Graham has forgotten his own essays if he thinks that this is a rebirth.
"What you can't say" [http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html] is one of the first of his essays I ever read. It eventually directed me to this site.
At the time, I thought it was brilliant. 18 years on, I think it's a good piece of writing but he's only got half the story. Sadly, today's essay suggest to me he hasn't found the other half in the intervening nearly two decades.
Taboo is a powerful tool. Some taboos, to be sure, outlive their usefulness. But some compress lifetimes of experience into easily remembered lessons for people who have not yet had that experience so that we can ever progress... If every generation has to keep relearning the same lessons over and over, there's no time for more.
The counterweight to the philosophy Graham is espousing here is this one (https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someo...). A taboo is a social analogy to a fence. Someone built it at some point for a reason. That reason might be gone, in which case the fence is unnecessary. But if you're going to tear down a fence, understand why it's there.
18 years on, I don't think Paul is wrong, but the repeated mistake I see people in my field make is assuming that they're the smartest person in the room when they encounter a heresy or taboo and falling right into the consequence that taboo was intended to protect against.
Graham didn't say it's a "recent" rebirth in the sense that we often use that word in the technology sector. It's "recent" in the sense that historians use it, i.e. sometime in the last generation or two. In TFA he places the cultural shift somewhere in the late 80s, long before his 2004 essay on the matter.
I've read both essays and it seems that Graham's opinion on the topic hasn't changed much over the last 18 years. We can probably all guess which "recent" event prompted him to revisit the topic, whether we agree with him or not.
smartest person in the room ... falling right into the consequence that taboo was intended to protect against.
I think you've made an interesting argument, but isn't this evidence that the taboo mechanism is failing at its job and needs to be replaced with something better?
The advantage to the taboo system is that if it's the smart folk who are getting themselves into sticky situations jumping fences, at least they're smart enough to have a fair shot at getting out.
Anything we replace it with needs to maintain the feature of protecting the most vulnerable... Taboos have the advantage of being simple, so you don't have to be smart to adhere to them.
I've heard that, but it doesn't apply here... Graham's position doesn't appear to have changed. Indeed, he seems to be retreading old ground like he forgot he wrote the other essay.
"What you can't say" [http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html] is one of the first of his essays I ever read. It eventually directed me to this site.
At the time, I thought it was brilliant. 18 years on, I think it's a good piece of writing but he's only got half the story. Sadly, today's essay suggest to me he hasn't found the other half in the intervening nearly two decades.
Taboo is a powerful tool. Some taboos, to be sure, outlive their usefulness. But some compress lifetimes of experience into easily remembered lessons for people who have not yet had that experience so that we can ever progress... If every generation has to keep relearning the same lessons over and over, there's no time for more.
The counterweight to the philosophy Graham is espousing here is this one (https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someo...). A taboo is a social analogy to a fence. Someone built it at some point for a reason. That reason might be gone, in which case the fence is unnecessary. But if you're going to tear down a fence, understand why it's there.
18 years on, I don't think Paul is wrong, but the repeated mistake I see people in my field make is assuming that they're the smartest person in the room when they encounter a heresy or taboo and falling right into the consequence that taboo was intended to protect against.