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What You Can't Say (2004)

paulgraham.com

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Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#181

Post by atoav »

pointerpointer wrote: post #179

This definitely applies to HN. HN should not grey out down voted comments. It is like there is no freedom of thought and speech on HN. If many people don't like what you're saying your idea gets censored while it might be very true. That is inherently wrong IMHO. edit: HN, why not just showing how many up and down votes a comment gets? I am really curious why someones comment should be invisible. Sometimes I'm readin…

I have never seen a comment that I couldn’t read because it was greyed out. I always saw it more or less as sign that I should either take the greyed out comment with a grain of salt (which makes it less likely for me to post a snarky reply underneath) or it shows me that the thing said there (or how it was said) is at least viewed as controversial.

Marking opinions is not censorship. Even if you’d mark posts with a bold red “lie” watermark, it wouldn’t be censorship.

The thing to keep in mind is: when the communicative tool of greying out is taken away, more people will write pointless responses.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#182

Post by rayalez »

buboard wrote: post #167
kristianc wrote: post #4

The inverse of this seems to be taking hold now: that it’s socially acceptable to say things which are unreasonable, outlandish or downright factually incorrect, if they’re considered to be in service of a cause that ‘our side’ believes in. But yes, this has also been discussed a lot here before.

It's not the inverse , but a corrolary: With heretical ideas being purged from each Church, the churches have doubled down on absurdness

Another somewhat related thing is "Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs":

https://www.lesswrong.com/s/M3TJ2fTCzoQq66NBJ/p/ZQG9cwKbct2L...

When more moderate, reasonable, or relatively skeptical people leave the group, people who remain are, on average, more fanatical and extreme. Which leads to even more extreme viewpoints, which pushes out more and more people who previously might have been acting as a voice of moderation.

> After the [moderate members] escape, the remaining discussions will be between the extreme fanatics on one end and the slightly less extreme fanatics on the other end, with the group consensus somewhere in the “middle.”

So

> This is one reason why it’s important to be prejudiced in favor of tolerating dissent. Wait until substantially after it seems to you justified in ejecting a member from the group, before actually ejecting. If you get rid of the old outliers, the group position will shift, and someone else will become the oddball.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#183

Post by lmm »

tshaddox wrote: post #143

> 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 what you're told. I’ve never quite understood this argument, because it seems…

If someone claimed to have done detailed fundamentals analysis on which stocks to buy, and the recommended portfolio they came up with was exactly the S&P 500, you'd be dubious that they'd actually done the analysis, right? If someone was doing a book report and came up with exactly the same analysis as a well-known essay, you'd be sceptical that they'd read the book themselves. Of course there's an underlying reality and you'd expect everyone to come up with the same broad themes. But there's enough noise that you also expect individuals to come up with some idiosyncratic differences.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#184

Post by Udik »

dTal wrote: post #178
Udik wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is another type that comes from a belief that your perceived "genetic" [...] inheritance make you in some way implicitly superior... On the other hand, I am pretty convinced that my genetic inheritance makes me "superior" (in some vague, but obvious way) to a cat- and yet I've never harmed or desired harm for cats- I actually like them. Or, to make a different example, while we consider it unacceptable to thi…

You don't compete with cats for resources, and you interact with them entirely on your terms. Once an animal enters your life without asking, and reduces the resources available to you, they become 'vermin', and people will do extraordinarily cruel things to them without feeling the slightest pang of guilt on the basis of that same 'superiority' which you feel towards cats.

Exactly- which means that the issue it's not the sense of (even genetic) superiority per se, but that of being threatened.

Btw, we have an entire genre of fiction (a subset of science fiction) in which humanity is threatened by technologically and cognitively superior races coming from other planets- this doesn't prevent us from trying to exterminate them to ensure our survival.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#185

Post by johnr2 »

gruez wrote: post #133
kristianc wrote: post #4

The inverse of this seems to be taking hold now: that it’s socially acceptable to say things which are unreasonable, outlandish or downright factually incorrect, if they’re considered to be in service of a cause that ‘our side’ believes in. But yes, this has also been discussed a lot here before.

> The inverse of this seems to be taking hold now: that it’s socially acceptable to say things which are unreasonable, outlandish or downright factually incorrect, if they’re considered to be in service of a cause that ‘our side’ believes in. examples?

> examples?

Person A is accused of criminal act X.

Person B: "It isn't proven yet. Allow due process to take place."

Person C: "X-apologist!"

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#186

Post by pointerpointer »

atoav wrote: post #181
pointerpointer wrote: post #179

This definitely applies to HN. HN should not grey out down voted comments. It is like there is no freedom of thought and speech on HN. If many people don't like what you're saying your idea gets censored while it might be very true. That is inherently wrong IMHO. edit: HN, why not just showing how many up and down votes a comment gets? I am really curious why someones comment should be invisible. Sometimes I'm readin…

I have never seen a comment that I couldn’t read because it was greyed out. I always saw it more or less as sign that I should either take the greyed out comment with a grain of salt (which makes it less likely for me to post a snarky reply underneath) or it shows me that the thing said there (or how it was said) is at least viewed as controversial. Marking opinions is not censorship. Even if you’d mark posts with a…

> Marking opinions is not censorship.

You mean when a comment is not readable anymore it is 'marking' instead of censoring? So if China hides peoples opinion it is 'marking', like being a good thing? I don't get this.

> more people will write pointless responses

Is that scientifically proven?

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#187

Post by hmry »

pointerpointer wrote: post #186
atoav wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never seen a comment that I couldn’t read because it was greyed out. I always saw it more or less as sign that I should either take the greyed out comment with a grain of salt (which makes it less likely for me to post a snarky reply underneath) or it shows me that the thing said there (or how it was said) is at least viewed as controversial. Marking opinions is not censorship. Even if you’d mark posts with a…

> Marking opinions is not censorship. You mean when a comment is not readable anymore it is 'marking' instead of censoring? So if China hides peoples opinion it is 'marking', like being a good thing? I don't get this. > more people will write pointless responses Is that scientifically proven?

They are supposed to be readable still. If you can't then that's an accessibility issue, not censorship. Try turning up your screens contrast.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#188

Post by TeMPOraL »

lone_haxx0r wrote: post #71
kaens wrote: post #64

> Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. > In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress th…

Embracing Popper's thesis implies the existence of a line separating "tolerant ideologies" from "intolerant ideologies". Who is going to define that line? Knowing how the world works, I don't suspect, but I know it will be used to suppress things that the mob doesn't agree with, while that same mob preaches ideologies more violent and intolerant than the ones they suppress. Popper's opinion only makes sense when the…

I think it's the mobs that need to be fought under Popper's thesis.

It's simpler to see if you apply the Paradox recursively. There's a reason for an exception to tolerance. It's made only in case of people who directly want to get rid of other members of society. Society needs to get rid of them first. But if, in your quest of chasing out the intolerant, you extend the meaning of intolerance to anything beyond immediate threats to people, or if you start claiming collateral damage, then you are the intolerant that the society needs to get rid of ASAP.

The groups currently wielding the Paradox as justification for their actions? If they actually believed in it, they'd dissolve.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#189

Post by TeMPOraL »

jonahx wrote: post #107
danShumway wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Paradox of Tolerance is just a rephrasing of the Paradox of Pacifism. I'm not convinced it brings anything ideologically new to the table. I'm not a pacifist, and by extension, I don't believe we should tolerate everything. I agree with Karl. But I still get very suspicious of people who bring this quote up, because they're arguing about something very basic that pretty much everybody already knows, and they're n…

> because they're arguing about something very basic that pretty much everybody already knows One would think... Unfortunately, many people believe that all intolerance stems from bad treatment of some kind, and that the intolerant can be swayed, eventually, given enough tolerance.

Out of the vocal people on the Internet, it would seem more seem to believe that whoever disagrees with them is intolerant and subhuman and must be opposed with violence instead of an argument.

Re: What You Can't Say (2004)

#190

Post by twic »

undefined1 wrote: post #40
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!

Paul's response to this: "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. (So far no one from the US car industry has complained though, perhaps because I mentioned explicitly that a heresy was coming, instead of just inlining it.) T…

As long as the French literature professors are allowed to publish on string theory, they're probably fine.
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