What You Can't Say

dtolton writes "Paul Graham has an excellent article posted on the subject of things you can't say. His article explores what ideas are generally considered heresy, and whether or not those ideas might be true nonetheless. He also presents advice for handling heretical ideas. Considering that many of the ideas in technology in general and Open Source specifically are near heresy, it's well worth a read."

Comments

Re:A quick list

[turgid]

"Sure I hit my wife - when she deserves it!" (this is probably less of a taboo than it should be)

I hate to rain on your parade but... Violence should be unacceptable except in self-defense.

In this country (UK) for about 10 years now there has been a campaign to stop "violence against women" (by men) i.e. Domestic Violence. There has been no such campaign agains violence against men by women. In the media, women are portrayed as heroes when they thump men.

Look, I'll cut out the crap and come straight to the point.

One night my then girlfriend went ape at me in a fit of madness, ripped out half my hair and beat me black and blue.

I didn't hit back and I'm glad I didn't,

In that case I deserved a go at self-defense, not revenge, but I prefered to curl up into a ball and take the beatings.

So you see, the guy was right on the money in his article. It's what people will let you say, what they will let you believe and what they allow us to believe is important.