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If I say "you are the master of your own destiny", is that offensive, because the word "master" is always offensive? I think that "main branch" sounds fine, it
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
If I say "you are the master of your own destiny", is that offensive, because the word "master" is always offensive?
I think that "main branch" sounds fine, it makes as much sense as "master branch", but I'm irked that people are always caving to word policing. Like, we're just going to scratch a whole bunch of words from the dictionary because someone somewhere is offended? The other day, people at my workplace were saying that expressions like "blind spot" and "falling on deaf ears" needed to be purged. AFAIK, "blind spot" is not actually about blind people, it's a term related to driving and the angles seeing people can't see in without looking.
- throwaheyy 6y agoNot sure I understand the idea of banning words being taken so far. I always interpreted Git’s usage of ‘master’ to mean the original replica. Like the golden master of a record or CD.
- kyawzazaw 6y agothis has been explained further again and again
- pseudalopex 6y agoNobody banned anything. They changed a default. Git was developed to replace Bitkeeper. Git's usage of master probably comes from Bitkeeper's usage of master and slave.
- throwaheyy 6y agoOk, that’s maybe a bit different.
- wayneftw 6y agoNo, the guy who picked the name "master", Petr Baudis, explained why he picked it: > "master" as in e.g. "master recording". https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441 https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272280760280637441
- pseudalopex 6y agoI hadn't seen that. Thanks! He also said "it's not unlikely at all" it was influenced by Bitkeeper[1] and he's "wished many times" he picked main instead[2]. [1] https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272958618124595201 https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1272958618124595201 [2] https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1271477451756056577 https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1271477451756056577
- throwaway894345 6y agoNot only this, but the idea that we should focus our efforts on these utter non-problems (no one has ever been harmed or disenfranchised in any way by the use of this term) as opposed to any of the very real problems our society faces (environment, growing inequality, etc) is itself a real problem. And the people who are meant to be the "victims" of these issues almost never take offense or issue (e.g., Japanese opinions on the little girl's geisha-themed party or Chinese opinions on the traditional-Chinese themed prom dress, or African American opinions on defunding the police, or etc). The people who take offense are very often not even members of these "victim groups", but rather people who believe race is the preeminently useful characteristic of any person and that races have agency and collective guilt/accomplishment and so on (i.e., "racism" in a literal, classical sense).
- stnmtn 6y agoTo me this point never makes much sense, do you really believe that a change as small as a naming convention switch means that we can't focus on real problems? It doesn't make sense and is a non-sequitur argument
- vlovich123 6y agoAt a minimum you should be considering organizational change fatigue. It takes expenditure of political capital to enact these changes even if you don’t see it right away. Spending it on this does mean you’re less able to spend it on others. So asking “is this the most important thing to spend that capital on?” doesn’t seem like a bad question. Additionally, if someone perceives you as being wasteful in how you choose to spend that capital they may be even more resistant in the future to changes that are far less cosmetic.
- kruczek 6y ago> a change as small as a naming convention This "small" change had to be split into 29 parts, so that each part stays below 100kB. This means nearly 3MB of changed code. How many hours did developers have to spend to consider what needs to be changed, make the change and then validate it? In my opinion these are hours wasted, that could be better spent on some real problems.
- tbrake 6y agoIn the grand scheme of slippery slopes this change isn't even at an angle.
- tachyonbeam 6y agoI fully agree that this specific change is insignificant, but the biggest deep learning conference has been renamed, after something like 20 years, because of this kind of pressure. Word policing has a bit of a 1984 feel to it. Some desire to control you and how you think by controlling which words you use, with new arbitrary words being banned all the time. Instead of actual change, we're focusing on the superficial.
- joh6nn 6y agoyou're having it both ways in your comment here: if it's only superficial and doesn't actually change anything, then you can safely ignore it. it only matters if it is actually controlling how you think (in which case, it is not superficial and is an actual change) you can argue that it is the wrong change, or that the end doesn't justify the means, etc, but it doesn't make sense to say that it is both thought control, and superficial
- tachyonbeam 6y agoIt's superficial as in it's addressing the wrong problem. You're not going to undo racism by eliminating the word master from spoken and written language. A word, which, once again, has multiple meanings. It's like you guys don't understand that context and intent matter 1000 times more than the choice of words. It's wrong because trying to censor the way everyone expresses themselves because a hypothetical person might be offended is a form of bullying.
- wadkar 6y agoI can assure you that I have seen 30+ year old graduate students giggle and try not to laugh in the Machine Learning Departments at CMU whenever that conference name was dropped in the office. I mean, you would think people would grow up, right? I am glad our female colleagues don’t have to suppress their embarrassment while mentioning the conference anymore.
- eloisius 6y agoWhat you’re saying is really tone de— I mean insensitive
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoIt depends on the person. Likely some people could be offended and some people wouldn't. The more relevant question is, should we care about those people's feelings. We could apply this suggested rationale to any hypothetical or actual use of language. What people find offensive tends to be deeply personal. Look at comedians who tell a joke that 'cross a line' -- some people will say it's nothing, some people will say it was far too much. Interpretation and judgment of offensiveness is largely shaped by individual life experience.
- tachyonbeam 6y agoIt seems to me like the people actually forcing these superficial changes through shaming and bullying are actually, for the most part, privileged upper middle class white people. That was definitely the case with the NIPS => NeurIPS conference renaming. That whole thing got started by some white dude on twitter.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoSo, let's apply the process. Suppose Person A says something, and Person B thinks another colleague, Person C, might find offensive. That alone may be enough to offend Person B. They feel Person A may be creating an uncomfortable environment, intentional or not. Person C may not even be actually offended, but other people of Person C's {race,sex,etc} have been offended by similar statements. How people apply judgment is an individual process. Should we care about how any of these people feel? Is Person {A,B,C} right or wrong to feel how they do? We can't control how other people feel about things, but we can try our best as individuals to promote welcoming environments, but recognize we are human and won't always get it right.
- throwaway894345 6y agoThe problem (IMO) is a growing distrust of Person B, because that guy keeps policing everything and everyone such that he appears to be using Person C's {race,sex,etc} to prop up and brandish his own moral authority in a way that Person C finds to be annoying and perhaps even actually offensive. Person B doesn't even care about the real issues affecting Person C or even the collective as a whole, and every time these issues are talked about Person B interrupts to speak on behalf of Person C or perhaps even accusing Person A (or whomever) of racism/sexism/etc for bringing up these issues which distract from Person B's personal crusade with respect to Person C's identity. By all appearances, Person B isn't acting in good faith, and his behavior in aggregate is causing a lot of problems and certainly isn't advancing his purported goal of "promoting a welcoming environment".
- zaksoup 6y agoI don’t really get this sentiment. Are you so absolutely dedicated to the phrase “falling on deaf ears” that if somebody says to you “hey, that phrase might hurt somebody’s feelings, can you use an alternative” you take it as some sort of massive imposition on your life? I don’t understand why small changes that can be done in kindness are seen as so inconvenient as to be worth this level of rejection. I’m hearing impaired. “Falling on deaf ears” is a phrase that honestly does kind of bug me. People use it to mean being ignored for idealogical reasons but often the reason I, somebody with an actual hearing impairment, don’t react to something is because the person trying to communicate with me isn’t doing a great job of accommodating that. I tell me coworkers “I’m hearing impaired, please speak loudly and slowly if the environment is noisy” but they still mumble and get annoyed with me when I ask them to repeat. Idk man, if you feel like this is language policing I recommend you walk a few years in my shoes and come back to me.
- tachyonbeam 6y agoI think you make a genuine argument with respect to "falling on deaf ears".
- zaksoup 6y agoThank you! Given that, why is it so difficult to assume that folks might be making a genuine argument with respect to "master/main"?
- eloisius 6y agoIf “small” change offends me because of my tiny stature would you please consider being more precise and saying “inconsequential” or “trivial” change instead of making a spatial analogy for its magnitude?
- zaksoup 6y agoI said this to another commenter who pointed out that "walk in my shoes" could be excluding language to folks who are paraplegic, I'm honestly happy to hear this feedback and consider using more inclusive language. Frankly this is good feedback simply from a precise communication perspective. We often use special metaphors when we mean to describe complexity, and "trivial" would more easily communicate what I meant regardless. This came up recently in my romantic relationship: I used "small" to describe an emotional feeling I was having and it did hurt the feelings of my partner, who is short. They didn't like that size was used to describe a negative emotion and I appreciated that they shared that with me and gave me an opportunity to think about a more precise way of communicating my feelings that didn't connect a negative connotation to something they identified with. Why is this so hard to understand that I would seek to live this way? I think we should be excited to practice radical compassion with each other.
- ldjb 6y agoSimilarly, I have worked in places where the word "brainstorming" (as in, "a brainstorming session") was banned because of its apparent offensiveness towards those with epilepsy. The funny thing is, 93% of people with epilepsy do not find the term offensive. https://www.epilepsy.org.uk/press/facts/brainstorming-offensive https://www.epilepsy.org.uk/press/facts/brainstorming-offens...
- ironSkillet 6y agoDo people have nothing better to do with their time than research and implement these policies?
- bit-rot 6y agoWhat's funny to me about your comment is that you actually chose a perfect example of the importance of critical thinking in how we discuss terminology. The message behind the English idiom you chose is clearly one of self empowerment; /you/ are the master of /your own/ destiny implies independence, freedom, and agency. In the context of git, and distributed systems more broadly, `master` is specifically chosen for its association with a power differential between one special entity giving the orders, and some collection of other entities taking the orders. In some DB systems, for example, the language is as literal as `master/s`. Even without "s" in use with `git`, there's a clear association with `master` being the branch that broadly holds sway above the other branches. We chose symbols and metaphors to aid in our mental modeling of complex systems. I'm further amused by your own choice of "policing" to describe a push for cultural healing coming from a minority population. I recommend reading up on the history of policing to see why this metaphor is ill-advised. > Like, we're just going to scratch a whole bunch of words from the dictionary because someone somewhere is offended? This is a strawman; nobody is calling for this. > The other day, people at my workplace were saying that expressions like "blind spot" and "falling on deaf ears" needed to be purged. Based on your use of "policing" and "[scratching] from the dictionary" I'm wondering whether these folks literally said "purged" in their own language. But otherwise, cool, it sounds like they are exhibiting the positive human trait of compassion. If a disabled person tells me they'd prefer I don't use this idiom, I'd happily find another way of saying the same thing. What's the big deal? > AFAIK, "blind spot" is not actually about blind people, it's a term related to driving and the angles seeing people can't see in without looking. This isn't really how language works though, is it? When people are forging associations with words or phrases, they're not opening a webster's dictionary, but rather drawing on a complex web of cultural associations. A more extreme version of your argument here is that it's unreasonable to be rattled by the use of a swatstika in western culture, since the /original/ meaning behind that symbol was one of peace. Nobody would buy that. However, in certain east asian cultures, the symbol is still in use for more positive associations. The specific choice of `master` as a symbol in distributed systems holds meaning due to its evocation of a power differential. Whether this is intentionally "bad" holds no meaning whatsoever. What does it say about us if we can't honestly hold some degree of empathy for someone who, affected by a violent history of subjugation and dominance, might not love the idea of using symbols chosen for their hierarchical power association?
- tdy_err 6y agoI thought the same but when I looked it up out of curiosity I was surprised to see the primary (probably most established) definition of master is ~ “one who owns people”.
- edejong 6y agoOh really, where did you look it up? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/master https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/master
- warmwaffles 6y agoPack it up, we need to rename the Masters degree to something else. Heh.
- heyoni 6y agoYou mean the “main degree?”
- tachyonbeam 6y agoCertification of Proficiency?
- sharken 6y agoSometimes I tend to divide the world into developers and non-developers. It is just another way of saying those who gets things done and those who don’t. People who take offense with these minor issues are very likely those who don’t get things done. Not sure what to do about it except fight it every step of the way.
- biryani_chicken 6y agoLike I heard someone say, Julius Cesar was a bad guy, but we probably don't wanna change the name of the month of July.
- rzz3 6y ago> Like, we're just going to scratch a whole bunch of words from the dictionary because someone somewhere is offended? This. Context and intention is everything.