
What You Can't Say (2004) - georgecmu
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
======
kristianc
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.

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

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

[https://www.lesswrong.com/s/M3TJ2fTCzoQq66NBJ/p/ZQG9cwKbct2L...](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/M3TJ2fTCzoQq66NBJ/p/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p)

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.

~~~
luckylion
Purity spiraling has always seemed to me to be a good differentiator to tell
apart the pragmatic and the purely ideological. The pragmatic will happily
tolerate some dissent from their position as long as it gets them closer to
their goal (even if they fundamentally disagree with it). The purely
ideological will vehemently reject anything that isn't purely their flavor and
will happily sacrifice making any advance in their direction if it isn't on
their exact terms.

------
evrydayhustling
I'd like to think that, like opening paragraph brings up, this piece is an old
snapshot that brings some embarrassment today. At the time it was posted I
would have been excited about it. 15 years later, indulgently and exhaustively
defining the well worn subject of heresy feels pretty dull.

Like most celebrations of heresy, this skips the fact that orthodoxy has its
own value: coordination. Parents teach their kids to avoid bad words so that
they can coordinate with others. This is not a bad thing.

A better thing still is for kids to understand that words aren't inherently
bad but that being conscious of how others feel about them is good. The
impactful heretics do the hard work of helping the orthodox world adapt to
what they have discovered.

And meanwhile, the vast majority of heresies are authentically wrong.
Celebrating being heretical for its own sake, rather than a combination of
truth seeking and empathy, had enabled all manner of jerks and frauds over the
years. Tech culture needs a more nuanced view of this topic.

~~~
codr7
The point stands, allowing your mind to roam freely without paying attention
to what others might think is the only way to find truth within.

The vast majority of heresies are authentically wrong? How exactly did that
happen? The opposite sounds more likely to me.

I used to enjoy PG's writings a lot more than anything that ever came out of
YC, that much I know.

------
georgewsinger
> For example, at the high water mark of political correctness in the early
> 1990s, Harvard distributed to its faculty and staff a brochure saying, among
> other things, that it was inappropriate to compliment a colleague or
> student's clothes. No more "nice shirt." I think this principle is rare
> among the world's cultures, past or present. There are probably more where
> it's considered especially polite to compliment someone's clothing than
> where it's considered improper. Odds are this is, in a mild form, an example
> of one of the taboos a visitor from the future would have to be careful to
> avoid if he happened to set his time machine for Cambridge, Massachusetts,
> 1992.

This is interesting. I've heard multiple people say that there have been two
political correctness peaks: one in the early/mid 90s, and the other starting
from about 2013 to now.

Are we already coming down from our current PC peak? I think we might be, even
though it seems weird to say (given that we're still near the peak, so that
political correctness is still high). Some evidence for this:

1\. There seems to be a larger and larger cultural awareness of the toxicity
of political correctness, so much so that it's starting to no longer be
counter-cultural anymore, but just a well-represented view. The IDW is
becoming more mainstream (which means they need to stop representing
themselves as a persecuted group, lest they become stuck in 2017). For the
record I'm a huge fan of the IDW. I don't want to see them stagnate.

2\. Leftists -- usually blamed the most for political correctness -- are even
now able to discuss a few ideas in public that they weren't formerly able to
quite as easily: (i) they can more openly discuss the merits of socialism
(using the "s" word) and (ii) they are free to question the orthodoxy of
traditional free trade. In fact nearly every major candidate for the
Democratic nomination has denounced free trade in some way. This would have
been unimaginable 10 years ago.

There's still a long way down from the peak, but times feel less PC now than
they were say in 2017.

~~~
ixtli
What is the IDW?

~~~
taylormckay
From Wikipedia:

The intellectual dark web (IDW) is a neologism coined by American
mathematician Eric Weinstein, and popularized in a 2018 editorial by Bari
Weiss. The term refers to a group of public personalities who oppose what they
see as the dominance of progressive identity politics and political
correctness in the media and academia.

~~~
ixtli
Thank you. Strange that that article doesn’t at all mention Mencius Moldbug
even though that’s clearly where this all inherits from.

~~~
TeMPOraL
How so? Doesn't seem related, except maybe that I'd expect the IDW to
criticize Moldbug's ideas.

------
kaens
> 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 the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter
> them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion,
> suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to
> suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that
> they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but
> begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen
> to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer
> arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim,
> in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

\- Karl Popper, Open Society and it's Enemies, 1945

~~~
lone_haxx0r
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 person in power (or the mob) is
never wrong, and that never happens.

~~~
Jarwain
I think that if one were to draw the line between tolerant and intolerant
ideologies, that line shouldn't be drawn based on the content of the ideology
but rather how that ideology spreads. Specifically, based on this quote

> they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but
> begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen
> to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer
> arguments by the use of their fists or pistols

The only ideology, the only Belief, that should not be tolerated is the belief
that ideology must spread through violent means.

That in and of itself is a belief, but it is a belief that can be discussed
through rational argument, and only calls upon violence when all else fails.

~~~
lone_haxx0r
1\. That line would still be hard to draw

2\. I know many ideologies that most people would consider "intolerant" but
would fall under the "tolerant" umbrella because there's a rationalization for
its intolerance. In fact, any ideology, as violent as it might be, can be
rationalized.

While it is also technically possible to discover the underlying, _hidden_
'intolerance' of an ideology, society at large is not capable of doing that,
simply because moral issues are some of the most complicated questions in the
world.

We would never achieve a consensus about the underlying tolerance/intolerance
of ideologies, because if we could do that, we would have already done it and
we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.

~~~
BurningFrog
> _1\. That line would still be hard to draw_

Perhaps I'm unusually gifted, but I find the line between violence and non
violence quite easy to raw. One of the easiest of all lines, really.

~~~
dunkelheit
Perhaps you haven't given much thought to the edge cases then. For example
what if someone is posting racist articles on the web, are they violent or
not? Well that's pretty easy - even if they are not directly violent they may
incite violence in others so they partly share the blame. But what if they
explicitly say that they are categorically against violence and it will just
abstractly be better if certain inferior races would not exist and back it up
with a rational-sounding argument? Another example. Is peaceful protest
violent or non-violent? Well it is peaceful, nobody touches anyone - it is
right in the name. But the protesters will probably bring inconvenience to
someone, otherwise they won't be noticed - e.g. a sit-in will obstruct the
workings of the target establishment. Is it violence or not? Is public shaming
violence or not? It is just words after all, but words that can ruin someone's
life. Etc.

~~~
BurningFrog
I have given it a lot of thought. As has many other thinkers in history. It's
not that hard.

1\. Posting racist articles is not violence. It's speech. If someone decides
to be violent after reading it, it's _their_ decision and _their_
responsibility.

2\. Peaceful protest is in general not violent. It might be trespassing and
other property crimes. That would give the police or possibly the victims of
those crimes the right to _use_ violence against the protestors. But that
doesn't make the _protests_ violent.

I can't help thinking the reason the left is so keen on calling speech
violence, is that they want an excuse to commit violence against the speakers.
Subconsciously, of course. Motivated Reasoning and all that.

------
rocqua
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.

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

~~~
liara_k
According to whom? The propagandists of their political adversaries, I'd
wager.

~~~
gruez
I'm guessing it's the shift for advocating for equality to advocating for
diversity. eg. Harvard admissions where Asians and Whites have a handicap in
an effort to increase diversity.

~~~
liara_k
Diversity e.g., in higher education admissions isn't just about what's fair
for the students, it's also about what's best for the university and the
students.

Universities are naturally xenophillic--both in their desire to understand
more about the world and in their desire to influence it. Exploration and
openness to new experiences and ideas are also important intellectual values
important to develop in students. All of these are enhanced with a diverse
student body.

As a more concrete example... $IVY_LEAGUE doesn't gain that much by having its
average standard test score go from the 99th to the 99.5th percentile. From
the university's perspective, it gains more by admitting students who spread
the influence of the university's ideas, enrich and enlarge context in
classroom discussions, etc...

~~~
DuskStar
> As a more concrete example... $IVY_LEAGUE doesn't gain that much by having
> its average standard test score go from the 99th to the 99.5th percentile.

Assuming accurate tests and a normal distribution of scores, shouldn't that be
approximately equivalent to going from the 80th to 90th percentile?

~~~
trashtester
Given you assumptions, the difference between the 80th and 90th percentile is
about twice as big as the difference beteen the 99th percentile and the 99.5th
percentile.

------
jonahrd
> 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!

~~~
Reedx
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.)

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?

We have some evidence here: the famous parody that physicist Alan Sokal got
published in Social Text. How long did it take him to master the art of
writing deep-sounding nonsense well enough to fool the editors? A couple
weeks?

What do you suppose would be the odds of a literary theorist getting a parody
of a physics paper published in a physics journal?"_

[http://www.paulgraham.com/resay.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/resay.html)

~~~
musicale
Thought experiments like this may reflect our own attitudes more than reality.

Poor review practices in journals are not limited to the humanities and social
sciences. For example, peer review in CS seems to be highly random, often
biased (depending on reviewer and author rather than the paper) and only
weakly correlated with quality and impact. Moreover, there seems to be a
problem with reproducibility (as well as data accuracy) of many published
results in the biological sciences, medicine, and psychology. And "not
reproducible" in science may very well mean "not true," and can have harmful
consequences such as prescription drugs that don't work.

I would also suggest that making it through a Ph.D. program in the humanities
is incredibly grueling and usually requires an unimaginable amount of reading
(in multiple languages, usually) as well as writing a massive and highly
detailed book for a very limited audience. It requires committing yourself to
years of intense and often solitary effort for minimal reward and low pay, so
I think you have to have remarkable dedication and "grit" as well as a passion
or affinity for the discipline. Moreover, actually getting hired into a
humanities faculty position is an astonishing achievement in itself.

Will the skills of physicists transfer trivially to the humanities? Perhaps,
but I think it would be an interesting study to see how well both sides do
switching disciplines.

~~~
wubblebubble
>Poor review practices in journals are not limited to the humanities and
social sciences.

to what extent? surely it's significantly less than that of math and "hard
sciences"

>I would also suggest that making it through a Ph.D. program in the humanities
is incredibly grueling

working in a sweatshop is grueling work. when you're in a factory for 12 hours
a day what's being worked is your obedience, your self-control. not
necessarily strength or intelligence.

There may be disagreement about whether the effort needed to hold a job is
“minimal”; but usually,in lower-to-middle-level jobs, whatever effort is
required is merely that of OBEDIENCE. You sit or stand where you are told to
sit or stand and do what you are told to do in the way you are told to do it.

The only requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence and, most of all,
simple OBEDIENCE.

------
aazaa
This quote is eerily prescient:

> 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.

It's especially powerful when paired with this question:

> 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?

Combining the two yields an odd idea. The group likely to have the most things
they're afraid to say out loud will be the group that was recently strong
enough to enforce taboos, but is not now.

One such group is white, straight males in the US.

~~~
traderjane
Which group is countering the strength of straight white males? When one looks
at the faces of the powerful in America, what do they see? Gay black women?

~~~
yourbandsucks
Different arenas.

You're talking about representation among the powerful in mainstream America,
but OP was talking about accepted speech in tech/academia.

You can both be right.

~~~
Udik
No, he has a point. "Accepted speech in tech/ academia" is supposed (in pg's
theory) to be enforced by a group that has recently become more powerful than
the previous power holders. But if you look at tech, or academia, or politics,
or economy, they're still overwhelmingly dominated by white males. Which
falsifies pg's theory.

~~~
username90
American politics is strange, tech people tend to be more right wing in Europe
where the right is usually scientific instead of religious like in America. So
in America you have the choice of either being on the side of religion or the
side of progress, and the side of progress just happens to be the same side as
all these movements against white, straight men.

~~~
jkp56
I don't see how being for progress makes one against white straight maleness.
I'm a very technical person and all for progress, but I also see political
correctness as a religion from medieval ages.

------
chess93
My belief is that people believe whatever they want to believe. If you are
liberal it is because you want to be liberal. Alternatively you might just not
want to be conservative. Same for the other direction. Naturally formed
beliefs are just an afterthought. It goes without saying that this might not
apply to everyone or to every belief.

For the record, I recognize that perhaps I believe this belief strictly
because I want to believe it. I also think many people don't want to believe
it.

~~~
toasterlovin
FWIW, I think that a huge amount of political alignment in the U.S. derives
from aesthetic sensibilities.

The thing last year where Trump ordered McDonald's for the college football
team that was visiting him because the White House cook staff was not working
due to the government shutdown is basically the perfect example of this. The
left though it was the most gauche, trashy thing that ever happened, as in, "I
can't believe someone would server toxic trash food to a guest in their own
home." And right wing people mostly though it was totally normal, as in, "Of
course you would order McDonald's if something came up and you couldn't serve
a home cooked meal to a guest."

~~~
edflsafoiewq
Feels like topsy-turvy land. The right, as the defenders of monarchy and
aristocratic taste, should obviously be horrified that the King is eating fast
food, and the left, as the voice of the people and universal equality, should
be delighted that the Chairman is eating the food of the common folk.

------
john-radio
> Suppose in the future there is a movement to ban the color yellow. Proposals
> to paint anything yellow are denounced as "yellowist"...

This made me remember the essay "Against Murderism" by Scott Alexander. If
someone would like to read a somewhat similar article to what's posted here,
written by (in my opinion) a devastatingly better essayist than Graham with a
lot more knowledge about human psychology and understanding of how culture
works, I definitely recommend it and Alexander's popular blog, "Slatestar
Codex," in general.

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/21/against-
murderism/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/21/against-murderism/)

~~~
spumoni
And if you would like to visit a place that is tacitly backed by Scott
Alexander as a place to discuss cultural phenomena with a wide variety of
backgrounds, visit
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/)

~~~
yourbandsucks
That's not at all how he described it in his Scott alexander-length blog post
on the matter.

~~~
spumoni
Why don't we pull up a direct quote, then?

> At this point this stops being my story. A group of pro-CW-thread mods led
> by ZorbaTHut, cjet79, and baj2235 set up r/TheMotte, a new subreddit for
> continuing the Culture War Thread tradition. After a week, the top post
> already has 4,243 comments, so it looks like the move went pretty well.
> Despite fears – which I partly shared – that the transition would not be
> good for the Thread, early signs suggest it has survived intact. I’m hopeful
> this can be a win-win situation, freeing me from a pretty serious burden
> while the Thread itself expands and flourishes under the leadership of a
> more anonymous group of people.

Not sure that proves your point.

~~~
yourbandsucks
Sorry, I thought you were implying something nasty.

I like TheMotte, although there's a few opinions I see that make my blood
boil.

------
baddox
> 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 to imply that
people’s beliefs are or should be a random, unpredictable process, and that
any regularity in the data should be treated with apprehension. But if beliefs
are not in fact random, but can be guided by some common forces, then it
wouldn’t be strange to expect people’s beliefs to in some cases largely
converge. Should I “stop and think about” the fact that I oppose murder, even
though my parents and all my friends and even most of my “enemies” hold that
same belief?” Of course not.

~~~
lmm
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.

~~~
baddox
There are obviously different levels of detail. I would be suspicious if two
book reports contained significant passages with the exact same phrasing. I
wouldn’t be surprised if two book reports for the same book noticed very
similar themes.

------
mips_avatar
I'm confused about the comments section, maybe it's better to keep taboo
comments to myself, or consider HN my confidants and enrich my belief.

------
jonny383
You mean like, there are only two biological genders, and you were either born
a male or female?

~~~
rmilejczz
Honest question, has anyone ever been fired, imprisoned, or killed for saying
that?

~~~
psilocipher
[https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/teacher-fired-
refusi...](https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/teacher-fired-refusing-use-
transgender-student-s-pronouns-n946006)

~~~
pgcj_poster
This is not an example of someone being fired for saying or believing that
there are two genders. This was someone deliberately misgendering and
ungendering a trans boy (not non-binary) in class after having been ordered to
stop.

~~~
psilocipher
The teacher felt strongly that the student's gender was biological and not
something the student could arbitrarily choose to change. The teacher felt
that using a pronoun other than a biologically consistent one was "lying", and
it was against the teacher's religion to lie, so the teacher would not use the
student's chosen pronoun. Did I miss something?

~~~
damnyou
Your response to my comment was flagged, but you seem to be laboring under
some misconceptions here. While biology is what it is, the mapping from
biology and other factors to social categories is determined purely socially.
Categories and labels are not true or false, they are socio-political
processes that can uplift or oppress minorities just like other such
processes.

I would recommend reading "THE CATEGORIES WERE MADE FOR MAN, NOT MAN FOR THE
CATEGORIES": [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-
ma...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-
not-man-for-the-categories/)

------
Uehreka
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 the need to speak their mind about this because it’s true despite the
surely inevitable downvoting.

The most upvoted reply concurs with the GP, adding a corollary about how the
current social justice climate is particularly nasty because of “X”, and of
course this miasma is so thick in the Bay Area that you simply can’t escape
it. Then their most upvoted reply is also someone shaking their head about how
no one is willing to question the SJW status quo.

Soon, a crystalline structure emerges: layers upon layers of contrarians
agreeing with each other, reflecting forlorn looks and awaiting the scythe of
politically correct criticism that is surely coming any minute.

Folks, let’s take a breath.

To be 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? Paul Graham, the guy who wrote TFA! Peter Thiel! A veritable
army of libertarian crypto enthusiasts!

I won’t deny that political conflict exists on HN, in the valley or elsewhere.
I just wish people would stop acting like no one agrees with them.

~~~
ecuzzillo
PG moved to England, afaik.

------
moksly
What about the people who aren’t afraid to provoke their peers? They seem to
neither fall into the “stay silent out of fear” or “you just believe what you
are told” categories.

------
eric234223
The Norm is changed by the trouble makers and impulsive people who don't think
about the long term consequences. Being selfish I don't want to be one of them
but i am very glad they exist.

------
masonic
Most active recent past posting, 120+ comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18221049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18221049)

~~~
dang
(Edit: just to be clear, links like this don't mean that the article shouldn't
have been reposted! Reposts are fine on HN after a year or so—this is in the
FAQ at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).
Had this repost had been a bad one, we'd have marked it as [dupe] in the title
instead. The purpose of linking to previous threads is that readers find those
interesting.)

Also, from 2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952908)

2014:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443420](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443420)

2009:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=956884](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=956884)

2009:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581050](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581050)

Those are the big ones.

~~~
masonic
> links like this don't mean that the article shouldn't have been reposted!

I didn't say, or even imply, that. I just thought reference to past
discussions would be useful.

~~~
dang
Oh, I didn't in the least think you did. I meant that bit to apply to the link
you kindly shared as well as the ones I listed. I added it because another
commenter in the thread referenced that this had been discussed a lot before.
Sorry for the misunderstanding!

I still don't know a reliable way to briefly link to past discussions, or
mention linking to past discussions, without it coming across to many readers
as an implicit reproach. Which is not at all the intention.

~~~
c22
Maybe the site should just automatically include links to past discussion.
Perhaps hidden behind a little [+] next to or under the title in the comments
view.

Then you wouldn't have to spend time posting them or feeling awkward about it.

~~~
dang
I'm reluctant to clutter the HN UI. It's simple enough that when X comes up,
nothing seems more natural than to just build in X... but there are many Xs.

Automatically finding links to good past discussions is harder than it sounds,
too.

------
sterileopinions
What about the things you can't say on HN

~~~
yzh
Just look at all the comments that got turned to grey. I bet there are
patterns, and if looked over a long period of time, would seem like fashions
too.

~~~
ascertain
But the comments that got turned to grey are things that people can and did
say.

------
iconjack
Things you can't say in the tech world, 2019: * global warming is junk science
* there are approximately two genders * Trump is a great president * the US is
not a racist country * Apple sucks

Edit: If you're one of the many downvoters, who presumably disagree with this,
I dare you to say any of these things if you work for a tech company.

~~~
topmonk
African Americans consist of only 13% of the population yet commit over half
of the crimes.

Asians and Whites score much higher on IQ tests than African Americans and
Latinos.

Women have innately different interests than men.

~~~
spumoni
Researchers are able to correctly classify human skulls into black and white
Americans a vast majority of the time.

~~~
neonate
So?

~~~
spumoni
People are trying to destroy Race, and it is scientifically defensible. This
is important for the reasons why people want to destroy Race, which are
inherently political.

------
buboard
TL;dr Progress only happens at the borders.

This long piece of wrongthink is such a great handbook for the 2010s

