4 ms·

Can you give an example of where it is making a clearly bad suggestion, and what the adverse impact of adopting it would be?

mr_toad 5y ago
Imagine working on a tax policy and having a proposed tax on “landlords” changed to a proposed tax on “property owners”. If that slipped through and was made public it could be a career limiting mistake.
- camdat 5y ago
  Imagine working on a tax policy and having a proposed tax on "moles" changed to a proposed tax on "holes". If that slipped through and was made public it could be a career limiting mistake. Thankfully HN wasn't around when spell-check was introduced.
vimy 5y ago
I don't know if it's on Google's list, would surprise me if it wasn't, but most Latinos find Latinx offensive. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/many-latinos-say-latinx-offends-or-bothers-them-here-s-ncna1285916 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/many-latinos-say-latin...
- lukeschlather 5y ago
  That poll says most prefer Hispanic, it also says most do not find Latinx offensive. It also seems like a bit of a push poll since it doesn't ask any questions about whether or not they find "Latino" offensive. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/06/hispanic-voters-latinx-term-523776 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/06/hispanic-voters-lat...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - rcoveson 5y ago
    Latinx is revolting, full stop. Nobody who speaks (using the lips and tongue) Spanish as their only language will adopt it. Spanish isn't the jumbled mess that English is. It has a lot of rhyme and reason to it. While not without exceptions, its rules are generally quite reliable. "inx" is a not a Spanish syllable. You can't pluralize it. You can't rhyme with it. Hell, you can't barely pronounce it. I get so tired of people popping up to defend the idea as if it's not so bad, invariably citing data collected from bilingual, second-generation US immigrants. Stop. If it's important to you, then at least have the sense to argue for "Latines", which at least kind of makes sense and doesn't sound like something invented by an English speaker who had only ever seen Spanish written, not spoken.
    - sangnoir 5y ago
      > Nobody who speaks (using the lips and tongue) Spanish as their only language will adopt it. Your argument isn't cogent to me: it's an English word used in an English context. Your line of reasoning could be used to argue that "Anglo-Saxon"[1] is not a legitimate term because the Germanic tribes didn't use the term to refer to themselves. 1. The same goes for "German", "Chinese" or "Belter"
      - rcoveson 5y ago
        German is an English word that English speakers use to describe Germans. It doesn't have any etymological relationship with the word that Germans use to describe themselves. Latino and Latina are Spanish words that American English speakers have adopted in the last ~80 years due to the significant intermingling of Spanish and English speakers. Their use spans a spectrum of Spanish-only speakers, bilingual speakers, and English-only speakers. Not only does the English word "Latino" (my eyes roll typing that) have an etymological relationship with the Spanish word "Latino", their etymologies haven't even diverged. English speakers who took a Spanish class in high school even pronounce Latino in the Spanish way, "lah-TEE-noh" instead of "luh-TEE-no", because they think of it as a Spanish word.
        mbg721 5y ago
dizzant 5y ago
I work in academia. Frequently, I need to convey various levels of confidence about facts when writing emails to my colleagues. Microsoft Outlooks suggestions are more than a mere annoyance on this front. They consistently suggest that "probably" and "perhaps" and "maybe" and "almost certainly" should be removed from my writing precisely because they convey uncertainty. That is why I wrote them in the first place! If I knew a result confidently, I would say so. Please, let's not have another venue algorithmically pressuring everyone to uniformly remove nuance from communication. There is no one-size-fits-all threshold for "too wordy" or "too passive" or anything else with regard to language. Context is everything.
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  > They consistently suggest that "probably" and "perhaps" and "maybe" and "almost certainly" should be removed from my writing That just sounds like a poorly implemented feature.
registeredcorn 5y ago
I'm not entirely sure if your question would fit this criteria, but it sounds awfully close to a Negative proof fallacy: https://logfall.wordpress.com/negative-proof-fallacy https://logfall.wordpress.com/negative-proof-fallacy Generally speaking, when a wide sweeping change is going to take effect, the onus of proof about why it should be done is on those advocating in favor of the change, not on those defending the standard. That is, "How is this change useful?" vs. "Why wouldn't this change be useful?" The latter assumes the change is good and asks for proof which cannot exist yet, while the former focuses the questioning on the underlying value of the change prior to implementation. This particular change is a complex one. It clearly has w*stern politics crammed into its carcass, which are tedious to read, and doubly so to speak on. For that reason, I'll try and avoid such topic. Besides, I tend to assume your question is asked in good faith, so I would simply ask: Can you give an example of where it making a "good" suggestion is helpful? Under optimal circumstances, the ability to "help" the writer would be subjective, right? Under suboptimal conditions, the suggestion would be: unwanted, unneeded, or wrong.
- otterley 5y ago
  > Can you give an example of where it making a "good" suggestion is helpful? Sure: Upon writing, "That guy is a loser," a response from the computer: "You're using using emotionally-loaded and ambiguous language. Consider revising to provide constructive criticism." Ideally, the feedback a computer would provide would be similar in scope and wisdom that feedback from an experienced human editor would provide.
  - registeredcorn 5y ago
    Using that example, who does the suggestion help: the writer, or the recipient?
    - otterley 5y ago
      Why not both?
      - 5y ago
tmnvix 5y ago
There's an example tweet where Google suggests that 'landlord' is not inclusive and 'property owner' or 'proprietor' could be used instead. This will encourage people to avoid the word 'landlord'. They will start using 'property owner'. I'm not okay with that. A homeowner is a property owner. A landlord rents out the property they own. The terms shouldn't be conflated like that (as much as many landlords might want them to be).
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  I agree that sometimes a landlord might be subletting something and therefore they might not own it, but what you write is mostly ridiculous: if a landlord owns the property, they are the property owner.
  - leereeves 5y ago
    I think you missed the point. In math terms: landlords are a proper subset of property owners, not equivalent. Using the latter term instead of the former is likely to change the meaning of the sentence. For example: "landlords should pay more taxes" is very different from "property owners should pay more taxes".
    - dan-robertson 5y ago
      Your explanation doesn’t square with the weird comment about landlords wanting to be conflated with property owners, which I read as meaning that the parent thought they weren’t subsets.
      - tmnvix 5y ago
        Apologies if I was unclear. I meant 'conflate' as in 'treat as equivalent'. As for landlords perhaps wanting to be treated as equivalent to property owners, I think the previous poster gave a suitable example of why this might be the case. In many places landlords are being targeted politically (rightly or wrongly). It would be to their political advantage if all reference to them was conflated with regular owner occupiers by use of the term 'property owners'.

mr_toad 5y ago

Imagine working on a tax policy and having a proposed tax on “landlords” changed to a proposed tax on “property owners”. If that slipped through and was made public it could be a career limiting mistake.

camdat 5y ago
Imagine working on a tax policy and having a proposed tax on "moles" changed to a proposed tax on "holes". If that slipped through and was made public it could be a career limiting mistake. Thankfully HN wasn't around when spell-check was introduced.

vimy 5y ago

I don't know if it's on Google's list, would surprise me if it wasn't, but most Latinos find Latinx offensive. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/many-latinos-say-latinx-offends-or-bothers-them-here-s-ncna1285916 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/many-latinos-say-latin...

lukeschlather 5y ago
That poll says most prefer Hispanic, it also says most do not find Latinx offensive. It also seems like a bit of a push poll since it doesn't ask any questions about whether or not they find "Latino" offensive. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/06/hispanic-voters-latinx-term-523776 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/06/hispanic-voters-lat...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rcoveson 5y ago
  Latinx is revolting, full stop. Nobody who speaks (using the lips and tongue) Spanish as their only language will adopt it. Spanish isn't the jumbled mess that English is. It has a lot of rhyme and reason to it. While not without exceptions, its rules are generally quite reliable. "inx" is a not a Spanish syllable. You can't pluralize it. You can't rhyme with it. Hell, you can't barely pronounce it. I get so tired of people popping up to defend the idea as if it's not so bad, invariably citing data collected from bilingual, second-generation US immigrants. Stop. If it's important to you, then at least have the sense to argue for "Latines", which at least kind of makes sense and doesn't sound like something invented by an English speaker who had only ever seen Spanish written, not spoken.
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    > Nobody who speaks (using the lips and tongue) Spanish as their only language will adopt it. Your argument isn't cogent to me: it's an English word used in an English context. Your line of reasoning could be used to argue that "Anglo-Saxon"[1] is not a legitimate term because the Germanic tribes didn't use the term to refer to themselves. 1. The same goes for "German", "Chinese" or "Belter"
    - rcoveson 5y ago
      German is an English word that English speakers use to describe Germans. It doesn't have any etymological relationship with the word that Germans use to describe themselves. Latino and Latina are Spanish words that American English speakers have adopted in the last ~80 years due to the significant intermingling of Spanish and English speakers. Their use spans a spectrum of Spanish-only speakers, bilingual speakers, and English-only speakers. Not only does the English word "Latino" (my eyes roll typing that) have an etymological relationship with the Spanish word "Latino", their etymologies haven't even diverged. English speakers who took a Spanish class in high school even pronounce Latino in the Spanish way, "lah-TEE-noh" instead of "luh-TEE-no", because they think of it as a Spanish word.
      - mbg721 5y ago

dizzant 5y ago

I work in academia. Frequently, I need to convey various levels of confidence about facts when writing emails to my colleagues. Microsoft Outlooks suggestions are more than a mere annoyance on this front. They consistently suggest that "probably" and "perhaps" and "maybe" and "almost certainly" should be removed from my writing precisely because they convey uncertainty. That is why I wrote them in the first place! If I knew a result confidently, I would say so. Please, let's not have another venue algorithmically pressuring everyone to uniformly remove nuance from communication. There is no one-size-fits-all threshold for "too wordy" or "too passive" or anything else with regard to language. Context is everything.

jonny_eh 5y ago
> They consistently suggest that "probably" and "perhaps" and "maybe" and "almost certainly" should be removed from my writing That just sounds like a poorly implemented feature.

registeredcorn 5y ago

I'm not entirely sure if your question would fit this criteria, but it sounds awfully close to a Negative proof fallacy: https://logfall.wordpress.com/negative-proof-fallacy https://logfall.wordpress.com/negative-proof-fallacy Generally speaking, when a wide sweeping change is going to take effect, the onus of proof about why it should be done is on those advocating in favor of the change, not on those defending the standard. That is, "How is this change useful?" vs. "Why wouldn't this change be useful?" The latter assumes the change is good and asks for proof which cannot exist yet, while the former focuses the questioning on the underlying value of the change prior to implementation. This particular change is a complex one. It clearly has w*stern politics crammed into its carcass, which are tedious to read, and doubly so to speak on. For that reason, I'll try and avoid such topic. Besides, I tend to assume your question is asked in good faith, so I would simply ask: Can you give an example of where it making a "good" suggestion is helpful? Under optimal circumstances, the ability to "help" the writer would be subjective, right? Under suboptimal conditions, the suggestion would be: unwanted, unneeded, or wrong.

otterley 5y ago
> Can you give an example of where it making a "good" suggestion is helpful? Sure: Upon writing, "That guy is a loser," a response from the computer: "You're using using emotionally-loaded and ambiguous language. Consider revising to provide constructive criticism." Ideally, the feedback a computer would provide would be similar in scope and wisdom that feedback from an experienced human editor would provide.
- registeredcorn 5y ago
  Using that example, who does the suggestion help: the writer, or the recipient?
  - otterley 5y ago
    Why not both?
    - 5y ago

tmnvix 5y ago

There's an example tweet where Google suggests that 'landlord' is not inclusive and 'property owner' or 'proprietor' could be used instead. This will encourage people to avoid the word 'landlord'. They will start using 'property owner'. I'm not okay with that. A homeowner is a property owner. A landlord rents out the property they own. The terms shouldn't be conflated like that (as much as many landlords might want them to be).

dan-robertson 5y ago
I agree that sometimes a landlord might be subletting something and therefore they might not own it, but what you write is mostly ridiculous: if a landlord owns the property, they are the property owner.
- leereeves 5y ago
  I think you missed the point. In math terms: landlords are a proper subset of property owners, not equivalent. Using the latter term instead of the former is likely to change the meaning of the sentence. For example: "landlords should pay more taxes" is very different from "property owners should pay more taxes".
  - dan-robertson 5y ago
    Your explanation doesn’t square with the weird comment about landlords wanting to be conflated with property owners, which I read as meaning that the parent thought they weren’t subsets.
    - tmnvix 5y ago
      Apologies if I was unclear. I meant 'conflate' as in 'treat as equivalent'. As for landlords perhaps wanting to be treated as equivalent to property owners, I think the previous poster gave a suitable example of why this might be the case. In many places landlords are being targeted politically (rightly or wrongly). It would be to their political advantage if all reference to them was conflated with regular owner occupiers by use of the term 'property owners'.