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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

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.
  - Edman274 5y ago
    It is not hyper-exaggerating any more than "Falsehoods programmers believe about names" is. That post lists as a counterexample the unpronounceable name that Prince went as. It described a scenario where no one has names and people only refer to each other by familial relationships. It said that it cannot be assumed that people's names can be written down. If you're willing to use "falsehoods programmers believe about names" as a guide for implementing a system for storing names, then you have to be able to handle my cases too. If I'm hyper-exaggerating, then so is that blog post. If I'm committing some kind of slippery slope fallacy, then you need to tell me how my examples are materially different from the one in the blogpost and draw a line that is able to say "this fallacy is true and we should accommodate it, but this one isn't, and we shouldn't."
lmm 5y ago
But inventing a new problem is exactly what the author of this post is doing? This is not someone who is being marginalised because of their involuntary name, this is someone who is wilfully choosing to use a name that doesn't fit social expectations.

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.
- Edman274 5y ago
  It is not hyper-exaggerating any more than "Falsehoods programmers believe about names" is. That post lists as a counterexample the unpronounceable name that Prince went as. It described a scenario where no one has names and people only refer to each other by familial relationships. It said that it cannot be assumed that people's names can be written down. If you're willing to use "falsehoods programmers believe about names" as a guide for implementing a system for storing names, then you have to be able to handle my cases too. If I'm hyper-exaggerating, then so is that blog post. If I'm committing some kind of slippery slope fallacy, then you need to tell me how my examples are materially different from the one in the blogpost and draw a line that is able to say "this fallacy is true and we should accommodate it, but this one isn't, and we shouldn't."

lmm 5y ago

But inventing a new problem is exactly what the author of this post is doing? This is not someone who is being marginalised because of their involuntary name, this is someone who is wilfully choosing to use a name that doesn't fit social expectations.