Thought taboos, freedom of speech and inquiry

From the pens of others-

An effective gatekeeper of the mind does not call attention to itself. It actuates a psychological mechanism called a taboo.

It follows that before a theory can be considered true, it is virtually indispensable that there be perfect freedom to impugn it. Any limitation, even indirect and however remote, imposed on anyone choosing to contradict it is enough to cast suspicion upon it. Hence freedom to express one’s thought, even counter to the opinion of the majority or of all, even when it offends the sentiments of the few or of the many, even when it is generally reputed absurd or criminal, always proves favorable to the discovery of objective truth.

Vilfredo Pareto, Mind and Society , p. 568.

There is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.

Taboos, however, are not just a matter of cowardice and mendacity. They also reflect a sincere human reluctance to give offense (which is why they tend to become rampant in diverse societies)…The job, however, must be done. Race and ethnicity are destiny in American politics.

How can a field [the psychology of raising IQ] advance without an understanding of its history?

Herman H. Spitz

The social science that deals in public policy has in the latter part of the twentieth century become self-censored and riddled with taboos - in a word, corrupt. Only the most profound, anguished, and divisive reexamination is going to change that situation, and it has to be done within the profession. Perhaps starting that reexamination will be The Bell Curve’s most important achievement.

In egalitarian societies, instructions and signals are anonymous (though publicity, advertisement, social pressure to conform, unquestioned slogans) expressions of what has been called a "soft ideology," so that people internalize them and respond to them as expected. The resulting neutral culture uses a meaningless wooden language, so nondescript and "safe" that it denies meaning and distinction, the very function of language. And, it is not very different from the Party-approved communication in communist regimes.

Thomas Molnar

That I might investigate the subject matter of this science with the same freedom of spirit we generally use in mathematics, I have labored carefully not to mock, lament, or execrate human actions, but to understand them; and to this end I have looked upon passions such as love, hatred, anger, envy, ambition, pity, and other perturbations of the mind, not in the light of vices of human nature, but as properties just as pertinent to it as are heat, cold, storm, thunder, and the like to the nature of the atmosphere.

The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.

Silencing debate solves no problems; it can only limit solutions.

Enforcement of the egalitarian fiction is not a moral or scientific imperative; it is merely political. It is terribly short-sighted, for it corrupts both science and society. However, just as the fiction is sustained by small untruths, so can it be broken down by many small acts of scientific integrity. This requires no particular heroism. All that is required is for scientists to act like scientists - to demand, clearly and consistently, respect for truth and for free inquiry in their own settings, and to resist the temptation to win easy approval by endorsing a comfortable lie.

The evolutionary psychology of race differences has become the most politically incorrect topic in the world today.