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The Turkish situation referenced (http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two-people-puts-three-more-in-jail http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellph

The Turkish situation referenced (http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two-people-puts-three-more-in-jail http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two...) is not an indictment of bad tech, but of a fucked up honor-based patriarchal culture. "Ramazan went to the family's home to apologize, only to be greeted by the father, Emine, two sisters and a lot of very sharp knives." There's no technological way to fix people that would try to kill someone over a text misunderstanding without figuring out the truth first. People like this are garbage-people murderers, let's not blame tech mistakes for the fact that some people are scum. Everyone involved knew damn well that a couple characters would make the difference between a benign text and an offensive one, and frankly, even if the text was offensive, murder was not justified. Scum.

jlg23 9y ago
> is not an indictment of bad tech, but of a fucked up honor-based patriarchal culture. Bad tech played a crucial role in the escalation, though. What is justified in one society or even demanded is not necessarily justified in another. And a text message that you consider just offensive might be a strong insult in another culture with implications you cannot even grasp. Calling people for their culture "scum" is the least effective way of "positively" influencing them (on the premise that Western culture is "positive").
- Kenji 9y ago
  > Calling people for their culture "scum" is the least effective way of "positively" influencing them If their culture is objectively so primitive and backwards that it causes behaviour you'd expect of savages a couple thousand years ago, I think that word is entirely appropriate.
  - jballanc 9y ago
    I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that, because a misunderstanding over text led to one person murdering another, that the culture in which these events occurred was primitive, backwards, and deserving of the epithet "scum"?
    - lawly 9y ago
      Yes.
      - jballanc 9y ago
        I mean, I'm no fan of the British, but I wouldn't call them "scum". Oh, or did you mean a different situation where a misunderstanding via text led to a murder? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1356632/Man-killed-friend-row-mis-spelt-text-message.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1356632/Man-killed-f...
        lawly 9y ago
        Oh, yes, let's pretend it's the same thing when a nutjob commits manslaughter and a family comes together over knives to commit premeditated murder of a man coming to apologize to defend the honor of the family's daughter.
      - jancsika 9y ago
        This is an instructive escalation. User ewjordan's original comment is clearly calling out a bad institution-- an "honor-based patriarchal culture"-- for encouraging a specific bad actor (or at least a specific class of bad actors) to murder other human beings. I say bad actor because ewjordan saw fit to emphasize-- using the heightened language "damn well"-- that everyone knows about the potential for ambiguity in the choice of text. People who jump on an ambiguity in a patriarchal society for a chance to do murder are clearly bad actors. Hence, the word scum probably seems like a fitting epithet for such a bad actor. The problem is that heightened language always ends up obscuring one's point. For example, is user dvfjsdhgfv agreeing with ewjordan or extending the critique more broadly to include people who aren't obviously bad actors? It isn't clear to me. User Kenji's logic is less ambiguous, however. Since it is "their culture" which "causes causes behaviour you'd expect of savages a couple thousand years ago", the use of the word "scum" is deemed appropriate. Yet, using "scum" to describe a "culture" is awkward, and seems to suggest that it is the inhabitants of that culture who are in fact being called "scum" here. Does that include both bad faith and good faith actors? User jballanc asks for clarification on this, and by now user lawly is apparently confident enough to give a one-word answer: "Yes." Finally, just to confirm that the understanding is that we're indeed applying the descriptor "scum" to large swaths of human beings, user jballanc gives the counter-argument based on that logic: > I mean, I'm no fan of the British, but I wouldn't call them "scum". This is why I try to avoid using heightened language especially when describing people who commit horrific acts.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  How on earth should people who kill over words, no matter how offensive, be called? Really, in these times of twisting the meaning of words, we should really call spade a spade and not to hide behinds untrue cliches such as "all cultures are equal and should be respected equally". Not they're not and shouldn't be. If your "culture" demands that you pour acid over the face of your ex-girlfriend, it doesn't deserve to be called "culture", and you deserve to be called who you are.
  - jlg23 9y ago
    I have no idea who you are responding too. Nobody in this thread claimed "all cultures are equal and should be respected equally". I was saying that cultures are vastly different and that showing complete disrespect for something you don't even understand will not help anybody at all. Acid-attacks, btw, are a mostly Indian specialty - try this in a honor based society and you have her family get at you sooner than you can write another uninformed "response" to something nobody ever said.
nine_k 9y ago
OK, the overreaction like this may be a cultural problem. But even without a problem like that, imagine a case when a wrong drug is administered to a patient, with deadly consequences, or a wrong turn is taken by a motorist, leading to a collision. To avoid this, things should be written in an unequivocal way. But for that, one has to realize how expensive a "negligibly small" mistake can be.
- gumby 9y ago
  > ...imagine a case when a wrong drug is administered to a patient, with deadly consequences... Out of band solutions are used to address these problems more comprehensively. The FDA regulates brand names for drugs for exactly this reason: avoid confusion and ambiguities. This is also one of the reasons for pharmacists, especially in hospitals. Mouse-clicking in a pull down list can easily select the wrong drug for the patient.
- x1798DE 9y ago
  To be fair, though, if you have two drugs that are separated only by very similar looking characters, that's a recipe for disaster anyway. Even ignoring the localization aspects, I wouldn't want two drugs separated only by the difference between i/l, u/v, etc.

jlg23 9y ago

> is not an indictment of bad tech, but of a fucked up honor-based patriarchal culture. Bad tech played a crucial role in the escalation, though. What is justified in one society or even demanded is not necessarily justified in another. And a text message that you consider just offensive might be a strong insult in another culture with implications you cannot even grasp. Calling people for their culture "scum" is the least effective way of "positively" influencing them (on the premise that Western culture is "positive").

Kenji 9y ago
> Calling people for their culture "scum" is the least effective way of "positively" influencing them If their culture is objectively so primitive and backwards that it causes behaviour you'd expect of savages a couple thousand years ago, I think that word is entirely appropriate.
- jballanc 9y ago
  I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that, because a misunderstanding over text led to one person murdering another, that the culture in which these events occurred was primitive, backwards, and deserving of the epithet "scum"?
  - lawly 9y ago
    Yes.
    - jballanc 9y ago
      I mean, I'm no fan of the British, but I wouldn't call them "scum". Oh, or did you mean a different situation where a misunderstanding via text led to a murder? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1356632/Man-killed-friend-row-mis-spelt-text-message.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1356632/Man-killed-f...
      - lawly 9y ago
        Oh, yes, let's pretend it's the same thing when a nutjob commits manslaughter and a family comes together over knives to commit premeditated murder of a man coming to apologize to defend the honor of the family's daughter.
    - jancsika 9y ago
      This is an instructive escalation. User ewjordan's original comment is clearly calling out a bad institution-- an "honor-based patriarchal culture"-- for encouraging a specific bad actor (or at least a specific class of bad actors) to murder other human beings. I say bad actor because ewjordan saw fit to emphasize-- using the heightened language "damn well"-- that everyone knows about the potential for ambiguity in the choice of text. People who jump on an ambiguity in a patriarchal society for a chance to do murder are clearly bad actors. Hence, the word scum probably seems like a fitting epithet for such a bad actor. The problem is that heightened language always ends up obscuring one's point. For example, is user dvfjsdhgfv agreeing with ewjordan or extending the critique more broadly to include people who aren't obviously bad actors? It isn't clear to me. User Kenji's logic is less ambiguous, however. Since it is "their culture" which "causes causes behaviour you'd expect of savages a couple thousand years ago", the use of the word "scum" is deemed appropriate. Yet, using "scum" to describe a "culture" is awkward, and seems to suggest that it is the inhabitants of that culture who are in fact being called "scum" here. Does that include both bad faith and good faith actors? User jballanc asks for clarification on this, and by now user lawly is apparently confident enough to give a one-word answer: "Yes." Finally, just to confirm that the understanding is that we're indeed applying the descriptor "scum" to large swaths of human beings, user jballanc gives the counter-argument based on that logic: > I mean, I'm no fan of the British, but I wouldn't call them "scum". This is why I try to avoid using heightened language especially when describing people who commit horrific acts.
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
How on earth should people who kill over words, no matter how offensive, be called? Really, in these times of twisting the meaning of words, we should really call spade a spade and not to hide behinds untrue cliches such as "all cultures are equal and should be respected equally". Not they're not and shouldn't be. If your "culture" demands that you pour acid over the face of your ex-girlfriend, it doesn't deserve to be called "culture", and you deserve to be called who you are.
- jlg23 9y ago
  I have no idea who you are responding too. Nobody in this thread claimed "all cultures are equal and should be respected equally". I was saying that cultures are vastly different and that showing complete disrespect for something you don't even understand will not help anybody at all. Acid-attacks, btw, are a mostly Indian specialty - try this in a honor based society and you have her family get at you sooner than you can write another uninformed "response" to something nobody ever said.

nine_k 9y ago

OK, the overreaction like this may be a cultural problem. But even without a problem like that, imagine a case when a wrong drug is administered to a patient, with deadly consequences, or a wrong turn is taken by a motorist, leading to a collision. To avoid this, things should be written in an unequivocal way. But for that, one has to realize how expensive a "negligibly small" mistake can be.

gumby 9y ago
> ...imagine a case when a wrong drug is administered to a patient, with deadly consequences... Out of band solutions are used to address these problems more comprehensively. The FDA regulates brand names for drugs for exactly this reason: avoid confusion and ambiguities. This is also one of the reasons for pharmacists, especially in hospitals. Mouse-clicking in a pull down list can easily select the wrong drug for the patient.
x1798DE 9y ago
To be fair, though, if you have two drugs that are separated only by very similar looking characters, that's a recipe for disaster anyway. Even ignoring the localization aspects, I wouldn't want two drugs separated only by the difference between i/l, u/v, etc.