5 ms·

This is a bit longer than I intended, but is my point of view, and not intended to dismiss what you’re saying at all. I think it’s easy to dismiss conversation

by JoBrad 6y ago

This is a bit longer than I intended, but is my point of view, and not intended to dismiss what you’re saying at all. I think it’s easy to dismiss conversations like master/slave whitelist/blacklist as overly PC or childish. I certainly don’t appreciate the overly-preachy feeling I sometimes get from people pushing their point of view. And my nature is to find pleasure in giving The Man the proverbial finger. The self righteousness can be intentional on their part, of course, but many times it’s not. I honestly get the similar feelings about the diet-of-the-year fad, too. I have been very lucky in life so far, in that I haven’t struggled with weight or the negative impacts of racism. But I’m discovering that language is an incredibly powerful tool for changing deeply-rooted habits, like which foods you find comfort in, or your default reaction to conflict. When I’ve become an unwilling participant in these changes, I have to ask myself: what is the balance of pros/cons for me and for others? Also, what is my net influence on others who are attempting to do good (no matter my opinion on its effectiveness)? I don’t think I’ve ever changed the default branch for any GitHub repo I’ve worked with. It should theoretically cause no issues at all, I suppose, but I can’t state that with certainty. So there’s a bit of a challenge that I’ll actually enjoy. And I’m not aware of any culture or richness of vocabulary that depends on the dynamic of this set of nomenclature. Besides, I still see words like “serf” and “lord” on a semi-regular basis despite it’s remove from our lifestyles, so these words aren’t disappearing any time soon. On the other hand, it’s hard to deny that racism has scarred our society very deeply. I remember being shocked when my wife told me how young age was when someone first attempted to take advantage of her for sex. I recently felt the same level of shock when my friend told me that she gets called the n word multiple times every day. If our vocabulary can change our mindset, then maybe removing the master/slave dynamic can be a net positive, like removing the vocabulary of war from our daily interactions. We end up turning to other defaults instead of the old ones. Maybe we end up no better off, and decide to change again. Who knows? But personally I don’t see a lot of downside in the attempt to better our world.

bendergarcia 6y ago
More hacker news users need to read this comment. Thanks for posting.
gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
> If our vocabulary can change our mindset, then maybe removing the master/slave dynamic can be a net positive, like removing the vocabulary of war from our daily interactions. I'm not sure what you mean by "removing the vocabulary of war". > But personally I don’t see a lot of downside in the attempt to better our world. I see tons of downsides; people are losing their livelihoods over the mere appearance of impropriety defined by activist narratives. Putting so much weight into these types of things may unexpectedly cause us to view social justice in the hollow terms of performative things like word choice instead of actual equality, etc.
- jeromegv 6y ago
  Which jobs have been lost by the master/slave debate? I see people losing job after harassing Black bird watchers in park due to public outrage, but I don't see a lot based on those vocabulary discussion.
  - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
    You know as well as anyone that people are losing jobs over the appearance of impropriety along very unforgiving, if not baseless grounds. Probably the most egregious so far is David Shor. These aren't racists, they're pretty normal liberals being singled out for any divergence from the BLM (organization not the ideal - read: Marxist ideologues) narrative. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/06/case-for-liberalism-tom-cotton-new-york-times-james-bennet.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/06/case-for-liberal... Along similar lines, this guy that got booted from a climate change event for a past tweet that mildly linked COVID-19 and China: >"COVID has taught us that the world is far more interconnected that we originally thought...we can’t always put ourselves first at the expense of others. > > It’s also made us realize that we are far too dependent on—and gracious to—China." https://twitter.com/BenjiBacker/status/1273042888864206848 https://twitter.com/BenjiBacker/status/1273042888864206848
  - downerending 6y ago
    I've recently been told at my job that it's a firing offense.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
My initial thoughts on the matter were similar to yours. Why not perform a simple search and replace on the source code for a contentious word? Or click a few buttons to change the default branch? The problem is in the unintended consequences. Once we started accommodating requests to change potentially-problematic words at my last company, those words went from "possibly problematic to someone" to "officially confirmed as offensive by company policy". From that point forward, many people assumed that anyone accidentally using those words had ill intent. This peaked when an interviewer chastised a candidate for referring to the "master branch" during an interview. We also had someone try to cause problems because our Linux systems had "man pages", which they believed was proof that Linux distributions were sexist. It's one thing to search/replace your documentation for a specific word, but just wait until you have a team of people brainstorming complex plans to remove "man pages" from every Linux PC and server in the company. Ironically, once we stopped making company-endorsed efforts to navigate problematic vocabulary, the number of people offended or insulted started to decline. The policies had the opposite of the intended effect. It's one thing to make a personal effort to use a less contentious vocabulary. I have no problem with that, nor should anyone else. However, the problems come when using industry-standard vocabulary is assumed to have ill intent. No one wants to operate in an environment where they can be declared to be racist, sexist, or otherwise prejudiced for using a basic technology term without ill intent.
- downerending 6y ago
  > people assumed that anyone accidentally using those words had ill intent That's becoming a thing at my current job. I'm just accepting that I will eventually slip (or even just fail to keep up with the trendy list of bad words) and get fired. Guess it's better than being eaten by a bear.
- zjs 6y ago
  > We also had someone try to cause problems because our Linux systems had "man pages", which they believed was proof that Linux distributions were sexist. This is a really interesting example. Naively, I'd expect the meaning of a word to matter. Do you know if the person advocating for this understood the etymology?
sigzero 6y ago
Git doesn't have master/slave terminology. It has a master "copy" which is not the same thing at all. It's a stupid conversation. Really it is.
- JoBrad 6y ago
  I've seen at least one interesting conversation that casts at least doubt on that. https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/msg00066.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/... But even the use of the word "master" as it relates to the primary copy seems to be related to a master, as in one who guides or rules others. So that seems to still be related to the master/servant relationship. I'm not an etymologist, so someone could point an error here. https://www.etymonline.com/word/master https://www.etymonline.com/word/master The point isn't that every person from Linus on has been engaged in a giant conspiracy to spread hate via git repos (Side note: would there be a secret code you can interpret by arranging hashes in a particular order?). The point is really that our language and culture contain countless reminders of the belief that not all people should be treated with equal value, to the point that we've been using them without regard to or even understanding of their impact.
nickik 6y ago
> like removing the vocabulary of war from our daily interactions What I find funny is that the 'vocabulary of war' gets about 100000000x more actual discussions of war and how the US is regularly killing people and has been engaged in ongoing war for 20 years and about 1000s of other way more harmful things. Apparently nobody gives a single shit about that stuff. I don't really care about changing the vocabulary for these technical terms and enough people go crazy over it then lets just change it so I don't have to deal with the discussion. I certainty wont waste any energy defending the master/slave terminology, I doesn't really make any sense anyway in DBs specially. Changing the default away from 'master' in git seem totally pointless as the term master is not only used in a master/slave context but in many other context as well. Its not like we have the master branch and slave branches. Again, I also don't care if we change it. One of the issue with white/black is that the night bad, day good dynamic goes back 10000s of years. The same patterns exist in African and eastern religion and imaginary, so not sure purging all use of the color black for 'bad' is sensible. Is the term Blackmagic or Black Humor also offensive now? I don't even no. I like Black metal, is that offensive? I hope not because that would be taking it to far.
- JoBrad 6y ago
  I agree that overly-aggressive terminology is widely used, pretty much everywhere. Clickbait articles particularly: “They evicerated/destroyed/devastated them”.

by JoBrad 6y ago

bendergarcia 6y ago

More hacker news users need to read this comment. Thanks for posting.

gnusty_gnurc 6y ago

> If our vocabulary can change our mindset, then maybe removing the master/slave dynamic can be a net positive, like removing the vocabulary of war from our daily interactions. I'm not sure what you mean by "removing the vocabulary of war". > But personally I don’t see a lot of downside in the attempt to better our world. I see tons of downsides; people are losing their livelihoods over the mere appearance of impropriety defined by activist narratives. Putting so much weight into these types of things may unexpectedly cause us to view social justice in the hollow terms of performative things like word choice instead of actual equality, etc.

jeromegv 6y ago
Which jobs have been lost by the master/slave debate? I see people losing job after harassing Black bird watchers in park due to public outrage, but I don't see a lot based on those vocabulary discussion.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  You know as well as anyone that people are losing jobs over the appearance of impropriety along very unforgiving, if not baseless grounds. Probably the most egregious so far is David Shor. These aren't racists, they're pretty normal liberals being singled out for any divergence from the BLM (organization not the ideal - read: Marxist ideologues) narrative. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/06/case-for-liberalism-tom-cotton-new-york-times-james-bennet.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/06/case-for-liberal... Along similar lines, this guy that got booted from a climate change event for a past tweet that mildly linked COVID-19 and China: >"COVID has taught us that the world is far more interconnected that we originally thought...we can’t always put ourselves first at the expense of others. > > It’s also made us realize that we are far too dependent on—and gracious to—China." https://twitter.com/BenjiBacker/status/1273042888864206848 https://twitter.com/BenjiBacker/status/1273042888864206848
- downerending 6y ago
  I've recently been told at my job that it's a firing offense.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

My initial thoughts on the matter were similar to yours. Why not perform a simple search and replace on the source code for a contentious word? Or click a few buttons to change the default branch? The problem is in the unintended consequences. Once we started accommodating requests to change potentially-problematic words at my last company, those words went from "possibly problematic to someone" to "officially confirmed as offensive by company policy". From that point forward, many people assumed that anyone accidentally using those words had ill intent. This peaked when an interviewer chastised a candidate for referring to the "master branch" during an interview. We also had someone try to cause problems because our Linux systems had "man pages", which they believed was proof that Linux distributions were sexist. It's one thing to search/replace your documentation for a specific word, but just wait until you have a team of people brainstorming complex plans to remove "man pages" from every Linux PC and server in the company. Ironically, once we stopped making company-endorsed efforts to navigate problematic vocabulary, the number of people offended or insulted started to decline. The policies had the opposite of the intended effect. It's one thing to make a personal effort to use a less contentious vocabulary. I have no problem with that, nor should anyone else. However, the problems come when using industry-standard vocabulary is assumed to have ill intent. No one wants to operate in an environment where they can be declared to be racist, sexist, or otherwise prejudiced for using a basic technology term without ill intent.

downerending 6y ago
> people assumed that anyone accidentally using those words had ill intent That's becoming a thing at my current job. I'm just accepting that I will eventually slip (or even just fail to keep up with the trendy list of bad words) and get fired. Guess it's better than being eaten by a bear.
zjs 6y ago
> We also had someone try to cause problems because our Linux systems had "man pages", which they believed was proof that Linux distributions were sexist. This is a really interesting example. Naively, I'd expect the meaning of a word to matter. Do you know if the person advocating for this understood the etymology?

sigzero 6y ago

Git doesn't have master/slave terminology. It has a master "copy" which is not the same thing at all. It's a stupid conversation. Really it is.

JoBrad 6y ago
I've seen at least one interesting conversation that casts at least doubt on that. https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/msg00066.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/... But even the use of the word "master" as it relates to the primary copy seems to be related to a master, as in one who guides or rules others. So that seems to still be related to the master/servant relationship. I'm not an etymologist, so someone could point an error here. https://www.etymonline.com/word/master https://www.etymonline.com/word/master The point isn't that every person from Linus on has been engaged in a giant conspiracy to spread hate via git repos (Side note: would there be a secret code you can interpret by arranging hashes in a particular order?). The point is really that our language and culture contain countless reminders of the belief that not all people should be treated with equal value, to the point that we've been using them without regard to or even understanding of their impact.

nickik 6y ago

> like removing the vocabulary of war from our daily interactions What I find funny is that the 'vocabulary of war' gets about 100000000x more actual discussions of war and how the US is regularly killing people and has been engaged in ongoing war for 20 years and about 1000s of other way more harmful things. Apparently nobody gives a single shit about that stuff. I don't really care about changing the vocabulary for these technical terms and enough people go crazy over it then lets just change it so I don't have to deal with the discussion. I certainty wont waste any energy defending the master/slave terminology, I doesn't really make any sense anyway in DBs specially. Changing the default away from 'master' in git seem totally pointless as the term master is not only used in a master/slave context but in many other context as well. Its not like we have the master branch and slave branches. Again, I also don't care if we change it. One of the issue with white/black is that the night bad, day good dynamic goes back 10000s of years. The same patterns exist in African and eastern religion and imaginary, so not sure purging all use of the color black for 'bad' is sensible. Is the term Blackmagic or Black Humor also offensive now? I don't even no. I like Black metal, is that offensive? I hope not because that would be taking it to far.

JoBrad 6y ago
I agree that overly-aggressive terminology is widely used, pretty much everywhere. Clickbait articles particularly: “They evicerated/destroyed/devastated them”.