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OP: "the demand for suppression of 'politically' offensive terms is ... a desire to make speech and thought malleable to political control." But OP feels that

OP: "the demand for suppression of 'politically' offensive terms is ... a desire to make speech and thought malleable to political control." But OP feels that using speech to make thought comfortable with owning slaves and thereby supporting the political support for slave-holding is OK. Noobs routinely ask, "The term is WHAT? But slavery is bad." The answer is, "Not in this case. This is a case where slavery is OK." After years of living with this language, this (admittedly small) support for slavery no longer disturbs the experienced programmer. The programmer will even say that, on this side, there is no thought control in the language, but on that side, there is.

DanAndersen 8y ago
Is there any evidence for your claim? Do programmers who view the word "slave" and "master" in a programming context poll higher on support for slavery? Should we expect that the ones pushing for changes, because they see the words "slave" and "master" more often than normal on their own computer screens (because they're in the habit of agitating for changes surrounding them), are secret would-be slave-owners because the words are infecting their brains? Slave slave slave slave slave. Master master master master master. By how many fractions of a percentage point have I increased your propensity for oppression now that you've viewed that? All this language control is an attempt to cargo-cult one's way to an imagined utopia. There's this idea that a perfect tolerant society, created ex nihilo, would obviously not have words for slave and master, so in order to get our own society towards it we should expunge those words. It's no different from a cargo cult in that it thinks that the outward effects can be summoned to bring about their typical cause.
- NPMaxwell 8y ago
  If there is no effect, then what is the OP's problem?

DanAndersen 8y ago

Is there any evidence for your claim? Do programmers who view the word "slave" and "master" in a programming context poll higher on support for slavery? Should we expect that the ones pushing for changes, because they see the words "slave" and "master" more often than normal on their own computer screens (because they're in the habit of agitating for changes surrounding them), are secret would-be slave-owners because the words are infecting their brains? Slave slave slave slave slave. Master master master master master. By how many fractions of a percentage point have I increased your propensity for oppression now that you've viewed that? All this language control is an attempt to cargo-cult one's way to an imagined utopia. There's this idea that a perfect tolerant society, created ex nihilo, would obviously not have words for slave and master, so in order to get our own society towards it we should expunge those words. It's no different from a cargo cult in that it thinks that the outward effects can be summoned to bring about their typical cause.

NPMaxwell 8y ago
If there is no effect, then what is the OP's problem?