[PorterBHall]

> Though the window of opinions you can express publicly has narrowed in the last decade, it's still much wider than it was a few hundred years ago. The problem is the derivative. Up till about 1985 the window had been growing ever wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would have expected freedom of expression to continue to increase. Instead it has decreased.

Let’s apply his heresy test. Is his statement true?

It might be, but I don’t know how one could confirm it. What is apparently true is that the amount of expression has greatly increased since then because internet. So that’s the denominator. The numerator of “fired for speech” would have to expand beyond the proportion of the growth of communication for this to be true.

Do you know anyone fired for their outré opinion in the last few years? Do you know _many_? I’ve read stories of it happening in business, universities, government but I don’t know anyone who has gotten the sack for expressing an opinion. Maybe that means I’m a conventional mind safely surrounded by the same.

When I hear about “cancel culture,” I picture a speaker who wants to say something and not face the social disapproval which said things triggers. But that disapproval almost always comes back at them as speech (I think infrequently as a pink slip). So those claims ring as “Free speech for me, not for thee.”

[classified]

The set of things you can't publicly say without facing adverse consequences is never the empty set. Maybe your opinions happen to lie within this week's Overton window.

[econ]

People don't talk about it anymore. The list of things you can't discuss is quite long and it has many items that logically shouldn't be on it.

You can say for example that the sum of genetics, culture, finances and upbringing will have different results.

Make it ever so slightly more specific and the water gets hot fast.

The retaliation for different topics is also different and has little relation with how offending the topic might be (if at all) 100 people might call your employer or you will simply be considered a lunatic.

The worse part of politics is that any real opinion will cost votes. You can't really say anything. Everything is heresy at that point.