

An actual attempt at a list of "What You Can't Say." - asciilifeform
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/6cwfo/middle_school_student_newspaper_runs_survey/c03iohu

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CWuestefeld
_They must something that teenagers can spot as true._

Indeed. Many of these are sophomoric "truths" that a teenager might believe,
but someone with more understanding would spot as falsehoods.

~~~
iamwil
Which ones are false? The only one I vaguely reacted to was about how women
are less adept at symbol manipulation.

I think there might be other sides of the coins and exceptions in exceptional
situations to some of these, but overall, I didn't think they were falsehoods.
Perhaps I'm too easily agreeable.

But defn, I didn't find them surprising.

~~~
ErrantX
Maybe not outright falshoods - but possibly a product of over zealous
cynicism.

For example:

"Fathers being suspicious of their young daughters' boyfriends and dates is
really just sexual jealousy"

Could just as easily be attributed (nowadays) to social pressure: e.g. it is a
well known in pop culture that fathers are suspicious of their daughters
boyfriends and so some of them are. :)

(and yeh I realise it is somewhat ironic to be disagreeing with a list of
"things that cant be said" :))

~~~
gabrielroth
Both you and the Reddit poster are overlooking the obvious evolutionary
explanation. To a father, a daughter's eggs are a precious reproductive
resource. A daughter who squanders her reproductive potential on lower-status
mates is diminishing her father's genetic legacy. (This doesn't hold for sons,
because they have a virtually unlimited reproductive capacity.)

~~~
ErrantX
I was just using a random example to highlight the idea he is probably wrong
in portraying that as an accurate assessment.

Now we have 3 ideas - I'm inclined to agree yours has a lot of bearing.

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83457
This topic reminds me of an ex-girlfriend who had a knack for saying what I
deemed inappropriate things. I recall getting upset with her when said
something like #4 (below) among others. For example driving through an
apartment area I used to live at which had slipped down economically after the
dot-com bubble burst she said "You know you are in a bad neighborhood when
there are a lot of black people" ... talking about a newborn cousin "he has a
big nose, like a black person" ... and some other non-racist sounding stuff
that I can't remember. Even when stuff she said was statistically true or had
some basis in fact she just stated it in the most matter of fact and cynical
way possible that really upset me.

"4. There is no such thing as altruism. Everyone is ultimately only interested
in their own pleasure. Even those who appear altruistic are doing so because
it makes them feel good. No one actually cares about anyone else."

~~~
joss82
Maybe the source of altruism is selfishness, but altruism exists anyway.

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unignorant
Not a surprising list. I agree with some points, and disagree with others. But
this:

"6. People believe what they want to believe. Any evidence they possess is an
excuse, not a reason."

Seems to pose a bit of self-referential paradox...

~~~
iamwil
I didn't think it was surprising as well, but I don't know if it's because I'm
older and have seen more of the world and the sort of people in it, but I know
I would have been surprised at some of them as a college student, such as
public schools didn't exist to teach, but as a daycare center so parents can
work.

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nickpp
I say (and believe) things from that list every day. I find it funny to
provoke people and test how much they can accept.

You can guess how popular I am with friends and at parties.

Consequently, my list of things we can't say would be very different. I guess
each of us has his own limits and his own taboos.

~~~
jimbokun
I think you are taking "can't" too literally.

I think the original sense of "can't" from pg's essay meant "things you can't
say and remain in good social standing with the broader society." You are
choosing to reduce your social standing on purpose by uttering these remarks.

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marltod
#27. There will always be people who think they are Right and anyone who
disagrees with them is Wrong. These people will espouse their views through
Religion, Politics, Lists of "What you can't say", etc...

------
ugh
Maybe stuff you can't say (and definitly should be able to say, no doubt about
that), but not stuff that is (obviously) true.

I have a hard time believing that there is empirical verification for all of
the things on the list. (Considering the ability of the social sciences, I
would claim that - at least today - finding out whether much of what is on the
list is true, is pretty much impossible. Not forever or even in principle
impossible, just as things stand today impossible.)

------
jimbokun
I find most of these things true by default. But I also find them things that
we are obligated to strive to overcome.

And I can't find a way to express this idea of overcoming human frailty and
human nature, without referencing something very much like a soul, or a
spiritual reality.

If we are just meat machines, we are just going to do what we are going to do,
and the rest is just philosophizing. I find myself unable to accept that, and
I guess that's why I'm religious.

To be specific, Jesus talked about most of these things as being the default
human condition, and said there was absolutely no way to overcome them from
within the human condition. The ability to transcend default human behavior is
necessarily spiritual, almost by definition.

So, I find myself mostly in agreement with this list, but my disagreement with
the first item puts the rest in a different context. Human nature is
immutable, unless we consider something outside the system, which I and many
others refer to as "spiritual."

~~~
ErrantX
On of my favourite ex-girlfriends once said the following to me:

 _I have great difficulty with this whole idea of the soul. I mean it seems to
simply be a way for individuals to secure themselves a much larger place in
the universe than we deserve. When you think of the grand scale of things we
are less consequential than a single atom is compared to the entire earth.
Seeing as we cant even truly visualize that analogy the whole truth scares the
crap out of us; hence the idea of a soul._

(I post that w/o wanting to derail into an argument/discussion. It always
struck me as an insightful analysis of the possibilities - hence worth
sharing)

------
gometro33
Tell me again why we're listening to this guy?

~~~
asciilifeform
Tell me again why we shouldn't?

~~~
mquander
Because most of the content is insultingly inane. I don't need some single guy
with no kids telling me about how

 _Love is not eternal. It is a simple state of endorphin chemistry. It serves
a single evolutionary purpose. It lasts about three years._

 _Fathers being suspicious of their young daughters' boyfriends and dates is
really just sexual jealousy._

 _Parents care less about their children than they do about their careers,
their socioeconomic status, and what the Joneses think. That's why we have
public schools instead of home education by one parent who doesn't have a
"career"._

~~~
a-priori
1\. Just because a mental state like love has a known chemical or evolutionary
basis doesn't make it any less real.

2\. I say the father is concerned about his daughter's mate selection because
she carries his genes. She is a proxy for his reproductive success. He wants
her to choose a good mate (e.g. someone who's more likely to stick around to
care for the children) so his genes are more likely to survive.

3\. No comment here, but I think it underestimates the effects of social proof
in a parent's decision.

~~~
mquander
1\. My primary target of ridicule on this one was the apparently arbitrary
cutoff of "three years."

2\. I'm not a parent, but what you just described is not at all what normal
people would mean when using the words "sexual jealousy."

3\. I personally think it speaks to a pretty unbelievable sense of privilege;
there are a hell of a lot of jobs that don't support a reasonable standard of
living for a family of four on one income.

~~~
a-priori
Regarding #2, that's exactly my point: the father's behaviour can be explained
completely without resorting to a sort of reverse Oedipus complex.

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rauljara
The list has the air of, 'you're an idiot if you disagree.' I suspect the
punishment that the author perceives from society has more to do with over
confidence of the delivery than the content itself.

Not to say I agree with all (or even most) of those statements. All of them
are highly debatable. Even the ones I agree with are not clear cut. I think
that's why I do find myself upset on reading the list. I find it particularly
infuriating when very complicated matters are cut down into terse one liners
as though no more thought is needed.

------
philwelch
I wonder--how much of what you can't say is necessarily all that cynical? I
think there might be a lot of things you can't say which are actually positive
and uplifting, but only incite outrage because they question the way most
people live their lives or the restrictions they place upon themselves.

15, 18, 21, 22, 23, and maybe 27 are the only items on the list which will
actually shock people, and 18 and 22 will only shock liberal people. I can
think of a lot of claims that are more shocking.

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Semiapies
"They must be something that society will punish you for saying...in any
degree from social disapproval..."

 _Social disapproval?_ What a ridiculously low bar. We might be better off
trying to come up with a short-list of plausible claims that _don't_ cause a
significant number of people, somewhere in one's society, to disapprove of
anyone making them.

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galactus
Honestly, I could tell most of the things in that list to pretty much anyone I
know without shocking them. Including my grandma.

"Communism would never work" ? Gee, I think there are actually more people in
the western world who would actually be shocked if they were told otherwise!

~~~
83457
I think you missed the point of that one

"Communism would never work, because no one with power is ever willing to
share it. However, the reason we were taught to hate it was because it was a
threat to our masters."

~~~
galactus
Ouch, you are right. This is perhaps the only one that might shock one or two
persons ;)

------
joss82
All items on this list can be summed up to : We always act out of self-
preservation.

