<story><title>What You Can&apos;t Say (2004)</title><url>http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>amirkdv</author><text>&amp;gt; Such obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or at worst as evidence of insanity, but they are not likely to make anyone mad. The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s some truth to this that&amp;#x27;s worth pausing on.&lt;p&gt;But it&amp;#x27;s a fallacy (probably with a fancy name) to say &amp;quot;it made you mad therefore you worry it&amp;#x27;s true&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;A statement could be false yet incite anger because it&amp;#x27;s demonstrably harmful.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>escapedmoose</author><text>Also the statements that people “worry might be believed” may not intersect with the statements that could be judged as plausible by an intelligent, rational person. There are a loooooot of dumb people out there, with uncomfortable levels of individual and&amp;#x2F;or collective power. When that cohort falls for something that smarter people see as blatantly false, it still can have nasty consequences. We should be angry at anyone who deliberately attempts to make them fall for it.</text></comment>
<story><title>What You Can&apos;t Say (2004)</title><url>http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>amirkdv</author><text>&amp;gt; Such obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or at worst as evidence of insanity, but they are not likely to make anyone mad. The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s some truth to this that&amp;#x27;s worth pausing on.&lt;p&gt;But it&amp;#x27;s a fallacy (probably with a fancy name) to say &amp;quot;it made you mad therefore you worry it&amp;#x27;s true&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;A statement could be false yet incite anger because it&amp;#x27;s demonstrably harmful.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>strogonoff</author><text>Anger is a manifestation of fear, which in turn stems from insecurity. If you are confident, there is nothing to be afraid of and becoming irate about.&lt;p&gt;This makes it a useful measure sometimes. If a thing you say causes anger, it may or may not be true—but it definitely indicates your counterpart’s sensitivity to and bias against it being true; the chance of it being false is thus elevated.</text></comment>