alt Hacker NewsHmm, this is an odd way to respond now that we’ve cleared up the “entrenched” bit of things yet now have all of these words that are in your comment masquerading as mine!
I think you’ll see my own words did not dress up in loaded language like “dangerous chemicals” and “divisive history”. I won’t say I’ve never said them but in this case no: I was careful and cautious to be neutral in word choice: “chemicals that have destructive and harmful _uses_” and, with that, regulatory considerations. And for the other, again, very carefully I said “information about the government’s own actions and history of the nation”.
See? None of those other words you thought I said and, thinking I’d said them, you placed down like stepping stones. And, once placed, you followed your own laid path and turned back, pointed at me, saying “extremely western” even! But, there you are, so far away, taken there by a path not of my making and yet it seems not quite of your own either?
Whose path then did you follow? Whose words have so surrounded you that they even seem, to you, to come from other people’s mouths as well? Such a storm of words unsourced! You should get rid of those words, whoever’s they are might want them back or not but they are getting in the way of you seeing mine clearly.
It was not my intention to quote you but rather to give short and direct names to the categories as I see them being used (which is of course subject to my own biases). Unfortunately punctuation and convention is such that "" or () are the only things that come to mind.
The point I'd intended to convey is that both cultures see various pieces of information as acceptable to censor in certain contexts. It's which pieces and in what context that people tend to disagree on. Despite disagreeing with both you and (my impression of) the Chinese, when framed in such general terms I can't even claim to be different myself - I studiously avoid sharing detailed information about certain sorts of chemicals and processes with people I don't know to be emotionally stable mature adults.
When I say "extremely western" I refer to the distinction you are drawing between the categories of (purportedly) harmful information. The view that it is inherently safer or more ethically acceptable or etc to subject one versus the other to censorship. The western view (which I tend to align with!) seems to be that social harmony is not terribly important or at least not overly dangerous to disrupt and that anyhow the government shouldn't be involved in maintaining it whereas that is not at all the vibe I get from Chinese policy.