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> The societal norms are shifting to a place where there are certain topics that are not allowed to be discussed at all even if looking at them from a critical

> The societal norms are shifting to a place where there are certain topics that are not allowed to be discussed at all even if looking at them from a critical lens. Patreon want to prevent the expression of certain thoughts. For example, they are against "negative generalizations, of people based on their race". However, negative generalisations are sometimes true. For example the homicide rate in Japan is much lower than in Jamaica; from this it follows that Jamaicans are on average more homicidal than Japanese. That's a negative generalisation. It's also true. I wouldn't mind that Patreon are censorious, if there were lots of alternatives. But that brings me to your other point: > Centralization is the real evil, here. This is the real problem, plus the fact that internet-based services tend to become centralised, due to network effects, high fixed costs and low variable costs. I'm not sure what the solution is. Encouraging decentralisation seems to me a bit like trying to make water run uphill: you can do it, but it's an effort and as soon as you stop, the water just runs back downhill.

TheDong 8y ago
> For example the homicide rate in Japan is much lower than in Jamaica; from this it follows that Jamaicans are on average more homicidal than Japanese. That's a negative generalisation. It's also true. That is not true. The fact you presented might be true, but the statement that "Jamaicans are on average more homicidal than Japanese" is not identical to the fact about homicide rates. Your statement implies that those two groups of people are somehow differing in temperament such that one has more violent tendencies than the other. The reality is that there are many complicating factors, and your statement removes enough of those that it no longer is true. For example, a similar but more obviously false statement from the same vein: "It is a fact that americans have more total car accidents than the ancient greeks. Therefore, the americans are worse drivers than the ancient greeks" (or similarly "more americans own cars and have no accidents than ancient greeks, so it follows americans are better drivers). The obvious confounding factor there is the fact that ancient greece had no cars, but it follows an identical pattern to your statement. It starts with a simple fact, and then creates a phrase which neatly avoids all confounding factors and has a negative implication that relates to the fact, but ignores how complex reality is. I think that if you, in seriousness, made a statement like your example, you can and should be banned from platforms. You're mis-using facts to represent one culture as more violent than another, and implying that it's a trait of the people, not a much more complicated result of economic and legal differences. It's an incredibly racist and insidious thing to say.
- username90 8y ago
  > Your statement implies that those two groups of people are somehow differing in temperament such that one has more violent tendencies than the other. I don't buy that, today many say things like "Men are on average more prone to violence than women" without intending it in an essentialist way. So then why would "Jamaicans are on average more prone to violence than Japanese" have to be essentialist? The interesting part is that few people take the same stance on both of these statements, people thinking the first is fine rarely accepts the second and vice versa. Seems like this argument is more about each side shutting down ideas they are uncomfortable with.
  - TheDong 8y ago
    I do think that the statement 'Men are on average more prone to violence than women' can be sexist, depending on context. However, I think that it is possible to contextualize fact-based-generalizations to remove sexist/racism from them. If you say 'society conditions men to be less emotionally open, thus men end up being more violent, see these psych studies', that's all well and good. On a similar note, if you say 'Jamaicans on average grow up in higher poverty with worse education, and more end up involved in crime', that contextualizes it to show that you are not speaking about the nature of the people, but rather about specific situations and facts. A final factor you're ignoring is that there's always a much broader social context through which your generalization is interpreted. "Black fathers are lazy" is a more racist generalization than "white fathers are lazy" because the first has racist context associated with it, and the second has much less of such a context. This context may be global or regional, though with the dominance of american media, that context is basically global at this point. On a similar note, anything to do with a specific people or race needs more explicit context because there's so much racist ambient context. > Seems like this argument is more about each side shutting down ideas they are uncomfortable with. I am not okay with anyone stopping you from providing facts and ideas about crime in different societies, just trying to stop you from generalizing in such a way that implies one race is inferior to another. This isn't a matter of discomfort per-se, but rather a matter of us having already seen the end of the slippery slopes such talk, when weaponized as rhetoric and internalized, leads to.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
barry-cotter 8y ago
> I wouldn't mind that Patreon are censorious, if there were lots of alternatives. Good luck with that. The Visa MasterCard cartel will not allow a Patreon competitor with different standards to use their payment infrastructure and will use their connections to get any competitor kicked off of other payment processors. It’s been two weeks and SubscribeStar still don’t have a replacement for the eight payment processors that dropped them all at once after they took on Carl Benjamin. Patreon would have backed down by now if that was an option. It’s all about the payment processors, as you’ll figure out pretty quickly if you read this transcript of a call between the head of Patreon’s Censorship team and one of their creators. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfhO7tbaIogisSqqxHw0hc/mobilebasic https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfh...
- someguydave 8y ago
  > a call between the head of Patreon’s Censorship team and one of their creators. Not only that, she was formerly a PayPal employee and had been working at Patreon for only a few months. Reading between the lines, it seems likely that Patreon was being told by PayPal that they had to fall in line with PayPal's censorship or lose PayPal (and thus mainstream credit card) processing.
perl4ever 8y ago
"For example the homicide rate in Japan is much lower than in Jamaica; from this it follows that Jamaicans are on average more homicidal than Japanese. That's a negative generalisation. It's also true." To me, a generalization is where you infer that because a general fact exists (e.g. the homicide rate) there is consequently a more specific fact about each member of a group. I feel like you have stopped short of actually making a generalization, or are leaving it ambiguous as to whether you have made one. If the homicide rate implies something about each Jamaican, what does it imply? I find the equivocation over such matters more viscerally irritating than the racism itself.

TheDong 8y ago

> For example the homicide rate in Japan is much lower than in Jamaica; from this it follows that Jamaicans are on average more homicidal than Japanese. That's a negative generalisation. It's also true. That is not true. The fact you presented might be true, but the statement that "Jamaicans are on average more homicidal than Japanese" is not identical to the fact about homicide rates. Your statement implies that those two groups of people are somehow differing in temperament such that one has more violent tendencies than the other. The reality is that there are many complicating factors, and your statement removes enough of those that it no longer is true. For example, a similar but more obviously false statement from the same vein: "It is a fact that americans have more total car accidents than the ancient greeks. Therefore, the americans are worse drivers than the ancient greeks" (or similarly "more americans own cars and have no accidents than ancient greeks, so it follows americans are better drivers). The obvious confounding factor there is the fact that ancient greece had no cars, but it follows an identical pattern to your statement. It starts with a simple fact, and then creates a phrase which neatly avoids all confounding factors and has a negative implication that relates to the fact, but ignores how complex reality is. I think that if you, in seriousness, made a statement like your example, you can and should be banned from platforms. You're mis-using facts to represent one culture as more violent than another, and implying that it's a trait of the people, not a much more complicated result of economic and legal differences. It's an incredibly racist and insidious thing to say.

username90 8y ago
> Your statement implies that those two groups of people are somehow differing in temperament such that one has more violent tendencies than the other. I don't buy that, today many say things like "Men are on average more prone to violence than women" without intending it in an essentialist way. So then why would "Jamaicans are on average more prone to violence than Japanese" have to be essentialist? The interesting part is that few people take the same stance on both of these statements, people thinking the first is fine rarely accepts the second and vice versa. Seems like this argument is more about each side shutting down ideas they are uncomfortable with.
- TheDong 8y ago
  I do think that the statement 'Men are on average more prone to violence than women' can be sexist, depending on context. However, I think that it is possible to contextualize fact-based-generalizations to remove sexist/racism from them. If you say 'society conditions men to be less emotionally open, thus men end up being more violent, see these psych studies', that's all well and good. On a similar note, if you say 'Jamaicans on average grow up in higher poverty with worse education, and more end up involved in crime', that contextualizes it to show that you are not speaking about the nature of the people, but rather about specific situations and facts. A final factor you're ignoring is that there's always a much broader social context through which your generalization is interpreted. "Black fathers are lazy" is a more racist generalization than "white fathers are lazy" because the first has racist context associated with it, and the second has much less of such a context. This context may be global or regional, though with the dominance of american media, that context is basically global at this point. On a similar note, anything to do with a specific people or race needs more explicit context because there's so much racist ambient context. > Seems like this argument is more about each side shutting down ideas they are uncomfortable with. I am not okay with anyone stopping you from providing facts and ideas about crime in different societies, just trying to stop you from generalizing in such a way that implies one race is inferior to another. This isn't a matter of discomfort per-se, but rather a matter of us having already seen the end of the slippery slopes such talk, when weaponized as rhetoric and internalized, leads to.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

barry-cotter 8y ago

> I wouldn't mind that Patreon are censorious, if there were lots of alternatives. Good luck with that. The Visa MasterCard cartel will not allow a Patreon competitor with different standards to use their payment infrastructure and will use their connections to get any competitor kicked off of other payment processors. It’s been two weeks and SubscribeStar still don’t have a replacement for the eight payment processors that dropped them all at once after they took on Carl Benjamin. Patreon would have backed down by now if that was an option. It’s all about the payment processors, as you’ll figure out pretty quickly if you read this transcript of a call between the head of Patreon’s Censorship team and one of their creators. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfhO7tbaIogisSqqxHw0hc/mobilebasic https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U0mQjUA0T5INc_GDkwPJ2mfh...

someguydave 8y ago
> a call between the head of Patreon’s Censorship team and one of their creators. Not only that, she was formerly a PayPal employee and had been working at Patreon for only a few months. Reading between the lines, it seems likely that Patreon was being told by PayPal that they had to fall in line with PayPal's censorship or lose PayPal (and thus mainstream credit card) processing.

perl4ever 8y ago

"For example the homicide rate in Japan is much lower than in Jamaica; from this it follows that Jamaicans are on average more homicidal than Japanese. That's a negative generalisation. It's also true." To me, a generalization is where you infer that because a general fact exists (e.g. the homicide rate) there is consequently a more specific fact about each member of a group. I feel like you have stopped short of actually making a generalization, or are leaving it ambiguous as to whether you have made one. If the homicide rate implies something about each Jamaican, what does it imply? I find the equivocation over such matters more viscerally irritating than the racism itself.