
Re: What You Can't Say - kf
http://www.paulgraham.com/resay.html
======
haon99
Not to be a jerk, but "[Copernicus] was forced into it, because it was the
only way to make the numbers come out right" just isn't correct.

Tycho Brahe's measurements showed that Ptolemy's model was more accurate than
Copernicus's. The point still stands that Copernicus transcended his time, but
he was really riding on the coattails of Ptolemy's genius. Ptolemy never gets
enough credit...

~~~
stcredzero
Really, Copernicus' accomplishment was that his model worked _very well_ yet
left out a huge heap of _epicycles_. Heliocentric = fewer epicycles. That was
Copernicus' contribution.

This pales in comparison to Kepler's "Equal areas in equal time." That
observation is a very strong hint towards Newtonian mechanics and Calculus.

~~~
jimbokun
This makes me think of over-fitting in machine learning algorithms. The
epicycles fit the data very well, but added a lot of parameters to the model.
It makes me wonder if there is a bias/variance trade off for scientific
models, but I don't know how to express the connection formally.

In machine learning algorithms, we hold out a dataset to test for over-
fitting. We don't exactly have a spare universe to test our scientific models
for over-fitting, but maybe if there were a second planetary system at the
time to test against it would have been clear sooner that the "epicycles"
model fit only this solar system from the vantage point of earth? Maybe you
could "train" the model on some heavenly bodies, then test on others?

I'm pretty sure I'm making a fool of myself at this point and missing
something obvious, and I'm hoping one or more of you will point that obvious
thing out to me.

~~~
stcredzero
Kepler's ellipses fit the data with an even simpler model. Newton added an
underlying model which could be generalized to hypothetical bodies. In other
words, you could plan something like an Apollo mission with it. I doubt you
could do something like that with the Copernican, Ptolemaic, or even the
Keplerian model. Newton's model gave you enough insight to _hack_. And not
just surface hacks, but _deep hacks_. Everything before was merely
descriptive.

Newton's model also showed convergence. The way the planets moved became
connected with the way cannonballs behaved. Mechanics could also subsume
models of buildings and machines. Engineering and architecture were unified by
Newtonian Mechanics.

It's not just a matter fitting. It's a matter of transcending current models.
(Another reason to study different programming languages/paradigms.)

~~~
jimbokun
I think you've hit on a weakness of the whole Machine Learning paradigm. I
might get this wrong, but I believe every machine learning algorithm
necessarily introduces some bias into selecting which possibilities to
consider, and without some kind of bias, learning is impossible.

But once you've chosen how you will bias your model, you are only going to
search for solutions in the space defined by that bias. So, figuring out the
parameters of the ellipses describing the movement of heavenly bodies, but not
questioning whether ellipses are a good choice to begin with. There is also
feature selection, how you decide which aspects of reality (or measurements of
reality, actually) are relevant to the learning problem. (There are feature
selection techniques, but that presumes you already have a finite set of
candidate features and then determine which ones have the most value.)

It seems that, perhaps, this kind of paradigm busting discovery is out of
reach of current machine learning methods, and that the kinds of decisions
about what to model and how to bias your model is where humans add value to
the process.

This is all philosophical bullshit at this point, but I remain curious about
the relationship between learning algorithms and scientific discovery. If
anyone is still reading, are there any good books on this topic?

------
seanc
_The reason I forbid my children to use words like "fuck" and "shit" is not
that I want them to seem innocent, but because these words are ill-mannered
and contribute nothing to communication._

For me that's not why. I don't let my seven year old curse for the same reason
I don't let her use power tools (yet). They require skill and can be a bit
dangerous if you don't use them properly.

I suppose if I sat down and thought about it I could come up with an
appropriate occasion for my seven year old to curse. But then to explain that
corner case to her and expect her to manage it isn't worth the effort. And for
my four year old it's simply not possible.

My kids will figure out these rules on their own, in due time.

~~~
pfedor
_If you ask parents why kids shouldn't swear, the less educated ones usually
reply with some question-begging answer like "it's inappropriate," while the
more educated ones come up with elaborate rationalizations._ \-- (also from a
Paul Graham's essay)

~~~
tptacek
"If you ask parents why kids shouldn't [violate social norm X], the less
educated ones usually reply with some question-begging answer like 'it's
inappropriate', while the more educated ones come up with elaborate
rationalizations."

I see no loss of meaning, but that's probably because there's so little
meaning in the dismissive little excerpt you've chosen to deploy here.

My kids aren't allowed to swear either, for exactly the same reason that this
commenter gave. People who think words can't be dangerous, especially for a 10
year old, seem likely to me to be leading sheltered and confined lives.

------
warwick
It took me a couple re-readings of the first page or so, because I didn't
understand that these were responses to some objections you got.

I spent several minutes trying to decide if French Literary profs might be
able to publish physics journal articles in your scenario. I eventually
decided they would be able to, since the physics journals would now be run by
French Literary theorists.

~~~
kurtosis
I'm surprised that noone has mentioned the case of Igor and Grichka Bogdanov
here. These were borderline literary theorists that actually did have a
complete nonsense physics article published.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair>

~~~
pfedor
How are they borderline literary theorists? One of them has a PhD in
theoretical physics, the other one in mathematics.

~~~
kurtosis
Maybe only sci/fi critics? Also I once tried to read their papers and it
reminded me of experiences where I've tried to read lit-crit. There were some
superficial stylistic similarities, between the two.

------
david927
_physicists are smarter than professors of French Literature_

I would tend to say the opposite. Paul, you're mixing up here what I would
call "savantism" with intelligence. We know that there is no true definition
of intelligence, but I think whatever the definition ends up being, it has to
be based more on understanding than just knowledge and mechanizations within
that knowledge. Who would be more afraid, in your scenario, between the
physicist and a Cantonese scholar?

 _if [Finland] seems that much more socialist than the US, it is probably
simply because they don't spend so much on their military_

Exactly. So it's not about dismissing Socialism (especially since all modern
countries operate on both Socialistic and Capitalistic principles), as much as
making an argument as to what the upper tax bracket should be. And for that, I
would look at companies that have tremendous bonus systems. (I won't exhibit
the obvious.) Are they more productive? Do they take more risks? What are the
benefits and consequences of those risks? Personally, I'm not as concerned
about the marginal incentive between $10 million and $1 billion as I am that a
society, as a whole, functions, and doesn't degenerate into something
"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".

~~~
wlievens
It's not so much what the upper bracket should be, it's about what the
threshold for the bracket needs to be!

In Belgium, the top bracket of 50% starts at about 32,000 euro's. In addition
to that, there's a separate flat social security tax of 13%, meaning that my
marginal tax rate is about 60% - with a mediocre salary.

------
spazmaster
If you live in Holland, that last point is pretty much a no-brainer.
Politicians are constantly accusing each other of saying things that are 'not
done'. We have our wannabe-Fortuyn (Geert Wilders) at the moment. Heck, a
politician just stepped down for not adhering to 'the code' another sign we're
not that tolerant. We're just tolerant about homosexuality and drugs.

~~~
stingraycharles
The world mistakenly confuses us for a tolerant country: we're not. We're just
indifferent.

------
euroclydon
" If you doubt that, imagine what people in 1830 would think of our default
educated east coast beliefs about, say, premarital sex, homosexuality, or the
literal truth of the Bible."

Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson didn't believe the Bible to be literally
correct. It's well documented. Jefferson even went as far as to create his own
Bible, editing out most miracles, the resurrection, and immaculate conception.

~~~
crystalis
I'm not sure that Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson count as "people in 1830"
in the same way that the Salem Witch Trials might constitute "people in 1692".
I'm also of the opinion that you should also account for the other two points,
even if to say that you don't mean to refute them by refuting the third.

~~~
euroclydon
I am not trying to refute the other two points, I just quoted the whole
sentence so it would make sense.

I would like to think that the 1700s and 1800s represented a golden age in
American religiosity, where our political and cultural leaders were deeply
spiritual, yet not biblical literalists. Now, it seems that dialog has broken
down and we are in fractious camps. I'm sure I am just romanticizing the
period though.

~~~
crystalis
Thanks for the reply. I didn't think you were trying to refute the other two
points, but I was interested in overt clarity.

Whether or not you've romanticized, "Deist" no longer seems to be a position
"mainstream" politicians can admit to.

------
Create
_but semiconductors or light bulbs or the plumbing of e-commerce probably have
to be developed by entrepreneurs. Life in the Soviet Union would have been
even poorer if they hadn't had American technologies to copy._

semiconductors: it wasn't e-commerce plumbing driving it, but fear from
Sputnik and its consequences (mobile computing ...in Minutemen). That wasn't
entrepreneurship (no risks taken on behalf of "entrepreneurs") at Bell either:
state subsidized monopoly which was somewhat acknowledged a little later with
the babies. The Valley had its paying customers before anything to "market"
(see HP f[o]unding letter).

light bulbs: that's a dead horse kicked around too often.

plumbing of e-commerce: being in the right circle helps (No Such Ancestors).
Btw. Minitel "3615" was there way before on scale with the actual plumbing
(net and terminal used to sell services from the armchair countrywide
[amazon/paypal/etc do not serve every country either]). Also from State
Monopoly. The Kahns in the USA never ran any risks.

And life in Afghanistan is as poor as it was, America has copied the Soviet
Union.

------
rms
This was in response to one of the replies here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=956774> (showdead=on required to see)

Specifically, this response is what I wanted to bring up.

 _The fact that you can't say something doesn't mean it's true.

I believe this is implicit in "So it's likely that visitors from the future
would agree with at least some of the statements that get people in trouble
today." In an earlier version I made this point explicitly, but it seemed
repetitive, so I cut it._

------
blasdel
There are largely two categories of "things you can't say", that by all
"community standards" are obscene:

Prurience:
[http://www.asstr.org/files/Collections/Alt.Sex.Stories.Moder...](http://www.asstr.org/files/Collections/Alt.Sex.Stories.Moderated/Year97/3923.txt)

Politics: <http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/>

~~~
vsync
A little more warning than that might have been nice.

------
dasht
The funny thing about Sokal is not so much that he (supposedly) slipped a
bogus paper past the editors, but rather in how so many people react to the
event and take it as proof positive that the entire field is bogus or even
that publishing that paper was a mistake of the editors.

The editors, by publishing the piece, were not saying "Aha! Brilliant
reasoning in this text!" but rather "People in our field should see this
submission. People in his field should, as well."

What _didn't_ happen after Sokal's paper was published? Years of earnest,
tortured academic work by others commenting on it as if it were serious on its
face.

The Wikipedia article on it gives some balance.

-t

~~~
jerf
'"People in our field should see this submission. People in his field should,
as well."'

This doesn't strike me as a good defense; in fact it seems to me to concede
the point you think you're fighting. The editors think that people should see
sheer nonsense? What are they doing, again? There's no justification for
publishing sheer nonsense; there's an infinite supply of that, and precious
few journal pages by comparison.

If they did not see some value in it, they would not have published it.
Therefore, they did see some value in utter nonsense. Therefore, I am
justified in treating them as people who see value in total nonsense. As a
person interested in learning, these are not people I want to emulate or
respect.

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

Well, actually...

<http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/>

~~~
m0nty
And also:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hendrik_Sch%C3%B6n>

"Jan Hendrik Schön (born 1970) is a German physicist who briefly rose to
prominence after a series of apparent breakthroughs that were later discovered
to be fraudulent.[1] Before he was exposed, Schön had received the Otto-Klung-
Weberbank Prize for Physics in 2001, the Braunschweig Prize in 2001 and the
Outstanding Young Investigator Award of the Materials Research Society in
2002."

------
bartl
For most of these points I don't even understand what he's trying to say.

~~~
jey
Context: <http://paulgraham.com/say.html>

~~~
Sukotto
I find this really annoying about Paul's otherwise insightful and interested
articles. Namely that he assumes you know everything he's written and when and
what it was called and that you know how to easily find it so you can
understand the context.

Paul, would you PLEASE date your articles (and RFS for that matter) and link
to whatever it is you're talking about?

~~~
philwelch
To be fair, unless someone goes and posts the URL to Hacker News or something,
the only way you'd get to this post is by reading "What You Can't Say" and
reading the links at the bottom. His top-level essays do have the date on
them.

------
kierank
_Smart people might work on sexy projects like fighter planes and space
rockets for ordinary wages, but semiconductors or light bulbs or the plumbing
of e-commerce probably have to be developed by entrepreneurs._

I don't agree that this is the case. Many smart people don't see the need to
be rewarded in a financially appropriate way. (Those that do make their way
into finance or startups eventually). Look at institutes such as the CSIRO in
Australia for science/technology in general or the BBC for broadcasting
technology.

~~~
gaius
The BBC's a good example, how long have they been working on their own Dirac
codec? That's taxpayer's money they're spending. Sure it probably makes a few
geeks happy but remember - these geeks know fully well that if they tried to
do that outside the safety of the BBC, they'd starve. At the end of the day,
in the private sector you get stuff done because if you don't you don't eat.

~~~
thristian
You seem to be implying that the BBC's Dirac work has produced no useful
results; I would disagree. Sure, it's not the format-of-choice of BitTorrent
users, and it hasn't cropped up in the endless discussions of the <video/>
element in HTML5, but that doesn't mean it's vanished. A subset of Dirac
colloquially called Dirac Pro has been standardised by the SMPTE as "VC-2"
(Windows Media Video was VC-1):

    
    
        http://sonofid.blogspot.com/2008/02/vc-2-progress.html
    

...and there's a company selling professional video-encoding hardware using
the Dirac Pro codec:

    
    
        http://www.numediatechnology.com/products.html
    

Wikipedia says "Dirac Pro was used internally by the BBC to transmit HDTV
pictures at the Beijing Olympics in 2008":

    
    
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_%28codec%29

~~~
nazgulnarsil
you missed the point. in the private sector you don't need to justify costs
back and forth to each other...either the product is wanted at its current
production costs or it isn't. would it be used if consumers had to pay the
full cost of its development? or do they only use it because those costs were
offloaded to the taxpayer and it can essentially be given away?

~~~
gaius
Exactly. Could a startup get VC funding if it wanted to develop something like
Dirac, which doesn't do anything groundbreaking?

------
trapper
Similar relationships exist in sport. Gymnasts can take up nearly any sport
and excel. Swimmers can barely walk :)

Gymnasts are the physicists of movement.

~~~
xiaoma
It sure didn't play out that way on my high school cross-country team. We had
a gymnast who couldn't even manage a 25min 5k by the end of the season and
three swimmers who beat that by a big margin in the very first meet.

A lot of gymnasts made good cheerleaders, though.

~~~
nostrademons
Cheerleading is another very physically demanding sport. A lot of cheerleaders
could easily move into other sports and do very well.

~~~
scott_s
Modern cheerleading with "stunting" is basically group gymnastics. Hence
xiaoma's comment.

------
jstevens85
What do academic economists actually have to say about the link between
entrepreneurship and taxation? My impression is that new tech companies start
in response to new technological opportunities and have little to do with
marginal tax rates.

Hewlett Packard 1939 - Top Income Tax Rate 79%

Intel 1968 - 75%

Microsoft 1975 - 50%

Adobe 1982 - 50%

Google 1998 - 40%

~~~
falsestprophet
Income tax rates are a red herring. In general, entrepreneurial activity is
taxed as long term capital gains. You can see those rate are more attractive.

    
    
      Hewlett Packard 1939 - 63% (1 year holding) to 23% (10 year holding)
      Intel 1968 - 25%
      Microsoft 1975 - 20%
      Adobe 1982 - 20%
      Google 1998 - 20%
    

source:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_United...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_United_States#History_of_capital_gains_tax_in_the_U.S).

If at any point I experienced a tax rate of 98%, I imagine I would not be
highly motivated to earn more money.

~~~
jstevens85
Yet the Beatles continued to pump out more than one album a year. I think
there are incentives other than money - fame, status, power, creativity,
curiosity etc.

~~~
KC8ZKF
Bad example. The Beatles only released albums for seven years, then quit.

~~~
jstevens85
Not exactly. Paul McCartney subsequently released 22 studio albums, Lennon 8,
Harrison 10 and Starr 15. I think we can safely say that all four would have
already been in the top income tax bracket from their Beatles royalties alone.
Yet they were somehow motivated to continue making music.

~~~
mynameishere
_Yet they were somehow motivated to continue making music._

I'm sure being tax exiles helped keep their motivation up.

------
dennisgorelik
Why Paul's article doesn't have a date on it?

~~~
ynniv
Archive.org goes back to 2004:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20040207184543/http://www.paulgra...](http://web.archive.org/web/20040207184543/http://www.paulgraham.com/resay.html)

------
JulianMorrison
French Lit is harder. Much harder per Kolmogorov complexity, but even if
you're running it on monkeys, getting the _right_ answer out to the limits of
evidence would be a huge work of detective and archeological and historical
study far beyond the source text. You would be attempting to reconstruct
someone's mind from the outside in, with very fragmentary life-logs.

IOW, French lit only seems easy because academics aren't aiming to be right.
They just want an informed guess. In physics, this is considered the start of
an investigation, not the end product.

~~~
anamax
> French Lit is harder.

What definition of "harder" are we using?

In physics, there's at least the illusion that there's a "correct" answer. If
your theory predicts that a cubic meter of gold has less mass than a cubic
meter of water, you've got a serious problem.

In literature, there is no "gold standard" to use as a referee or to consult
in helping to make a decision.

~~~
JulianMorrison
To be 100% correct in literature you would need a time machine and a mind-
reading device. To be the closest evidential approximation to correct, you
would have to do your best to simulate these machines using every possibly
accessible causal consequent of the relevant past remaining in the present.
This is the "gold standard" but it would be technologically and financially
implausible. Thus, "doing it right" is impossibly hard. Only "doing it wrong"
is easy.

~~~
anamax
> To be 100% correct in literature you would need a time machine and a mind-
> reading device.

Even that's not enough. It is generally agreed that the author's intent isn't
binding.

There is no generally accepted definition of "correct" in literature.

One could say that the lack of "correct" makes literature harder, or one could
say that asking for correct or judging it by that basis is wrong.

If you do the latter (which seems reasonable), you can't compare it with
physics on the basis of "harder".

------
nzmsv
It's too bad that the majority takes the moral fashions Paul talks about in
these two articles so seriously. So, in the end, one can only discuss these
topics with close friends, whose reaction you can be fairly sure about.

Case in point: someone's comment in a thread about suicide last night. Sure,
it was offensive. And the karma drop that resulted was frightening. Which is
exactly the point: if you state a certain opinion on certain subjects, the
outcome is something entirely different from rational discussion.

------
diego
Thought experiment: would this essay be at the top of HN if Paul Graham wasn't
its author?

~~~
tptacek
Of course not. Neither would "Things You Can't Say".

~~~
jimbokun
I remember that "Things You Can't Say" was picked up and discussed a lot by
people with no connection to hacking or technology. Several political blogs
made their list of predictions for ideas today that will be considered
barbaric in the future, for example. I specifically remember Andrew Sullivan
linking to it (my favorite political blogger).

~~~
tptacek
It may have been successful (though it also tells bloggers what they want to
hear, and does so with a stamp of authority --- the fact that it came from a
tech/startup person adds novelty for political bloggers, and probably
subtracts nothing). That's kind of not my point.

I'm actually a lot more interested in what jimbokun really thinks of the
article than what Andrew Sullivan thinks about it. What's the insight you got
from it? That thinking forbidden thoughts is, in fact, like stretching your
brain?

------
unalone
Dismissing socialism is as silly as dismissing capitalism would be. There is
no simple answer to society: The best combination is a mixture of many things.
There'll be hints of socialism there.

Similarly, perhaps Paul was criticized for his dismissal of French Literature
professors because a lot of people realized what a stupid blanket statement he
made. Just because it's easier to bullshit about literature doesn't mean the
whole of literature is bullshit. That's like assuming that just because math
is about simplistic formulas, the entirety of math is simple to comprehend.

I don't know much about French literature, but what I _do_ know of it tells me
that by learning about it, I'd be learning not just about literary theory but
about French sociology, French history, and the feelings behind France at
various moments in times. There's an incredible amount of information in
literature. It's not a bug that it's subjective in nature and prone to debate.
That's the feature.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Socialism has killed hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century. I
think it's fair to put it into the "doubtfully useful techniques" bin, where a
higher standard of proof for usefulness is required to make use of anything
that seems socialist.

Unfortunately, exactly the opposite is the case today. Free enterprise and
competition is looked on skeptically, while socialism (multiply disproved and
damned by the experience of history) is gleefully embraced and readily adopted
with insufficient skepticism.

~~~
count
Facism and national socialism killed hundreds of millions - don't confuse
dictatorial societies and their losses with socialism as an idea.

~~~
InclinedPlane
See my post below, communism has always devolved into statist tyranny in every
attempt so far. If a software development methodology had an equivalent track
record to communism (adjusted appropriately for the subject matter) it would
be far more reviled even than waterfall (if you could imagine such a thing)
and nobody would ever seriously propose using it.

~~~
unalone
This isn't about communism. It's about socialism, which has an impressive
track record.

~~~
anamax
While the claim that national socialism has killed hundreds of millions is an
exaggeration, the actual record isn't that impressive.

Most of the hell-holes on earth are a "people's republic".

Yes, socialism seems to work in Western Europe and Japan. However, that may be
more a function of Western Europe and Japan than it is of socialism. It's
unclear what wouldn't work in those places.

~~~
unalone
What the fuck is that supposed to mean? What does Western Europe have that
makes it instantly capable of supporting any random-ass system? It's not like
Europe's some magical land of milk and honey.

The fact that socialism works in Europe is because socialism is a potent
economic system.

~~~
sfk
As an aside, we don't call it socialism here. We call it social market
economy. Also, true socialist parties aren't nearly as big as social democrat
parties, which are more moderate.

~~~
unalone
That's understandable. There're more shades to socialism than just the one
that gets used again and again in America.

It's why this entire conversation is so ridiculous. Neither Paul nor the
majority of the commenters here has a clue about what they're talking about.
They're spouting talking points like there's a set-in-stone socialism that all
would-be socialists have to follow. I'm not at all the pinko-commie sort, but
it always tickles me when this particular weakness of HN comes out. For a
bunch of people who work with complex systems daily, we suck at appreciating
the complexities of economic systems and we adore Paul despite his habit of
oversimplifying topics to the point of satire.

------
sfk
"There are indeed things you can't say in Holland.

Oops, yes, I forgot about the fate of Pim Fortuyn."

I live in the Netherlands (as opposed to "Holland"), and this poor rhetoric
device beats everything I've read about the matter in terms of
oversimplification and naivety.

~~~
plinkplonk
"and this poor rhetoric device beats everything I've read about the matter in
terms of oversimplification and naivety."

It would be useful to the rest of us(who don't live in Holland) if you could
explain _why_ the "rhetoric device" is "poor", "oversimplified" and "naive"
(vs a bald statement that it has all these qualities).

~~~
AndrewDucker
Because the murder of one person says nothing about the attitudes towards
freedom of speech across a whole country.

~~~
plinkplonk
It might say something about countries with large numbers of unassimilated
minorities (in this case mostly Muslim).

That aside, pg's point was that even in Holland (which he uses as an example
of a "tolerant" country), there are negative consequences to actually saying
"can't say" things. E.g: Many things about Islam and its prophet are (in
practice) "can't say"/undebatable things (without assuming a serious risk of
getting killed).

