Ah sorry, then it was just classism! :)

Noticed you assumed I'm a Yankee, considered challenging you to a duel, decided with this crowd it probably wouldn't go over.

I think the crowd would love the idea. But I'm biased.

Let's link to it again: Paul Grahm's What You Can't Say.

"Redneck ideas" is certainly an oversimplification, but I am not sure it is such a grossly inaccurate one. The ideology behind bad treatment of women and minorities in parts of the third world also comes in for Western opprobrium, and might be likewise reviled by or at least of little consequence to rednecks depending on the instance. But it does not seem like an entirely different category -- what people despise about American rednecks, when that term is used pejoratively, is their bigotry.

In a separate category one has cruelty toward animals (which probably coincidentally I also associate with redneck stereotypes), and cruelty toward children. I can't think of any other categories of reviled ideas.

In any case, think about the following. For any human society in history about which you have some reasonably accurate picture, except the present Western ones, you'll probably be able to think of some beliefs that are true, or at least defensible enough that one shouldn't be considered as malicious or delusional for holding them, but also unacceptable in that society. (So that even if expressing them is not outright dangerous, it would face blind hostility and no chance of rational consideration.) Either there are such beliefs in the modern Western societies too, or there is something outstandingly unique and exceptional about these societies that makes such cases impossible. But what could this be?

I see what you're getting at but I don't know enough to judge. Certainly there have been many famous superstitions and manias in history, but I worry that my models of them have been too much influenced by certain parts of modern culture. (It occurs to me I have never read an account of the Salem trials that was written in the two hundred fifty years between them and the Miller play.) As to what might be exceptional about modern society, it contains huge numbers of people who are not bored by ideas and who have some basic equipment, such as literacy, for analyzing them. This might be of some consequence when thinking about the content and enforcement of the rules for respectable discourse, now and then.

I've been wondering for a while, but I haven't been able to think of examples of ideas so reviled that they warrant secrecy besides "redneck ideas"

Cannibalism. Incest. Human sacrifice. Bestiality.

Also: pedophilia; the Idea that the Chinese government system (technocratic dictatorship) is better (in terms of outcomes) than the US Government system.

I'll come out and say I have no problem with cannibalism if the individual being cannibalized consented to it before they died. (Otherwise one is using property from their estate without permission and that's theft.) An argument can be made that in societies without abundant food, a cannibalism taboo is more useful, but that obviously doesn't apply today.

Incest I have more mixed views on, but assuming one is talking about adult siblings who are consenting and not going to have children, I don't see an issue, even though I personally find it disgusting. Parent-offspring incest even when they are both adults isn't ok because it is extremely difficult to remove the power-imbalance issues.

Bestiality.

In practice, difficult to tell when an animal is consenting. But if we could confirm consent then I'd be ok with it. But, my view here isn't really fully consistent in that by this logic I should be worried about ducks not consenting to each other (a very large fraction of duck sex is rape). Regardless, whether or not I find it disgusting, consenting individuals should be allowed to do it.

Human sacrifice

Willing victim, sure why not? If we think it is ok for a Jehovah Witness to refuse blood transfusions or an Orthodox Jew to refuse a heart transplant, why not allow active sacrifice? In this case it might even have positive results. As Ellie Arroway observed, celibate clergy could help reduce inherited predispositions to fanaticism, and this might have a similar selective effect.

It sounds to me like you picked ideas that were maximally superficially offensive under the constraint that at least one person might defend them, rather than ideas that were maximally defensible under the constraint that they were offensive.

Focusing on the ideas that are held by people stupid enough to blurt them out leaves you vulnerable to a selection effect. If there were classes of political ideas such that anyone rational enough to believe them was also rational enough not to tell, how would you know?

Cannibalism. Incest. Human sacrifice. Bestiality.

Any open supporter of any of the above would probably do well to hide it (at least if they're using their real-life name), but I wouldn't call any of the above "redneck ideas" (by which I understand you to mean racism/sexism/homophobia/etc)

I don't have any objection to bestiality. Having sex with animals seems like a less harmful thing to do to an animal than killing it and eating it. I also don't object to other people who are consenting adults ignoring taboos regarding incest so long as they ensure that negative reproductive outcomes are avoided. For that matter cannibalism is fine by me as long as murder isn't involved (although I suggest avoiding the brain). Human sacrifice is a big no no though!

I wouldn't call any of the above "ideas" at all. You are listing outlawed practices, not tabooed beliefs. True, "support for incest" is an idea, but if there is a covert ideology behind it it is not nearly as extensive and widespread as the ideology behind e.g. sexism.

Aw, no mention of Necrophilia? It's even a victimless crime!

So, p(Vladimir is a NAMBLA member who tends a small shrine to Pol Pot) = 1, as far as you're concerned?

Uh oh... I must quickly decide that you are not a truth-seeking agent, lest I be forced by Aumann to agree!

Mm, those reasons do make some sense.

I think as far as 1 goes, it seems to me like that's already happening -- I know a few people not on this site (who discovered it independently of myself, none of whom know each other), and many more I've encountered about online, who explicitly view LW as essentially compromised by 2, hence they have no interest in being here. YMMV how much those people are reachable or desireable, of course, but it's difficult for me to disagree with their basic perception that this place is already full of contrarian-cluster types who're intellectuals but still quite biased.

I also wonder about signalling now, re: "less-than-rational" -- given what I understand of rationality as it's described and the reasons humans don't tend to display that trait most of the time, it seems like it's only asymptotically-reachable -- you can reduce the frequency of incorrect decisions and amend certain biases in short or long-term ways, but you probably can't get rid of it altogether. Who here is truly "rational?" Even Eliezer Yudkowsky still has his own biases -- the most you can hope for is, well, "less wrong", and that is work to achieve.

So assuming (big assumption here!) that I understand the about rationality and how LW views it, and why it's desireable and how much realistically a human being can self-optimize for that trait, it seems like "less than rational" should probably be avoided. Aren't we all? Aren't we all going to be until such time as we come up with some kind of game-breaking thing that allows a person to really just run rationality full-time if that's what they want?

I apologize for the confusion -- you seem to think that my using the noun constitutes an attempt to bill some unspecified set of statements and ideas as examples of the first thing you listed.

What I'm actually doing, just so you can read my post accurately, is saying that prejudice is a thing (as per your second definition which you apparently thought I was being sneaky about), that it exists (I presume this at least is uncontentious to you?), and that in general it's a true statement it's now more costly to signal certain forms of that openly, according to prevailing social mores.

In other words, if you have no objection to the assertion: "An employer in the US these days cannot generally refuse a job applicant by openly referring to the applicant's race as a disqualifying factor, without expecting some form of social reprisal", then you now understand what I meant when I used the word prejudice in that sentence.

So, just to be sure I'm absolutely clear, since this is apparently confusing:

When I say

it has succeeded in making it somewhat more costly to signal prejudice socially in polite company

I mean that it is now more difficult to signal certain forms of prejudice (not specific as to what particular things constitute prejudice; pick an example you find unobjectionable) casually or irrespective of one's audience, without garnering some social risk.

While I think that political and regulatory decision making as to which loans were risky and which were not is guaranteed to lead to disaster even in the absence of affirmative action, affirmative action is particularly deadly, because a financial system requires truth and that lies be punished, whereas affirmative action requires lies and that truth be punished, so when affirmative action meets finance, it is like matter and antimatter.

When official truth meets finance, the financial system is likely to implode. When the official truths of affirmative action meet finance, the financial system is guaranteed to implode.

And it did.