PG had an essay a while back about things you can't talk about.
I've found lately that there are many topics where you just can't mention them at all online. I will not list these topics. To do so would just invite the kinds of conversations that end in a death spiral.
I'm reminded of the old joke of accusing somebody that they are in denial. Once you do that? There's no way they can reply without agreeing with you. It's a semantic trap.
There are scads of topics like that today. People have taught themselves the appropriate kinds of wordplay such that they are able to declare certain areas off-limits.
Our society, world, and species depends on open and sometimes offensive civil dialogue. I find it depressing that so many people have paid so much money for an education and are not aware of this basic prerequisite for a modern world.
I think it's because we seriously aren't made for this environment.
Consider that 100 years ago a picture was a novelty, there was no such thing as perfect recollection.
Today we have a perfect/accurate record of exactly what was said/done on social media; it's led to a culture of virtue signalling and often dishonest but politically correct dialogue.
Don't get me wrong, I love technology and the amazing things it's let us do, but I don't think this aspect is discussed enough.
Our day to day existence as a human being has completely/foundationally/fundamentally changed within the span of a couple generations.
Who says a lot of that previous physical world won't return? The Gods of the Copybook Headings and all that?
E.g. how long can the US Federal government continue to borrow "a trillion dollars a year" to fund continuing operations? Not forever, I submit to you.
(And, yes, I know it's dropped to around half of that, but there's no plan to drop it further, and that's not counting things like the Fed keeping interest rates so low.)
PG had an essay a while back about things you can't talk about.
I've found lately that there are many topics where you just can't mention them at all online. I will not list these topics. To do so would just invite the kinds of conversations that end in a death spiral.
I'm reminded of the old joke of accusing somebody that they are in denial. Once you do that? There's no way they can reply without agreeing with you. It's a semantic trap.
There are scads of topics like that today. People have taught themselves the appropriate kinds of wordplay such that they are able to declare certain areas off-limits.
Our society, world, and species depends on open and sometimes offensive civil dialogue. I find it depressing that so many people have paid so much money for an education and are not aware of this basic prerequisite for a modern world.