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Re: What You Can't Say

paulgraham.com · 1,287 words · saved by 1 readers

Why didn't you say some of the things you can't say? The most extreme of the things you can't say would be very shocking to most readers. If you doubt that, imagine what people in 1830 would think of our default educated east coast beliefs about, say, premarital sex, homosexuality, or the literal truth of the Bible. We would seem depraved to them. So we should expect that someone who similarly violated our taboos would seem depraved to us. If I said this kind of thing, it would be like someone doing a cannonball into a swimming pool. Immediately, the essay would be about that, and not about the more general and ultimately more important point. Another alternative would be to say milder, moderately controversial things, like those Larry Elder wrote about in The Ten Things You Can't Say In America. I haven't read this book and have no idea if it's any good, but these are certainly not the ten things you can't say in America. I can easily think of ten that would be more shocking

Re: What You Can't Say --> Why didn't you say some of the things you can't say? The most extreme of the things you can't say would be very shocking to most readers. If you doubt that, imagine what people in 1830 would think of our default educated east coast beliefs about, say, premarital sex, homosexuality, or the literal truth of the Bible. We would seem depraved to them. So we should expect that someone who similarly violated our taboos would seem depraved to us. If I said this kind of thing, it would be like someone doing a cannonball into a swimming pool. Immediately, the essay would be a

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