What are some examples of ideas today that are considered heretical but may have value to them?
But okay, here goes. Here are some areas where there’s a very large “dead zone” of ideas which surrounds some bad ideas but which may also encompass some good ones too:
1. Intrinsic statistical racial differences or other ideas labelled as racist
2. Intrinsic statistical sexual differences or other ideas labelled as sexist
3. Maybe some aspects of the Holocaust have been exaggerated?
4. (Increasingly) Climate change skepticism
I wish to stress, once again, that all of these heretical regions certainly contain a bunch of bad ideas at their core; but the size of the fenced-off region in each case is so large that it makes you wonder whether some good ideas have been fenced off too.
Thanks though! I also find myself hesitating to comment or post here to avoid getting downvoted. I would've thought HN would be the most tolerant among online communities of controversial or even obviously wrong ideas.
Regardless of the merit, or not, of that idea... this whole process perfectly demonstrates the article's point.
An aspect that Paul Graham did not address in his essay is the difficulty one can face to communicate about something in a domain considered an heresy. The probability to find something new in such domain is greater than the average, but the recognition is much more difficult to gain than average.