A couple of further thoughts on the Taboo question. There is a lot of tension in all this – because there are some rational, non-ostrich-like, non-fingers-in-ears, non-You Can’t Say That reasons for worry about, for instance, saying that a particular identifiable set of people may have, in however small a statistical sense, less of a given ability than another set or sets. One such reason is the self-fulfilling prophesy. The worry is that if you tell people – especially and all the more so if you tell them officially academically scientifically studies have shownically – that they are, or they belong to a group or subset of the population that is, statistically, however slightly and tail end effectly, innately less … Read the rest

There is a lot of discussion of the Taboo mentality going on right now – which is good, in the sense that the dangers of the taboo mentality are being pointed out, but it’s bad, in the sense that there is also a lot of Taboo mentality around right now. Is it worth it to have some people thinking badly to give an occasion for other people to explain what’s wrong with bad thinking? Wouldn’t it be better and simpler just to have everyone thinking clearly to begin with? Yes, probably, but since that’s not going to happen, it’s a good thing there are people around to do some nudging.

Salman Rushdie at Open Democracy, for example.

At Cambridge