I didn’t feel the need to distinguish between censorship of ideas and censorship of independent-minded people, because censorship of ideas censors the independent-minded.
give enough examples to know what kind of exceptions to look for
I deliberately avoided examples for the same reason Paul Graham’s What You Can’t Say deliberately avoids giving any specific examples: because either my examples would be mild and weak (and therefore poor illustrations) or they’d be so shocking (to most people) they’d derail the whole conversation.
Without examples, I have trouble understanding “censorship of independent-minded people”. It’s probably not formal censorship (but maybe it is—most common media disallows some words and ideas). There’s a big difference between “negative reactions to beliefs that many/most find unpleasant, even if partially true” and “negative reactions to ideas that contradict common values, with no real truth value”. They’re not the same motives, and not the same mechanisms for the idea-haver to refine their beliefs.
In many groups, especially public ones, even non-committal exploration of these ideas is disallowed, because at least some observers will misinterpret the discussion as advocacy or motivated attempts to move the overton window. In these cases, the restriction is distributed enough that there’s no clear way to have the discussion with the right folks. Meaning your use of “we” and framing the title as advice is confusing.
Another way of framing my confusion/disagreement is that I think “independent-minded” and “conventional-minded” are not very good categories, and the model of opposition is not very useful. Different types of heresy have different groups opposing them for different reasons.
Your comment is not a censure of me.
I didn’t feel the need to distinguish between censorship of ideas and censorship of independent-minded people, because censorship of ideas censors the independent-minded.
I deliberately avoided examples for the same reason Paul Graham’s What You Can’t Say deliberately avoids giving any specific examples: because either my examples would be mild and weak (and therefore poor illustrations) or they’d be so shocking (to most people) they’d derail the whole conversation.
Without examples, I have trouble understanding “censorship of independent-minded people”. It’s probably not formal censorship (but maybe it is—most common media disallows some words and ideas). There’s a big difference between “negative reactions to beliefs that many/most find unpleasant, even if partially true” and “negative reactions to ideas that contradict common values, with no real truth value”. They’re not the same motives, and not the same mechanisms for the idea-haver to refine their beliefs.
In many groups, especially public ones, even non-committal exploration of these ideas is disallowed, because at least some observers will misinterpret the discussion as advocacy or motivated attempts to move the overton window. In these cases, the restriction is distributed enough that there’s no clear way to have the discussion with the right folks. Meaning your use of “we” and framing the title as advice is confusing.
Another way of framing my confusion/disagreement is that I think “independent-minded” and “conventional-minded” are not very good categories, and the model of opposition is not very useful. Different types of heresy have different groups opposing them for different reasons.