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What You Can't Say (2004)

paulgraham.com

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Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#41

Post by Uehreka »

hollerith wrote: post #36
Uehreka wrote: post #30

Having seen many articles on this topic show up on HN, and this one in particular recur like a comet every year, I’d like to note a trend I feel like I see in the HN comments every time. First I see a highly upvoted top-level comment talking about how tragic it is that thoughtcrime is such a capital offense these days, and lamenting that surely the HN thought police will be coming for their head, but they still feel…

>sure, there exist people on HN who hold liberal or leftist beliefs, and there exist similar people in the Bay Area. But you know who else lives in the Bay Area? . . . Peter Thiel! Uh, he moved to LA " — a move his camp describes as a bid to escape the political hegemony of the San Francisco Bay Area": https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-peter-thiel-20180215-...

Womp, fair enough.

That part notwithstanding though, I think the overall point stands.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#42

Post by dmurray »

jonahrd wrote: post #5

> 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. Well having taken a lesson from the article, I think he's purely mistaken with this point. (As well as divisive, insensitive, etc..) Quite the hubris to make that assumption!

The follow up [0] to this essay tells how he didn't want to explicitly claim anything as an "unsayable truth" today, but that he snuck this one in anyway. It's...controversial, not PC and quite possibly wrong, but it has some chance of being one of those truths.

> Actually, for illustrative purposes I did include a few things you can't say, but I stuck to domain-specific ones. Within university faculties, this is the great unmentionable. And look at how much trouble I got in for bringing it up...

> Try this thought experiment. A dictator takes over the US and sends all the professors to re-education camps. The physicists are told they have to learn how to write academic articles about French literature, and the French literature professors are told they have to learn how to write original physics papers. If they fail, they'll be shot. Which group is more worried? [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/resay.html

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#43

Post by malandrew »

rocqua wrote: post #10

What is scary about this approach is that it tends to favor conservatism. Any change achieved politically can easily be dismissed as a moral fashion (immigrant's rights, racial equality being ideal, same-sex marriage, women's rights). This is much more of an issue when you use the methods outlined to argue against an idea. If instead you use these methods internally, this is less of an issue.

Neither conservatism nor progressivism is necessarily correct or better. Sometimes conservatism is worse because it preserves things that we should change for the better. Sometimes progressivism is worse because it doesn't fully understand why society arrived at a solution so progressives try to change things in a way they think is better but then there are all sorts of unintended consequences that turn out to be worse that what progressives were trying to change for the better.

For example, at one time progressives were trying to end segregation and promote judging someone on the content of character and not the color of their skin while conservatives fought them on this. Now progressives are trying to reinstitute segregation and promoting the idea that people should be judged on skin color and not content of character while conservatives fight them on these changes.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#44

Post by rland »

jonahrd wrote: post #5

> 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. Well having taken a lesson from the article, I think he's purely mistaken with this point. (As well as divisive, insensitive, etc..) Quite the hubris to make that assumption!

Statements like these are STEM vs. Non-STEM version of "why does Twitter need 4000 software engineers? I could make that in two weeks!"

Didn't Paul Graham write an article about that?

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#45

Post by Tronno »

malandrew wrote: post #43
rocqua wrote: post #10

What is scary about this approach is that it tends to favor conservatism. Any change achieved politically can easily be dismissed as a moral fashion (immigrant's rights, racial equality being ideal, same-sex marriage, women's rights). This is much more of an issue when you use the methods outlined to argue against an idea. If instead you use these methods internally, this is less of an issue.

Neither conservatism nor progressivism is necessarily correct or better. Sometimes conservatism is worse because it preserves things that we should change for the better. Sometimes progressivism is worse because it doesn't fully understand why society arrived at a solution so progressives try to change things in a way they think is better but then there are all sorts of unintended consequences that turn out to be wor…

"Now progressives are trying to reinstitute segregation and promoting the idea that people should be judged on skin color and not content of character while conservatives fight them on these changes."

That's quite a statement. Could you go into more detail?

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#46

Post by ecuzzillo »

Uehreka wrote: post #30

Having seen many articles on this topic show up on HN, and this one in particular recur like a comet every year, I’d like to note a trend I feel like I see in the HN comments every time. First I see a highly upvoted top-level comment talking about how tragic it is that thoughtcrime is such a capital offense these days, and lamenting that surely the HN thought police will be coming for their head, but they still feel…

PG moved to England, afaik.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#47

Post by lawnchair_larry »

jonahrd wrote: post #5

> 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. Well having taken a lesson from the article, I think he's purely mistaken with this point. (As well as divisive, insensitive, etc..) Quite the hubris to make that assumption!

It’s a sign that we are in crazy times when people even think his claim is debatable. Come on. Whether it’s divisive or insensitive is irrelevant. It’s true.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#48

Post by mikelyons »

chimi wrote: post #13
mikelyons wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selfishness is devilry, and devils make Truth out as falsehood and spin falsehood as true.

This is pervasive in society right now. It's rampant in politics, advertising, dating... and it seems to be getting worse not better. It's almost like we don't have time to evaluate honesty. Politicians win, not because they will answer a question honestly, but because they will repeatedly deflect and they get away with it. Why do we allow it?

The people who are working to raise their level of consciousness, and who are willing to let go of ideology and dogma are few and far between, because it's painful and difficult. Just look at the votes that happen to anyone speaking this truth, people hate getting called on their devilry because it makes them look bad so they down vote when really this is the conversation that we need to have to eventually disallow it!

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#49

Post by dextralt »

rocqua wrote: post #10

What is scary about this approach is that it tends to favor conservatism. Any change achieved politically can easily be dismissed as a moral fashion (immigrant's rights, racial equality being ideal, same-sex marriage, women's rights). This is much more of an issue when you use the methods outlined to argue against an idea. If instead you use these methods internally, this is less of an issue.

in case you haven't noticed, progressives have long since moved on from the idea of "equality" of races and sexes.
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