 The Stanford Tech Department, the Stanford Tech Department came out with these language criteria, index of forbidden words, right? And this is a recommendation by the Tech Department at Stanford and index of forbidden words. Now, this is not, and there's no indication this is going to be a compulsory. This is a list of words that is, it is recommended at Stanford University by the tech bros that you should not use, that are offensive and shouldn't use it. And it very much reminds me of the good old 90s. You remember political correctness and I mean there was a whole, like the idiot's guides to political correctness where they had the whole, all the list of words and you couldn't say certain words, you couldn't say short, you know, vertically challenged and all of this stuff. I'm not sure where all of that went. Political correctness kind of disappeared for a while and has come back as some type of wokeness and it's funny, it's ridiculous and of course because it deals with words, it deals with concept, it is pretty serious because it is more than anything what these things do is they create cognitive clumsiness, they create cognitive inefficiency, they make thinking more difficult because what you can't say you shouldn't think, they make thinking more difficult, they make language more difficult, they make it more cumbersome to engage in thoughts and conversations and it's absurd and ridiculous. Here are some of the words that you shouldn't use, you shouldn't call anything or anybody, but including anything or anybody crazy or insane, that is offensive. You can't use the word retarded and I'm pretty sure that was during the 90s, I remember that wasn't that cognitive challenge or something like that, you couldn't use the word retarded back then but this goes a little further so this, I'm quoting from the thing, you can't use retarded because it is a slogans those who are neurodivergent so now you have to call them neurodivergent or have cognitive disability so I guess that's cognitive disability. Alright, fair enough but then it adds you should not use to make a point about a person, place or thing, so I mean you can say a fire extinguisher retards the fire, that's what a sprinkler system does, you're supposed to instead of by the way they offer you alternatives so you can't blame the Stanford tech department of not thinking this through, they offer you alternatives to, by the way this is, some of this is coming out of, we'll see a journal, some of this is coming out of an article by Jonah Goldberg, some of it's coming out of an article in Reason, as I said this went viral last week but Jonah, if Jonah says, Stanford says that instead of crazy and sane retarded you can say things like boring or uncool instead of retarded. So he writes, this is Jonah, so if there's a fire, a sprinkler system can uncool the blaze. So everything is uncool or boring, you're not stupid, you're boring but soon boring is going to be insulting, don't you think boring is going to be insulting? One of the terms you're not supposed to use is American, you shouldn't call yourself an American because that's just wrong, right? There's a bunch of countries that are part of America, right, of the American continent, there are actually 42 countries in the Americas and American kind of implies that we're the most important country in the Americas, they're only we count and that seems wrong, right? I mean and I know this is a real problem because I'm sure the Canadians offended because they'd like call themselves Americans but they don't want to be confused by us and yet or you know what about the fact that Canadians call themselves anti-Americans and that doesn't bother them, I mean there's a whole anti-American movement in South America, I mean there's a lot of anti-Americans in South America, they call themselves anti-Americans and they don't seem to have any problem with that but we shouldn't call ourselves Americans because there are other people who are Americans, even those other people who are Americans don't call themselves Americans and think of us as Americans and hate us because we're anyway, it goes on and on. Of course the Jonah points out that the whole term Americans should be purged and is going to be purged, it's just a matter of time because after all America was derived from the name of Amerigo Vespucci, Amerigo America, the Italian colonizer, he was the colonizer, he was the man who argued for the first time that what Columbus had discovered was the new continent so he is considered, the continent was named after him but he was a colonizer, it's one of those evil bad guys so there's no way we shouldn't even use America and you're sure that that is going to be, that is going to go away so you really should call yourself a United Statist so you're from the United States, you're not from America or United States citizen but of course citizen is a problematic word you know immigrant is a problematic word they list immigrants was the listing of immigrants as a problematic word they've got a better word than immigrants let me just find this the immigrant one yeah I can't find the immigrant but immigrants no not acceptable here's some other ones that are pretty funny you shouldn't say low man on the totem pole I don't know that anybody uses that anymore but totem you know can't use that that's cultural appropriation long time no see because that's discriminating because some type people don't see that that's discriminating against the blind don't use white paper you know you wrote a white paper on this issue can't use white paper that's obviously racist webmaster webmaster I mean anything with master in it is unacceptable because a master master and slave I mean nobody in America is a master you can't use a master um beating a dead horse is is too cool to animals it's it's just it's it's too vivid or take a stab at it you want to take a stab at that but you can't use that because that's like that's violence you're advocating kind of white white noise Jennifer no no no no that's racist can't use white in anything you can't use um uh what was it was the term so it used to be that you weren't allowed to use the term victim in instead used the term survivor but now the term survivor is not acceptable and the new uh at the IT department now refers to survivors or victims as person who has been impacted by now notice the cumbersome nature of the kind of language that that all implies um you could go on and on and on about this it's it's uh it's ridiculous the the the the absurdity of it all and it's interesting Jonah quotes I think um a a really good quote out of 1984 um by the way the website where all of these words are listed has a trigger warning this website contains a language language that is offensive or harmful please engage with this website at your own pace just be careful because I mean you could be offended and you could you know the whole microaggression trigger warning thing is kind of gone silent that was the thing that kind of led to woke and that was the thing like five four five years ago and that has now gone under and and maybe it's just being accepted so it's not a news worthy item anymore um anyway this is the quote from 1984 which I think is is is really apropos and it kind of exposes the um it exposes the nihilism that is implicit in the destruction of banning of words the cognitive destruction that is of banning of words um here's the quote from uh 84 quote it's a beautiful thing the destruction of words um and and you know that it's a beautiful thing the destruction of words and and Jonah goes on to say the beauty of that project is to deprive the mind of words to describe reality as it is and to shrink the map of mental space there is no safe harbor from the party line I mean that's I mean Jonah is summarizing what's going on in 1984 but that's absolutely right again the beauty of the project that is the destruction of words is to deprive the mind of words to describe reality as it is and to shrink the map of mental space so there's no safe harbor from the party line and now that's absolutely right that's the kind of nihilism that is involved in this um so uh yes I mean uh you know just a few other stances preferred replacement for stupid as well as retarded boring and uncool we said that instead of crazy or insane you're supposed to use the words like like a surprise uh wild or surprising you want to jump off that bridge instead of staying that's crazy you say that's surprising uh or see that strange guy in the clown suit behind the wheel of that old van it it'll be wild if you accepted his invitation for for a ride instead of it would be insane if you accepted his invitation for a ride and you can go on and okay one more and this is Jonah brings up one more comment on words and this I think relates the destruction of words but this is one we've talked about before dictionary.com dictionary.com has declared that its word of the year is get what the word of the year is for dictionary.com anybody guessing word of the year word of the year is woman woman right pretty straightforward pretty straightforward uh word yet a woke crowd a woke world has put this word into play word is a woman. Woman happens to be one of the as Jonah Goldberg writes woman is one of the oldest words in the English language it's one of those fundamental words one of the most basic words because it describes something that is easy to identify and easy to recognize um it's intensely important uh because the differences men and women are crucial particularly if we go back to pretty basic uh basic life uh it's is a reason why this is one of the first words we identify the difference between men and women becomes crucial to human survival it's a it's a human survival word um and um it's it's tells us it tells you a lot of a lot about the world in which we live that um this is the word of of the year right um we can't define women anymore the dictionary.com is not sure what the definition of women anymore uh it's it's horrible now this is uh this is John Kelly the dictionary.com's editorial director he says quote the dictionary is not the last word on what defines a woman no it's actually biology uh he writes the word belongs to each and every woman however they define themselves in other words words now become completely subjective completely they mean whatever we feel like they should mean um i mean it's it's it's pretty ridiculous it's pretty absurd we talked about this when we talked about when we talked about Matt Walsh's uh what is a woman um so uh yeah i mean uh people are now cancelled uh being cancelled for claiming there was a difference between men and women uh or claiming there's a difference between women and men who describe themselves as women uh women and men who even go through surgical process to become women uh or to become closer to women uh claiming that there's a difference there is now a cancelable offense or in Norway it you can land up in jail supposedly uh Tonya Jev John whatever i can't pronounce the name uh who's a Norwegian actress a lesbian wrote on her facebook page quote it's just as impossible for men to become a lesbian as it is for men to become pregnant men are men regardless of their sexual fetishes um whether you agree with that or not uh she faces up to three years in prison under Norway's hate crime laws uh so state of language in the world in which we live all right um pretty sad and pretty disturbing uh and and it really has nothing to do with um your views on trans it has nothing to do with the fact that uh there is a small uh tiny fraction of a percent of people who are not clearly men or not clearly women because the the genitalia doesn't necessarily reflect their chromosomes and there's all kind of borderline cases all kinds of them i mean it's it's truly amazing once you start reading about this the wide range of different types of borderline cases of of of things that are uh uh you know are not uh clearly men or women uh in in that doesn't eviscerate the actual concept it doesn't change the fact that there is such a thing as a man and a woman and it it it it just says that there's some people who don't fall neatly into either one of those categories and that seems to be a biological reality whether some of you like it or not but it is a biological reality thank you for listening or watching The Iran Book Show if you'd like to support the show we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me you get value from listening you get value from watching show your appreciation you can do that by going to iranbookshow.com slash support by going to patreon subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution uh on any one of those uh any one of those channels also if you'd like to see The Iran Book Show grow please consider sharing our content and of course subscribe press that little bell button right down there on youtube so that you get an announcement when we go live and for you those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who already supporters of the show thank you i very much appreciate it