocating an increase to speed limits, you're valuing a few minutes of your time over people's lives. Now, for one thing, it has been demonstrated by numerous studies that increased speed limits do not necessarily result in increased accident rates (in fact, often the opposite). But even leaving that aside. Say that an across the board increase to speed limits of X%^ results in a Y% increase in fatal crashes. For some sufficiently (very) small Y/X, would that not be worthwhile? It's callous, but it seems to me that it must be true. (I mean, look at the extreme case. Driving at any speed is much more dangerous than walking, but we do it anyway since it gets us places faster.) I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable saying so in a lot of peer groups though, nor without all the preamble. ^Not that that would be the most logical way to do it of course. Edit: I should clarify that I'm speaking of main arterial roads and highways here, not residential streets. At least in most of Canada, almost all non-highways have speed limits of 50km/h, regardless of whether they're a residential side-street or a major 4 or 6 lane road. Most highways have limits of 80km/h, a few 100, and the highest I've ever seen is 110. In good conditions, most highways could easily be safely traveled at at least 120km/h. I don't think it makes sense to set speed limits for the worst case scenario, and ignore all the efficiency that could be safely gained in most driving conditions. I haven't done a ton of driving in the US, so it's possible the situation differs there more than I was aware.

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maxerickson 13y ago
I don't think you are correct about speed limits. Most limited access roads can probably support higher speeds (Except when there is a lot of traffic entering and exiting), but the majority of 2 lane roads don't have the visibility to support much higher speeds (More developed roads probably do, but they are small fraction of the total mileage). Roads that see much pedestrian use certainly don't need higher limits (they don't necessarily need lower limits either, just some better sharing system).

DickingAround 13y ago

This article actually makes me think of something I first liked about hacker news: I noticed that posts which went against widely accepted views tended to be up-voted. Seriously, even now when I'm writing something people like it'll generally ok on any site. If I write something I think is well founded and people will not agree with, it'll probably do better on hacker news. I guess that reminds me to read and up-vote things that I didn't initially like...

applecore 13y ago

Previous discussion (1789 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581050 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581050 Today's discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443420 Interesting.

crististm 13y ago

Wow - It's ten years already... Time flies.

Russell91 13y ago

The true genius of this essay is that it gives to the reader a sense that every controversial idea they believe is indeed correct.

mwfunk 13y ago
That's what I'm seeing here. Very little discussion on the article, lots of people posting lists of things they feel persecuted for believing, with the implication being that they're sitting there drumming their fingers and waiting to be validated by history. Oh, and other people arguing with them about those things. Hooray for the Internet I guess? :)
- ivanca 13y ago
  And of course there is the meta discussion where they feel superior for analyzing the behavior of the crowd and pretending that discussing random controversial matters is a childish behavior. Hooray for internet I'm sure (not guess).
ivanca 13y ago
Nope, every one already had a sense of that because otherwise they wouldn't have them; plus controversial ideas are harder to hold on to.

whyme 13y ago

I have to say, while I really like this article, I think it goes too far with the statement: "Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot." He prefaces that statement with a very black and white example of people who ban the color yellow. Using that example every reader can agree they are idiots, but in truth these issues are never that black and white. So calling them idiots, and suggesting you would become one by entering the debate goes a little too far - IMHO.

dreamfactory2 13y ago

> "most physicists could, if necessary, make it through a PhD program in French literature, but few professors of French literature could make it through a PhD program in physics" This is simply an embarrassingly stupid and ignorant comment. The rest of it is fine if stating the obvious/sophomoric. I'd have like to have seen him take the interesting nuggets on fashion being political in nature and run with it (already well understood by fashion students but might deserve wider exposure).

waterlesscloud 13y ago
I'd be surprised if PhDs in either of those fields genuinely disagreed with that.
- slvv 13y ago
  Well, I don't quite qualify - I have a BA in French and I'm working on a PhD in another humanities discipline - but I disagree pretty strongly with the idea that a physicist could do what a French literature specialist does but not vice versa.

woofuls 13y ago

Capitalism.

sfx 13y ago

I'm glad this was submitted here for discussion. The first time I read this essay I had trouble coming up with ways our society behaves that "people in the future will find ridiculous." Many of the ones in the comments are just ways our society is backwards, but not many taboos. 1. America's devoted support for our military. A support so unquestioning that you can be beaten up for saying otherwise. Polar opposite from the Vietnam war. Strange how much this has changed in less than forty years. 2. Eugenics, while not totally taboo, it's hard to talk about it without being labeled a bigot, racist, etc. 3. I also think it's difficult to have a discussion on pedophiles that doesn't involve advocating locking them up forever, it might be worth having a more empathetic discussion on such crimes. (I almost didn't include this last one for fear of getting in trouble, I rewrote it a dozen different times, but it's such a taboo subject that it should be examined.)

namenotrequired 13y ago
I'm happy you did include 3. While I can normally discuss absolutely anything with my girlfriend, my opinion on this matter is one of the very few things she refuses to discuss with me.

dbbolton 13y ago

>It could be that the scientists are simply smarter; most physicists could, if necessary, make it through a PhD program in French literature, but few professors of French literature could make it through a PhD program in physics. I think this is a pretty unfair generalization, and furthers the stereotype that STEM majors are smarter/harder-working/generally better than liberal arts majors. It is not inconceivable to me that most people choose to major in something they are passionate. I think people who choose a major just because they perceive it as easy are a small minority of students. Aside from that, I personally believe academic success is primarily due to hard work, rather than intelligence. I imagine almost all PhDs are reasonably intelligent and could in fact make it through a physics program, provided they were willing to put in the time and effort.

MatthiasP 13y ago
Academic success is based on hard work, intelligence and to know exactly what not to say.

barce 13y ago

In the future, people will not be measured by how productive they are. They will see that human organizations greater than 150 people are divorced from reality. Productivity will be considered a shared delusion held during the Age of Work. Managers often ask me how they can make their workers more productive. What I cannot say is, "There is no productivity." There is a book that goes into deconstructing productivity. It's called "How to Survive in an Organization" by James Heaphey. It's based on a generation's worth of study on organizations like corporations.

Exenith 13y ago

I'm pretty disappointed in most people's responses. Here's two real, actual taboos that no one wants to touch with a 20ft stick: 1. consensual incest 2. consensual pedophilia All of these things are just utterly shunned. It would be unspeakable for me to argue in support of these in real life, except with very close friends and in a very detached manner. In fact, this has probably put me on some sort of list (especially considering the stuff I saw on 4chan last night...). The interesting thing is that I would never want to do any of those things. Yet I know that my own repulsion is based on irrational disgust, and the reason for our shunning is also based on irrational disgust. When we take universal moral baselines -- empathy, compassion -- none of these taboos, assuming the sex is protected and consensual, harm anyone. We've also got eugenics and polygamy, but I could probably argue for those without being shot. Oh wow, and consensual cannibalism. I'm usually the devil's advocate, but even this shit is starting to make me feel dirty.

iopq 13y ago

Stretching before running increases your risk of injury. This is because you inhibit the pain response and increase your mobility.

AgathaTheWitch 13y ago

If I made known my views on a number of issues to my coworkers, I would quickly be looking for a new job and may even be shunned in the greater tech community. I've made peace with that knowledge.

bjlorenzen 13y ago

1. War and conflict are desirable 2. Unfit/unintelligent people should be sterilized 3. Sex with children is ok mad yet?

dghughes 13y ago

Even something like a person's name change change within a generation, names once considered male becoming primarily associated with females. Swearing seems more commonplace now even in my workplace people casualy saying fuck is as common as hello, even in front of small children. Not so long ago you wouldn't dare say such a thing in a workplace.

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whatevsbro 13y ago

This seems timely in light of the new "pending comments" system. What it boils down to, is comments being censored by default, until they're possibly uncensored by group-think. As if the community needed a narrower focus on supporting Basic Income and other misguided but popular ideas. The effect will be silencing unharmonious views, which seems like something the author of "What You Can't Say" would see. Maybe silencing dissent is the goal here. I don't expect (m)any of my own comments to get uncensored.

juliendorra 13y ago

I see Sexism, Racism, Islamophobia (and speed limits !) mentionned as taboo and unspeakable several times in this thread. I'm not sure we live in the same era. There is mainstream politicians all over Europe and the US saying sexist, racist and islamophobic things. They usually win votes by saying them. (And there is motorist groups still openly advocating for no speed limits ;-). There is a confusion here between unspeakable and "currently fought by a sizable active minority".

hippoman 13y ago

I'm surprised peadophilia and bestiality haven't come up. These are often victimless but you can say "I want to have sex with children".

nwenzel 13y ago

Ask pg: What does the pg of today (the pg with kids) think about what the pg of the past (circa 2004) wrote about the parts of the essay related to kids? If there's something interesting to diff, it's the ideas people have that pertain to taboos and taboo subjects before and after kids. I suspect if more developers and engineers had kids, iPads would have a kid mode. I wonder how thinkers and writers (and painters?) would think and write and paint differently with/without kids.

bigd 13y ago

Living longer is a problem, not a solution Cars are a problem, not a solution Religions are a problem, not a solution Democracy is broken. Weighted democracy may work slightly better: (you take a test on the voting matter and the weight of your vote is proportional to the score) this feels good...

onetwofiveten 13y ago

Maybe future societies will condemn us for always being so opinionated on subjects that we don't know much about, instead of just accepting that no-one knows for sure yet.

joerich 13y ago

If you know two or more languages you may realize that you cannot say the same things with each language, actually there are some words that doesn’t exist in some languages. For example, I’m from Spain, there are some adjectives that doesn’t exist in English and the other way around. That is why I met English people who have not the behavior of that adjectives (which doesn’t exist) and Spanish people that don’t have the behavior of some adjectives I learned in English which doesn’t exist in Spanish. I think cultures depend on the adjectives they have, how are you gonna expect a behavior that you cannot qualify with your own language with an adjective? As he says at the end”How can you see the wave, when you are the water?” you have to go to other waters (countries) to learn/absorb/feel about other waves(language, culture, behaviour… or whatever) and at the same time you learn about the previous water you were.