8 ms·

In my opinion, that might be a sign that the idea of drawing abstract connections between words and concepts, that are several layers of indirection apart, may

In my opinion, that might be a sign that the idea of drawing abstract connections between words and concepts, that are several layers of indirection apart, may be going too far. Yeah using language that upsets people is bad, but if you allow enough layers between words and concepts, _everything_ can be argued to be offensive for one reason or another. Or will be soon once something else becomes a hot button issue.

kleer001 5y ago
> using language that upsets people is bad Shouldn't be. Intent should be the grounds for upset, intent only. Otherwise you get a Euphemism Treadmill, and that's a goddamn fucking waste of time.
- godelski 5y ago
  > intent only. I disagree. Intent matters, a lot, and you're right, but it isn't the only thing. Right now I think we fall on the other side, that reception is all that matters (in the bias training I receive they specifically mention that it is 100% reception and not intent). I believe the law works on reception because that's easier to quantify. Intent is very tricky. You can do something that most people would consider wrong and just say "well I didn't mean it that way." (the inverse can happen too, but less people are likely to start a legal case out of spite compared to people defending themselves. It is tricky) I believe that there is a middle ground somewhere. Where that is I'm not sure and I think we need to work together as a society to figure that out. I think somewhere in there there is a "reasonable" set of norms, and we have other laws to suggest that we can use this as a basis. But even this can be tricky as there are many different cultural norms and customs. It isn't even just ethnic customs. In America we have very different regional customs that often butt heads. I think we need to recognize that people are different and operate based on different values and often this is fine. But I think a big thing we've lost in our current standing is good faith. There's three parts to any form of communication. 1) The idea that is within one's head that they are trying to convey to the other person. 2) The words, body language, inflection, etc that are used to codify this idea (aka: encoding). 3) The understanding of that language that was used to convey the idea (aka: decoding). Humans are pretty good encoders and decoders (we wouldn't have made it here where we are if we weren't) but there are limitations. Language is extremely messy and we often don't think it is because we're so used to it. But you can look at words being used today and you'll often find that people are talking past one another because they are using different definitions of the same word and actively refuse to interpret the other person's intended message (as an example, every internet conversation about capitalism/socialism/communism). The point of communication is to pass one idea from one head to another head. It requires understanding that there are these three components. If we do not act in good faith then we cannot communicate. With that knowledge it suggests there are two different actions to take if one wants to act in good faith. The communicator should try to encode their thoughts as best as they can, attempting to understand their audience (aka: speak to your audience). BUT we often forget that the listener's job is to decode, to do their best to determine the idea that the communicator is trying to convey (aka: __intent__). In fights we will say "but you said..." even knowing what was intended as a way to win. This is not in good faith but is so prevalent. When conversations are about mic drops and one upping another person, communication cannot be had.
  - Rebelgecko 5y ago
    To you point about intent vs reception, I think the way the law works is actually more along the lines of "how a reasonable person might receive this". Which is perhaps harder to quantify, but IMO strikes a good balance. However I totally agree with your point about how some communication has become more about scoring points than having an empathetic and thoughtful dialogue
- SilverRed 5y ago
  This would save so much time wasting. When someone says "Can you push that to the master branch" there is nothing that ties that statement to slavery or racism so there is nothing wrong with it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - zarzavat 5y ago
    The best thing to do is to ignore these people, they will never be happy so there's no point trying to please them. If you ignore someone who is never happy then in time they may respect you, but if you always comply then they will never respect you and their perceived power over you simply increases, which means they feel empowered to ask for more and more.
    - russelldjimmy 5y ago
      Exactly
    - reedjosh 5y ago
      But how will tech Cos show they're woke if they can't just change the names of things and say they did something important? It's literally a bragging point at my new Co.
      - jaimex2 5y ago
        Anyone else intentionally making master branches in new repos at work? It's hilarious watching the amount of mental energy people waste on this.
    - commandlinefan 5y ago
      > ignore these people Unfortunately for the rest of us, they've been put in charge.
      - kleer001 5y ago
- mc32 5y ago
  It reminds me of all the synonyms and symbols, homophones and homographs Chinese use when referring to mr Xi on Weibo, etc., including the now censored Winnie the Pooh. To get around the censorship which blocks mentioning of me Xi in unflattering light. It’s ever evolving to keep ahead of the censors.
  - BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
    Check out “Euphemism Treadmill”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmil...
- soheil 5y ago
  thinks the case of yelling fire in a movie theater jokingly
  - Clubber 5y ago
    Yelling fire in a movie theater is perfectly legal and protected speech, even if false. It's only illegal if what is said is "likely to incite imminent lawless action," like a riot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the... It's funny, this is often presented as a supporting example to limit citizens' free speech or other rights, typically paired with something along the lines of, "no freedom is limitless." Of course many people don't realize this example is a) outdated and currently false, and b) the argument used against citizens speaking out against WWI using the Espionage Act of 1917, which is considered by many to be one of the worst and oppressive laws to our rights ever written. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917 You may recognize the names of some of the act's victims: Among those charged with offenses under the Act are German-American socialist congressman and newspaper editor Victor L. Berger, labor leader and five-time Socialist Party of America candidate, Eugene V. Debs, anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, former Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society president Joseph Franklin Rutherford, communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Cablegate whistleblower Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Defense Intelligence Agency employee Henry Kyle Frese, and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden.
    - soheil 5y ago
      Thanks for this. I think it is shocking that so many people still use this. What about yelling bomb on an airplane?
      - Clubber 5y ago
        I'm not sure that has been tested in court yet. If based on precedent, I would assume it would also be legal, but it would take a brave soul with a lot of money and free time to find out for certain.
- kube-system 5y ago
  > Intent should be the grounds for upset, intent only. People can be unintentionally upset. I'm sure we can all think of a time when we've accidentally upset someone. I still try not to do it. We don't have to force people to change their language. It will happen over generations as we discuss these topics.
- brianpan 5y ago
  > intent only Communication is a multiple party activity. It's not just a speaker and a speaker's intent. The recipient and how it's received absolutely matter (and should). I've said plenty of things I didn't intend to be stupid. Still stupid. Is it ok for the Washington football team to be the Redskins because no current fan or owner intends to be using a racist name? It's not only the hearer getting upset that matters either. There's room for error and for grace and tact on both sides of a conversation. But it's definitely not just intent only. Humans don't work like that. Hell, even computers don't work like that.
  - catgary 5y ago
    Yeah, this “intent is the only thing that matters” mindset is a naive perspective on communication. People like to act as though there's some liberal bogeyman reaching for social currency by acting “woke”, when what has generally happened is someone was thoughtless/inconsiderate and an offended party spoke up (this whole experience was, of course, quite traumatizing for the thoughtless/inconsiderate person).
- judge2020 5y ago
  Text is text, and you can't encode intent without assuming that the reader has a similar level of internet experience to be able to pull such hidden intent using context clues.
  - dmix 5y ago
    It's sad we have to go so far down rabbit holes before asking basic questions fundamental to the alleged 'solutions'.
- BigJono 5y ago
  I've never got why people don't understand this. Judging people by their intent resolves a lot of ambiguity, for both political sides. If someone gets up infront of a room of 1000 people and says "hey guys!", clearly intending to reference the entire audience, they're not being fucking sexist. And if you're standing there with 5 racists showing a pepe flag or an ok sign or whatever random garbage it is this week, then you're a fucking racist. There's absolutely no need for nuance or ambiguity in either case. You can argue the toss all you want about how to determine whether someone is intending to do something (it's not like you can read minds so that can obviously have a ton of complexity to it), but if you're starting from a position that people can unintentionally do something offensive then everything that follows is just pointless bullshit. You've just built a trump card for both sides into the argument so they can just scream past each other like morons without contributing anything meaningful.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
ma2rten 5y ago
You know that many people are advocating for replacing the terms whitelist and blacklist, right? I don't see how chess is any different.
- uxp100 5y ago
  Because the pieces really are white and black, or light and dark. The list is not black.
  - ma2rten 5y ago
    But they are not naturally so. We decided to make them that way.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - pyr0hu 5y ago
      And what? should i rename my black desk or black chair or better, get a new colored one, because "someone decided to call them that way"?
- spatley 5y ago
  Chess is different in that the pieces are literally black and white in their color. Blacklist and whitelist are used as linguistic symbols: black==bad white==good. That is pretty different to me.
  - godelski 5y ago
    I'm no expert, but I thought the black and white thing originates really from night and day. It is easier to see when there is light (often perceived as white) than it is at night (often perceived as black). We used white and black to convey the color of the sky. A white color reflects light while a black color absorbs light. This is how I've always thought about it. I never associated this with skin color until someone told me. I still have never internalized this because it just doesn't make sense to me. I'm open to being wrong but to be this connection of archetypal meanings and skin color is a stretch. I don't look at a white phone or black phone and think good or bad (in fact I have a black phone and prefer dark colors while my skin tone is the opposite). One which requires a lot of fundamental change in language and how we think. Because I'm sure I'm not the only one that has codified this representation in my mind. And most of us should understand archetypes are not how you go about judging the world or people. I don't see a person dressed in red and think "angry" (which would be a different emotion in a different culture), or yellow and "happy". I just see colors. That is pretty different to me.
userbinator 5y ago
I remember many years ago when colour schemes/UI themes were still called "skins", and forum discussions about them often yielded amusing racist-if-taken-out-of-context sentences like "do you like white or black skin" and "I have dark skin, but I prefer the white skin." Not a single person was offended or outraged, everyone saw the racial associations but clearly understood the context and was more amused than anything else. I'm of mixed opinion whether people were actually more intelligent or level-headed back then, or whether the current "ultra-PC/SJW-ism" trend actually started as a joke that got taken too far and adopted as truth by the gullible.
- cynicaltheories 5y ago
  If you would actually like to know the history of the current trend, read Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay
- cryptoz 5y ago
  Jokes that evoke racist hatred are not good, though. You don't actually know that NOBODY - literally you said that not a single person - was offended. Also, so what if someone was offended? Isn't that mostly irrelevant to this debate? The goal isn't to stop people from offending others, the goal of changing our speech is to reduce the unknown harm that words can do re: normalization of hatred of minorities. The 'jokes' you describe aren't funny and do in fact have a potential to cause real harm in the world. I would posit that unchecked hatred towards minorities online for decades is one of the reasons we are in this 'mess' of language today.
  - pyr0hu 5y ago
    I'd like everyone to stop speaking and stop writing anytthing because it MIGHT offend someone. /s
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    > The 'jokes' you describe aren't funny That's an opinion, and it's not a supportable opinion, because we don't really know much about the jokes. Parent's comment wasn't intended to convey the material faithfully-- just a bare description. We don't know the exact wording, the delivery, the timing, or any other context. Maybe they were lame (another opionion), but it's also possible that I (or even you) would have gotten a chuckle out it. Regardless, there's no reason to assume that humor of this nature serves to normalize racial hatred. But if you assume the worst of people, you're certainly more likely to get it in return.
flippinburgers 5y ago
This was in my opinion already readily apparent the instant that whitelist/blacklist came under fire.
busymom0 5y ago
“Political correctness: is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.” ― Theodore Dalrymple
nextlevelwizard 5y ago
But literally anything can upset anyone. You can never satisfy everyone at the same time.
boublepop 5y ago
> Yeah using language that upsets people is bad There are people who get upset about the language used to communicate results of scientific studies proving the efficiency of vaccines against the ongoing pandemic. Kids get upset at the language “No” even when uttered to tell them that they can’t go out and play with a chainsaw, purely for their own protection. You cannot determine if language or language usage is bad purely from the response of others even if they get extremely upset about it.

kleer001 5y ago

> using language that upsets people is bad Shouldn't be. Intent should be the grounds for upset, intent only. Otherwise you get a Euphemism Treadmill, and that's a goddamn fucking waste of time.

godelski 5y ago
> intent only. I disagree. Intent matters, a lot, and you're right, but it isn't the only thing. Right now I think we fall on the other side, that reception is all that matters (in the bias training I receive they specifically mention that it is 100% reception and not intent). I believe the law works on reception because that's easier to quantify. Intent is very tricky. You can do something that most people would consider wrong and just say "well I didn't mean it that way." (the inverse can happen too, but less people are likely to start a legal case out of spite compared to people defending themselves. It is tricky) I believe that there is a middle ground somewhere. Where that is I'm not sure and I think we need to work together as a society to figure that out. I think somewhere in there there is a "reasonable" set of norms, and we have other laws to suggest that we can use this as a basis. But even this can be tricky as there are many different cultural norms and customs. It isn't even just ethnic customs. In America we have very different regional customs that often butt heads. I think we need to recognize that people are different and operate based on different values and often this is fine. But I think a big thing we've lost in our current standing is good faith. There's three parts to any form of communication. 1) The idea that is within one's head that they are trying to convey to the other person. 2) The words, body language, inflection, etc that are used to codify this idea (aka: encoding). 3) The understanding of that language that was used to convey the idea (aka: decoding). Humans are pretty good encoders and decoders (we wouldn't have made it here where we are if we weren't) but there are limitations. Language is extremely messy and we often don't think it is because we're so used to it. But you can look at words being used today and you'll often find that people are talking past one another because they are using different definitions of the same word and actively refuse to interpret the other person's intended message (as an example, every internet conversation about capitalism/socialism/communism). The point of communication is to pass one idea from one head to another head. It requires understanding that there are these three components. If we do not act in good faith then we cannot communicate. With that knowledge it suggests there are two different actions to take if one wants to act in good faith. The communicator should try to encode their thoughts as best as they can, attempting to understand their audience (aka: speak to your audience). BUT we often forget that the listener's job is to decode, to do their best to determine the idea that the communicator is trying to convey (aka: __intent__). In fights we will say "but you said..." even knowing what was intended as a way to win. This is not in good faith but is so prevalent. When conversations are about mic drops and one upping another person, communication cannot be had.
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  To you point about intent vs reception, I think the way the law works is actually more along the lines of "how a reasonable person might receive this". Which is perhaps harder to quantify, but IMO strikes a good balance. However I totally agree with your point about how some communication has become more about scoring points than having an empathetic and thoughtful dialogue
SilverRed 5y ago
This would save so much time wasting. When someone says "Can you push that to the master branch" there is nothing that ties that statement to slavery or racism so there is nothing wrong with it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- zarzavat 5y ago
  The best thing to do is to ignore these people, they will never be happy so there's no point trying to please them. If you ignore someone who is never happy then in time they may respect you, but if you always comply then they will never respect you and their perceived power over you simply increases, which means they feel empowered to ask for more and more.
  - russelldjimmy 5y ago
    Exactly
  - reedjosh 5y ago
    But how will tech Cos show they're woke if they can't just change the names of things and say they did something important? It's literally a bragging point at my new Co.
    - jaimex2 5y ago
      Anyone else intentionally making master branches in new repos at work? It's hilarious watching the amount of mental energy people waste on this.
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    > ignore these people Unfortunately for the rest of us, they've been put in charge.
    - kleer001 5y ago
mc32 5y ago
It reminds me of all the synonyms and symbols, homophones and homographs Chinese use when referring to mr Xi on Weibo, etc., including the now censored Winnie the Pooh. To get around the censorship which blocks mentioning of me Xi in unflattering light. It’s ever evolving to keep ahead of the censors.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  Check out “Euphemism Treadmill”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmil...
soheil 5y ago
thinks the case of yelling fire in a movie theater jokingly
- Clubber 5y ago
  Yelling fire in a movie theater is perfectly legal and protected speech, even if false. It's only illegal if what is said is "likely to incite imminent lawless action," like a riot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the... It's funny, this is often presented as a supporting example to limit citizens' free speech or other rights, typically paired with something along the lines of, "no freedom is limitless." Of course many people don't realize this example is a) outdated and currently false, and b) the argument used against citizens speaking out against WWI using the Espionage Act of 1917, which is considered by many to be one of the worst and oppressive laws to our rights ever written. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917 You may recognize the names of some of the act's victims: Among those charged with offenses under the Act are German-American socialist congressman and newspaper editor Victor L. Berger, labor leader and five-time Socialist Party of America candidate, Eugene V. Debs, anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, former Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society president Joseph Franklin Rutherford, communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Cablegate whistleblower Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Defense Intelligence Agency employee Henry Kyle Frese, and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden.
  - soheil 5y ago
    Thanks for this. I think it is shocking that so many people still use this. What about yelling bomb on an airplane?
    - Clubber 5y ago
      I'm not sure that has been tested in court yet. If based on precedent, I would assume it would also be legal, but it would take a brave soul with a lot of money and free time to find out for certain.
kube-system 5y ago
> Intent should be the grounds for upset, intent only. People can be unintentionally upset. I'm sure we can all think of a time when we've accidentally upset someone. I still try not to do it. We don't have to force people to change their language. It will happen over generations as we discuss these topics.
brianpan 5y ago
> intent only Communication is a multiple party activity. It's not just a speaker and a speaker's intent. The recipient and how it's received absolutely matter (and should). I've said plenty of things I didn't intend to be stupid. Still stupid. Is it ok for the Washington football team to be the Redskins because no current fan or owner intends to be using a racist name? It's not only the hearer getting upset that matters either. There's room for error and for grace and tact on both sides of a conversation. But it's definitely not just intent only. Humans don't work like that. Hell, even computers don't work like that.
- catgary 5y ago
  Yeah, this “intent is the only thing that matters” mindset is a naive perspective on communication. People like to act as though there's some liberal bogeyman reaching for social currency by acting “woke”, when what has generally happened is someone was thoughtless/inconsiderate and an offended party spoke up (this whole experience was, of course, quite traumatizing for the thoughtless/inconsiderate person).
judge2020 5y ago
Text is text, and you can't encode intent without assuming that the reader has a similar level of internet experience to be able to pull such hidden intent using context clues.
- dmix 5y ago
  It's sad we have to go so far down rabbit holes before asking basic questions fundamental to the alleged 'solutions'.
BigJono 5y ago
I've never got why people don't understand this. Judging people by their intent resolves a lot of ambiguity, for both political sides. If someone gets up infront of a room of 1000 people and says "hey guys!", clearly intending to reference the entire audience, they're not being fucking sexist. And if you're standing there with 5 racists showing a pepe flag or an ok sign or whatever random garbage it is this week, then you're a fucking racist. There's absolutely no need for nuance or ambiguity in either case. You can argue the toss all you want about how to determine whether someone is intending to do something (it's not like you can read minds so that can obviously have a ton of complexity to it), but if you're starting from a position that people can unintentionally do something offensive then everything that follows is just pointless bullshit. You've just built a trump card for both sides into the argument so they can just scream past each other like morons without contributing anything meaningful.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

ma2rten 5y ago

You know that many people are advocating for replacing the terms whitelist and blacklist, right? I don't see how chess is any different.

uxp100 5y ago
Because the pieces really are white and black, or light and dark. The list is not black.
- ma2rten 5y ago
  But they are not naturally so. We decided to make them that way.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - pyr0hu 5y ago
    And what? should i rename my black desk or black chair or better, get a new colored one, because "someone decided to call them that way"?
spatley 5y ago
Chess is different in that the pieces are literally black and white in their color. Blacklist and whitelist are used as linguistic symbols: black==bad white==good. That is pretty different to me.
- godelski 5y ago
  I'm no expert, but I thought the black and white thing originates really from night and day. It is easier to see when there is light (often perceived as white) than it is at night (often perceived as black). We used white and black to convey the color of the sky. A white color reflects light while a black color absorbs light. This is how I've always thought about it. I never associated this with skin color until someone told me. I still have never internalized this because it just doesn't make sense to me. I'm open to being wrong but to be this connection of archetypal meanings and skin color is a stretch. I don't look at a white phone or black phone and think good or bad (in fact I have a black phone and prefer dark colors while my skin tone is the opposite). One which requires a lot of fundamental change in language and how we think. Because I'm sure I'm not the only one that has codified this representation in my mind. And most of us should understand archetypes are not how you go about judging the world or people. I don't see a person dressed in red and think "angry" (which would be a different emotion in a different culture), or yellow and "happy". I just see colors. That is pretty different to me.

userbinator 5y ago

I remember many years ago when colour schemes/UI themes were still called "skins", and forum discussions about them often yielded amusing racist-if-taken-out-of-context sentences like "do you like white or black skin" and "I have dark skin, but I prefer the white skin." Not a single person was offended or outraged, everyone saw the racial associations but clearly understood the context and was more amused than anything else. I'm of mixed opinion whether people were actually more intelligent or level-headed back then, or whether the current "ultra-PC/SJW-ism" trend actually started as a joke that got taken too far and adopted as truth by the gullible.

cynicaltheories 5y ago
If you would actually like to know the history of the current trend, read Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay
cryptoz 5y ago
Jokes that evoke racist hatred are not good, though. You don't actually know that NOBODY - literally you said that not a single person - was offended. Also, so what if someone was offended? Isn't that mostly irrelevant to this debate? The goal isn't to stop people from offending others, the goal of changing our speech is to reduce the unknown harm that words can do re: normalization of hatred of minorities. The 'jokes' you describe aren't funny and do in fact have a potential to cause real harm in the world. I would posit that unchecked hatred towards minorities online for decades is one of the reasons we are in this 'mess' of language today.
- pyr0hu 5y ago
  I'd like everyone to stop speaking and stop writing anytthing because it MIGHT offend someone. /s
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  > The 'jokes' you describe aren't funny That's an opinion, and it's not a supportable opinion, because we don't really know much about the jokes. Parent's comment wasn't intended to convey the material faithfully-- just a bare description. We don't know the exact wording, the delivery, the timing, or any other context. Maybe they were lame (another opionion), but it's also possible that I (or even you) would have gotten a chuckle out it. Regardless, there's no reason to assume that humor of this nature serves to normalize racial hatred. But if you assume the worst of people, you're certainly more likely to get it in return.

flippinburgers 5y ago

This was in my opinion already readily apparent the instant that whitelist/blacklist came under fire.

busymom0 5y ago

“Political correctness: is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.” ― Theodore Dalrymple

nextlevelwizard 5y ago

But literally anything can upset anyone. You can never satisfy everyone at the same time.

boublepop 5y ago

> Yeah using language that upsets people is bad There are people who get upset about the language used to communicate results of scientific studies proving the efficiency of vaccines against the ongoing pandemic. Kids get upset at the language “No” even when uttered to tell them that they can’t go out and play with a chainsaw, purely for their own protection. You cannot determine if language or language usage is bad purely from the response of others even if they get extremely upset about it.