But honestly: the stuff about "racial insensitivity" and the words "divisive" and "inappropriate" DO get somewhere in the ballpark of "uncomfortable". I'm trying for a neutral word to capture it. None of this is anything like the historical examples—totalitarianism, religious persecution—that inflate his abstract case. These are still problems today on a scale that dwarfs "cancel culture" and "self-censorship".
He gives historical examples. Instead of giving contemporary examples, though, he hand-waves in a way that absolutely will make one side nod vigorously with their priors. Its BS. Tech executives keep getting treated like moral philosophers because they wink and say "why not phrenology?" in order to pose as victims. Galileo was oppressed by religious conservatives engaging in a moral panic. That's happening now, too.
Why do you think that his giving a variety of examples with different moral weights is a problem? The fact that big moral issues exist does not mean small ones don't, nor does it mean all small ones should be ignored until all of the big ones are fixed.
> Instead of giving contemporary examples, though, he hand-waves in a way that absolutely will make one side nod vigorously with their priors.
He addressed the question of contemporary examples in a follow-up here:
I am not saying that he is giving different "moral weights" to anything. I am saying he is invoking an extreme moral context: religious persecution, totalitarian wartime governments. Then he starts talking about how some things (he won't give any example but adverts to some social justice code words as bad) are moral threats like this, insofar as they make us hide our beliefs.
They are not. He is making a bunch of category mistakes. There are in fact numerous specific threats to free speech and human freedom in 2004 and 2022: there are people with specific beliefs, specific identities actually being targeted today. It seems to me that people who want to discuss censorship in the abstract aren't interested in the actual moral challenge this poses.
Taking it at it's word, PG's article should prompt you to explore a thought space you think should be self-censored in many environments. Can YOU give me an example that might convince me? This is a safe space ;)
I'm not sure we read the same article. (For example, the things pg says people in the 1830s would be horrified to hear do not include the thing you mention--and of course there were plenty of people in the 1830s who agreed with the viewpoint you mention and said it, loudly, so it was hardly something "you can't say" in that time period.) I don't agree with your vituperative criticisms, but I doubt we'll get anywhere with further discussion.
The way I put it is a legitimate if somewhat more abstract (but historically literate) gloss on this. My point is that PG is saying is dumb and ignorant and does not support his fantasizing about being Galileo. I have no idea what point you're trying to make.
We have such labels today, of course, quite a lot of them, from the all-purpose "inappropriate" to the dreaded "divisive." In any period, it should be easy to figure out what such labels are, simply by looking at what people call ideas they disagree with besides untrue. When a politician says his opponent is mistaken, that's a straightforward criticism, but when he attacks a statement as "divisive" or "racially insensitive" instead of arguing that it's false, we should start paying attention.
So another way to figure out which of our taboos future generations will laugh at is to start with the labels. Take a label — "sexist", for example — and try to think of some ideas that would be called that. Then for each ask, might this be true?