This one, in additional with the previous essay about 2 different kind of centrists really make me curious of what unorthodox opinions PG is holding and can't say right now.
> I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.
"If one harbours anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:
BRITISH TORY: Britain will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.
COMMUNIST: If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.
IRISH NATIONALIST: Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.
TROTSKYIST: The Stalin régime is accepted by the Russian masses.
PACIFIST: Those who 'abjure' violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.
All of these facts are grossly obvious if one's emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also INTOLERABLE, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial."
(With hindsight, we see the irish nationalist was less conflicted than Orwell had been willing to admit to himself. Or am I missing something important, given that this was written in 1945 and not 1922?)
As far as Orwell's most famous book goes, my heterodoxy of the moment is that I'm convinced the frame story in 1984 was not a jeremiad of warning about a future to avoid, but instead a cathartic story about a past young EA Blair had suffered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23825457
Ireland spent the Second World War neutral, albeit sympathetic to the Axis (Eamon de Valera famously mourned Hitler's death!); what Orwell was trying to say is that the only reason Ireland had any neutrality to preserve is the U.K. was implicitly defending it: had the Axis powers won the war Germany or Italy would have soon enough made Ireland a puppet state.
This sentence usually ruffles some feathers, and is a good, even if weak, example of things you "can't say".
Paul Graham is somewhat a victim of this himself.
For example, the assumption behind this very essay is that there is such a thing as a rigid, singular concept of "truth" in the moral, cultural and political sphere, that there is a "fact of the matter" whether a belief (say one PG holds) is correct or not. Or that that we live in a static world where such truths can even exist, and not, in a fluid, dynamic, politically messy world where contrasting viewpoints interact and produce something not something ever lasting, but something which is fragile and must always be fought for, this fight being a necessary feature for a functioning democracy.
It seems to me that the biggest reason why some opinions are taboo is that we're worried (usually for good reason) they'll find supporters. Instead of making opinions taboo, we should work on an educational system that doesn't let harmful opinions take hold of people.
There will always be taboo opinions. For example, I can't imagine a civilized society where an opinion like "capital punishment for every minor fault is ok" is not taboo.
> Instead of making opinions taboo, we should work on an educational system that doesn't let harmful opinions take hold of people.
How? I think the problem is that this is impossible at all. Not every opinion is based on reason and education will not be a shield from them.
This one isn't. Here, I can say "there should be capital punishment for every minor fault!" and nobody will bat an eyelid. Nobody will agree, which is why it's okay to say this.
"Taboo" means "opinions you can't talk about", not "opinions that won't be popular". Many taboo opinions are extremely popular, such as "homosexuality shouldn't be a crime" a few decades ago.
Hell, I spent a full thirty seconds wondering whether I should even post the latter under my name, even if it's clearly in a hypothetical context and I'm just mentioning it as an example.
I don't think that assumption is required by the essay. It says that people with orthodox privilege believe that anything outside their orthodoxy must be untrue. So it merely claims that certain people believe (often falsely) that they can conclude something is untrue because it's unorthodox. A crisp universal definition of truth isn't necessary for them to believe this.
"They literally can't imagine a true statement that would get them in trouble." would be replaced by "They literally cannot image a statement which is morally acceptable to certain groups of people (to which they belong) would get them in trouble with those groups of people". Which is completely fair and reasonable.
Whether it's IQ or crime demographics, or something more esoteric, we're increasingly entering into a time where you have to toe the line of orthodoxy or risk losing your livelihood. This means we can't actually get better studies into these areas, nor can we propose policy mechanisms that might actually work towards improving reality, because we are incapable of basing policies on unorthodox facts.