[jjk166]

Taboos are not simply undesirable things, they are rules which carry severe penalties if you break them. The difference is that rather than going through the effort of getting society on the same page and agreeing what is okay and what isn't, you instead leave ambiguity that harms the well meaning and benefits the malicious. If something is bad enough that it should be banned by an unwritten rule, it's bad enough to be banned by a written rule. If you aren't willing to ban something by law, then it ought to be permissible.

[worik]

I am not a lawyer. I am from a legal family (three generations) and I understand jurisprudence

> you instead leave ambiguity that harms the well meaning and benefits the malicious.

Two points

1. Law advantages those with access, and often benefits the malicious and harms the good. Case in point: Drug law. Another is IP law

2. Law is not objective. The words that form it are in black and white, but there are courts and judges because the application of the law is subjective. The boundary cases are numerous and important

More generally....

> If something is bad enough that it should be banned by an unwritten rule, it's bad enough to be banned by a written rule.

Sotp, just stop! This is the idea that we must punish and scantion people into being good.

I think of things that are good (like treating drug addicts as ill, not criminal or imoral). I think not of "bans". They accomplish little.

Permissible, impermissible, these are blunt concepts that are not very useful. We can be, and should be, aspirational and collegial not judgemental and competitive

[jjk166]

> Sotp, just stop! This is the idea that we must punish and scantion people into being good.

You're not understanding what this conversation is about. Taboos punish and sanction people into being good. We are in full agreement that this is undesirable. There are some things that should be banned, and if they should be banned, they should be banned explicitly. There are many other things that should not be banned, and if it should not be banned it should not be a taboo, which is a form of ban.

You give a perfect example for my argument - treating drug addiction as an illness that should be treated instead of a moral failure to be punished. Where drug use is a taboo, you can't treat it; eliminating the taboo and accepting that these are people in need of help is, in my and many other people's opinion, the correct course of action. Most would agree that making drug use legal but ostracizing drug users would be an absurd strategy.

Taboos are fundamentally about what is permissible and impermissible, there is no other framework in which to talk about them.

[worik]

> There are some things that should be banned, and if they should be banned, they should be banned explicitly.

What about the things that are missed? Are you going to make an explicit rule for every bad thing?

Is the only way to be good, to be punished?

The creative bad folks, they are free to do their bad stuff, so long as they are more creative than the rule makers?

I do not want to live in the world where the only reason good things happen, is because all the options for being bad are outlawed

I want to live in a world, li,e the one I mostly live in, where we cooperate and love one another.

I am not advocating taboos. I am advocating the literal opposite