What You Can't Say

Paul Graham ^ | January 2004 | Paul Graham

[Libertina]

Dear Eala, please don't forget to *ping* your fans :)

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Yeah, but you like RAISINS? Hmmmm...

[Oberon]

FR is owned and run by a private individual who doesn't want garbage on his website.

You are always free to start your own website, and put up with any trash you want to.

Ooooh, that's an impressive sinksupurian response... make your reply and frame the debate in the same few pithy words.

I think we should coin an adjective for this bit of work, almost poetic in its concentrated effect: It's sinkspurious.

While I don't think we've communicated to one another before now, Mr. spur, I've read a few of your posts before. They're impressive samples of the rhetorical art...highly sophisticated bits of writing.

[SauronOfMordor]

You must be a Libertarian

I keep my membership card in my wallet. You got a problem with that?

Generally, it's fun to have a position where a Dem can screech that you're a radical right-wing extremist while a Pubby can express his horror at your radical left-wing attitudes

[Nick Danger]

Hmmmm. I had the opposite reaction. I thought the piece was spectacularly well-written. It was almost fun, in the same way that reading Thomas Sowell is fun.

[DefCon]

To say nothing of spell-checking.

Or grammar.

[Post Toasties]

This article wouldn't stand a chance of being published in the Muslim Middle East.

[js1138]

Ping.

[Arthur McGowan]

I skimmed this article, and I saw it mentioned "Scientology" so it must be bad article. For the umpteen-billionth time, Galileo did NOT get in trouble with the Church for saying the earth moves.

[WFTR]

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.

I hear this argument occasionally, and I disagree with it completely. The question is not whether we are concerned that our beliefs might be false, the question is whether we believe that the promotion of false beliefs might cause damage. I become angry when I hear someone say something that is false and dangerous. I can ignore someone saying things that are false and not dangerous.

I'll start with this guy's examples. Generally, I don't become angry at hearing someone claim that 2 + 2 = 5 because I know that few people who believe this statement will be in a position to cause harm by believing it. Even with all of the things that our society does incorrectly, we don't put important calculations in the hands of people who are incapable of basic arithmetic. (People may still make mistakes in calculations, but the question here is about basic beliefs.) Likewise, someone who seriously believes that all residents of Pittsburgh are ten feet tall will not likely be put in a position of power. We don't worry about these falsehoods because they aren't likely to do any damage.

On the other hand, false beliefs that can have damaging consequences make us very angry. As conservatives, most of us don't believe that a society can tax itself into prosperity. We can become angry when we hear someone arguing that raising taxes will improve the economy. Our anger is not born of any doubt about what we believe. Our anger results from concern over the damage that will be done if too many people believe this falsehood and want to implement it as policy.

I suspect that people make the suggestion that this guy made as a rhetorical ploy. By suggesting that we are secretly in doubt about anything that makes us angry, someone who is good at remaining calm can create doubts about the positions that his opponent has taken. When he says something completely wrong and dangerous and someone reacts passionately, he will try to claim that the passion is evidence that his claim is more likely to be right and less likely to be dangerous. The technique can be effective in winning a debate, but it doesn't help anyone find the truth.

Resolving for 2004
Bill

[WFTR]

A good scientist, in other words, does not merely ignore conventional wisdom, but makes a special effort to break it. Scientists go looking for trouble. This should be the m.o. of any scholar, but scientists seem much more willing to look under rocks.

This statement sounds good, but it isn't entirely true. There's a world of difference between breaking a conventional wisdom and looking "under a rock." A great deal of research does not involve challenging known ideas as much as it does applying them in new ways. These scientists are looking under rocks, but they are using the principles that already accepted. They don't "break" anything when they publish a new idea. Even many of the ideas that have broken conventional wisdom are not as shattering as some people suppose. I remember from college physics that many of the equations in Einstein's relativity theories reduce to familiar mechanics equations when the speed of the object in question is nowhere near the speed of light.

Resolving for 2004
Bill

[jennyp]

I can think of one more way to figure out what we can't say: to look at how taboos are created. How do moral fashions arise, and why are they adopted? If we can understand this mechanism, we may be able to see it at work in our own time.

Moral fashions don't seem to be created the way ordinary fashions are. Ordinary fashions seem to arise by accident when everyone imitates the whim of some influential person. The fashion for broad-toed shoes in late fifteenth century Europe began because Charles VIII of France had six toes on one foot. The fashion for the name Gary began when the actor Frank Cooper adopted the name of a tough mill town in Indiana. Moral fashions more often seem to be created deliberately. When there's something we can't say, it's often because some group doesn't want us to.

The prohibition will be strongest when the group is nervous. The irony of Galileo's situation was that he got in trouble for repeating Copernicus's ideas. Copernicus himself didn't. In fact, Copernicus was a canon of a cathedral, and dedicated his book to the pope. But by Galileo's time the church was in the throes of the Counter-Reformation and was much more worried about unorthodox ideas.

To launch a taboo, a group has to be poised halfway between weakness and power. A confident group doesn't need taboos to protect it. It's not considered improper to make disparaging remarks about Americans, or the English. And yet a group has to be powerful enough to enforce a taboo. Coprophiles, as of this writing, don't seem to be numerous or energetic enough to have had their interests promoted to a lifestyle.

I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That's where you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them.

That is a very interesting idea.

There are 2 things I've noticed about moral fashions:

1. Baby-boom-like generations tend to turn mere social fashions into moral causes. They seem to assume that if they like something new that they've discovered, then that new product, cuisine, music genre, or fashion statement must have society-changing, even spiritually renewing properties. Remember long hair on men, rock & roll, salad bars, health foods? Microcomputers ("PCs" for you young'uns), gourmet coffee, chai, evangelical Protestantism, trips to foreign countries, soccer? Whenever a new fad or movement comes along, you just know there's a good chance that some boomers are going to reflexively infuse it with a deeper, moral meaning - even though you suspect the only real "deeper meaning" is, "this is what happened to catch my I and my fellow boomers' interest this year".

2. Government is a moral fashion amplifier. At some point enough boomers who are spiritually inspired by the new fad reflexively start to agitate for a change in the laws (or innovative new legal theories to use in lawsuits) to encourage the said fad and to punish people who don't follow it. Think Prohibition 90 years ago, or smoking bans & anti-fat lawsuits today.

   The thing is, even if the fad is objectively silly, the transitory fad will get enshrined for way too long because of the new laws and/or successful lawsuits. So the new legal regime will become oppressive, horror stories will crop up, and inevitably there will be a violent reaction. If we're lucky, all the bad laws get repealed & sanity returns for a while.

[Johnny_Cipher]

FR used to stand for freedom, but now it's apparently run by a bunch of statists.

Why would anyone want to post at a web site "run by a bunch of statists?" Especially somebody who has been doing it since March 26, 1999?

[PatrickHenry]

For the umpteen-billionth time, Galileo did NOT get in trouble with the Church for saying the earth moves.

Yeah, right. The Crime of Galileo: Indictment and Abjuration of 1633.

[skypod]

Like I said, this is a recent problem here. I posted this question to Liberty Round Table discussion list and found out that it's been this way for about a year -- which is about the time since my last post.

In answer to your question, NO, I won't be posting here any more, nor will I be promoting this website. You can see the comment on my home page.

[Junior]

I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.

[Physicist]

It's disappointing that the author shrinks back from actually listing some things that he thinks he can't say. Our society is a pretty tolerant one. Most of the things people profess to be unsayable actually wouldn't get them in any trouble if they did. In fact, so many people make such an ostentatious show of flouting taboos that it isn't even interesting anymore.

Here's my list of unsayable things:

• N*gg*r [assuming your skin is white]
• I have had sexual relations with [insert minor's name here].

Add to it if you can, but pretty much anything else goes. (I'm leaving out obviously illegal things like defaming someone, making terroristic threats, and babbling classified information; we're talking about social mores, here.) You can advocate infanticide, you can call for the overthrow of the United States, you can call for Jews to be rounded up and shot, you can support Saddam Hussein, you can scream profanities, you can wax rhapsodic about your bestial experiences, and while some may look askance--just as some would if you admitted to belonging to any given political party--most will ignore you and go about their business.

The author's general point ("Check your premises") is good advice well taken, but American mores don't typically translate into unutterable thoughts.

[FLCowboy,]

What amazes me about this article is that some elitest was actually paid an exorbitant amount to write it.

[Johnny_Cipher]

Well, your warning has been received and understood. Thank you for taking the time to make it. The exit door's that way.

[SevenDaysInMay]

Protectors of the current and long established criminal alien invasion across the Mexican-American boundary are using aggressive PC "racist" accusations against observers who cite history and rule of current law as reasons to control American sovereign borders.

Accurate historical terminology, "w*****k" is banned from FR as a "racist" slur, when it is most accurate and not racist. For years, politically protected minority groups and sympathizers Hell-bent on nullifying our laws have sought to deflect the debate in law and social intercourse by disallowing some of the very terminology which places the debate in the most accurate light.

In Texas, we have several rivers which criminal aliens have had to cross to gain entry into the Republic of Texas, then into the USA, CSA, and USA. The 1846 Mexican War was fought over Mexico's refusal to adhere to the treaty signed after the 1836 Texas independence victory over Santa Anna, establishing the Rio Grande as the national border. At the time, much of this river was navigable by paddle wheel river boats, before too much water was diverted into crops.

Are those millions of foreign criminals who wade or swim our Statewide Rio Grande to violate Texas' USA sovereign borders be declared, by complicit and sympathic enablers, to be designated "undocumented workers" because any historical descriptive term less camouphlaging is brayed as "racist"?

Capitulation to this unlimited criminal invasion is both supremely foolish and self-destructive. Defending this international invasion bleeding our taxpayers while crushing our environment with a population explosion which is undermining our nation's security.

We should call a spade a dirty shovel when it is.