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Comment by aazaa | Hacker News Reader

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.

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Later, Paul Graham comes with the following variation of the above:

> What groups are powerful but nervous, and what ideas would they like to suppress?

Which I think is better. The difference is "weak enough to need taboos" vs "nervous". The group just needs to feel their power slipping away. This makes it a lot more applicable to your white males comment too. Whether white males' position is "weak enough to need taboos" is much more up for debate than whether some are nervous that their power is slipping away.

What moral taboos are enforced by straight white males?

Ideas suggesting that being a straight white male might give a person advantages.

The majority of homeless in the streets are straight white males. The majority of people doing dirty, dangerous, low paid jobs are straight white males. The majority of deaths at work are straight white males.

It’s not taboo, it’s factually wrong to claim that straight white maleness is a guaranteed ticket to an easy life. The truth is that everything else is a rounding error compared to class.

And it is wilfully delusional to respond as though anybody says "straight white maleness is a guaranteed ticket to an easy life" or that it is in any way a valid interpretation of what I said.

That idea does not seem to be taboo in academia.

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?

It’s the most currently socially acceptable way of agreeing with the argument. Which is in itself a wonderful way of highlighting what you can and cannot say, not to mention the punishments doled out for doing so.

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.

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.

My comment was that accepted speech and representation are different things, so saying "but representation" isn't really speaking to it, imo.

And you're not even right about the demographics unless one ignores east and south Asians. Plurality != Dominance.

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.

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.

In either arena, which group is the rising power against straight white men? Latinos? And what are the straight white women doing in this portrait of power? Where are women in this narrative?

I personally find this idea pretty weak.

The main problem I have with it is that these taboos are enforced precisely by the members of the group that would be the "weak" group now. As the most recent and obvious example, the #metoo movement has thrived with the fundamental support of powerful white men. The taboos of religion are, or were, not imposed by a powerful group of priests to a subjugated population, but instead they were enforced collectively.

There is a taste, a natural instinct, for just conforming with mainstream opinions, not out of fear but with sincere conviction, sometimes beyond any logic and reason. Once some ideas get enough traction, and non conformity is met with enough execration, then people just tend to join in with real devotion.

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