1. Prison. Almost every modern penal system focuses on punishment rather than rehabilitation. I think that as our understanding of the brain improves, we'll be able to find the causes of violent behavior and cure them. Punishment will become cruel and unusual.

2. Eating meat (and other animal rights issues). Even if they're not conscious, most tasty animals can suffer just as much as we can. They have desires and kin. Some even mourn the passing of their brethren. But few eyes are batted when our microencephalized cousins are abused and killed by the billions. Cheap in-vitro meat is probably a prerequisite for this change.

3. Banning assisted suicide for the elderly and terminally ill. See http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/

I doubt I'll be right on all of these, but I'm hopeful. Now for something I really can't say: I think all three of these atrocities share a root cause. Some of you will probably guess what I'm getting at.

Most unspeakable thoughts today deal with isms and phobias: sexism, racism, agism, Islamophobia, homophobia.

There are others of course. For example, I am not a climate-change denier, but if I was I certainly wouldn't say so on HN!

I'm gay so I'll pick on my own group: HIV is ridiculously high amongst urban gay men. To me, it's obvious why this is the case. Evolutionarily, men have had no reason not to try and be as successful with as many partners as possible. Women, who may be saddled with a pregnancy and baby for years, had evolutionary pressure to be more choosy with sexual partners. This created fertile ground for HIV to spread amongst gay men.

Now, could a straight person say that without being ostracized from polite society? Probably not!

The question I would throw back to pg though is this: are we better or worse off for avoiding these topics entirely? The truth sometimes comes at a cost. Let's say that we found out that white people are less smart than East Asians. What good could come from knowing that? I don't know the answer...

I think future societies will be surprised by how much human suffering we permit in the name of being "tolerant". Religions are not all created equal, and no intellectually honest person will claim that Islam and Jainism are equally valid moral frameworks (this is why few people fret about Jainophobia). We know that Islam and its adherents are generous contributors to the surplus of misery in the world. People concerned about the quality of human life will recognize that we were right to be extremely suspicious of Islam.

(Note that I'm defining Islamophobia as "deep suspicion of Islam / thoughts informed by Islamic beliefs", especially when it comes to questions of morality and ethics.)

Speaking as an Arab person who is very critical of Islam, I think we should be careful to distinguish the two.

NOPE! You've been made to think that by the media. Time to bring out this vid again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQnxnYEVp4U

The relevant part:

The meaning of “Islamophobia” is not at all like the meanings of those other terms. It is simply not easy to differentiate prejudice against Muslims from ordinary racism and xenophobia directed at Arabs, Pakistanis, Somalis, and other people who happen to be Muslim. Of course, there is no question that such bigotry exists, and it is as odious as Greenwald believes. But inventing a new term does not give us license to say that there is a new form of hatred in the world. How does the term “anti-Semitism” differ? Well, we have a 2000-year-old tradition of religiously inspired hatred against Jews, conceived as a distinct race of people, both by those who hate them and by Jews themselves. Anti-Semitism is, therefore, a specific form of racism that, as everyone knows, has taken many terrible turns over the years (and is now especially prevalent among Muslims, for reasons that can be explicitly traced not merely to recent conflicts over land in the Middle East, but to the doctrine of Islam). “Sexism,” generally speaking, is a bias against women, not because of any doctrines they might espouse, but because they were born without a Y chromosome. The meanings of these terms are clear, and each names a form of hatred and exclusion directed at people, as people, not because of their behavior or beliefs, but because of the mere circumstances of their birth.

Islamophobia is something else entirely. It is, Greenwald tells us in his three points, an “irrational” and “disproportionate” and “unjustified” focus on Muslims. But the only way that Muslims can reasonably be said to exist as a group is in terms of their adherence to the doctrine of Islam. There is no race of Muslims. They are not united by any physical traits or a diaspora. Unlike Judaism, Islam is a vast, missionary faith. The only thing that defines the class of All Muslims—and the only thing that could make this group the possible target of anyone’s “irrational” fear, “disproportionate” focus, or “unjustified” criticism—is their adherence to a set of beliefs and the behaviors that these beliefs inspire.

And, unlike a person’s racial characteristics or gender, beliefs can be argued for, tested, criticized, and changed. In fact, wherever the norms of rational conversation are allowed to do their work, beliefs must earn respect. More important, beliefs are claims about reality and about how human beings should live within it—so they necessarily lead to behavior, and to values, laws, and public institutions that affect the lives of all people, whether they share these beliefs or not. Beliefs end marriages and start wars.

So “Islamophobia” must be—it really can only be—an irrational, disproportionate, and unjustified fear of certain people, regardless of their ethnicity or any other accidental trait, because of what they believe and to the degree to which they believe it. Thus the relevant question to ask is whether a special concern about people who are deeply committed to the actual doctrines of Islam, in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, is irrational, disproportionate, and unjustified.

His arguments for arming himself smack of complete ignorance of the concept of the monopoly of physical violence[1], and without accounting for those theories (and their practical application in modern states), the whole argument is just vapid.

[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gewaltmonopol_des_Staates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

Are you proposing that they should read minds? As far as I know that's not possible so this statement is preposterous, of course they are going to target by the headgear/skin-color, is the only way they can determine who is Islamic and who is not; being bad at it is a different matter.

How do you decide who owns the "right" beliefs? By that logic, who can we consider to be a Christian?

It's not NtS to point out that James "Scotty" Doohan wasn't Scottish (he was a Canadian of Irish descent.) Nor is it NtS to point out that certain people don't hold various relevant defining characteristics and therefore to claim that they don't count as being in a particular category. Of course, that exclusion is contextual -- it can apply to a particular use of a label without applying to all uses of it.

Note that I disagree with Sam Harris overall. His claim is that the only way Muslims can be reasonably said to exist is his definition; I would argue that one way Muslims can be said to exist is his definition. I would further argue that some people who use other definitions of Islam have irrational/unjustified/disproportionate fear, and can therefore be said to be Islamophobic.

on IQ - I'm not sure that's necessarily true, or at least, the differences are complex (one group has a slightly higher average, the other a higher standard deviation, which has implications at the right-end of the bell curve). but for day-to-day social impact, that's not nearly as important as wondering what society should with people in the bottom 50% of the IQ distribution, which is another topic we don't discuss.

I often wonder whether the political correctness furies directed at pg were a factor in him putting sam altman in charge.

for example - it was considered wildly controversial to say that not being able so speak english without a heavy accent might put you at a disadvantage in starting a company in an english speaking country. really?

also - yc is the most forward thinking vc on women's issues in the country, and yet they were still accused of gender bias etc. wildly unfair, you might say.

kind of hard for a thoughtful person to deal with all that chatter. you have to adopt a PR perspective, make general statements - no longer operating from a place of logic, just a desire not to offend.

my sense is that there are many foolish things progressive americans believe which future generations will laugh at. we already laugh publicly at conservatives, but we're supposed to take everything progressives say seriously.

here's a controversial closer - even if we equalized educational access to EECS, funding - women would be less likely to start companies than men, because men are hard-wired to take risks (hormonal profiles, probably other brain circuitry). tens of thousands of years of evolution can't easily be overcome, in even 100 years.

doesn't mean we shouldn't encourage women, or that they can't do it (they obviously can) but bemoaning the out-of-whack ratios constantly, and expecting parity to be around the corner, seems foolish IMHO.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Under every interpretation I can think of, it is incorrect. In the first place, people vary in their CD4 and CCR5 (&c.) receptors, so they also vary in their susceptibility to HIV infection given exposure. My understanding is that some alleles confer such resistance to infection that carriers are considered naturally immune. As ever in immunology, that's not the entire story, but it certainly enough to falsify the view that "everyone is equally likely to get HIV" _even given exposure_.

More importantly, people have different rates of exposure. Those rates depend on what sort of potential transmission events one faces, and the prevalence of infection among partners for potential transmission events. Both of those differ between groups of people.

Hence, not everyone is equally likely to get HIV. That implies nothing, of course, about what we ought to _do_ about that.

Are blood donations accepted from gay men now?

Women _on average_ may very well be better or worse than men in all sorts of ways, but that doesn't mean some of them won't be extraordinary.

We have to be careful about our biases so we don't miss out on the extraordinary ones.

It takes extra work to do this.

For example orchestras (traditionally very male dominated) tried to remove bias from their auditions by having the musicians play behind a curtain. The curtain increased the probability that a woman would advance from preliminary rounds by 50 percent(!).

Bemoaning may be tiresome, but it can also lead to changes that really do make a difference.

I wonder if YC applications are gender neutral (names removed)?

Very often times ideas which stir controversy do so because of a real or perceived agenda behind them. If I say, for example (as I have on HN and gotten flack for) that women tend to be more likely to think in ways which are socially more complex than men, I get flack because there is a fear that anything essentialist about gender (outside of, say, the abortion debate) is essentially a way of trying to imprison women in limiting gender roles. That isn't my intention naturally but I have to accept that this is the framework behind the controversy that saying something like that arises.

Similarly if I argue that the natural order is for people to retire with their children, this has huge impacts for modern ideas of sexuality and the choice of childlessness.

There are tons of attitudes that I think that I would be cautious (though perhaps I am too foolish to be reluctant) about discussing. But the key issue is the concern about the perceived agendas, and the perceived power structures that come with those.

Ideas themselves must exist in a context, and that context is defined in part by how they are used, not only by the person discussing them but also by others.

That could eliminate unconscious bias during the application screening process, but it would be hard to run face-to-face interviews without revealing the sex of the person doing the interviewing.

To give an example in the present day: imagine you believed a gender or race was literally subhuman, in the sense that you had every right to do whatever you wanted to the Thing. That is something that was a widespread belief in the past but is now simply unspeakable. Note that we're not talking about race and IQ, which is still "allowed" to be spoken of, in the sense that people can and do talk about it, even if other people vociferously disagree with the person. But also note the framing the race-and-IQ folk themselves use when talking about it: they bend over backwards to claim that they think race has no bearing on whether a person has rights or equal moral status. It's always framed as a purely scientific statement which, although perhaps having policy implications, says nothing about the moral status of the person designated as more likely to have a low IQ. Someone arguing otherwise wouldn't be denounced but altogether written out of rational discourse.

When PG talks about the unspeakable assumptions and fashions of an age, that's what I read him as talking about. In general, I mean, not about race in particular. It also goes to show that just because something is a widely shared assumption of an age doesn't mean it's wrong.[1]

[1] But isn't it interestingly meta that I can reference universally shared moral assumptions and use the fact that they are universally shared as rhetorical evidence that they're good and useful?

The reason why people often choose to condemn those who speak an unpopular truth is because the truth is a powerful and dangerous weapon, often used to fight progress. This is what is known as the naturalistic fallacy, or the is-ought fallacy: the fact that something is true does not mean that it is good, or that it cannot change if we try hard enough. A "lie" might be more valuable than the "truth", because a lie might be a bright hope for the future, while the truth is simply the status quo.

For some reason, even people that are usually curious and generally skeptical, sometimes stop questioning society when they find data demonstrating that some notion is "true". They don't take the extra step to ask why is it true, and can we change it? Or, should we change it?

That is why the "truth" in the social sciences might be a dangerous thing, because if people come to assign the same meaning to a true finding in physics or in anthropology, we have a problem. While we cannot change the laws of physics, we can certainly change the social order. And we have.

I don't think, then, that "truth" is all that important when it comes to ideology. What's important is picking values that you feel comfortable believing, and staying true to them.

related: http://nytimes.com/2014/03/15/health/in-rare-case-woman-with...

PG suggested this as well with his references to "racial insensitivity," etc. And he may be right that future generations may not worry too much about racial insensitivity. But that does not mean that trying to speak and write about race in a way that is sensitive to the problems that race presents is irrational or merely fashionable.

We live in a time of ongoing racial strife in America and around the world, and we come from times of even worse strife. Attempting to be racially sensitive is a rational response to the fact that, for centuries, we white western men have been extraordinarily racially insensitive.

Let's look at an example of statements about race that would fall on different sides of that line. If I were to say that black men earn, on average, less money than white men, most people would say I was speaking factually. If I were to say that black men are, on average, less intelligent than white men, most people would say I was being racially insensitive -- or worse. In fact, one striking thing about many taboo or insensitive things that one could say today, is that they are frequently used as moral apologies for other, factual statements. Anyone arguing that black people are usually less intelligent than white people is probably also going to argue that black people deserve to make less money than white people. If it is taboo to say that urban gay men are more likely to contract HIV (in a moment I'll argue that that is not the case), it would be because there could also be a whiff of a suggestion that therefore a gay man with HIV deserves to be sick.

Another striking thing about this variety of taboo statements today, as opposed to taboos of previous generations, is how frequently such taboo statements are factually inaccurate. In fact, calling "black men are less intelligent than white men" racially insensitive is possibly the most charitable thing one could say about that statement. When you see "racially insensitive" in print, that is usually because someone (a politician or celebrity) said something false and/or blatantly racist, but the publication felt it was too inflammatory to call it what it was -- false and racist.

Finally, as a rebuttal to your statement about HIV, if it's taboo, why does a doctor ask me if I have sex with men the first time I meet her? Why are gay men still not allowed to donate blood? Context is what matters here. As a matter of fact, HIV is more prevalent in the gay community than the straight one (or at least it was -- feel free to offer newer data that refutes this). It is also more prevalent among African Americans. Stating these facts is not taboo, but suggesting that these fact hold any moral weight, that any of these groups that has faced ancient discrimination actually deserves it, is rightfully subject to distaste and rebuke given our cultural history.

This is what pg wrote five years ago, referencing this essay:

Just as well I've avoided saying most of the "things you can't say," or 90% of the people who read that essay and think "hear, hear" would hate me instead.... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=255492)

And as I said, I left out the things I really can't say.

The quote is often used a proof that Pauline Kael was clueless, but, IIRC, she began by saying "many of my liberal friends have told me ...," i.e., she wasn't truly perplexed by Nixon's victory. Instead, she was pointing out that there are downsides to being insular about politics.

The difference between you and the vast majority of the population is that you recognize there are dissenting viewpoints held by people you've never met.

It would be the end of society. I don't even know what we'd do; probably just live like wild animals in the forest only worrying about primal needs.

I love meat. I will not stop eating meat. Not only because I trust my personal "instincts" as tuned by millions of years of evolution to inform me to some degree what I need to consume to be effective far more than any conscious decision I might make, (e.g. that I think we're rather "young" in our understanding of how nutrition impacts the body), but because when confronted by that "animals have feelings and we are being cruel", my response is "yes, but that is nature."

Two qualifiers. Do I think we could be better? (more humane raising and slaughter) Abso-fucking-lutely. Do I think as technology grows, that we should move to more humane options? I would be more appalled if we didn't.

But will I ever "regret" choosing to eat meat, or fault those who do? Not a chance. I'm sure many people will disagree with the following, and I'd hope to hear a response rather than just get downvoted to oblivion, but so long as it is sustainable (which is a BIG qualifier that links heavily with my above statements about technological progress), we are at the top of the food chain, period. I am a predator, and I take pleasure in continuing to be one, to certain degrees.

Given that my justification is simply "this is a system that has worked for far longer than humanity has existed" mixed with "but I like it (so long as it does not become destructive to the point of disrupting said system that has existed successfully for so long)" I admit I feel that this is a weak argument. But I've both never found a really compelling counter, nor have I found any particular "holes" in mine. (Aside from the obvious "but it's not sustainable", to which I'd hand wave a bit and blame that more on an unfortunate side effect of market forces than on the choice to eat meat itself, which is also a bit of a reduction problem since the latter powers the former, and turtles all the way down, but I'd mostly respond with that I'd rather look for solutions than knee jerk responses, and personal consumption at this point is NOT going to impact "how things are", perhaps ignoring the wisdom of the whole "be the change you wish to see" etc... (but then, the change I want to see is simply better implementation, not vilification/removal of the "problem", so maybe not?)

Wow, this rambled. Sorry about that. This is just an issue that I have convoluted feelings on, as someone who tries to be conscious about both maintainable systems and loving to consume animals.

- we don't understand how nutrition affects the body. True, but there are societies that are vegetarian and have been for centuries. Apparently veggies are healthy!

- You are a predator? I don't know you but I'm willing to bet it's been a while since you hunted down, killed, and ate an animal in the wild.

- "The system has worked" - with that kind of reasoning you could justify anything from rape, manslaughter, ostracizing, etc. Being civilized means rising above unhealthy instincts.

I think you should probably just stick with "it tastes good". Can't argue with that.

As for being a predator, I have hunted, and it is a fact that most people who eat meat could hunt if in need. It's not rocket science. The fact that they don't hunt is caused by practical reasons. I don't knit my sweaters and that does not preclude me from wearing clothes.

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_vegetarianism

Your post is ridiculous, and I say that as an American hunter with some knowledge of foraging and farming.

also, to answer in order: -Indeed, there are multiple approaches, and this is why I find it hard to select one vs. the other. If my body "craves" meat, there's usually a reason due to digestive peptides that the nutrition from the food I'm craving is something that'd be useful. I realize I could with time potentially reprogram this, but, the statement stands.

-You'd actually be wrong. I enjoy both bow hunting (which I had the opportunity to learn initially as a boy scout) and game shooting.

-If you notice, I qualify that with avoiding creating undue harm. I think it's quite a strawman to draw an equivalence between consuming animals that are killed in a humane fashion with e.g. rape especially. If you kept it to manslaughter, you'd have a stronger point, since I have a hard time arguing against anything outside of specific targeted uses of violence either. (please don't take this as bait; just that there have been wars in history I do not oppose.)

You crave meat for a variety of psychological and physiological reasons, but not necessarily because you're missing something that meat provides.

My argument for not eating meat is simple - why kill something for food if I don't have to?

I've been a vegetarian for 15 years or so, and would question your statement that finding non-meat protein alternatives is complicated.

It sounds like you're trying to make an argument that not eating meat could have long-term health hazards, in which case I'd argue that it's easier to prove that meat is bad for you than it is to prove not-eating it is.

Now, this is all anecdotal, I was just addressing that my body responded in a way that suggested that I did "require" the protein.

With regards to the more formal argument, I'd word it more that you put yourself more "at risk" for certain health hazards by cutting ANY core part of the diet out. It's certainly easy to prove meat is "bad" but most of the studies I had seen involved excessive consumption, which defaults back to the general statement of "all things in moderation". Do you have references that show the former (negative effects) without the latter? (ineffective dietary balance).

To summarize, I'd agree if we're only talking in extremes, that it's very easy to show that meat is bad. So I'd qualify all my previous statements with "a well balanced diet"

Mostly, unless you've developed some kind of novel purely-synthetic foodstock, you have to (well, you can probably get away with dismembering living things rather than killing them, in some cases.) To a certain extent, you have a choice about whether the "something" killed or dismembered is plant, animal, fungus, etc.

The environment for which your instincts have been tuned has very little to do with the one you are living in. Obesity makes it quite clear that people's instincts are misguiding them, and that our understanding of nutrition is less wrong than instincts.

(I am not advocating vegetarianism, just addressing this specific argument.)

This goes not only for meat, but for animal products in general (the dairy and egg industries cause just as much, if not more, suffering than the meat industry).

Eating meat can be morally justified if it's done in a humane way, I think. The problem is that unless you have your own small-scale farm, it's almost impossible to find animal products that aren't the result of suffering. I don't find it very likely that things will change unless we, as a society, move towards a (much) lower consumption of animal products.

[1] http://www.farmforward.com/farming-forward/factory-farming [2] http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/meat-wastes... [3] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report...

I generally am sympathetic with what you're saying, however, I'm mostly pescatarian due to the issues you completely overlook.

So, without getting into the arguments about whether or not humans ought to eat meat (for argument's sake, let's assume we were carnivores, and could not survive without eating mammalian flesh).

I cannot think of a moral framework, besides the laughable "other mammals are not conscious," that would justify the inhumane conditions our mammals we feed on are kept in. Solitary confinement, often not seeing the sun their entire lives, fed corn in buckets rather than they would feed on naturally. For what? So we save a dollar or two on each burger or pork chop we eat? When you really stop to think about it, it's abhorrent.

It may be natural to eat meat if you are a predator, but i see no reason why it's natural to torture. And i think that is what the future will look back on and be ashamed of.

We should strive in all things to cause as little undue harm as possible. (and trust me, I realize the potential conflict with this and advocating eating meat, which is why I try to apply lots of thought to the problem)

I don't expect people living in a world where criminals can be "cured" will condemn our use of prisons either, because we can't "cure" criminals yet!

Do you catch my drift? It makes no sense to condemn ancient peoples for not doing something they couldn't do.

Sure, but there are prisons and prisons: based on what I saw, I would very much prefer to be in a prison in Sweden than in the US or in France (to select rich countries where prison SHOULD be better).

I believe deterrence is important thus the prison status quo is fine. Try saying that at a party full of educated people. Everything thinks we can just teach people moralism and how to be good. In reality, you can't treat some/most and things like sociopathy are real.

I didn't say the things I can't say. I even said so. HN users would probably flag a comment containing what I didn't say.

This is most extreme in the case of engineering humans. Most people are horrified at the idea, worried about eugenics or a Gattica type future. But if you really examine what this will do, ie eliminate many forms of horrible genetic diseases or propensity to cancer, then I think you are going to see that this is something we really should do.

Prisons are a radically modern invention, maybe more so than any other government institution. It's just they and their logic are so pervasive we don't recognize them for what they are.

See: Foucault, Bentham.

Or are you wrapping ancient Egypt into your notion of radically modern.

(Ok, maybe ancient Egypt didn't have many cells with walls and bars for windows, but they sure had prisoners chained to things)

Before then "prisons" were more or less temporary affairs, usually just a makeshift holding chamber where people were kept before the actual punishment was meted out (death, torture, or mutilation). But the idea of a building where people are isolated and placed under permanent bodily control for months or years on end by the State (for the betterment of society, or fixing of the individual, or punishment, or whatever) is very much a product of the Enlightenment.

4. Criminalization of drug use and possession.

5. Private funding of politics.

> cure them

Why would a violent behavior necessarily be a disease? We are violent creatures, that's part of our nature. (Many other mammals are violent; some species of monkeys kill their own offspring for no apparent reason; lions kill the offspring of a lioness in order to mate with her, etc.)

We can choose as a society to try to eliminate all occurrences of violence, but it would be foolish to think we can change human nature (not with societal systems anyways; with eugenics maybe but that doesn't look very palatable).

Besides, a majority (or a great proportion) of the people currently behind bars in the US are charged with non-violent offenses; people are routinely imprisoned for crimes that make no other victim than themselves, and that's the greatest scandal of all.

There should be no crime when there is no other victim than the perpetrator; that should be part of the bill of rights of all nations (if we need nations, and constitutions, and "rights").

Sociopathy is permanent and uncurable. It's also common among people with a criminal record. Sifting those out from otherwise lost but psychonormal individuals is not trivial.

That's part of the intent (however misguided and misapplied) behind three strikes laws, the assumption is that repeat offenders are more representative of those that cannot be rehabilitated. Which isn't far from the truth, but we're not really rehabbing them at the moment.

Also common among CEOs and politicians. See? Being a sociopath doesn't automatically make you a murderer!

I believe most sociopaths don't commit major crimes (maybe they could but benefits are none or don't outweight consequences). There are some people who are sociopaths and can't control themself but they are a minority of a minority. Most crimes have a motive, don't they?

Too narrow a scope. Future societies will condemn us for not eliminating mortality faster.

I am however interested in your root cause - is it religion?

2. Eating meat is very natural. Even animals do it.

3. Nope. So completely and utterly wrong.

The Patrician took a sip of his beer. "I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to its day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."

-- Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

I find that paragraph to be a perfect rebuttal to appeals to nature. Hat tip to ChronoDAS for bringing it to my attention: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ud/rationality_quotes_march_2010/1p...

First, we are animals. Second, "nature" isn't a good reason for anything. "You can't get an ought from an is." I still love meat, but I'm aware that animal treatment is certainly a moral issue that is not adequately addressed.

3. Any reason other than "my religion says so"?

Just like murder, rape, spreading disease, slavery...

To my knowledge, animals have little to no moral consciousness, so I don't think "Animals do it" can justify any moral opinion.

Why?

Gotta love advertising.

So since religion as a label will stay for much longer than the actual harmful religious beliefs, people tend to disregard religion as the problem in itself. The ones that harm based on religious beliefs are just considered "fanatics".

2. Animals, just like humans, die. There's no way around it. Even if the entire world decides not to eat a particular goat, that goat will die. And when an animal dies, it gets eaten - no exception. Either by microorganisms, or higher level organisms. The problem isn't why animals die, it's how animals live. Even if an animal is bred for food, it doesn't have to lead a miserable life, and it doesn't mean we should not respect that life on its own merit. So again, don't throw out the baby with the bath water.

3. I agree. But say, if an old animal wants to die, can I eat it?

Preserving an animal's life artificially until it's so old it dies from its age is what is actually unnatural (also see the original point 3). So the focus should not be on extending an animal's life length, but improving those animals' life quality.

And actually if you would replace "animal" with "human" in anything I say, it still applies. This is how you know I'm not discriminating against an animal's life. Which would be pure ignorance.

And meat is just so tasty!

The other alternative would be that you independently considered every question and came up with the exact same answers that are now considered acceptable. That seems unlikely, because you'd also have to make the same mistakes. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If another map has the same mistake, that's very convincing evidence.

Is it a possibility that someone has controversial opinions but could be unafraid of expressing them to a group of peers?

Ever pitched a controversial opinion to a group of peers? You'll find that a lot of people look down at their hands, or away from you, or at each other with a blank/expectant/fearful face.

I think that might be me. I have to figure out a way to test this.

"The Conformist Test doesn't consider a third possibility: that you simply don't care what anyone thinks."

True enough. But considering how very hard it is to disentangle yourself from the thinking of your time, someone who comforts himself with this thought is almost certain to be mistaken. It's not enough to be an ornery cuss. You have to be Voltaire, and then some.

Sure, but if you want to be able to do it more than once you need to be...

1.) Useful enough to someone that the people you offend or scare can't simply discard or destroy you.

2.) Content with a count of friends that hovers near and will almost certainly reach 0 repeatedly.

3.) Prepared to deal with people who feel righteous glee in taking the most extreme misinterpretations of your words possible and maliciously applying them to you and yours.

4.) Plastic enough in your thinking that in the face of new evidence you're able accept not just that you were wrong, but that you've hurt and alienated people over things you have now reversed on.

Related to this, one thing I find interesting is that I actually have to filter myself far more when speaking anonymously online than I do in person.

I get the impression that online communications tend to be scored more often than understood. It's up or down, agree or not, run across a hot-button keyword and idea is instantly categorized and binned as this or that.

Face to face, when you can pair a threatening idea with a calm and friendly face or something which sounds wrong with a visible intelligence people tend to more amenable to understanding.

It is fascinating that were you to advocate gun control in the late 19th century, it seems nearly everyone would have laughed you out of the room. But that sentiment has reversed here in the 21st century.

Always interesting to think about.

Here are 5 decisions: http://www.constitution.org/2ll/2ndcourt/state/18st.htm http://www.constitution.org/2ll/2ndcourt/state/23st.htm http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=25 http://www.constitution.org/2ll/2ndcourt/state/154st.htm http://www.guncite.com/court/state/31ar455.html

Personal ambition is overrated, and we're actually just buying into the lies of Western culture that we have to become the Ubermensch to be happy.

I struggle with this.

Completely agreed. In actual fact, most such people aren't even real ubermenschen.

They have no mission, no true values of their own that they will impose on the world. Their ambitions are not only the small beer of rising in wealth but the zero-sum nonsense of rising in social status. Their dreams are forever confined to the cage of the established capitalist system. What's another dollar?

Many so-called ambitious professionals are just more self-deceiving pigs in human clothing.

</grimdark>

I wish there were more frank expressions of beliefs that go against the status quo. I strongly agree with you, even as my core moral values and ambitions line very well up with the chase of my personal ambitions.

Then again, I'm only exposed to the "Nuclear Power Policy" dialogue occurring in the United States.

Edited for clarity.

I was over in San Francisco last summer and walked out of a bar pint in hand to tag along for a cigarette break, we were promptly chastised about it. I apologized saying that I'd briefly forgotten what continent I was on.

It's also not unusual to see children milling around with their parents in bars in Europe well into the evening. There's no demand that you have to be of drinking age to be in the establishment, just that you can't be sold drinks if that's not the case.

All in all it contributes to a more relaxed atmosphere around drinking and I suspect to overall moderation and safety around drinking.

If you ban guns in bars then someone who carries a gun around anyway will have to stash it somewhere before they arrive, or risk breaking the law.

I carry a swiss army knife on my keychain because it's a useful tool, I bring that to bars I go to. I don't think I'm any more likely to attempt to stab someone after a few pints than I otherwise would.

Still, I totally agree with you. The stringent attitude towards alcohol-serving in the United States does stigmatize it's consumption quite a bit, and, IMO, causes a decrease in moderation and safety when compared to a more relaxed Europe.

edit:spelling

Coat check for guns? A peace tie (zip-tie) on the holster? It's not like this isn't a well understood problem.

Make what you will of those arguments, but note both options could also be applied to car keys of people entering a bar (check your keys so we can evaluate your intoxication before giving them back). In fact, one could note that cars are a tool much much more often used by the intoxicated to murder (commit manslaughter, if you like).

You're right in general, though as <cadlin> points out modern forms of "gun control" do have late 19th century racist roots. But outright criminal prohibitions on personal possession of firearms -- which we had in the U.S. in some areas before the Supreme Court's Heller decision -- would have been unthinkable. So would effectively complete bans on carrying weapons both concealed or openly, which some areas still have until the Supreme Court rules in the next 2A case up for arguments this fall.

> But that sentiment has reversed here in the 21st century.

It depends on who you talk to. If you were in a room filled with libertarian-minded engineers at Google or Microsoft, and there are plenty of them, you'd be the one laughed out of the room. Or if you were in a diner in most rural areas of the United States. But in certain coastal enclaves, yes, "gun control" has come to have a religious import.

Though the taboo-to-question topic I thought of first when reading pg's 2004 essay (a well written one, too) was anthropogenic global warming.

This is the opposite of the extreme near-religious positions of folks who want to ban guns. See Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein (CA) telling 60 Minutes she wanted an "outright ban" on all guns -- "Mr. and Mrs. America turn 'em all in" -- but didn't have enough Senate votes for it. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/01/Reminder-...

Most people's opinions on this stuff is somewhere in the middle (i.e. there should be some regulations on guns but some private gun ownership should be allowed). There are extremists on both sides. On one side it manifests as "ban them all" and on the other side it's "no regulation whatsoever".

    Most people's opinions on this stuff is somewhere in the middle 

Ah, but I'm picking two leading advocates for their respective positions.

Most people, perhaps all people, don't arrive at their opinion on religion through rational thought. I make this claim due to the obvious fact that there are a lot of contradictory religious beliefs out there, and if most people used rational thought then you'd expect most people to have similar beliefs. They don't, thus most people aren't rational about it.

Since most, perhaps all, people are irrational about it, there's no point in discussing it. It's just going to cause anger and pain. Better to avoid it.

Well, possibly. But then again, what if all those people happen to have very different sets of evidence on which to make their decisions?

It's all logic at the end of the day - or at least that's the path we take in talking about it.

Gun ownership is just fear of a tool. I'd see it in a similar vein as ignorant people thinking that TV rots your brain. Or fearing the RTGs on Cassini/MSL. Any engineer should be able to easily identify that breathless tone people use when they blame the tool for human failings.

Nuclear power stations? An engineering circle where nuclear power is encouraged is more likely. I've got a hard time imagining engineers sitting around reasonably coming to the conclusion that carbon free power in huge quantities is taboo to even discuss.

I have NOT noticed this at all with regards to nuclear power stations. I've found that there is a fairly even divide among 'reductionist' or science-praising mindsets about nuclear being net negative or net positive.

just my two anecdotal cents.

1. http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

A couple of times I've tried the philosophical argument, but I get shot down every time. It's easier to just stuff it.

testacular 42 minutes ago | link | parent [dead] | on: What You Can't Say (2004)

I have a couple colleagues who are openly Christian, and will mention church events when asked what they're doing this weekend. Nobody cares.

I go shooting sometimes, and I sometimes talk about guns with another colleague. Nobody cares.

I've suggested that thorium reactors might be a great idea during lunch conversations, and nobody batted an eye. These aren't terribly taboo taboos.

It hijacks conversations, starts fights, and doesn't accomplish anything since people will be arguing from an emotional reaction.

That doesn't mean you can't ever discuss politics and religion, just be understanding if other people aren't interested in your views.

And nobody ever realizes that Galileo was not at all interested in the scientific facts (well he was, up to the point he went insane and became a political agitator and generally a lunatic, read his letters, you'll see that I'm actually quite polite here). Rather he was organizing demonstrations and violence because the church owed him a different kind of state (needless to say, with him on top) because the earth rotated around the sun (amongst many other "reasons", most of them quite insane). This case was then dug up later to justify ripping the catholic church out of Germany. That failed, but the story about Galileo stuck.

Some of our historical heroes ... aren't heroes. Socrates is a similar situation. Celebrated philosopher. Speaker at nearly every forum (meaning the weekly meeting where their direct democracy happened). He was an advocate, a statesman, a philosopher.

And then they execute him. Wait. What ? Nobody ever seems to think that they've probably skipped over small part of the story here.

An inaccurate summary was that Socrates' students were involved TWICE with actions that led to the military sacking of Athens, with very strong suspicions of him having ordered them to do so. This "just happened" to occur right after one of the first times he didn't get his way in the forum. The first time he got off with a stern warning, execution of every one of his students involved that sided with the occupying force, and a promise not to have any students for 2 years, which he promptly ignored. Then it very nearly happened again, and again his students were helping the enemy army. Then he was executed together with his students.

There is at least a decent case to be made that Galileo was executed for organizing violent protests against the state (using, amongst many other things, the idea that the earth rotated around the sun as a rallying idea).

Likewise, Socrates was likely killed for organizing the military conquest of Athens when he couldn't democratically get his way in parliament twice (and for having a habit of sleeping with the wives of other Atheneans). Not because Atheneans were afraid of science.

Neither of them were very nice people. Not that horrible people can't be important forces of good in history, but you should at least note that this is so. E.g. Kemal Ataturk, an early 20th century figure that a lot more genocidal than Hitler. He also ended the 1.5 millenia long war of muslims against the west and the east, and frankly without him we would not have a modern time. He ended it because he thought it was a waste of money, effort and most of all, lives, not because he was against war. He just didn't believe the objective was worth the cost. Still, his importance in making our current mostly democratic world possible is at least on par with Churchill. But he is a monster, personally responsible for several ethnic extermination campaigns, no doubt about that.

Where do you get that he was executed?

Also, regarding differences between Copernicus's treatment and Galileo's. Copernicus didn't publish a lot of his material, nor was it widely known, until late in life. Galileo basically stepped into the controversy that had developed after Copernicus died. Essentially, there was little controversy in Copernicus's time because it wasn't widely known, and those that did know his theory didn't have a reason (yet) to view it as controversial or "wrong".

I would even say he was not so much looking to change the state, rather to destroy it, becoming a sort of dictator himself, without any thought to what that would do. This he did after a few years of sending out letter that made it very clear he would immediately execute half the nobility and clergy if he did come to power. It didn't help that he had pissed off all of his teachers and environment with those letters. This is what his trial was really about, and of course it mentioned his rallying cries.Those were not the essence of the trial though.

Think about it. Suppose you're an autocratic ruler in the middle ages, in Italy. Everybody's writing letters, a lot of them calling for your throat getting slit. One more of these lunatics starts writing letters. Disturbing letters, lots of them. You ignore him, at this point, there's 100 others like him. Then a few demonstrations happen, led by him, with hundreds of people calling for your throat getting slit on the street. This is unnerving, but happens regularly, most demonstration leaders are never seen again, so, again, you probably ignore this. But if he manages to make the demonstrations grow, you've got to react. That's what happened.

Regardless if you agree with the second paragraph, he was not attacked because he claimed the earth rotated around the sun.

Was that just a convenient law to hang his prosecution on? Why not "inciting others to treason" or some such direct accusion?

It's a less subtle attack than "have you stopped hitting your wife yet?"

Quote:

  The standing of Socrates among his fellow citizens suffered mightily during two periods
  in which Athenian democracy was temporarily overthrown, one four-month period in 411-410
  and another slightly longer period in 404-403.  *The prime movers in both of the anti-democratic
  movements were former pupils of Socrates, Alcibiades and Critias*. Athenians undoubtedly
  considered the teachings of Socrates--especially his expressions of disdain for the
  established constitution--partially responsible for the resulting death and suffering.
  Alcibiades, perhaps Socrates' favorite Athenian politician, masterminded the first
  overthrow.  (Alcibiades had other strikes against him: four years earlier, Alcibiades had
  fled to Sparta to avoid facing trial for mutilating religious pillars--statues of
  Hermes--and while in Sparta had proposed to that state's leaders that he help them defeat
  Athens.)  Critias, first among an oligarchy known as the "Thirty Tyrants," led the second
  bloody revolt against the restored Athenian democracy in 404.  The revolt sent many of
  Athen's leading democratic citizens (including Anytus, later the driving force behind
  the prosecution of Socrates) into exile, where they organized a resistance movement.

Bit grandiose.

A government does not gain from showing its society a proper mirror. It runs the risk of losing ground by having "insulted" the guilty older generation and national identity, and simultaneously plants the distrust for itself (it mostly is that older generation) to form a youth revolt (the RAF supposedly formed from this distrust in West Germany.)

I think this test is fascinating when applied to the Musk vs. Gates debate from yesterday.

How taboo is it to say forget charity? I know I feel uncomfortable with saying: 'forget the poor, we can fix them after we've figured out how to create a sustainable form of first world living' and yet that seems like a far more rational strategy to act upon.

I immediately thought, "We need to be able to leap forward, not backward. If this involves some sacrifice of human lives, it will save trillions in the long run. Pre-civilizaiton is just waiting for the next asteroid to impact the planet."

I don't understand how someone could be against civilization.

So, to go to a pre-civilization population level we need at least 6,900,000,000 volunteers.

The argument that present, let alone near-future projected populations are long-term sustainable doesn't merit much support in my book.

And, NB, your 200 million estimate's reasonably close -- Wikipedia gives estimates of 150 - 330 million worldwide as of 0 CE:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates

The question to my mind is one of: what level of civilization is sustainable?

Is it a modern technological society, say, 1950 - present? At what level of population and resource consumption?

A scientific and semi-industrial society, equivalent to, say, 1800 - 1900 or so? That's got some merits, but it would be rather rougher than has been experienced in the West since the 1950s or so.

An agrarian preindustrial society? This might preserve elements of arts and culture, but in limited forms. Think Roman empire or equivalents elsewhere.

Wandering nomadic groups?

Human extinction?

Large mammal extinction?

There's gradations of bad.

Because technology is a force multiplier and will pay larger dividends than charitable endeavors.

Because “On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

*Keep in mind I'm making this statement as if we're only able to pursue one course of action (charity or technology). In reality we should, and are, pursue both solutions at once.

>What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people.

It may appear that morality behaves like fashion, but it's doesn't, or at least it shouldn't. The key ingredient here is that in fashion, there is no wrong, only taste. Thus, you can pull back the curtain on any would-be wizard trying to force you to conform.

In ethics, on the other hand, screaming a bunch of hurtful crap at people, just because you're "not supposed to do that" isn't cocksure cleverness. It's wrong. It hurts people. There are good, justifiable, reasons why you shouldn't say them.

Do we have taboos we shouldn't have? Sure, but if we are going to talk about them, they should be within a moral framework, not in some empirical mess of hey-that-shouldn't-be-that-way.

1. consensual incest

2. consensual pedophilia

All of these things are just utterly shunned. It would be unspeakable for me to argue in support of these in real life, except with very close friends and in a very detached manner. In fact, this has probably put me on some sort of list (especially considering the stuff I saw on 4chan last night...).

The interesting thing is that I would never want to do any of those things. Yet I know that my own repulsion is based on irrational disgust, and the reason for our shunning is also based on irrational disgust. When we take universal moral baselines -- empathy, compassion -- none of these taboos, assuming the sex is protected and consensual, harm anyone.

We've also got eugenics and polygamy, but I could probably argue for those without being shot. Oh wow, and consensual cannibalism. I'm usually the devil's advocate, but even this shit is starting to make me feel dirty.

1. America's devoted support for our military. A support so unquestioning that you can be beaten up for saying otherwise. Polar opposite from the Vietnam war. Strange how much this has changed in less than forty years.

2. Eugenics, while not totally taboo, it's hard to talk about it without being labeled a bigot, racist, etc.

3. I also think it's difficult to have a discussion on pedophiles that doesn't involve advocating locking them up forever, it might be worth having a more empathetic discussion on such crimes. (I almost didn't include this last one for fear of getting in trouble, I rewrote it a dozen different times, but it's such a taboo subject that it should be examined.)

I love this kind of insight. I think that we, as humans, are very egotistical by nature. The time we're living in is surely the time we have all the answers and everything important figured out. We simply can't live with the feeling of "eh, it'll be way better in 100 years". We always need the feeling of certainty and ownership. Throughout history, we have always been certain of what we thought, regardless of how much reason we had to believe it.

> If you believe everything you're supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s-- or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have.

Here's a similar thought: "What are the odds that a huge percentage of the people with a certain position were born together in the same geographic location at the same time?" If that doesn't make you scared of being morally brainwashed, I don't know what will.

Hooray for internet I'm sure (not guess).

Hence the behavior you see inside many startups - non-founding members questioning the mission/purpose/intention/success of the company is typically taboo.

I was thinking of this very essay when pg "got into trouble" for his comments about female founders, whenever I see vicious backlash to dissent here whenever some of these issues are discussed. I think (haven't read anything to back this, absolutely my own personal feeling) that debacle may have had just a little bit in his decision to step down.

Read the section headed Why once again, it's gold. This piece ranks in my personal top ten pg essays.

It's so interesting that the piece mentions Summers, albeit one year earlier than the famous speech (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_be...). I would so love to sit down with pg and have his honest opinions on this subject. Of course, not probably he cannot afford to deviate from ""i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto."

If there's something interesting to diff, it's the ideas people have that pertain to taboos and taboo subjects before and after kids.

I suspect if more developers and engineers had kids, iPads would have a kid mode. I wonder how thinkers and writers (and painters?) would think and write and paint differently with/without kids.

He prefaces that statement with a very black and white example of people who ban the color yellow. Using that example every reader can agree they are idiots, but in truth these issues are never that black and white. So calling them idiots, and suggesting you would become one by entering the debate goes a little too far - IMHO.

I have faith that at some point in the future this form of sexism will become less fashionable !! What were we thinking you will all say. And no-one will remember the dissenters.

I have more to add:

It is either extremely difficult or impossible for a society to treat its men and women equally. Though it is possible to grant them equal respect, the experience of living as a man and living as a woman is, and always will be, different.

Assigning target ratios of men/women in various industries makes as much sense as making sure each man have an equal number of sexual opportunities. There are some jobs that, in general, one sex is better at, and so it may be perfectly possible for one sex to, on average, be the majority of those doing that job, as well as, on average, attain a higher wage in that role, achieved without the interference of some male authority past or present.

That would only get us started on the list of things we aren't allowed to say.

I think this is a pretty unfair generalization, and furthers the stereotype that STEM majors are smarter/harder-working/generally better than liberal arts majors. It is not inconceivable to me that most people choose to major in something they are passionate. I think people who choose a major just because they perceive it as easy are a small minority of students.

Aside from that, I personally believe academic success is primarily due to hard work, rather than intelligence. I imagine almost all PhDs are reasonably intelligent and could in fact make it through a physics program, provided they were willing to put in the time and effort.

Today's discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7443420

Interesting.

In comes Santa. I can just make out his big fat belly, red suit, white beard, and a big sack. He unloads presents in various places around the room. Then, as he's leaving, the light from the slightly open door catches his face and I realise it's my dad in a Santa outfit. I remember very distinctly feeling crushed and exhilarated at the same time. Santa wasn't real, but I'd found out what grown-ups know.

I planned to confront my dad about it the next day. When I woke up there were sooty bootprints in the fireplace, and my siblings were just so incredibly excited about the whole thing that I didn't have the heart to bring it up.

There are few things outside of fantasy that will create that feeling for a child. Reaching a level of maturity where you get that excited about the real world is a rite of passage. So that's what I'm going to do. I don't care if my kids believe in Christmas or whatever, but if there's some fantasy that enriches their lives without harming them, I'll commit to it until they grow out of it.

Death: Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.

Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?

Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.

Susan: So we can believe the big ones?

Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.

Susan: They're not the same at all.

Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged.

EDIT: personally I never asked about it because I didn't want to risk stopping the gifts.

I've never thought about why we continue to do it, but even gifts exchanged between my wife and myself get labeled "from: santa" in many cases.

My own children are young right now, so I let them enjoy it. I'll just make sure when they get a little older they know who's really buying those presents.

The juxtaposition of the Santa and Jesus myths has always baffled me. It is truly a spectacular example of the mental hoops people will go to get past their fear of death: even when they are given an opportunity to question their wider beliefs when the truth about the non-existence of Santa is revealed, they are somehow able to effortlessly compartmentalize the "real" unbelievable stories (like rising from the dead, etc) and the "made up" stories (Santa visits all children on Christmas, elves make the toys, etc.) You couldn't make this up if you tried: we piggyback a widely acknowledged fake myth about a man with superpowers on top of a widely believed myth about a man with superpowers, and "grow out" of the former but will go to the grave with the latter. It's the ultimate troll.

Why? There were going to find out anyway.

http://www.online-literature.com/twain/1320/

Yes it does, it in fact gave two answers to the question.

> It's just another attempt at emotional blackmail

I don't agree, but if that's what you think, then move along, I don't care.

I try hard to never explicitly lie to my kids. Sometimes I have to pad my words. Like to answer "Are you going to die today?" Well, maybe, but a rather low probability. That scares them a bit, so sometimes I have to reassuringly tell them no. I feel bad about not being totally truthful, but I think the confidence and security for them is worth a loose interpretation.

I'm sorry, is this meant to be a defense of smug superciliousness?

Sometimes, you go along with obvious bullshit because there's something in it for you.

Managers often ask me how they can make their workers more productive. What I cannot say is, "There is no productivity."

There is a book that goes into deconstructing productivity. It's called "How to Survive in an Organization" by James Heaphey. It's based on a generation's worth of study on organizations like corporations.

Now, in this particular group I expect that isn't terribly controversial. But it can be a very unpopular opinion in some circles for two different reasons.

1) It's the law. You want to break the law?

And the somewhat more reasonable one:

2) Nothing is more important than human life. If driving slowly can save even one life, it's worth it. By advocating an increase to speed limits, you're valuing a few minutes of your time over people's lives.

Now, for one thing, it has been demonstrated by numerous studies that increased speed limits do not necessarily result in increased accident rates (in fact, often the opposite). But even leaving that aside. Say that an across the board increase to speed limits of X%^ results in a Y% increase in fatal crashes. For some sufficiently (very) small Y/X, would that not be worthwhile? It's callous, but it seems to me that it must be true. (I mean, look at the extreme case. Driving at any speed is much more dangerous than walking, but we do it anyway since it gets us places faster.) I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable saying so in a lot of peer groups though, nor without all the preamble.

^Not that that would be the most logical way to do it of course.

Edit: I should clarify that I'm speaking of main arterial roads and highways here, not residential streets. At least in most of Canada, almost all non-highways have speed limits of 50km/h, regardless of whether they're a residential side-street or a major 4 or 6 lane road. Most highways have limits of 80km/h, a few 100, and the highest I've ever seen is 110. In good conditions, most highways could easily be safely traveled at at least 120km/h. I don't think it makes sense to set speed limits for the worst case scenario, and ignore all the efficiency that could be safely gained in most driving conditions.

I haven't done a ton of driving in the US, so it's possible the situation differs there more than I was aware.

Roads that see much pedestrian use certainly don't need higher limits (they don't necessarily need lower limits either, just some better sharing system).

Seriously, even now when I'm writing something people like it'll generally ok on any site. If I write something I think is well founded and people will not agree with, it'll probably do better on hacker news.

I guess that reminds me to read and up-vote things that I didn't initially like...

http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have-somethin...