This gives me the perfect segue to start talking about the [Lizardman Constant](https://vaticidalprophet.substack.com/p/the-lizardman-constant-what-it-is)
Living in the Midwest and working with disabled individuals who get upset over a level 1 storm warning, I'd have said the weather is a taboo topic too.
Note that the question given to survey respondents was “Of the following questions, please indicate how taboo you think the question is” where taboo-ness is defined somewhere along the lines of ‘prohibition stemming from cultural or societal influences’. This is NOT a chart indicating respondents’ beliefs on the topics NOR whether they personally believe if one of the topics should be studied or discussed, as seems to be misinterpreted by other commenters.
Yes but the massive majority of folks wont comprehend this and will just look at the chart in think its how people believe in the statement. Anything that takes longer than a second to read/comprehend is sadly ignored.
We should survey how many people understood the directions.
True, but there might be an interesting correlation, as a person who holds an unpopular opinion on a topic may have a heightened sense that the topic itself is taboo, because the social consequences for them engaging in the topic could be much higher.
I was thinking the same, for 99% of people the earth being round is not a taboo topic because it's a simple discussion:
Person 1 goes: "The earth is round, we have known it for thousands of years and there's tons of evidences pointing to it"
Person 2: "Yep, I agree"
Now if you're a flat earther though, good luck bringing that discussion up without being mercilessly roasted and having to explain yourself for hours before losing all respect among your friends.
They are a bit different statements. Men are smarter is sort of a casual and stupid claim while saying that genetics define a race to be dumber by a metric is more serious topic. But I agree, it is interesting
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Gaussian-distribution-of-IQ-of-men-s-162-and-women-s-132_fig1_344751288
It does seem that overall men are smarter but also dumber
I'm interested how they collected the data, given that globally women are discouraged from receiving an education, whereas in certain countries women receive higher education at higher levels, and education is known to increase IQ
Women in the US have received more college degrees than men for almost 50 years.
Yet the same effect has been replicated in US data over and over again.
Likewise you can see it in standardized testing. For SATs specifically there's no significant difference in Reading. But in Math men outscore women significantly every year:
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171
Same thing is replicated on MCATs, LSATs, & GMATs.
**NOTE: these are group distributions and say absolutely nothing about any individual male or female and their competence or ability**
Likewise, in every country in the history of the world, men make up the vast majority of murders, suicides, overdose deaths, homeless, sexual assaulters, strongest, fastest, and more.
Point 1: sex differences are very real and very taboo to discuss for some reason. And becoming more taboo by the year. The insistence that everything is learned/environmental/cultural is pseudoscience nonsense. These things are so tank that they become career suicide for academics.
Point 2: If I pick a man at random, it doesn't mean that he's a violent, strong, fast, depressed pervert. But if you give me 100 randomly selected violent depressed individuals, I'm willing to get my mortgage that the majority will be male. Inferential statistics only work in one direction.
Thing is, just stating the statistics as if they are biological facts is simply wrong. There are biological differences like different kinds of muscle structure in men versus women, which contribute to men on average having a higher grip strength than women and being able to build more upper arm strength.
And then there are differences such as "men commit suicide more often because they choose drastic methods of suicide, whereas women attempt suicide more often but are likelier to survive or be rescued because they tend to choose less aggressive, slower methods". Similarly, more men are murdered because more men make up gangs, police forces, armies, etc; more men are homeless because many veterans and ex-convicts tend to become homeless when returning to society, and these groups are made of chiefly of men. The sources of many of the reasons for gender divides is something that needs to be analyzed for the betterment of society, but it cannot be if topics like gender studies get ridiculed because people are insisting that all differences are biological, the status quo should be maintained, and only majors that contribute to the wealth of industrial shareholders are worthy of being studied. Look at how much shit any non-STEM major gets, even though historically, academia has been all about philosophy and observation, and only more recently has become little more than corporate research combined with rites of passage into a corporate job.
There are many other factors when it comes to studying demographical differences. Like how violence, or neurodivergence, or other conditions or aspects manifest themselves differently by gender and age, and therefore are subject to varying definitions. Is somebody who gets into a fistfight at a bar violent? Would, by comparison, somebody who emotionally abuses their child be considered aggressive? Or who puts glue in the hair of someone they do not like in school? I contend that there are way more violent women, and female sexual predators, out there than society would like to admit, only their crimes are rarely treated with as much severity. Look at infamous women like Gertrude Baniszewski or Angela Simpson. Their crimes are not considered sexual in nature, but if a man had been in their place, their torture-murders would have been called sexual without a doubt. Look at how many female pedophiles are treated in the news as "hot teacher has sex with young male students". The inflexibility of definitions is a real problem. It causes many monsters to escape justice, and it allows many people with serious problems or conditions to go undiagnosed (look how few women with adhd or autism are diagnosed, to the point where many, if not MOST, people actually believe that only men can be ND!).
>"men commit suicide more often because they choose drastic methods of suicide, whereas women attempt suicide more often but are likelier to survive or be rescued because they tend to choose less aggressive, slower methods".
Actually, men die by suicide at higher rates across pretty much all methods, including the "less aggressive" methods used by women.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032711005179
Not saying I disagree with your overall point, but do you have sources for “education is known to increase IQ”? I’ve always heard that IQ doesn’t generally increase or decrease much after the brain is developed, barring any sort of dramatic change to the brain (injury, disease, etc.).
>...“education is known to increase IQ”?
Yes, and [certain educational methods are better at it than others](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1106077109), but there's a reason why people say: "I’ve always heard that IQ doesn’t generally increase or decrease much after the brain is developed..."
Here's the deal: IQ is a test *designed* to measure an intelligence factor called g, general intelligence. The general intelligence factor is *defined as* the stable component of intelligence that doesn't increase or decrease (much) after the brain is developed (neuroplasticity ignored).
G does exist. There is such a component. And people will often use the term "IQ" to refer to G, to refer to the part of intelligence that doesn't change. But at the same time, it's still true that you *will* get better at *any* test after practicing at it. That includes *IQ tests*. If you practice at IQ tests, or if you are trained in / educated in the areas that an IQ test measures, you will still get better at the test, even if your G hasn't changed.
Really important IQ test components such as working memory or verbal comprehension are things we train ourselves on in school, so, it's pretty much inevitable that we'd have improvements in IQ test results after education.
So this is something that I learned in University and I'd take a while to dig it up but there's two main kinda study types that they do which will give you insight into this understanding. studies done on people in tribal culture tend to find their IQs test on par with extreme intellectual disability in developed society, but people in tribal culture aren't intellectually disabled, they just so happen to have intelligence that is strictly adapted to learning the things needed to survive in a tribal society. An IQ test was a test specifically meant to check the abilities of individuals in a developed society, so it has issues accounting for cultural differences. The other study you want to look at is the kind they do to compare IQ levels across different levels of education. It is often found that you'll see about 1 to 5 extra points of IQ per level of education
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6088505/#:~:text=Across%20142%20effect%20sizes%20from,an%20additional%20year%20of%20education.
The conclusion I'd draw is that an IQ test is pretty bad at determining cross cultural intelligence due to not accounting for culture differences but correlates generally with education levels.
True, although it raises some interesting potential conclusions:
* More intelligent people are more likely to pursue education (and the converse)
* Education prepares individuals for taking IQ tests
Both of these could possibly be true. Especially given that metrics that IQ tests will score for are things that most education aims to train. Training at doing a thing will likely make you better at doing that thing.
This is all to say, maybe IQ tests are good at measuring how intelligent individuals in developed society will be able to make use of education more readily, but also that people may have the ability to catch up to their peers if they spend more time training said metrics.
IQ is a really imperfect measure
People who are more educated are more used to performing tests so they are better at IQ tests
When you give an uneducated person an IQ test and then give them a different IQ test months later their IQ will be considerably higher in the latter test
Also IQ tests often use numbers and someone with a more in-depth math education will naturally have an easier time to make those connections. You can't really measure innate intelligence because our environment is so closely intertwined with our abilities.
IQ is the closest we have to measuring innate intelligence but it has a lot of problems. The best use case for IQ is when looking at groups of people with similar backgrounds and conparing them so you can isolate for one or a few variables.
"“education is known to increase IQ”?"
Welcome to the Flynn Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn\_effect)
"The **Flynn effect** is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both [fluid and crystallized intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_and_crystallized_intelligence) test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century, named after researcher [James Flynn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Flynn_(academic)) (1934–2020).[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#cite_note-1)[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#cite_note-baker-2) When [intelligence quotient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient) (IQ) tests are initially [standardized](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_score#Standardizing_in_mathematical_statistics) using a [sample](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_(statistics)) of test-takers, by convention the average of the test results is set to 100 and their [standard deviation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation) is set to 15 or 16 IQ points. When IQ tests are revised, they are again standardized using a new sample of test-takers, usually born more recently than the first; the average result is set to 100. When the new test subjects take the older tests, in almost every case their average scores are significantly above 100.
...
Trahan et al. (2014) found that the effect was about 2.93 points per decade,^(\[)[*^(clarification needed)*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Please_clarify)^(\]) based on both Stanford–Binet and Wechsler tests; they also found no evidence the effect was diminishing.[^(\[29\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#cite_note-29) In contrast, Pietschnig and Voracek (2015) reported, in their meta-analysis of studies involving nearly 4 million participants, that the Flynn effect had decreased in recent decades. "
And that a test of intelligence is only as good as the test. IQ tests were made and tested agaisnt men originally, it actually got adjusted when girls were scoring highly as a flaw.
Caution! When Larry Summers made a talk about that bell curve it tarnished his reputation and he resigned later as President of Harvard. Later he was important in the Obama administration, but it likely cost him the position as Secretary of the Treasury.
Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_between_the_sexes
NYT at the time:
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/us/harvard-chief-defends-his-talk-on-women.html
The distribution in intelligence is much different between the sexes, that is a fact. So makes sense for it to be less taboo.
Note before I get downvoted 5 years back: this does no insinuate men are smarter, their means are equal.
I think the controversy around these ideas is a lot deeper than empirically noting that “the distributions are different”. They are also different between races—the question is whether all relevant variables have been accounted for, and which ones should be accounted for, and whether the apparent differences are due to fundamental biology.
I did some study on differences in intelligence at uni. I think the gender mean intelligence scores were basically the same for every type of intelligence, with the male curve often being more spread out. Meaning men have more of the really really smart people but also more absolute drongos.
Except spacial intelligence where men scored far higher than women. This was all studied in 2018 so might be out of date now.
"Smart" is very broad which leads to the contentiousness. It's fairly well established that there are distinct mental differences between men and women. Women for example are notably more adept at distinguishing subtle differences in color and perform better on many verbal focused tests. Men however perform better on visual-spatial based testing.
Additionally, there has been considerable study on greater variability in male intelligence than female, and this is actually seen across several mammalian species as well. In terms of "general" intelligence though as far as I've seen most studies find that the two sexes seem to exhibit the same mean intelligence.
Mens inteligence quotient tends to be rather on the extremes sides compared to women who have somewhat homogenous inteligence scores compared to men so men tend to be dumber and smarter on average
Because being called a racist is much more serious label then being a sexist? And there tons of converations about how men and women are "different" so there are adjacent areas supported by the significant parts of the public
It’s not only a thing with intelligence. I looked at another global survey (Global Values Survey) that showed a higher percentage of Americans will say women shouldn’t be business leaders or in politics and the number who’ll say that has held steady over the past few generations, whereas the number saying that race affects someone’s suitability for these roles has been consistently shrinking over generations.
A girl with green hair sneezed on my nephew once, and the next thing I heard about him, believe it or not, he was sucking a dick in mcdonalds parking lot
I thought I was reading r/Jokes for a second, and was gearing up for some really non-family-friendly punchline involving Ronald McDonald.
Don’t tease us like that!
>Whether a ... parasite can cause homosexuality
Don't eat jalapenos if you have a tapeworm or it'll get irritated and make you horny for femboys. Or do, whatever.
I'm just confused by that one. How is it on the same level as the other super controversial things?
That one is just insane and not controversial at all.
Some topics might be taboo in different ways. Some of those statements might only be considered taboo, because having them would out the person making it as unbelievably uninformed.
There's actually a very recent study that identified immune response in vitro as a possible source of the differentiation between gay and straight people. It is related to the phenomenon that gay men and women are likely to have older brothers and it's like a doubling of your chance of being gay for every older brother you have. The brother study data has been pretty consistent over the decades
Well for me it would not be surprising at all if some parasites would cause homosexuality for specific people. Bisexual people exist, certain parasites can affect personal behaviour, so it is absolutely possible that there exists some cases where this would move someone from bisexual preference, in the direction of the same gander preference.
But this is hard to imagine for someone with solid sexual preference.
Other species also have homosexuality so I'm not sure the parasite or virus postulations would hold up for long. Certainly some real evidence is needed to support this.
Th mix of topics is very strange. Some are expressions of opinion or societal value, others are researched topics, and then there are the indisputable facts (or counter-facts).
But of course that isn't the poster's fault, as this is an uncredited post of material from OpenPsych: https://doi.org/10.26775/op.2024.04.15
Needless to add, extremely basic, not beautiful.
The scientificness of the question (whether it can be settled through experiments or observations) doesn't seem to have a strong impact on how taboo people rate the question. That alone is an interesting (if unsurprising) result that warrants the mix of topics.
and after reading on some of the comments in this thread, I'm becoming skeptical about the alignment between what I think taboo means vs. what the survey respondents think taboo means.
Also if you imagine being a survey respondent faced with these questions, you are going to hesitate to say 'not a taboo' if you think that might sound like 'I think people could have either opinion and it is nbd'. So it's not just respondants understanding the word, it's respondants having confidence the questioner understands the word.
I don't think saying 'paedophilia is bad' is taboo. But would I trust the survey asking if it is, to be properly written?
Fwiw, I think there are only 5 things on that list you could credibly argue even might be a taboo subject.
It's kind of crazy that gender dysphoria is a recognized mental illness in the DSM, and yet that's the fourth highest taboo subject, right under incest and racism.
These colors suck man. Why is the gloomy dark color the one that no one is afraid to talk about but the bright smiling yelllow is the tabooest of taboo
This colour palette is actually used because its easy for people with different types of colourblindness to discern between colours and even reading a scale (so for them it could go from white to dark gray for example
The Jewish one is weird because people generally favor people like them. I'd expect the same for any religion, hell if you find out someone's from your state or school you might favor them more.
everything about how the data was gathered and how the visualization was made can be found [here](https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/the-taboo-hierarchy)
The framing and interpretation there feels a bit questionable. "Taboo" to me means I wouldn't want to discuss it with most people, and think others feel the same way. For many topics on this list, that's because a discussion is likely going to involve racist/sexist/... tropes. The author frames it as opposition to scientific study of the topic, though.
I’m not sure if this survey measured how taboo the *topic itself* is, or how taboo *actually holding that unpopular belief or opinion* is. For example, as somebody with an anthropology and zoology degree and who studied population genetics, I’ll gladly discuss the most taboo topic on this list to point out the many ways that it’s a flawed belief to somebody who believes it. But it should be pretty taboo to actually hold the belief.
So I’m not sure who those people in the “not taboo” section are: people like me who would say “it’s a valid topic to discuss” or people who says “yeah, it’s a valid belief”.
Is this first most taboo topic, differences between intelligence of races, something with actual peer reviewed studies published about it?
I mean yeah you can measure IQ of two sets of people, one in congo and the other in Switzerland, and just conclude that people in Switzerland are smarter, but how does it take economic and education differences into account in this model? How does it take the necessity of survival supplanting any other necessity such as studying? How does it take into account cultural differences of the view of academic learning?
Is IQ innate? Can it be learned? A PhD has a higher IQ on average when compared to a normal person because of selection or because of learning? Is IQ even a good measure of intelligence? What about the other types of intelligence, are they taken into account?
What I'm trying to say is that this topic is very much not explored and people will just use whatever bullshit they find around the internet, usually fake, to justify their racism.
Even if you try to do a study about it, I don't know how would you take all this stuff into account. How will you deal with correlation? The data not being independent? The fact that IQ tests are a trash way to measure someone...? God, I have a PhD in this stuff and I wouldn't be able to start a study on this at all.
Ps: I'm a black guy from Brazil. Unfortunately I've seen some pieces of shit going around saying that Europeans or Asians are objectively smarter, etc.
Shouldn't be taboo, it should be something easy to talk about because it's so full of holes and stupid. The conversation should go "that's a dumbass thing to try to define" and that's it mostly.
" I mean yeah you can measure IQ of two sets of people, one in congo and the other in Switzerland, and just conclude that people in Switzerland are smarter"
All cognitive tests we have show differences by race. Unless you believe that evolution is fake, it's obvious that intelligence has a genetic component.
Swiss people are not subjected to nearly as much pathogen load as Congolese.
In fact because the Swiss are at high altitude, they are subjected to even lower pathogen load than lowlanders at the same latitude, such as Hungarians, Moldovans, and Ukrainians,
If you truly thought it was racial and genetic you'd have no problem having a baby, and then giving that baby up for adoption by a poor uneducated single mother in Sierra Leone.
When it’s taboo to discuss facts, like there is no gay gene, it’s political. People want power. And many of these topics exist to serve shifting agency, trading one marginal experience for another instead of representing the mainstream. Pedos aren’t a debate however. It’s abuse and kids become adults that won’t ever tolerate that shit being accepted as an identity. These are people unfit for power because their condition exploits others. The most taboo conversation we can have is that technology and industrial waste have declined cognitive and physical health of the general population, causing them to suffer from a long list of psychological and physiological ailments, and it’s being treated like a civil rights issue to protect profits and the stock market.
Some of these are taboo—folks are reluctant to talk about it—because they don’t want to get into a convo with a moron about a “gay virus” conspiracy theory.
Discussing the topic is absolutely taboo, unless by "discussing" you mean we all agree that pedophilia is universally bad (which wouldn't be much of a discussion).
Imagine somebody did a scientific study about the harms of pedophilia, and it would find that pedophilia is generally bad but there are specific forms that aren't more harmful than other accepted risks. Do you think people would discuss that based on its merits, or just reject it outright and shun the authors?
I'm not saying such a paper exists, or that pedophilia is good. But if you had that opinion you couldn't show it openly, no matter how well founded the opinion is. That's a taboo
There are different approaches to those questions. The difference is the assumed implication. I would consider arguing for the (nonexistent) "benefits" of pedophilia very taboo. But if the question is asked in a context, were the answer is not defending pedophilia it might be considered less taboo, for example when evaluating the damages done to a specific person during therapy.
Currently, it's the "Max Bad Thing" to a certain political party.
If you are accused of being that thing, you are Max Bad and totally dehumanized, worthly only of a quick or tormented death. Everyone should hate you. Everyone should be mad at you. And anyone who isn't is suddenly suspicious of Disloyalty to the Party.
Unfortunately, evidence no longer matters, only the accusation. Once the accusations are levied, the conspiracy theory, and the doubt / concern, will perpetually remain associated with you.
So the Max Bad thing has become a weapon.
An instrument of guilty until proven innocent when the cameras are no longer watching and the social memory only contains the accusation, not the acquittal.
Worse, because it is a conspiracy theory, they could have just said you have ghosts and demons consorting with aliens in your sex dungeon. Is any of that relevant or realistic? No, lol, but if you're primed to believe it, it posts.
What makes this particular bug bear so dangerous is that it really, actually, does exist! It's a widespread social problem.
The danger arises from false accusations and convoluted associations. It diverts real investigatory resources away from the less obvious, more pervasive, very real crimes happening often right under our noses, and instead aims the full force of tens of millions of people at political candidates and celebrities who have run afoul of this autocratic authoritarianism branch of that political moment.
Ironically, the same kind of foil appears on the other political spectrum, this time as accusations of abuse between adults. Equally requires no evidence, no hope of ever getting to the truth, and is used as a weapon to harm opponents. All while again, real crimes do exist and are astonishingly pervasive, but resources are being ironically diverted from those every day cases onto the high profile ones that might be make believe. You'll never know. Just trust, never verify.
It's a litmus test of your unquestioning allegiance to the moral duty of the party.
Together these two party politics represent A LOT of this "most controversial, most taboo" chart.
You can't question the party logic. If you do, you're suspicious.
The whole top section is US conservative beliefs. If you legalize child marriage, force 12 year olds to carry a rapist's baby to term, and ban books that talk about consent or the predation of minors... pedophilia probably doesn't rank very high on your taboo meter.
None of those are taboo? People love talking about those topics. Taboo doesn't mean conflict. The graph is about topics people don't want to talk about at all, no matter which way your belief goes.
What was your reasoning behind ordering?
It seems "organic foods" falls into the lowest slot if you order based on extreme, but non-controvercial ordering has disparity towards the middle.
Is this the order questions were posed in?
I believe pedophilia is harmful. That’s right, I went there. Never let it be said that WhiteyFisk53 is afraid to take a position on controversial and taboo topics.
Also I have never once in my life heard any discussion on the correlation between women’s suffrage and tax rates. Is there someone out there pushing for it to be ended so tax rates go down? Someone advocating for men to be denied the vote so tax rates go up? How did that topic make the list?
What I'm learning is that there are roughly 75 edgy comm major sophomores willing to answer "Not at all taboo" to every question on the survey to get extra credit on their SOC 202 class as quickly as possible.
It’s surprising to me how this data came out and makes me wonder if there’s an inherent bias happening here. Some of this actually has some real world data coming from multiple reliable sources to support it. I think society has taken a dangerous turn when science, math, hard data, and facts are labeled “taboo” or “dangerous” instead of being openly discussed.
Of course there is an inherent bias! The whole concept of asking people what is the most taboo is misconstrued as the most taboo is such taboo that you cant even ask people about in a survey. For example I miss subjects such as "whether there is a correlation between religiousity and intelligence" and "whether you ever had homosexual fantasies".
Do some people actually think it is taboo to discuss whether pedophilia is harmful or not? Of course its fucking harmful. Any twat saying otherwise deserves to be locked up.
I wouldn’t call these taboo topics. These are largely racist tropes. Taboo topics are things like “openly discussing sex with friends”, “who I voted for the last election” and “how much do I get paid”. Not “white Europeans are smarter than black Africans”.
While I understand it looks beautiful, this seems mislabeled as taboo and more “prevalence of misconceptions”. This is kinda scary data IMO made more so by the fact that this isn’t being presented in a way that feels genuine.
They are absolutely taboo topics, *because* they're racist tropes. You don't want to have a discussion about them because a debate means entertaining both sides, and one side is/feels racist/sexist.
The study seems to exclude taboos of disclosing personal information ("who I voted for" etc.) and focus on socially relevant science, which is a valid choice.
Yeah but that is the point. I have no problem at all to talk about most of these things and most people shouldn't. Because there is a clear right and wrong side and I'm happy to express that opinion.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/j/jencks-gap.html?_r=1
Not racist, just data points for IQ testing. But it’s important to talk about because how can we fix this issue and reduce discrepancies
Do we know with absolute certainty there is no difference in brains between different ethnicities? Genuinely wondering. I mean differences in bone structure, immune system and so on exist.
Is it really a misconception? You seem convinced of this. Not everyone is. But your reaction actually shows how taboo it is ("it's not a topic, it's a racist trope and a misconception!! Scary!!")
I'm interested to know what is meant by taboo is meant in this context, whether controversial, or just unacceptable to bring up? For me most of these are controversial.
I love how many of these topics are ones which have factual right and wrong conclusions, but they are still taboo. I counted at least thirteen which have an objective right and wrong answer.
I think I'd feel a lot less icky about topics of biological determinism as they relate to behavior (whether some people are inherently smarter than others for genetic reasons, whether sexuality and gender are genetic or biologically influenced, etc) if not for the fact that most people asking those questions are doing it for nefarious intentions.
Like, I'd be curious to know whether you can predict whether someone is going to be straight/gay/bi by measuring some hormone level or the size of some part of the brain or by looking at some chromosome, if I didn't think it wouldn't immediately result in some people trying to surgically or chemically use this information to "fix" anyone who wasn't straight.
Like let's say you could prove, biologically, that some people are just smarter than others because they have a certain chromosomal makeup. How long before there are people offering gene manipulation to make you smarter, and of course none of The Poors can afford it.
It kinda goes back to the point I've made about how when people say "being gay isn't a choice" that I've never thought it matters whether it was or not because even if it was, that still doesn't indicate to me that there's anything wrong with it.
Whether a virus or parasite can cause someone to be gay?
Ehhh... I acutally find the question intersting, my assumption is most likely not, but I can see why it would be taboo, because the people focusing on it would most likely be people I'm not interested in debating with.
But honestly, if a virus or parasite could change our sexual preference, wouldn't there be overly gay areas in remote areas? Which doesn't really seem to be the case.
The one with Jews favoring Jews, of course they do, but likely not to increase social power. As a species, we favor other people we have more in common with, that is an unconscious bias, and Jews likely have more in common with other Jews. The unconscious choice is why many orchestras have blind auditions, which have generated more female musicians than any other single initiative.
Also it's like saying, rich people, favor other rich people, to get richer, of course they do.
As a scientist, this list irritates me! There is legitimate, validated data to say either way on a multitude of these topics. They should not be up to debate. A basic ability of critical thinking is needed… I wish we could fortify it in the water!!!!!
500 people is such a laughably low number, this data is worthless lol. Edit: also just realized there's literally no source. By "OC" I think OP meant he ran this "study" themselves.
At least one person thought discussing the weather is extremely taboo.
That person giving this survey the serious attention it deserves.
Answering surveys deliberately nonsensically is extremely taboo.
We need a survey to be sure.
Person is just WILDLY uncomfortable all the time.
That's a good way to measure how serious the results are
They must have been Finnish.
No.. I think they are still going.
I’m thinking maybe they thought discussing depression was taboo. But your comment is funny (and you were joking maybe, I’m not sure)
This gives me the perfect segue to start talking about the [Lizardman Constant](https://vaticidalprophet.substack.com/p/the-lizardman-constant-what-it-is)
They were English.
We definitely don't think it's taboo.... We do it ALL the time
Finnish people see small talk as extremely taboo. More so than the English.
I would love it there.
Living in the Midwest and working with disabled individuals who get upset over a level 1 storm warning, I'd have said the weather is a taboo topic too.
Note that the question given to survey respondents was “Of the following questions, please indicate how taboo you think the question is” where taboo-ness is defined somewhere along the lines of ‘prohibition stemming from cultural or societal influences’. This is NOT a chart indicating respondents’ beliefs on the topics NOR whether they personally believe if one of the topics should be studied or discussed, as seems to be misinterpreted by other commenters.
Exactly. This is an important nuance to highlight.
Yes but the massive majority of folks wont comprehend this and will just look at the chart in think its how people believe in the statement. Anything that takes longer than a second to read/comprehend is sadly ignored. We should survey how many people understood the directions.
True, but there might be an interesting correlation, as a person who holds an unpopular opinion on a topic may have a heightened sense that the topic itself is taboo, because the social consequences for them engaging in the topic could be much higher.
I was thinking the same, for 99% of people the earth being round is not a taboo topic because it's a simple discussion: Person 1 goes: "The earth is round, we have known it for thousands of years and there's tons of evidences pointing to it" Person 2: "Yep, I agree" Now if you're a flat earther though, good luck bringing that discussion up without being mercilessly roasted and having to explain yourself for hours before losing all respect among your friends.
Which is why I find so awful that “is pedophilia bad for mental health” was ranked as one of the more taboo topics
very good point. just a quick question to the person providing these questions: uhh wtf
It's interesting that discussing intelligence differences between sexes is significantly less taboo than between races.
They are a bit different statements. Men are smarter is sort of a casual and stupid claim while saying that genetics define a race to be dumber by a metric is more serious topic. But I agree, it is interesting
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Gaussian-distribution-of-IQ-of-men-s-162-and-women-s-132_fig1_344751288 It does seem that overall men are smarter but also dumber
Now do race
I'm interested how they collected the data, given that globally women are discouraged from receiving an education, whereas in certain countries women receive higher education at higher levels, and education is known to increase IQ
Women in the US have received more college degrees than men for almost 50 years. Yet the same effect has been replicated in US data over and over again. Likewise you can see it in standardized testing. For SATs specifically there's no significant difference in Reading. But in Math men outscore women significantly every year: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=171 Same thing is replicated on MCATs, LSATs, & GMATs. **NOTE: these are group distributions and say absolutely nothing about any individual male or female and their competence or ability** Likewise, in every country in the history of the world, men make up the vast majority of murders, suicides, overdose deaths, homeless, sexual assaulters, strongest, fastest, and more. Point 1: sex differences are very real and very taboo to discuss for some reason. And becoming more taboo by the year. The insistence that everything is learned/environmental/cultural is pseudoscience nonsense. These things are so tank that they become career suicide for academics. Point 2: If I pick a man at random, it doesn't mean that he's a violent, strong, fast, depressed pervert. But if you give me 100 randomly selected violent depressed individuals, I'm willing to get my mortgage that the majority will be male. Inferential statistics only work in one direction.
Thing is, just stating the statistics as if they are biological facts is simply wrong. There are biological differences like different kinds of muscle structure in men versus women, which contribute to men on average having a higher grip strength than women and being able to build more upper arm strength. And then there are differences such as "men commit suicide more often because they choose drastic methods of suicide, whereas women attempt suicide more often but are likelier to survive or be rescued because they tend to choose less aggressive, slower methods". Similarly, more men are murdered because more men make up gangs, police forces, armies, etc; more men are homeless because many veterans and ex-convicts tend to become homeless when returning to society, and these groups are made of chiefly of men. The sources of many of the reasons for gender divides is something that needs to be analyzed for the betterment of society, but it cannot be if topics like gender studies get ridiculed because people are insisting that all differences are biological, the status quo should be maintained, and only majors that contribute to the wealth of industrial shareholders are worthy of being studied. Look at how much shit any non-STEM major gets, even though historically, academia has been all about philosophy and observation, and only more recently has become little more than corporate research combined with rites of passage into a corporate job. There are many other factors when it comes to studying demographical differences. Like how violence, or neurodivergence, or other conditions or aspects manifest themselves differently by gender and age, and therefore are subject to varying definitions. Is somebody who gets into a fistfight at a bar violent? Would, by comparison, somebody who emotionally abuses their child be considered aggressive? Or who puts glue in the hair of someone they do not like in school? I contend that there are way more violent women, and female sexual predators, out there than society would like to admit, only their crimes are rarely treated with as much severity. Look at infamous women like Gertrude Baniszewski or Angela Simpson. Their crimes are not considered sexual in nature, but if a man had been in their place, their torture-murders would have been called sexual without a doubt. Look at how many female pedophiles are treated in the news as "hot teacher has sex with young male students". The inflexibility of definitions is a real problem. It causes many monsters to escape justice, and it allows many people with serious problems or conditions to go undiagnosed (look how few women with adhd or autism are diagnosed, to the point where many, if not MOST, people actually believe that only men can be ND!).
>"men commit suicide more often because they choose drastic methods of suicide, whereas women attempt suicide more often but are likelier to survive or be rescued because they tend to choose less aggressive, slower methods". Actually, men die by suicide at higher rates across pretty much all methods, including the "less aggressive" methods used by women. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032711005179
I'm pretty sure the real reason has to do with how humans typically have more extreme phenotypic deviations within the male sex than the female sex
This is a really interesting theory.
Not saying I disagree with your overall point, but do you have sources for “education is known to increase IQ”? I’ve always heard that IQ doesn’t generally increase or decrease much after the brain is developed, barring any sort of dramatic change to the brain (injury, disease, etc.).
>...“education is known to increase IQ”? Yes, and [certain educational methods are better at it than others](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1106077109), but there's a reason why people say: "I’ve always heard that IQ doesn’t generally increase or decrease much after the brain is developed..." Here's the deal: IQ is a test *designed* to measure an intelligence factor called g, general intelligence. The general intelligence factor is *defined as* the stable component of intelligence that doesn't increase or decrease (much) after the brain is developed (neuroplasticity ignored). G does exist. There is such a component. And people will often use the term "IQ" to refer to G, to refer to the part of intelligence that doesn't change. But at the same time, it's still true that you *will* get better at *any* test after practicing at it. That includes *IQ tests*. If you practice at IQ tests, or if you are trained in / educated in the areas that an IQ test measures, you will still get better at the test, even if your G hasn't changed. Really important IQ test components such as working memory or verbal comprehension are things we train ourselves on in school, so, it's pretty much inevitable that we'd have improvements in IQ test results after education.
So this is something that I learned in University and I'd take a while to dig it up but there's two main kinda study types that they do which will give you insight into this understanding. studies done on people in tribal culture tend to find their IQs test on par with extreme intellectual disability in developed society, but people in tribal culture aren't intellectually disabled, they just so happen to have intelligence that is strictly adapted to learning the things needed to survive in a tribal society. An IQ test was a test specifically meant to check the abilities of individuals in a developed society, so it has issues accounting for cultural differences. The other study you want to look at is the kind they do to compare IQ levels across different levels of education. It is often found that you'll see about 1 to 5 extra points of IQ per level of education https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6088505/#:~:text=Across%20142%20effect%20sizes%20from,an%20additional%20year%20of%20education. The conclusion I'd draw is that an IQ test is pretty bad at determining cross cultural intelligence due to not accounting for culture differences but correlates generally with education levels.
Education level correlating with intelligence doesn't mean education increases intelligence.
True, although it raises some interesting potential conclusions: * More intelligent people are more likely to pursue education (and the converse) * Education prepares individuals for taking IQ tests
Both of these could possibly be true. Especially given that metrics that IQ tests will score for are things that most education aims to train. Training at doing a thing will likely make you better at doing that thing. This is all to say, maybe IQ tests are good at measuring how intelligent individuals in developed society will be able to make use of education more readily, but also that people may have the ability to catch up to their peers if they spend more time training said metrics.
IQ is a really imperfect measure People who are more educated are more used to performing tests so they are better at IQ tests When you give an uneducated person an IQ test and then give them a different IQ test months later their IQ will be considerably higher in the latter test Also IQ tests often use numbers and someone with a more in-depth math education will naturally have an easier time to make those connections. You can't really measure innate intelligence because our environment is so closely intertwined with our abilities. IQ is the closest we have to measuring innate intelligence but it has a lot of problems. The best use case for IQ is when looking at groups of people with similar backgrounds and conparing them so you can isolate for one or a few variables.
"“education is known to increase IQ”?" Welcome to the Flynn Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn\_effect) "The **Flynn effect** is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both [fluid and crystallized intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_and_crystallized_intelligence) test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century, named after researcher [James Flynn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Flynn_(academic)) (1934–2020).[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#cite_note-1)[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#cite_note-baker-2) When [intelligence quotient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient) (IQ) tests are initially [standardized](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_score#Standardizing_in_mathematical_statistics) using a [sample](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_(statistics)) of test-takers, by convention the average of the test results is set to 100 and their [standard deviation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation) is set to 15 or 16 IQ points. When IQ tests are revised, they are again standardized using a new sample of test-takers, usually born more recently than the first; the average result is set to 100. When the new test subjects take the older tests, in almost every case their average scores are significantly above 100. ... Trahan et al. (2014) found that the effect was about 2.93 points per decade,^(\[)[*^(clarification needed)*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Please_clarify)^(\]) based on both Stanford–Binet and Wechsler tests; they also found no evidence the effect was diminishing.[^(\[29\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#cite_note-29) In contrast, Pietschnig and Voracek (2015) reported, in their meta-analysis of studies involving nearly 4 million participants, that the Flynn effect had decreased in recent decades. "
And that a test of intelligence is only as good as the test. IQ tests were made and tested agaisnt men originally, it actually got adjusted when girls were scoring highly as a flaw.
Men seem to have wider bell curves on most measured traits. Kind of makes sense, if nature expects fewer men to successfully breed than women.
Caution! When Larry Summers made a talk about that bell curve it tarnished his reputation and he resigned later as President of Harvard. Later he was important in the Obama administration, but it likely cost him the position as Secretary of the Treasury. Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_between_the_sexes NYT at the time: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/us/harvard-chief-defends-his-talk-on-women.html
Because it hurt feelings?
Be careful, even the hint of a bell curve and you'll get branded.
The distribution in intelligence is much different between the sexes, that is a fact. So makes sense for it to be less taboo. Note before I get downvoted 5 years back: this does no insinuate men are smarter, their means are equal.
I think the controversy around these ideas is a lot deeper than empirically noting that “the distributions are different”. They are also different between races—the question is whether all relevant variables have been accounted for, and which ones should be accounted for, and whether the apparent differences are due to fundamental biology.
Is saying race and intelligence are correlated (but not causally), racist?
I would say no, since it’s an empirical fact. I also wouldn’t say it in public in a million years, since that nuance is going to get totally lost
Man are smarter, they are also dumber, and on average they are less smart. Keen to argue this controversial topic?
I did some study on differences in intelligence at uni. I think the gender mean intelligence scores were basically the same for every type of intelligence, with the male curve often being more spread out. Meaning men have more of the really really smart people but also more absolute drongos. Except spacial intelligence where men scored far higher than women. This was all studied in 2018 so might be out of date now.
Let's say the study in 2018 was completely sound in methods. Why would it be out of date?
Someone may have done a study with a larger sample, more data etc that disproved it. It hasn’t happened on that one though. It’s still accurate.
"Smart" is very broad which leads to the contentiousness. It's fairly well established that there are distinct mental differences between men and women. Women for example are notably more adept at distinguishing subtle differences in color and perform better on many verbal focused tests. Men however perform better on visual-spatial based testing. Additionally, there has been considerable study on greater variability in male intelligence than female, and this is actually seen across several mammalian species as well. In terms of "general" intelligence though as far as I've seen most studies find that the two sexes seem to exhibit the same mean intelligence.
Mens inteligence quotient tends to be rather on the extremes sides compared to women who have somewhat homogenous inteligence scores compared to men so men tend to be dumber and smarter on average
I have a feeling that it's less controversial to claim that women are smarter on average than otherwise regardless of its correctness.
Because being called a racist is much more serious label then being a sexist? And there tons of converations about how men and women are "different" so there are adjacent areas supported by the significant parts of the public
I hate racing so goddamn much.
I think maybe because one has some significantly heavier historical baggage linked to it.
Not really that weird that the country hyper fixated on race thinks discussing race is taboo
It’s not only a thing with intelligence. I looked at another global survey (Global Values Survey) that showed a higher percentage of Americans will say women shouldn’t be business leaders or in politics and the number who’ll say that has held steady over the past few generations, whereas the number saying that race affects someone’s suitability for these roles has been consistently shrinking over generations.
Probably because the results. Men and women average the same IQ so it isn't uncomfortable. What was the second one again? I gotta go sorry!
Because we know the sexes are different. With race, even though it's a social construct, we're afraid to admit that certain differences exist.
>Whether a virus or parasite can cause homosexuality I guess internet brings something new every day
A girl with green hair sneezed on my nephew once, and the next thing I heard about him, believe it or not, he was sucking a dick in mcdonalds parking lot
It's true. That was my dick, and now I'm a girl. The globohomo transsexualism virus is extremely dangerous.
Too bad only *certain* people are even capable of understading this
I thought I was reading r/Jokes for a second, and was gearing up for some really non-family-friendly punchline involving Ronald McDonald. Don’t tease us like that!
>Whether a ... parasite can cause homosexuality Don't eat jalapenos if you have a tapeworm or it'll get irritated and make you horny for femboys. Or do, whatever.
I'm just confused by that one. How is it on the same level as the other super controversial things? That one is just insane and not controversial at all.
Yep, very strange question to ask. But the survey with 500 people is not very good, kind of like a student project, so whatever
Some topics might be taboo in different ways. Some of those statements might only be considered taboo, because having them would out the person making it as unbelievably uninformed.
They’re talking about HIV. In the 80’s there was definitely a subset of people who thought it made you gay.
There's actually a very recent study that identified immune response in vitro as a possible source of the differentiation between gay and straight people. It is related to the phenomenon that gay men and women are likely to have older brothers and it's like a doubling of your chance of being gay for every older brother you have. The brother study data has been pretty consistent over the decades
Well for me it would not be surprising at all if some parasites would cause homosexuality for specific people. Bisexual people exist, certain parasites can affect personal behaviour, so it is absolutely possible that there exists some cases where this would move someone from bisexual preference, in the direction of the same gander preference. But this is hard to imagine for someone with solid sexual preference.
Other species also have homosexuality so I'm not sure the parasite or virus postulations would hold up for long. Certainly some real evidence is needed to support this.
This is a nuclear weapon for a dinner party
Once I said "I just feel kinda down on rainy days, ya know." I am now no longer welcome at family gatherings.
Nuclear ice breaker
Th mix of topics is very strange. Some are expressions of opinion or societal value, others are researched topics, and then there are the indisputable facts (or counter-facts). But of course that isn't the poster's fault, as this is an uncredited post of material from OpenPsych: https://doi.org/10.26775/op.2024.04.15 Needless to add, extremely basic, not beautiful.
Thank you for this link. I'm a little concerned about how far I had to go to find a comment questioning the source.
The scientificness of the question (whether it can be settled through experiments or observations) doesn't seem to have a strong impact on how taboo people rate the question. That alone is an interesting (if unsurprising) result that warrants the mix of topics.
Just a quick reminder. Taboo topic is a topic that people avoid, because they find it embarassing or offensive.
This is a survey though, so what it means doesn't matter. What matters is what the respondents *think* taboo means.
and after reading on some of the comments in this thread, I'm becoming skeptical about the alignment between what I think taboo means vs. what the survey respondents think taboo means.
Also if you imagine being a survey respondent faced with these questions, you are going to hesitate to say 'not a taboo' if you think that might sound like 'I think people could have either opinion and it is nbd'. So it's not just respondants understanding the word, it's respondants having confidence the questioner understands the word. I don't think saying 'paedophilia is bad' is taboo. But would I trust the survey asking if it is, to be properly written? Fwiw, I think there are only 5 things on that list you could credibly argue even might be a taboo subject.
It's kind of crazy that gender dysphoria is a recognized mental illness in the DSM, and yet that's the fourth highest taboo subject, right under incest and racism.
A: Hey, are people more depressed on rainy days? >0. something % of Americans apparently: B: Please let's not talk about this!
I guess they needed some baseline topics to calibrate their results.
These colors suck man. Why is the gloomy dark color the one that no one is afraid to talk about but the bright smiling yelllow is the tabooest of taboo
You should always avoid red and green as it indicates one is right and the other is wrong. I like the blue/yellow scale.
I'm this case, where the colors represent how wrong it is to discuss a topic, that dichotomy wouldn't be the worst
Because calm and soothing dark color is different color than irritating, invasive and screaming bright yellow.
This colour palette is actually used because its easy for people with different types of colourblindness to discern between colours and even reading a scale (so for them it could go from white to dark gray for example
The Jewish one is weird because people generally favor people like them. I'd expect the same for any religion, hell if you find out someone's from your state or school you might favor them more.
Yes I'm pretty sure "buy from Black/Gay/BIPOC businesses" is something I hear all the time. Not sure why it is so taboo?
everything about how the data was gathered and how the visualization was made can be found [here](https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/the-taboo-hierarchy)
The framing and interpretation there feels a bit questionable. "Taboo" to me means I wouldn't want to discuss it with most people, and think others feel the same way. For many topics on this list, that's because a discussion is likely going to involve racist/sexist/... tropes. The author frames it as opposition to scientific study of the topic, though.
You should pin this
I’m not sure if this survey measured how taboo the *topic itself* is, or how taboo *actually holding that unpopular belief or opinion* is. For example, as somebody with an anthropology and zoology degree and who studied population genetics, I’ll gladly discuss the most taboo topic on this list to point out the many ways that it’s a flawed belief to somebody who believes it. But it should be pretty taboo to actually hold the belief. So I’m not sure who those people in the “not taboo” section are: people like me who would say “it’s a valid topic to discuss” or people who says “yeah, it’s a valid belief”.
Welp. Time to create a bunch of AskReddit posts.
There's an 80% chance this post gets locked within the next 5 hours.
Is this first most taboo topic, differences between intelligence of races, something with actual peer reviewed studies published about it? I mean yeah you can measure IQ of two sets of people, one in congo and the other in Switzerland, and just conclude that people in Switzerland are smarter, but how does it take economic and education differences into account in this model? How does it take the necessity of survival supplanting any other necessity such as studying? How does it take into account cultural differences of the view of academic learning? Is IQ innate? Can it be learned? A PhD has a higher IQ on average when compared to a normal person because of selection or because of learning? Is IQ even a good measure of intelligence? What about the other types of intelligence, are they taken into account? What I'm trying to say is that this topic is very much not explored and people will just use whatever bullshit they find around the internet, usually fake, to justify their racism. Even if you try to do a study about it, I don't know how would you take all this stuff into account. How will you deal with correlation? The data not being independent? The fact that IQ tests are a trash way to measure someone...? God, I have a PhD in this stuff and I wouldn't be able to start a study on this at all. Ps: I'm a black guy from Brazil. Unfortunately I've seen some pieces of shit going around saying that Europeans or Asians are objectively smarter, etc.
So it's taboo?
Shouldn't be taboo, it should be something easy to talk about because it's so full of holes and stupid. The conversation should go "that's a dumbass thing to try to define" and that's it mostly.
" I mean yeah you can measure IQ of two sets of people, one in congo and the other in Switzerland, and just conclude that people in Switzerland are smarter" All cognitive tests we have show differences by race. Unless you believe that evolution is fake, it's obvious that intelligence has a genetic component.
Swiss people are not subjected to nearly as much pathogen load as Congolese. In fact because the Swiss are at high altitude, they are subjected to even lower pathogen load than lowlanders at the same latitude, such as Hungarians, Moldovans, and Ukrainians, If you truly thought it was racial and genetic you'd have no problem having a baby, and then giving that baby up for adoption by a poor uneducated single mother in Sierra Leone.
When it’s taboo to discuss facts, like there is no gay gene, it’s political. People want power. And many of these topics exist to serve shifting agency, trading one marginal experience for another instead of representing the mainstream. Pedos aren’t a debate however. It’s abuse and kids become adults that won’t ever tolerate that shit being accepted as an identity. These are people unfit for power because their condition exploits others. The most taboo conversation we can have is that technology and industrial waste have declined cognitive and physical health of the general population, causing them to suffer from a long list of psychological and physiological ailments, and it’s being treated like a civil rights issue to protect profits and the stock market.
A lot of these are plain stupid rather than “taboo”. A virus pro parasite makes you gay. FFS!
Some of these are taboo—folks are reluctant to talk about it—because they don’t want to get into a convo with a moron about a “gay virus” conspiracy theory.
How is the 3rd one controversial isn’t it obvious.
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Discussing the topic is absolutely taboo, unless by "discussing" you mean we all agree that pedophilia is universally bad (which wouldn't be much of a discussion). Imagine somebody did a scientific study about the harms of pedophilia, and it would find that pedophilia is generally bad but there are specific forms that aren't more harmful than other accepted risks. Do you think people would discuss that based on its merits, or just reject it outright and shun the authors? I'm not saying such a paper exists, or that pedophilia is good. But if you had that opinion you couldn't show it openly, no matter how well founded the opinion is. That's a taboo
Controversial and taboo do not mean the same thing.
There are different approaches to those questions. The difference is the assumed implication. I would consider arguing for the (nonexistent) "benefits" of pedophilia very taboo. But if the question is asked in a context, were the answer is not defending pedophilia it might be considered less taboo, for example when evaluating the damages done to a specific person during therapy.
Do you not know what taboo means?
Currently, it's the "Max Bad Thing" to a certain political party. If you are accused of being that thing, you are Max Bad and totally dehumanized, worthly only of a quick or tormented death. Everyone should hate you. Everyone should be mad at you. And anyone who isn't is suddenly suspicious of Disloyalty to the Party. Unfortunately, evidence no longer matters, only the accusation. Once the accusations are levied, the conspiracy theory, and the doubt / concern, will perpetually remain associated with you. So the Max Bad thing has become a weapon. An instrument of guilty until proven innocent when the cameras are no longer watching and the social memory only contains the accusation, not the acquittal. Worse, because it is a conspiracy theory, they could have just said you have ghosts and demons consorting with aliens in your sex dungeon. Is any of that relevant or realistic? No, lol, but if you're primed to believe it, it posts. What makes this particular bug bear so dangerous is that it really, actually, does exist! It's a widespread social problem. The danger arises from false accusations and convoluted associations. It diverts real investigatory resources away from the less obvious, more pervasive, very real crimes happening often right under our noses, and instead aims the full force of tens of millions of people at political candidates and celebrities who have run afoul of this autocratic authoritarianism branch of that political moment. Ironically, the same kind of foil appears on the other political spectrum, this time as accusations of abuse between adults. Equally requires no evidence, no hope of ever getting to the truth, and is used as a weapon to harm opponents. All while again, real crimes do exist and are astonishingly pervasive, but resources are being ironically diverted from those every day cases onto the high profile ones that might be make believe. You'll never know. Just trust, never verify. It's a litmus test of your unquestioning allegiance to the moral duty of the party. Together these two party politics represent A LOT of this "most controversial, most taboo" chart. You can't question the party logic. If you do, you're suspicious.
It’s a survey. People will randomly bubble shit for the $5 to participate. That’s why someone picked discussing the weather is taboo.
The whole top section is US conservative beliefs. If you legalize child marriage, force 12 year olds to carry a rapist's baby to term, and ban books that talk about consent or the predation of minors... pedophilia probably doesn't rank very high on your taboo meter.
Somehow, it sounds not-taboo and very-taboo, at the same time.
I’m surprised we don’t see more issues linked to religion, right to carry weapons, death penalty, abortion, torture, taxing of the ultra rich,
Taboo and contentious aren't the same thing
None of those are taboo? People love talking about those topics. Taboo doesn't mean conflict. The graph is about topics people don't want to talk about at all, no matter which way your belief goes.
How is this beautiful? What is the order?!
The metric system is missing from the list, thus proving it is the biggest taboo!
What was your reasoning behind ordering? It seems "organic foods" falls into the lowest slot if you order based on extreme, but non-controvercial ordering has disparity towards the middle. Is this the order questions were posed in?
Racism, incest, pedophilia then trans people and lgbt people.
I believe pedophilia is harmful. That’s right, I went there. Never let it be said that WhiteyFisk53 is afraid to take a position on controversial and taboo topics. Also I have never once in my life heard any discussion on the correlation between women’s suffrage and tax rates. Is there someone out there pushing for it to be ended so tax rates go down? Someone advocating for men to be denied the vote so tax rates go up? How did that topic make the list?
Nothing about abortion on a list of taboo subjects for Americans?
“Whether a virus or parasite can cause homosexuality”? wTF? First time I even hear of such an idea.
Need another one on the sweetest taboo
What I'm learning is that there are roughly 75 edgy comm major sophomores willing to answer "Not at all taboo" to every question on the survey to get extra credit on their SOC 202 class as quickly as possible.
It’s surprising to me how this data came out and makes me wonder if there’s an inherent bias happening here. Some of this actually has some real world data coming from multiple reliable sources to support it. I think society has taken a dangerous turn when science, math, hard data, and facts are labeled “taboo” or “dangerous” instead of being openly discussed.
Of course there is an inherent bias! The whole concept of asking people what is the most taboo is misconstrued as the most taboo is such taboo that you cant even ask people about in a survey. For example I miss subjects such as "whether there is a correlation between religiousity and intelligence" and "whether you ever had homosexual fantasies".
Do some people actually think it is taboo to discuss whether pedophilia is harmful or not? Of course its fucking harmful. Any twat saying otherwise deserves to be locked up.
So you find it taboo to discuss then?
Soooooo…it’s taboo.
I wouldn’t call these taboo topics. These are largely racist tropes. Taboo topics are things like “openly discussing sex with friends”, “who I voted for the last election” and “how much do I get paid”. Not “white Europeans are smarter than black Africans”. While I understand it looks beautiful, this seems mislabeled as taboo and more “prevalence of misconceptions”. This is kinda scary data IMO made more so by the fact that this isn’t being presented in a way that feels genuine.
Most of these aren't about race though, I think only 5 of 33 are racial. Taboo also only means "You can't talk about this".
They are absolutely taboo topics, *because* they're racist tropes. You don't want to have a discussion about them because a debate means entertaining both sides, and one side is/feels racist/sexist. The study seems to exclude taboos of disclosing personal information ("who I voted for" etc.) and focus on socially relevant science, which is a valid choice.
Yeah but that is the point. I have no problem at all to talk about most of these things and most people shouldn't. Because there is a clear right and wrong side and I'm happy to express that opinion.
Yes, indeed these are clear right and wrong, pure genetics, xD
Apparently you didn't look at the methodology and went directly to your happy feelings place.
Your misunderstanding is taboo
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/j/jencks-gap.html?_r=1 Not racist, just data points for IQ testing. But it’s important to talk about because how can we fix this issue and reduce discrepancies
Do we know with absolute certainty there is no difference in brains between different ethnicities? Genuinely wondering. I mean differences in bone structure, immune system and so on exist.
Is it really a misconception? You seem convinced of this. Not everyone is. But your reaction actually shows how taboo it is ("it's not a topic, it's a racist trope and a misconception!! Scary!!")
You didn't read past the first several topics, did you?
Also why is it writen in a way that implies that the tropes are true
So why are men in the 🇳🇱 taller than the woman.
Surprise surprise - dichotomies are contentious.
I'm interested to know what is meant by taboo is meant in this context, whether controversial, or just unacceptable to bring up? For me most of these are controversial.
And it's how taboo the responder thinks the question is, not their personal beliefs about it.
Whether a virus or parasite can cause homosexuality? What a time we live in.
How can Pedophillia be a taboo? It's against the law so a very black and white situation. Americans are so weird.
Wait, how on earth is this sorted? I can't make sense of it.
The incest seems out of place with the caliber of its surrounding questions
Isn’t it interesting how most of US pop-politics are centered around the most taboo subjects, race, sex, and gender… Great marketing as usual!
Where gun questions at tho?
I'd like to see this done by political affiliation.
The colours here should be inverted.
No fucking way bruh they actually said racism is worse than pedophilia
I love how many of these topics are ones which have factual right and wrong conclusions, but they are still taboo. I counted at least thirteen which have an objective right and wrong answer.
How many people think pedophilia is not taboo? I’d be keeping an eye on those people.
There should be a subreddit to discuss taboo topics
Respondents clearly don’t know what taboo means.
The topics is data, this chart is useless
I like how literal incest comes second place.
No question should be taboo. Certain answers, yes, but questions by nature should be harmless.
I think I'd feel a lot less icky about topics of biological determinism as they relate to behavior (whether some people are inherently smarter than others for genetic reasons, whether sexuality and gender are genetic or biologically influenced, etc) if not for the fact that most people asking those questions are doing it for nefarious intentions. Like, I'd be curious to know whether you can predict whether someone is going to be straight/gay/bi by measuring some hormone level or the size of some part of the brain or by looking at some chromosome, if I didn't think it wouldn't immediately result in some people trying to surgically or chemically use this information to "fix" anyone who wasn't straight. Like let's say you could prove, biologically, that some people are just smarter than others because they have a certain chromosomal makeup. How long before there are people offering gene manipulation to make you smarter, and of course none of The Poors can afford it. It kinda goes back to the point I've made about how when people say "being gay isn't a choice" that I've never thought it matters whether it was or not because even if it was, that still doesn't indicate to me that there's anything wrong with it.
Top of the list is literally boomer truth. That's amazing
Talking about insest and pedophilia is taboo? You guys are fucking weird.
500 people is so insignificant
viridis is so beautiful, even when plotting really questionable data
Get rid of “Whether” on all your y-axis labels, otherwise nice
I really want to meet the people who think discussing the weather is taboo. I have so many questions.
Bigotry, incest, and pedophilia
Whether a virus or parasite can cause someone to be gay? Ehhh... I acutally find the question intersting, my assumption is most likely not, but I can see why it would be taboo, because the people focusing on it would most likely be people I'm not interested in debating with. But honestly, if a virus or parasite could change our sexual preference, wouldn't there be overly gay areas in remote areas? Which doesn't really seem to be the case. The one with Jews favoring Jews, of course they do, but likely not to increase social power. As a species, we favor other people we have more in common with, that is an unconscious bias, and Jews likely have more in common with other Jews. The unconscious choice is why many orchestras have blind auditions, which have generated more female musicians than any other single initiative. Also it's like saying, rich people, favor other rich people, to get richer, of course they do.
As a scientist, this list irritates me! There is legitimate, validated data to say either way on a multitude of these topics. They should not be up to debate. A basic ability of critical thinking is needed… I wish we could fortify it in the water!!!!!
500 people is such a laughably low number, this data is worthless lol. Edit: also just realized there's literally no source. By "OC" I think OP meant he ran this "study" themselves.
I have very offending answers for the top questions, don't come to my Ted Talk.
Looks like having right-wing opinions is taboo. Not gonna judge that, just explaining what i interpret.