Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Heresy

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 1001 posts

Re: Heresy

#601

Post by ambrozk »

analog31 wrote: post #546
Beltalowda wrote: post #155

I think this is an important part: "Fortunately in western countries the suppression of heresies is nothing like as bad as it used to be. Though the window of opinions you can express publicly has narrowed in the last decade, it's still much wider than it was a few hundred years ago. The problem is the derivative. Up till about 1985 the window had been growing ever wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would…

Indeed, and the very concept of "heresy" has changed over the centuries, to the point where the analogy to Newton is probably meaningless. "Heresy" was considered to be an immediate mortal threat to the eternal life of the soul. It was not just a disagreement with social customs. It was the spiritual equivalent to yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, or driving a truck into a crowd.

Are you telling us that it was literally violence?

Re: Heresy

#602

Post by rayiner »

NoraCodes wrote: post #521
twofornone wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These claims that the "don't say gay" legislation stifles free speech are dishonest. These are teachers, agents of the state, in a professional setting, not private citizens expressing opinions off the clock. If I'm paying taxes for public education then I should have a say in what gets taught, and that includes culture.

Now, wait a second - either it's bad that people get fired for expressing opinions, as Graham states in the essay, or it's not and people _should_ get fired for expressing opinions that you don't like. I don't think you can have it both ways. It's not even as if there's a conflict of interest here, as in the case of public officials being banned from certain kinds of political speech; these teachers are not hurting a…

The difference is that what the teacher says is the actual service the teacher is providing pursuant to his or her employment. The government has every right to decide the content of the material being provided to kids in public schools. It’s not a free speech issue at all. Note that the Florida law applies only to “instruction.”

To use a different example: a public bus driver shouldn’t be fired for an offhand comment. But they have to drive the routes the government tells them to drive. That’s not a “freedom of movement” issue.

Re: Heresy

#603

Post by shadowgovt »

Koshkin wrote: post #467
shadowgovt wrote: post #9

Graham has forgotten his own essays if he thinks that this is a rebirth. "What you can't say" [ http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html ] is one of the first of his essays I ever read. It eventually directed me to this site. At the time, I thought it was brilliant. 18 years on, I think it's a good piece of writing but he's only got half the story. Sadly, today's essay suggest to me he hasn't found the other half in the in…

> Graham has forgotten his own "If a person is not a liberal when he is twenty, he has no heart; if he is not a conservative when he is forty, he has no head."

I've heard that, but it doesn't apply here... Graham's position doesn't appear to have changed. Indeed, he seems to be retreading old ground like he forgot he wrote the other essay.

Re: Heresy

#604

Post by AlexTrask »

NoraCodes wrote: post #498

> The reason the current wave of intolerance comes from the left is simply because the new unifying ideology happened to come from the left. The next one might come from the right. Imagine what that would be like. I'm curious how Mr. Graham can look at a country that is in the process of reversing much of the last half-century's progress on women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and disability rights, and _not_ see a politic…

I think that Mr.Graham is not talking about rights and progress.

curl -sb -H "http://paulgraham.com/heresy.html" | grep "right" one will be the last.

There are aggressively conventional-minded people on both the right come from the left. The next one might come from the right. Imagine when, like the medieval church, they say "Damn right we're banning

Re: Heresy

#605

Post by ethbr0 »

ambrozk wrote: post #581
ScarletEmerald wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

If there is a pulpit in the town square, then the 1st amendment says that a speaker *is* entitled to that pulpit. This is the essence of free speech, and always has been. The 1st amendment is very explicit about this: citizens have a right to assemble *in public* and air their opinions *publicly.* Cordoning off opinions and declaring them unfit for certain public squares is a classic form of censorship. Communists, R…

Exactly. IMHO, we just need to accept that "public" has extended and changed to encompass publicly-accessible, privately-owned platforms of a sufficient size.

Re: Heresy

#606

Post by switchbak »

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #355
Beltalowda wrote: post #155

I think this is an important part: "Fortunately in western countries the suppression of heresies is nothing like as bad as it used to be. Though the window of opinions you can express publicly has narrowed in the last decade, it's still much wider than it was a few hundred years ago. The problem is the derivative. Up till about 1985 the window had been growing ever wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would…

I think the problem with this argument is the free speech "is at an all time high if you zoom out a bit". This is much like the argument, "gun violence is at an all time low if you zoom out a bit" argument. Both of these statements are true in the macro, but if you look at the trends, they point to a very disturbing line. The call for the restriction of free speech on the right(1) and the left (2) have increased in v…

I think that's something that often gets overlooked in the frenzy to tribal defence: this is a sideshow to take the spotlight off of the real important issues of the day.

If you really look at it, the left/right dichotomy in US politics seems designed (evolved?) to serve much the same purpose.

When we all calm down on the partisanship, often it's amazing how much shared ground there really is.

Re: Heresy

#608

Post by moolcool »

RichardHeart wrote: post #584

Mr. Graham writes an essay supporting free speech. Thus the comments here, ironically, attack his speech, with tons of words found no where in his essay at all. The comments here literally prove the spirit of his essay.

I don't see the irony. I don't think anyone is denying PG's his right to speak freely, they're just disagreeing with him.

Re: Heresy

#609

Post by adrianwaj »

"Thanks to Marc Andreessen, Chris Best, Trevor Blackwell, Nicholas Christakis, Daniel Gackle, Jonathan Haidt, Claire Lehmann, Jessica Livingston, Greg Lukianoff, Robert Morris, and Garry Tan for reading drafts of this."

Why so many people?

Re: Heresy

#610

Post by randomtwiddler »

sanderjd wrote: post #369

> The reason the current wave of intolerance comes from the left is simply because the new unifying ideology happened to come from the left. This is an (aggressively?) conventional idea that I have an (I guess) heretical opinion about. I'm somewhat persuaded that there is a recent outbreak of intolerance for differing ideas and ideals (though I suspect every generation expresses a version of this opinion as they get…

Seems a false equivalency. The majority of the personalized destruction, cancelling, firing, etc, comes from one side.
Post reply on HN