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Can we please stop wondering about being politically correct and focus on the real problems of the world? Thanks! I would also like to add the fact that politi

Can we please stop wondering about being politically correct and focus on the real problems of the world? Thanks! I would also like to add the fact that politics or any social matter IMHO should be kept out of software in general. I don't think that any other engineering field has this much drama over some words that have been part of our whole life until now like IT is having.

cratermoon 6y ago
> politics or any social matter IMHO should be kept out of software in general How would that work?
- joh6nn 6y ago
  right? maybe Op would care to give examples of software issues that have no social or political ramifications?
  - denysvitali 6y ago
    Pure algorithms, for one. I don't think that Merge Sort for example has had or will ever have any political / social ramification. On the contrary, I see that now the SJW trend is to attack IT in general and make a huge deal out of terms that (given the context) are perfectly fine. I wonder how much it will take before we'll have to assign pronouns to the connetors or to the USB cables
    - aaomidi 6y ago
      We already assign pronouns and gender to connectors. Seems like you've not actually worked in IT if you don't know that? Pure algorithms have the capacity to change the world. Sometimes for the worse. An example of a pure algorithm with massive political and ethical considerations is crypto currency algorithms. I think a lot of people here would've benefited taking a basic "ethics in CS" class.
      - denysvitali 6y ago
        I wasn't talking about calling a female connector or a male connector, I was referring to the somewhat new trend of having to specify a pronoun in your Twitter bio because genders are non-binary. > Pure algorithms have the capacity to change the world. Sometimes for the worse. An example of a pure algorithm with massive political and ethical considerations is crypto currency algorithms. Nobody was arguing that. I just said that we shouldn't integrate politics into software, not the other way around. Obviously the code that we write is going to have an impact, but that's completely different from adding the impact from day 0 (e.g: software that spams propaganda in the stdout)
        whynaut 6y ago
        > I wasn't talking about calling a female connector or a male connector, then you’re gonna need to explain, because that’s pretty much exactly what you said. > Obviously the code that we write is going to have an impact, but that's completely different from adding the impact from day 0 (e.g: software that spams propaganda in the stdout) So it would seem you have no issue here.
      - ddvvff 6y ago
        Imagine speaking a non gender neutral language like spanish, how do they live with themselves
Troop4Christ 6y ago
Tell that to Dominion Voting Systems...
mason55 6y ago
Imagine if instead of master/slave the terms were master and "n-word". Would there be a reasonable argument to change it at that point? If you say "yes" then you agree there is a line somewhere. If that's the case then we should discuss where the line should be and why it should be there instead of saying "stop [worrying] about being politically correct". If you say "no" then your argument is that no words are too offensive to use or we shouldn't care if people are offended by any term at all. Which is an argument that you're free to have but if that's what's happening then make that argument and advocate for why it would be ok to use the n-word as a terminology as well. I think that in these discussions it's easy to get sidetracked because people are actually arguing different points without realizing it. You're talking about the same scenario but you're arguing from different premises which means there's no hope of coming to a shared understanding because you're not actually talking about what you disagree on.
- da_big_ghey 6y ago
  Master/slave has a technical meaning beyond the sense of one person enslaving another. "Nigger" has no use case outside of making horrible and offensive remarks, aside from historical writing (e.g. To Kill a Mockingbird) or making a point about racism, cases in which it is accepted.
  - mason55 6y ago
    So, two things (and I realize you aren't the person I originally replied to). 1. Your argument here is implicitly agreeing with my point number one. There are terms that would be considered too offensive and so the conversation is about where the line falls. We can't just say "let's not ever talk about whether a term is offensive" because there are some that we really wouldn't want to use, and so we should be talking about what terms are too offensive and why. 2. This is the conversation what what's too offensive and why. "Master/slave" only has technical meaning because we've been using it that way for awhile. But master/slave was originally picked because of its meaning in the historical context of slavery. The terminology itself has no inherent technical meaning. So, to me at least, that is not a great argument for why we shouldn't change it now. But at least this part of the discussion is two people talking about the same premise and not arguing past each other.
mikepurvis 6y ago
I think there is a growing awareness in the mainstream that, in fact, everything is political, and that people who thought thing X wasn't previously and are upset that it apparently is now are simply in the early stages of discovering the privilege they've enjoyed in being society's default gender, race, culture, etc: https://brettclt.medium.com/why-is-everything-political-because-we-tried-to-pretend-that-nothing-is-9461ec1c1bce https://brettclt.medium.com/why-is-everything-political-beca...

cratermoon 6y ago

> politics or any social matter IMHO should be kept out of software in general How would that work?

joh6nn 6y ago
right? maybe Op would care to give examples of software issues that have no social or political ramifications?
- denysvitali 6y ago
  Pure algorithms, for one. I don't think that Merge Sort for example has had or will ever have any political / social ramification. On the contrary, I see that now the SJW trend is to attack IT in general and make a huge deal out of terms that (given the context) are perfectly fine. I wonder how much it will take before we'll have to assign pronouns to the connetors or to the USB cables
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    We already assign pronouns and gender to connectors. Seems like you've not actually worked in IT if you don't know that? Pure algorithms have the capacity to change the world. Sometimes for the worse. An example of a pure algorithm with massive political and ethical considerations is crypto currency algorithms. I think a lot of people here would've benefited taking a basic "ethics in CS" class.
    - denysvitali 6y ago
      I wasn't talking about calling a female connector or a male connector, I was referring to the somewhat new trend of having to specify a pronoun in your Twitter bio because genders are non-binary. > Pure algorithms have the capacity to change the world. Sometimes for the worse. An example of a pure algorithm with massive political and ethical considerations is crypto currency algorithms. Nobody was arguing that. I just said that we shouldn't integrate politics into software, not the other way around. Obviously the code that we write is going to have an impact, but that's completely different from adding the impact from day 0 (e.g: software that spams propaganda in the stdout)
      - whynaut 6y ago
        > I wasn't talking about calling a female connector or a male connector, then you’re gonna need to explain, because that’s pretty much exactly what you said. > Obviously the code that we write is going to have an impact, but that's completely different from adding the impact from day 0 (e.g: software that spams propaganda in the stdout) So it would seem you have no issue here.
    - ddvvff 6y ago
      Imagine speaking a non gender neutral language like spanish, how do they live with themselves

Troop4Christ 6y ago

Tell that to Dominion Voting Systems...

mason55 6y ago

Imagine if instead of master/slave the terms were master and "n-word". Would there be a reasonable argument to change it at that point? If you say "yes" then you agree there is a line somewhere. If that's the case then we should discuss where the line should be and why it should be there instead of saying "stop [worrying] about being politically correct". If you say "no" then your argument is that no words are too offensive to use or we shouldn't care if people are offended by any term at all. Which is an argument that you're free to have but if that's what's happening then make that argument and advocate for why it would be ok to use the n-word as a terminology as well. I think that in these discussions it's easy to get sidetracked because people are actually arguing different points without realizing it. You're talking about the same scenario but you're arguing from different premises which means there's no hope of coming to a shared understanding because you're not actually talking about what you disagree on.

da_big_ghey 6y ago
Master/slave has a technical meaning beyond the sense of one person enslaving another. "Nigger" has no use case outside of making horrible and offensive remarks, aside from historical writing (e.g. To Kill a Mockingbird) or making a point about racism, cases in which it is accepted.
- mason55 6y ago
  So, two things (and I realize you aren't the person I originally replied to). 1. Your argument here is implicitly agreeing with my point number one. There are terms that would be considered too offensive and so the conversation is about where the line falls. We can't just say "let's not ever talk about whether a term is offensive" because there are some that we really wouldn't want to use, and so we should be talking about what terms are too offensive and why. 2. This is the conversation what what's too offensive and why. "Master/slave" only has technical meaning because we've been using it that way for awhile. But master/slave was originally picked because of its meaning in the historical context of slavery. The terminology itself has no inherent technical meaning. So, to me at least, that is not a great argument for why we shouldn't change it now. But at least this part of the discussion is two people talking about the same premise and not arguing past each other.

mikepurvis 6y ago

I think there is a growing awareness in the mainstream that, in fact, everything is political, and that people who thought thing X wasn't previously and are upset that it apparently is now are simply in the early stages of discovering the privilege they've enjoyed in being society's default gender, race, culture, etc: https://brettclt.medium.com/why-is-everything-political-because-we-tried-to-pretend-that-nothing-is-9461ec1c1bce https://brettclt.medium.com/why-is-everything-political-beca...