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Objectivity and neutrality have value even if they can never perfectly realized. Case in point: You wouldn’t be arguing against objectivity and neutrality if

Objectivity and neutrality have value even if they can never perfectly realized. Case in point: You wouldn’t be arguing against objectivity and neutrality if doing so did not advance your own social and political power; you yourself have abandoned any pretense of aspiring to either. This makes you a self-serving person to whom it would be dangerous to grant power.

stonogo 4y ago
You have it exactly backwards. Anyone who claims to be objective is either bullshitting you or so naive as to be unreliable. Neither case is a person you want to empower. Anyone who claims to be "neutral" is in fact declaring their own apathy towards a topic, and when that topic is "should a specific group of people have civil rights" then neutrality is ethically disgusting. I'm personally apathetic regarding whether some money-collecting company wants to work for AI people, so I don't really care about Kickstarter's policy here, and I don't foresee myself caring in the future. Pretending that Kickstarter is a power broker of some kind is in my estimation some serious Chicken Little territory. "Aspiring" to either objectivity or neutrality is not the same thing as actually manifesting either quality, and such aspirations generally involve disclosing conflicts of interest or other biases, which are things every living person has. Wrapping either concept in other weasel words doesn't really move the needle.
- catiopatio 4y ago
  It's not backwards to favor someone attempting to manifest objectivity and neutrality over the person telling you, forthrightly, that they'll trod over anyone and argue anything if it advances their aims and shifts power to their in-group. I find your position to be the one that's "ethically disgusting", completely without principal beyond your self-serving aims, and corrosive to a healthy society.

stonogo 4y ago

You have it exactly backwards. Anyone who claims to be objective is either bullshitting you or so naive as to be unreliable. Neither case is a person you want to empower. Anyone who claims to be "neutral" is in fact declaring their own apathy towards a topic, and when that topic is "should a specific group of people have civil rights" then neutrality is ethically disgusting. I'm personally apathetic regarding whether some money-collecting company wants to work for AI people, so I don't really care about Kickstarter's policy here, and I don't foresee myself caring in the future. Pretending that Kickstarter is a power broker of some kind is in my estimation some serious Chicken Little territory. "Aspiring" to either objectivity or neutrality is not the same thing as actually manifesting either quality, and such aspirations generally involve disclosing conflicts of interest or other biases, which are things every living person has. Wrapping either concept in other weasel words doesn't really move the needle.

catiopatio 4y ago
It's not backwards to favor someone attempting to manifest objectivity and neutrality over the person telling you, forthrightly, that they'll trod over anyone and argue anything if it advances their aims and shifts power to their in-group. I find your position to be the one that's "ethically disgusting", completely without principal beyond your self-serving aims, and corrosive to a healthy society.