27 ms·

A riddle that stumps 3rd graders: Q: "What belongs to you but others use it more than you do?" A: "Your name." Given that your name is going to be used by ot

A riddle that stumps 3rd graders: Q: "What belongs to you but others use it more than you do?" A: "Your name." Given that your name is going to be used by other people a lot more frequently than you're going to use it yourself, it would make sense to make sure that your name is convenient for others to use. Another thing - any person defining their own name could technically have a valid caveat that breaks some schema. I could decide that I can never have the same name after it's been uttered once. I could decide that my name is the last ten thousand numbers of pi. I could decide that my name is only allowed to be said by a person, and not rendered by a computer, because my name belongs to only the heavenly language of humans. I could decide that my name is the same as my social security number, which would make any system that doesn't have PCI-DSS control on my name out of compliance. There is no limit to the ways that a name can be restricted in a database, because there's no limit to the ways that a name can be defined. We decided collectively in the western English speaking world to assume that mononyms are more of a novelty than a real identifier. There will be other restrictions. There always are. An example: the restriction that people using a website are literate. I think you'll find that there are far more illiterate computer users than there are people with mononyms, and yet no one designs websites to cater to those who are not able to read.

krallja 5y ago
PCI: payments card industry They don’t care about your SSN. They only care about credit card numbers (“PANs”).
- Edman274 5y ago
  Okay. Let's change the example. I make my full, legal name the same as my credit card number.
eyelidlessness 5y ago
> Given that your name is going to be used by other people a lot more frequently than you're going to use it yourself, it would make sense to make sure that your name is convenient for others to use. I’m not sure a riddle that stumps young children is a good basis for how people should define their own identity. I certainly don’t think it should defer to the convenience of others. Especially when identity, or conflict thereof, can be a source of trauma and/or expose people to serious risk.
- Edman274 5y ago
  > I’m not sure a riddle that stumps young children is a good basis for how people should define their own identity. I certainly don’t think it should defer to the convenience of others. Especially when identity, or conflict thereof, can be a source of trauma and/or expose people to serious risk. The riddle is a reflection of reality. I used it as an example to illustrate the idea that everyone - including children - implicitly know that a name is a social contract with everyone (including software and government databases) that uses that name. > Especially when identity, or conflict thereof, can be a source of trauma and/or expose people to serious risk. Identity absolutely can expose people to risk. No system, anywhere, has ever exposed someone to a special form of risk or trauma by asking for a first name and a last name. They absolutely have by asking for valid government names without privacy protections (as Facebook, Google+, and others have), but that's an orthogonal issue.
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    > No system, anywhere, has ever exposed someone to a special form of risk or trauma by asking for a first name and a last name. Countdown til this gets added to Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, if it hasn’t already.
    - xena 5y ago
      Author here, part of the reason I want to disassociate myself with my assigned at birth last name is for trauma reasons.
      - Edman274 5y ago
        Does the requirement to define any last name at all expose you to a special form of trauma that would be mitigated by not having to define any last name, even if the last name is of your choosing?
        xena 5y ago
        I would rather it be a last name of my choosing if I have to have one at all.
wolfgang42 5y ago
Your initial comments are thought-provoking, but to be blunt: the examples you give are the sort of hyper-exaggerated strawman so often deployed against people with marginalized identities, intended to induce the slippery slope fallacy rather than doing anything about actual problems. There are plenty of names (as enumerated in the “Falsehoods programmers believe” article linked from the post) which have complications already, without needing to invent new ones.
- Edman274 5y ago
  I know the post - it includes most of the examples I gave! "I could decide that I never have the same name after it's been uttered once" is the extension of "8. People’s names change, but only at a certain enumerated set of events". "I could decide that my name is the last ten thousand numbers of pi" is an extension of "40. People have names". "I could decide that my name is only allowed to be said by a person, and not rendered by a computer, because my name belongs to only the heavenly language of humans" is the same as "11. People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points". "I could decide that my name is the same as my social security number, which would make any system that doesn't have PCI-DSS control on my name out of compliance" is the same, in spirit, as "31. I can safely assume that this dictionary of bad words contains no people’s names in it". I'm not inventing any new ones. "Falsehoods programmers believe about names" is a superset of the examples I gave. If you have issues with the examples I gave, then it's because you have issues with what is implied by the article, and not about my examples. Everything that I said flows directly from reading that article and understanding its implications.
  - wolfgang42 5y ago
    It is still very much hyper-exaggerating, even if you can claim that you’re technically within the realm of plausibility. In my opinion, your post would have been more engaging and less polarizing had you omitted that section altogether: the fantastical hypotheticals draw the reader’s attention away, and do not seem to add anything that more staid examples would not have offered while avoiding reducing the salience of your main argument.

krallja 5y ago

PCI: payments card industry They don’t care about your SSN. They only care about credit card numbers (“PANs”).

Edman274 5y ago
Okay. Let's change the example. I make my full, legal name the same as my credit card number.

eyelidlessness 5y ago

> Given that your name is going to be used by other people a lot more frequently than you're going to use it yourself, it would make sense to make sure that your name is convenient for others to use. I’m not sure a riddle that stumps young children is a good basis for how people should define their own identity. I certainly don’t think it should defer to the convenience of others. Especially when identity, or conflict thereof, can be a source of trauma and/or expose people to serious risk.

Edman274 5y ago
> I’m not sure a riddle that stumps young children is a good basis for how people should define their own identity. I certainly don’t think it should defer to the convenience of others. Especially when identity, or conflict thereof, can be a source of trauma and/or expose people to serious risk. The riddle is a reflection of reality. I used it as an example to illustrate the idea that everyone - including children - implicitly know that a name is a social contract with everyone (including software and government databases) that uses that name. > Especially when identity, or conflict thereof, can be a source of trauma and/or expose people to serious risk. Identity absolutely can expose people to risk. No system, anywhere, has ever exposed someone to a special form of risk or trauma by asking for a first name and a last name. They absolutely have by asking for valid government names without privacy protections (as Facebook, Google+, and others have), but that's an orthogonal issue.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  > No system, anywhere, has ever exposed someone to a special form of risk or trauma by asking for a first name and a last name. Countdown til this gets added to Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, if it hasn’t already.
  - xena 5y ago
    Author here, part of the reason I want to disassociate myself with my assigned at birth last name is for trauma reasons.
    - Edman274 5y ago
      Does the requirement to define any last name at all expose you to a special form of trauma that would be mitigated by not having to define any last name, even if the last name is of your choosing?
      - xena 5y ago
        I would rather it be a last name of my choosing if I have to have one at all.

wolfgang42 5y ago

Your initial comments are thought-provoking, but to be blunt: the examples you give are the sort of hyper-exaggerated strawman so often deployed against people with marginalized identities, intended to induce the slippery slope fallacy rather than doing anything about actual problems. There are plenty of names (as enumerated in the “Falsehoods programmers believe” article linked from the post) which have complications already, without needing to invent new ones.

Edman274 5y ago
I know the post - it includes most of the examples I gave! "I could decide that I never have the same name after it's been uttered once" is the extension of "8. People’s names change, but only at a certain enumerated set of events". "I could decide that my name is the last ten thousand numbers of pi" is an extension of "40. People have names". "I could decide that my name is only allowed to be said by a person, and not rendered by a computer, because my name belongs to only the heavenly language of humans" is the same as "11. People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points". "I could decide that my name is the same as my social security number, which would make any system that doesn't have PCI-DSS control on my name out of compliance" is the same, in spirit, as "31. I can safely assume that this dictionary of bad words contains no people’s names in it". I'm not inventing any new ones. "Falsehoods programmers believe about names" is a superset of the examples I gave. If you have issues with the examples I gave, then it's because you have issues with what is implied by the article, and not about my examples. Everything that I said flows directly from reading that article and understanding its implications.
- wolfgang42 5y ago
  It is still very much hyper-exaggerating, even if you can claim that you’re technically within the realm of plausibility. In my opinion, your post would have been more engaging and less polarizing had you omitted that section altogether: the fantastical hypotheticals draw the reader’s attention away, and do not seem to add anything that more staid examples would not have offered while avoiding reducing the salience of your main argument.