Things You Can't Say

[Trausti]

Things are always moving slowly in the direction of reason.

This is merely hopeful.

No, it is an historical observation.

Isn't this basically just because of the idea that winners write history? Whatever the current society thinks is considered reasonable by that society. For example, if say, 100 years from now, creationists made up 90% of the populace, they are going to say that "reason" finally won on that issue.

That's kind of the point of the OP. Every society has things you cannot say; whether that sanction is corporal or one of ostracizing. We may view ourselves as enlightened, but people in the past and other places likely viewed themselves the same way. In the Soviet Union to suggest the benefits of private ownership would get you in trouble. Also, in the socialist world to accept that genes play a primary role in cognition and behavior (despite this being true) would subject you to loss of benefits, etc. (It's the reason Dmitry Belyayev had to cast his silver fox experiment as simply a fur factory.) Politics and religion being two sides of the same coin, in Muslims societies to question the Islamic faith or Mohammad is considered hateful and hurtful to adherents, thus making death obligatory. (Unfortunately, this disposition is being imported into the West.) So perhaps a rule of thumb is to identify those ideas which produce the most severe reaction from conformists. The more severe the reaction, the more probable the idea is to be correct. What are such ideas in our time and place?

 

[LordKiran]

Things are always moving slowly in the direction of reason.

This is merely hopeful.

No, it is an historical observation.

Isn't this basically just because of the idea that winners write history? Whatever the current society thinks is considered reasonable by that society. For example, if say, 100 years from now, creationists made up 90% of the populace, they are going to say that "reason" finally won on that issue.

That's kind of the point of the OP. Every society has things you cannot say; whether that sanction is corporal or one of ostracizing. We may view ourselves as enlightened, but people in the past and other places likely viewed themselves the same way. In the Soviet Union to suggest the benefits of private ownership would get you in trouble. Also, in the socialist world to accept that genes play a primary role in cognition and behavior (despite this being true) would subject you to loss of benefits, etc. (It's the reason Dmitry Belyayev had to cast his silver fox experiment as simply a fur factory.) Politics and religion being two sides of the same coin, in Muslims societies to question the Islamic faith or Mohammad is considered hateful and hurtful to adherents, thus making death obligatory. (Unfortunately, this disposition is being imported into the West.) So perhaps a rule of thumb is to identify those ideas which produce the most severe reaction from conformists. The more severe the reaction, the more probable the idea is to be correct. What are such ideas in our time and place?

Also its pretty disingenuous to compare Galileo's censuring by a top-down power structure, and you being shouted down by your immediate peers. Grow up.

 

[untermensche]

Donald Trump was just elected president.

We are in Wonderland. The crazies have taken over.

Nobody needs to be hysterical.

Nor blind.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Can't say anything about Christians or can't kneel at a football game.

 

[untermensche]

You can't say capitalism is a rigged game and is morally bankrupt.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Can't say the vast majority of terrorists are males.

 

[untermensche]

Can't say the largest act of terrorism in the 21st Century was the attack of Iraq.

 

[LordKiran]

Can't say that the benefits of capitalism do have their limits and that "Capitalism" Isn't an answer to every social or economic problem.

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

Can't say guns are a problem and need to be regulated

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Can't say women are paid at 70-80% of their male counterparts.

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Can't say we ought to increase taxes in order to increase gov't funding levels.

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[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

See...you all are really getting what "politically correct" actually means. There's a political narrative that if you go against it, you get trounced and it's a right-wing and nationalist narrative.

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

Can't say that the minimum wage is too low.

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Can't say that we ought to implement policies that lower greenhouse gas emissions (cause jobs! and there's no science!)

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[ronburgundy]

This is merely hopeful.

No, it is an historical observation.

Depends on what you mean by "the direction of reason".

It cannot be concluded that the current elected leaders of the US are any more reasonable or prone to appeal to reason of the population than 230 years ago. IOW, the prevalence and weight given to the epistemology of reason has not increased.

One could more easily argue that is has decreased since the heyday of the Enlightenment.

However, so long as there is some amount of reasoning and people are encourage to openly question all assumptions, then there will be and has been an accumulation of victories of reason over unreason. In that sense, society moves in the direction of replacing more unreasoned ideas with reasoned ones, but the rate of that progress is not any faster and sometimes (as in now) slower than at other times in the past.

The rate of that progress toward reason is directly dependent upon how unconstrained people are in voicing ideas deemed "wrong" by current norms, and the extent to which use of any constraints or punishments for speech are themselves rooted in reason, and thus only enacted when there is clear overwhelming evidence that the ideas are wrong.

This is not limited to governmental punishments for speech, but applies to any and all attempts by anyone to negatively impact the speaker in any way beyond being informed via reasoned argument why they are wrong. IOW, something like a Twitter frenzy demanding a person be fired for their speech can easily do more harm and decelerate the progress of reason as would a government jail sentence for the same speech. Thus, it is everyone's moral obligation to set themselves a high bar for going beyond countering the offending ideas and seeking to negatively impact the speaker themselves. For example, only when the speech combined with other evidence is sufficient to rationally conclude the speaker is generally unfit for some position, should there be efforts to remove them from that position. Any lower bar than that inherently undermines the rate of progress toward reasoned epistemology and reasoned ideas.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Stupid shit should not go unchallenged, but it should be "tolerated" in the sense that there should be zero legal ramifications for it and those who say stupid shit should not be punished beyond things like losing a job because the stupid shit directly relates to one's competence in that job. Only actually "stupid" (and therefore objectively false) shit should even receive those sorts of punishments. Which means those seeking punishments should be expected to have clear evidence of such falsehoods, and their failure to produce it should be treated as punishable stupid shit of its own.

This distinction is absolutely vital. Unless the stupid shit is actually causing clear and immediate danger (like an incitement to violence)...

Nope, not that either because when a bunch of NFL players took to a knee during the anthem as a result of Trump's unbelievable inability to properly equate the Nazi and KKK marches calling for blodd... white males lost their shit.

 

[sharon45]

This distinction is absolutely vital. Unless the stupid shit is actually causing clear and immediate danger (like an incitement to violence)...

Nope, not that either because when a bunch of NFL players took to a knee during the anthem as a result of Trump's unbelievable inability to properly equate the Nazi and KKK marches calling for blodd... white males lost their shit.

And not this either.

 

[sharon45]

Can't say that we ought to implement policies that lower greenhouse gas emissions

It's about what these policies actually are.

 

[sharon45]

Things are always moving slowly in the direction of reason.

This is merely hopeful.

No, it is an historical observation.

Isn't this basically just because of the idea that winners write history? Whatever the current society thinks is considered reasonable by that society. For example, if say, 100 years from now, creationists made up 90% of the populace, they are going to say that "reason" finally won on that issue.

That's kind of the point of the OP. Every society has things you cannot say; whether that sanction is corporal or one of ostracizing. We may view ourselves as enlightened, but people in the past and other places likely viewed themselves the same way. In the Soviet Union to suggest the benefits of private ownership would get you in trouble. Also, in the socialist world to accept that genes play a primary role in cognition and behavior (despite this being true) would subject you to loss of benefits, etc. (It's the reason Dmitry Belyayev had to cast his silver fox experiment as simply a fur factory.) Politics and religion being two sides of the same coin, in Muslims societies to question the Islamic faith or Mohammad is considered hateful and hurtful to adherents, thus making death obligatory. (Unfortunately, this disposition is being imported into the West.) So perhaps a rule of thumb is to identify those ideas which produce the most severe reaction from conformists. The more severe the reaction, the more probable the idea is to be correct. What are such ideas in our time and place?

Also its pretty disingenuous to compare Galileo's censuring by a top-down power structure, and you being shouted down by your immediate peers.

Who said that they were equal?

 

[sharon45]

Can't say women are paid at 70-80% of their male counterparts.

Yeah, people should keep saying this for many more decades without doing anything notable about it.

 

[ronburgundy]

This distinction is absolutely vital. Unless the stupid shit is actually causing clear and immediate danger (like an incitement to violence)...

Nope, not that either because when a bunch of NFL players took to a knee during the anthem as a result of Trump's unbelievable inability to properly equate the Nazi and KKK marches calling for blodd... white males lost their shit.

And everyone trying to pressure the NFL to punish those players is an enemy of free speech, free thought and moral/political progress.
Any yes, it is about free speech, because the 1st Amendment is NOT the basis of the free speech principle, but rather the 1st Amendment is rooted in a more broad principle that goes beyond the government punishing speech. As I explained in my reply to bilby above, it is an ethical principle that all people should uphold by refusing to seek any kind of punishment of a speaker themselves, except in very specific limited circumstances. (Note that arguing against the speakers views is not a punishment of the speaker).

 

[Underseer]

Here's an essay from the mid aughts about conformity.

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. [2]

Of course, we're not just looking for things we can't say. We're looking for things we can't say that are true, or at least have enough chance of being true that the question should remain open. But many of the things people get in trouble for saying probably do make it over this second, lower threshold. No one gets in trouble for saying that 2 + 2 is 5, or that people in Pittsburgh are ten feet tall. Such obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or at worst as evidence of insanity, but they are not likely to make anyone mad. The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.

If Galileo had said that people in Padua were ten feet tall, he would have been regarded as a harmless eccentric. Saying the earth orbited the sun was another matter. The church knew this would set people thinking.

Certainly, as we look back on the past, this rule of thumb works well. A lot of the statements people got in trouble for seem harmless now. So it's likely that visitors from the future would agree with at least some of the statements that get people in trouble today. Do we have no Galileos? Not likely.

To find them, keep track of opinions that get people in trouble, and start asking, could this be true? Ok, it may be heretical (or whatever modern equivalent), but might it also be true?

Link

What are the things we can't say in our historical period? Anything about Race, perhaps. What else?

Ah, here comes the old "I'm not a white supremacist, I'm a free speech advocate!!!!"

So we're not allowed to call white supremacists white supremacists, we must call them "free speech advocates" or else we risk triggering all the rightists.

We're not allowed to call Nazis Nazis anymore, we must call them "alt right" or "alt right free speech advocates," or else we trigger the rightists.

But sure. Tell me all about how your free speech rights have been taken away. You're not a racist, you're a noble defender of our human rights, right?



https://xkcd.com/1357/

 

[Underseer]

See, here's the thing.

No one is actually stopping me from using the word Nazi, but if I do, then I have to deal with Republicans crying, which frankly I have no problem with.

Similarly, no one is stopping you from using the n-word. You are more then free to say the n-word. What you are really complaining about is the fact that when you use the n-word, people will know that you are a white supremacist and call you out on it. It's not that you want freedom of speech, you want freedom from criticism, and that is exactly the opposite of free speech.