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Comment by bambax

1 hour ago

Yes, he wrote a whole essay about it, in which he says:

> What can't we say? One way to find these ideas is simply to look at things people do say, and get in trouble for. (...) The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.

https://paulgraham.com/say.html

What are those statements that "might be true"? It's hard to come up with better candidates than Cofnas' theories.

(As an aside, Graham likes to talk a lot about Galileo (in this essay and many others); he makes him a hero of truth. But Galileo didn't get into trouble because of his theories! But because of his attitude. He would ridicule the papacy, in writing, repeatedly. What you couldn't say wasn't that the earth moved, but that the Pope was a clown.)