4 ms·

Do a thought experiment and imagine that there was a negatively tinted term in software engineering with %YOURCOUNTRY% or %YOURNATIONALITY% or %YOURPHENOTYPICTR

Do a thought experiment and imagine that there was a negatively tinted term in software engineering with %YOURCOUNTRY% or %YOURNATIONALITY% or %YOURPHENOTYPICTRAIT% in the name. E.g., if you’re from the US, “American pointer dereference” or something like that. (A bit far-fetched; to really resonate the experiment should include some invented cultural baggage which is difficult to do on the spot.) I want to think I personally wouldn’t be insecure enough to be concerned by something like that, but I have to agree that some might feel uncomfortable even if the intent behind that term was benign. Whether getting rid of that term entirely is worth it or not is another question (how far should we go? do we spend human-months rewriting all Git histories to replace this term with an alternative currently in fashion? what if it changes again? etc.), but just stopping using it in new codebases might be relatively low-effort.

grawprog 6y ago
Yeah, you know what, i've personally experienced that more than once, it's not politically correct to say, but i'm not american so... and it happened in Richmond so meh... I've also met enough people from different places in the world to understand it happens to everybody for different reasons. Hell there's racism in the world I bet a lot of people don't even realize is an issue. An old Iranian coworker and a chinese coworker of mine hated eachother, for absolutely no reason other than racism. I also live in a place where the prevalent racism isn't the black/white stuff that goes on in america and where generally black and white people get along reasonably well. You're right, it's about culture and perspective. And that's what bugs me most about PC culture. It doesn't take into account culture and perspective. It doesn't take into account the fact that prejudice and racism depend heavily on where you are exactly in the world and it doesn't take into account the fact that a good majority of the things PC culture would consider racist isn't. All I know is, i've had a lot of great conversations that started with me or someone else asking. 'Hey, where are you from?' I can't think of one time when either me or someone else was offended by this yet... https://othersociologist.com/2017/07/15/where-are-you-from-racial-microaggressions/ https://othersociologist.com/2017/07/15/where-are-you-from-r...
- goblin89 6y ago
  > All I know is, i've had a lot of great conversations that started with me or someone else asking. > 'Hey, where are you from?' Once in Hong Kong I asked a taxi driver of Indian descent where he’s from, and felt awkward when he responded “Hong Kong”. This was a failure of applying the golden rule on my part, as I hate when others ask me that. I’m personally starting to think that, when strangers get together, crowds where there’s less profiling going on are where more interesting conversations tend to happen—and I really tend to take “where are you from?” as a fundamental profiling question (some don’t use it this way, but too many do). At the same time, perhaps paradoxically, the individual self-confidence that allows one to easily respond “yeah I might look X but I’m actually Y, yadda yadda” is also a great thing.
psyc 6y ago
Well, "beta releases" never for one moment reminded me of my failures in dating or leadership. But, to tangentially riff on your point, white straight cis males could never be recognized as even being capable of having such feelings, even if they had them. Only systematically oppressed peoples can feel that way, so it is said.
- goblin89 6y ago
  I believe for this experiment to be fair it requires an inborn, unalienable physical trait with particular cultural baggage that resonates with the negative connotation of the term. This combination isn’t that easy to come by, and might be hard to invent for those unaffected. “Beta” is unlikely to qualify (not unalienable); “master branch” maybe not (?); “blacklist” is debatable. Something involving country of origin/nationality/skin color might be it though (if the controversial cultural baggage condition is satisfied).
seanhunter 6y ago
> A bit far-fetched; to really resonate the experiment should include some invented cultural baggage which is difficult to do on the spot.) I'll give you a concrete example from the world of finance. In options there are two main forms of exercise. You can have options which can be exercised at expiry and options that can be exercised at any point.[1] When the economist Paul Samuelson started to work on Wall street he was told that he would never truly be able to understand options because he was American and therefore the maths would be too complicated for his mind[2]. So when he came up with the first pricing model that could handle warrants that exercise at any point he named the simple case (at expiry) "European" and the complex case "American" as a dig at his detractors. For that reason to this day we have European and American styles of option exercise.[3] [1]You can also have options that can be exercised on a given set of dates which are sort of a half-way house but that is a more exotic and recent phenomenon. It is called "Bermudan" because Bermuda is in the ocean between Europe and America. [2]When I worked in finance (2000-2008) some of this bias still existed. Our swaps desk was almost entirely French. [3] Reference for the story although it is well known and there are many others https://www.macroption.com/american-vs-european-options/#origin https://www.macroption.com/american-vs-european-options/#ori...
- goblin89 6y ago
  Seems relevant. How did you feel about that term? Did it trigger slight unease deep down? I do suspect that the fact that the US doesn’t have a recent history of being oppressed might discount it a little (if one is considered a dominant power, one can afford the luxury of taking some mild negging in stride). On the other hand, in case of e.g. “blacklist” — it meaning a list of people or entities to deny service — color of skin being unalienable phenotypical trait — history of black skin color used as basis for discrimination and oppression (and indeed denial of service) not long ago (or even now) — it could be a little trickier. I have no personal experience with either case, though, so who am I to judge.
  - seanhunter 6y ago
    I don't really have a credible opinion on this topic. That said there are lots of examples of this type of thing in language. Eg in ancient Rome they used to think left-handedness was unnatural, so to this day there are negative words like "Sinister" which literally in Latin means "left" and positive words (dextrous, dexterity etc) which derive from "dexter" which is Latin for "right". Also "adroit" in English means "able" where "a droit" in French means "to the right". And "gauche" means clumsy or lacking grace in English whereas in French it means "left" Likewise "hysterical" derives from "hyster" (Uterus) and stems from the idea that the female reproductive system made women mad and incapable. I feel like one of the things that people miss often in discussing these topics is the asymmetry of power. If you're one of the people who has historically been discriminated against you may well have different feelings from people who has historically doing the discriminating. We should listen to each other more and if these terms are a barrier then there really is no harm to using other terms. I think using friendly language is the least I can do from the point of view of being courteous to others.

grawprog 6y ago

Yeah, you know what, i've personally experienced that more than once, it's not politically correct to say, but i'm not american so... and it happened in Richmond so meh... I've also met enough people from different places in the world to understand it happens to everybody for different reasons. Hell there's racism in the world I bet a lot of people don't even realize is an issue. An old Iranian coworker and a chinese coworker of mine hated eachother, for absolutely no reason other than racism. I also live in a place where the prevalent racism isn't the black/white stuff that goes on in america and where generally black and white people get along reasonably well. You're right, it's about culture and perspective. And that's what bugs me most about PC culture. It doesn't take into account culture and perspective. It doesn't take into account the fact that prejudice and racism depend heavily on where you are exactly in the world and it doesn't take into account the fact that a good majority of the things PC culture would consider racist isn't. All I know is, i've had a lot of great conversations that started with me or someone else asking. 'Hey, where are you from?' I can't think of one time when either me or someone else was offended by this yet... https://othersociologist.com/2017/07/15/where-are-you-from-racial-microaggressions/ https://othersociologist.com/2017/07/15/where-are-you-from-r...

goblin89 6y ago
> All I know is, i've had a lot of great conversations that started with me or someone else asking. > 'Hey, where are you from?' Once in Hong Kong I asked a taxi driver of Indian descent where he’s from, and felt awkward when he responded “Hong Kong”. This was a failure of applying the golden rule on my part, as I hate when others ask me that. I’m personally starting to think that, when strangers get together, crowds where there’s less profiling going on are where more interesting conversations tend to happen—and I really tend to take “where are you from?” as a fundamental profiling question (some don’t use it this way, but too many do). At the same time, perhaps paradoxically, the individual self-confidence that allows one to easily respond “yeah I might look X but I’m actually Y, yadda yadda” is also a great thing.

psyc 6y ago

Well, "beta releases" never for one moment reminded me of my failures in dating or leadership. But, to tangentially riff on your point, white straight cis males could never be recognized as even being capable of having such feelings, even if they had them. Only systematically oppressed peoples can feel that way, so it is said.

goblin89 6y ago
I believe for this experiment to be fair it requires an inborn, unalienable physical trait with particular cultural baggage that resonates with the negative connotation of the term. This combination isn’t that easy to come by, and might be hard to invent for those unaffected. “Beta” is unlikely to qualify (not unalienable); “master branch” maybe not (?); “blacklist” is debatable. Something involving country of origin/nationality/skin color might be it though (if the controversial cultural baggage condition is satisfied).

seanhunter 6y ago

> A bit far-fetched; to really resonate the experiment should include some invented cultural baggage which is difficult to do on the spot.) I'll give you a concrete example from the world of finance. In options there are two main forms of exercise. You can have options which can be exercised at expiry and options that can be exercised at any point.[1] When the economist Paul Samuelson started to work on Wall street he was told that he would never truly be able to understand options because he was American and therefore the maths would be too complicated for his mind[2]. So when he came up with the first pricing model that could handle warrants that exercise at any point he named the simple case (at expiry) "European" and the complex case "American" as a dig at his detractors. For that reason to this day we have European and American styles of option exercise.[3] [1]You can also have options that can be exercised on a given set of dates which are sort of a half-way house but that is a more exotic and recent phenomenon. It is called "Bermudan" because Bermuda is in the ocean between Europe and America. [2]When I worked in finance (2000-2008) some of this bias still existed. Our swaps desk was almost entirely French. [3] Reference for the story although it is well known and there are many others https://www.macroption.com/american-vs-european-options/#origin https://www.macroption.com/american-vs-european-options/#ori...

goblin89 6y ago
Seems relevant. How did you feel about that term? Did it trigger slight unease deep down? I do suspect that the fact that the US doesn’t have a recent history of being oppressed might discount it a little (if one is considered a dominant power, one can afford the luxury of taking some mild negging in stride). On the other hand, in case of e.g. “blacklist” — it meaning a list of people or entities to deny service — color of skin being unalienable phenotypical trait — history of black skin color used as basis for discrimination and oppression (and indeed denial of service) not long ago (or even now) — it could be a little trickier. I have no personal experience with either case, though, so who am I to judge.
- seanhunter 6y ago
  I don't really have a credible opinion on this topic. That said there are lots of examples of this type of thing in language. Eg in ancient Rome they used to think left-handedness was unnatural, so to this day there are negative words like "Sinister" which literally in Latin means "left" and positive words (dextrous, dexterity etc) which derive from "dexter" which is Latin for "right". Also "adroit" in English means "able" where "a droit" in French means "to the right". And "gauche" means clumsy or lacking grace in English whereas in French it means "left" Likewise "hysterical" derives from "hyster" (Uterus) and stems from the idea that the female reproductive system made women mad and incapable. I feel like one of the things that people miss often in discussing these topics is the asymmetry of power. If you're one of the people who has historically been discriminated against you may well have different feelings from people who has historically doing the discriminating. We should listen to each other more and if these terms are a barrier then there really is no harm to using other terms. I think using friendly language is the least I can do from the point of view of being courteous to others.