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Then you should be willing to suffer the consequences of truth telling. It's a fairly common pattern in history.

philwelch 11y ago
The entire point of having a relatively free society is to reduce those consequences so that people can freely search for the truth without fearing for their livelihoods, reputations, or lives. We make a lot more progress now that the Church doesn't haul people in for saying the earth revolves around the sun, and now that people don't get blacklisted from their careers for being suspected of communist sympathies. Just because heliocentrism and communism aren't taboo anymore doesn't mean we've figured everything out and can abandon these principles.
- zem 11y ago
  none of those opinions would be labelled "politically correct"; the term is a dog-whistle for people who want to express opinions like "what if women are simply less capable than men?" or "black people would get a lot further if they'd just clean up their act and behave like civilised folk". google for "politically incorrect but" if you are disinclined to take my word for it.
  - philwelch 11y ago
    Yeah, those are examples of opinions that are politically incorrect today, but so are more sophisticated and plausible opinions, like "genetics may be expressed in behavioral ways that predict criminality", "the distribution of cognitive and personality traits differs between sexes and races", "Islamic immigrants to Europe are disproportionately responsible for cases of sexual assault", "some women falsely accuse men of rape", or even "it's not realistic to expect people to coexist in society together when they hold entirely different social mores and norms". You may agree or disagree with any of these statements, but the notion of political correctness is that we are not even allowed to discuss whether or not these propositions are factually correct, because they are already politically incorrect. But the real risk of political correctness isn't just the possibility that some politically incorrect proposition turns out to be true. It's that reality is always more complicated than we think it is. Two opposing propositions might be true in different contexts. For instance, the NBA slam dunk competition was this weekend; I don't think it's a stretch to say that in that particular context, women are, in fact, less capable than men. What if that's true about things other than dunking basketballs? We're not even comfortable contemplating that notion. That discomfort is a bias on our picture of the world.
waterlesscloud 11y ago
There are a lot of common patterns in history we should avoid repeating. "Suffering consequences" for truth telling should be one of them.

The entire point of having a relatively free society is to reduce those consequences so that people can freely search for the truth without fearing for their livelihoods, reputations, or lives. We make a lot more progress now that the Church doesn't haul people in for saying the earth revolves around the sun, and now that people don't get blacklisted from their careers for being suspected of communist sympathies. Just because heliocentrism and communism aren't taboo anymore doesn't mean we've figured everything out and can abandon these principles.

zem 11y ago
none of those opinions would be labelled "politically correct"; the term is a dog-whistle for people who want to express opinions like "what if women are simply less capable than men?" or "black people would get a lot further if they'd just clean up their act and behave like civilised folk". google for "politically incorrect but" if you are disinclined to take my word for it.
- philwelch 11y ago
  Yeah, those are examples of opinions that are politically incorrect today, but so are more sophisticated and plausible opinions, like "genetics may be expressed in behavioral ways that predict criminality", "the distribution of cognitive and personality traits differs between sexes and races", "Islamic immigrants to Europe are disproportionately responsible for cases of sexual assault", "some women falsely accuse men of rape", or even "it's not realistic to expect people to coexist in society together when they hold entirely different social mores and norms". You may agree or disagree with any of these statements, but the notion of political correctness is that we are not even allowed to discuss whether or not these propositions are factually correct, because they are already politically incorrect. But the real risk of political correctness isn't just the possibility that some politically incorrect proposition turns out to be true. It's that reality is always more complicated than we think it is. Two opposing propositions might be true in different contexts. For instance, the NBA slam dunk competition was this weekend; I don't think it's a stretch to say that in that particular context, women are, in fact, less capable than men. What if that's true about things other than dunking basketballs? We're not even comfortable contemplating that notion. That discomfort is a bias on our picture of the world.

waterlesscloud 11y ago

There are a lot of common patterns in history we should avoid repeating. "Suffering consequences" for truth telling should be one of them.