Re E Pur Si Muove

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ridgely Evers <rce () evers org>
Date: Sat, Dec 16, 2017 at 11:01 AM
Subject: Re: [IP] Re E Pur Si Muove
To: Farber David <dave () farber net>


Dave,

I'm not sure if you've seen/distributed this article, but it seems relevant
to this thread.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cdc-gets-list-of-forbidden-words-fetus-transgender-diversity/2017/12/15/f503837a-e1cf-11e7-89e8-edec16379010_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.6630cbb5269e
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-administration-cdc-banned-words_us_5a348ed2e4b0ff955ad3221d>

<snip>

The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation’s
top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases in any
official documents being prepared for next year’s budget.

Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in
Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with
senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who
took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are “vulnerable,”
“entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and
“science-based.”

In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of
“science-based” or ­“evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases
its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards
and wishes,” the person said. In other cases, no replacement words
were immediately offered.

</snip>

A friend drew my attention to this, commenting that it's straight out of
Orwell's "1984."

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of
thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible,
because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that
can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning
rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten."


I shudder.

--Ridge

On Dec 16, 2017, at 7:25 AM, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:




Begin forwarded message:

*From:* Peter Moody <peter.moody () gmail com>
*Date:* December 16, 2017 at 10:19:46 AM EST
*To:* Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
*Cc:* ip <ip () listbox com>
*Subject:* *Re: [IP] E Pur Si Muove*

a rebuttal

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/941431220952584196.html

On Sat, Dec 16, 2017 at 12:42 AM, DAVID FARBER <dfarber () me com> wrote:

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> *From:* the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>
> *Date:* December 16, 2017 at 2:42:58 AM EST
> *To:* E-mail Pamphleteer Dave Farber's Interesting People list <
> ip () listbox com>
> *Subject:* *E Pur Si Muove*
>
> Sam Altman:
> E Pur Si Muove
>
> Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me.
> I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in
> Beijing than in San Francisco.  I didn’t feel completely comfortable—this
> was China, after all—just more comfortable than at home.
>
> That showed me just how bad things have become, and how much things have
> changed since I first got started here in 2005.
>
> It seems easier to accidentally speak heresies in San Francisco every
> year.  Debating a controversial idea, even if you 95% agree with the
> consensus side, seems ill-advised.
>
> This will be very bad for startups in the Bay Area.
>
> *Restricting speech leads to restricting ideas and therefore restricted
> innovation—the most successful societies have generally been the most open
> ones.*  Usually mainstream ideas are right and heterodox ideas are wrong,
> but the true and unpopular ideas are what drive the world forward.  Also, *smart
> people tend to have an allergic reaction to the restriction of ideas, and
> I’m now seeing many of the smartest people I know move elsewhere.*
>
> It is bad for all of us when people can’t say that the world is a sphere,
> that evolution is real, or that the sun is at the center of the solar
> system.
>
> *More recently, I’ve seen credible people working on ideas like
> pharmaceuticals for intelligence augmentation, genetic engineering, and
> radical life extension leave San Francisco because they found the reaction
> to their work to be so toxic*.  “If people live a lot longer it will be
> disastrous for the environment, so people working on this must be really
> unethical” was a memorable quote I heard this year.
>
> *To get the really good ideas, we need to tolerate really bad and wacky
> ideas too. * In addition to the work Newton is best known for, he also
> studied alchemy (the British authorities banned work on this because they
> feared the devaluation of gold) and considered himself to be someone
> specially chosen by the almighty for the task of decoding Biblical
> scripture.
>
> *You can’t tell which seemingly wacky ideas are going to turn out to be
> right, and nearly all ideas that turn out to be great breakthroughs start
> out sounding like terrible ideas.*  So if you want a culture that
> innovates, you can’t have a culture where you allow the concept of
> heresy—if you allow the concept at all, it tends to spread.  When we move
> from strenuous debate about ideas to casting the people behind the ideas as
> heretics, we gradually stop debate on all controversial ideas.
>
> This is uncomfortable, but it’s possible we have to allow people to say
> disparaging things about gay people if we want them to be able to say novel
> things about physics. [1] Of course we can and should say that ideas are
> mistaken, but we can’t just call the person a heretic.  We need to debate
> the actual idea.
>
> Political correctness often comes from a good place—I think we should all
> be willing to make accommodations to treat others well.  But too often it
> ends up being used as a club for something orthogonal to protecting actual
> victims.  The best ideas are barely possible to express at all, and if
> you’re constantly thinking about how everything you say might be
> misinterpreted, you won’t let the best ideas get past the fragment stage.
> [...]
> http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove
>
> --
> Geoff.Goodfellow () iconia com
> living as The Truth is True
> http://geoff.livejournal.com
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