9 ms·

I wonder if this is an example of not knowing your audience (or rather assuming one's self represents a wider audience than it does). The people vouching for t

I wonder if this is an example of not knowing your audience (or rather assuming one's self represents a wider audience than it does). The people vouching for this at Google are likely product marketing managers, public relations folks, social media managers, etc. All they do is write corporate garbage all day, and much like we have "nit"s in PR's for formatting, variable names, etc; they likely have similar reviews that get flagged for "non-inclusive language" or whatever this is. So they have brilliant idea: the Code people use auto linters/formatters that we enable by default (hey gofmt) and everyone loves it, how about we do the same for the Prose people! Basically: "All I write is corporate garbage, and all the writing I consume is corporate garbage, and all my coworkers only write corporate garbage, therefore everyone would love a corporate garbage-ifyer!"

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
systemvoltage 4y ago
michaelt 4y ago
There's a market for 'help you write english better' tools that spot things like grammar errors. For example, if my english-as-a-second-language eastern European subordinates feel self-conscious about their english, they might find an automated tool helpful - where a professional journalist would be better served by their own judgement. The 'inclusive language' thing is just weird though.
- DancesWTurtles 4y ago
  Just like Google is not an actual search engine but a "recommendation" engine that prods users into getting recommended just what Google needs to recommend ("did you mean...?") this is not an actual writing assistant but a "write (and think) the Google way" mould
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- LudwigNagasena 4y ago
  There is a market for grammar checkers. Word has one for 30 years. But it doesn't try to turn your writing into a textual form of Alegria art.
riedel 4y ago
IMHO OK if the feature would actually provide explainations and it would be based on some sort of rulebook rather some random decision of individuals. I also would be fine if there is a warning if I use the word 'property owner' because some random internet user says that is deeply capitalistic. In the end I could decide if I want to follow the argument. Just nudging people to get away with a warning is bad and will lead to no warning. I doubt even that it will lead to a more inclusive world because no reflection is involved. The problem for me is particularly that the combination of monopolies combined with AI that will learn from data largely filtered by those monopolies will generate some questionable gradients. So, yes, this might ultimately change language very quickly without much of human discourse over it. This will lead to language with less variation and arguably to a world that does not encourage variation and will be in effect less inclusive.
Icathian 4y ago
This explanation rings a lot more true to me than the rest of this thread. Everyone here seems to be looking into shadows for the woke gestapo, when I'd be willing to bet that this explanation is a lot closer to how this tool actually came to exist. I appreciate you adding to the conversation.
- badwolf 4y ago
  They probably just don't want their employees sending their valuable company data to Grammarly.
- morgante 4y ago
  It's a little of both. There's enough woke influence over corporate communication to drive all employees to want to avoid non-inclusive words in docs. At that point, this becomes useful even for employees who don't agree with it—I'd rather just have the word flagged now and fix it instead of going back and forth later. However, the net result is that words are driven out of the language even if everyone involved in the document wouldn't care.
  - slg 4y ago
    >However, the net result is that words are driven out of the language even if everyone involved in the document wouldn't care. No one uses "fuck" in corporate communication either. Is anyone worried about that word being "driven out of the language"? I don't think corporate speech is as influential in overall language use as you are implying.
    - lupire 4y ago
      Yes, a lot of people see any infringement on their freedom of expression to be unacceptable, while expecting everyone to engage with that expression.
    - limelight 4y ago
      > No one uses "fuck" in corporate communication either. Swear words are specifically used to be provocative, so naturally they're not going to disappear. Words like "motherboard" or "whitelist" were historically neutral and primarily used in professional settings, so removal from corporate speech is correspondingly a much bigger factor. To be clear, I'm not particularly worried or concerned about this. I don't consider it any great loss if we start saying "allowlist" and have happily changed my projects to match. It's not a big deal, and the kind thing to do is to go along with those who do care a lot.
62951413 4y ago
yeetsfromhellL2 4y ago
Actually I've seen an English linter to help you maintain a passive voice for papers, remove waffle words and unnecessary fluff, etc. I'm not sure I can find the exact one I'm thinking of, but wasn't too bad overall, it spotted errors and made helpful suggestions. It was cool too, because it would read from stdin and integrated into vim pretty well with a few lines in my config.
- ketzo 4y ago
  Not sure if these are the things you’re thinking of, but I know Grammarly and Hemingway are apps/services with similar functions.
- lupire 4y ago
  Why would you want to maintain a passive voice? That's terrible writing unless you are defendant in litigation.
  - yeetsfromhellL2 4y ago
    I think it was made for publishing scientific research, and you could flag the options for what you wanted checked. If you were okay without the passive voice hints, you could still make whatever you were writing very direct and concise, or less wishy washy.
  - Fomite 4y ago
    It's extremely important in a lot of policy positions to be able to use things like "a decision was made".
    - alanh 4y ago
      Is it extremely important to omit who made the decision?
      - Fomite 4y ago
        If one wishes to maintain continuous employment? Yes.
la6472 4y ago
I support it and I don’t work for google. I like this feature that encourages more empathy in this strife and hate filled world.
- account42 4y ago
  Neither hate or empathy are in words being written but in the intention behind them. If anything, corporate writing is all about feigning empathy while having none. Or do you actually believe that corporations care deeply about your privacy or all the other things they claim to do.
- nxm 4y ago
  So Google execs now decides how we speak… brave new world. You like it until it corrects you for not being woke enough
  - la6472 4y ago
    No they don’t decide. They suggest. Are you also offended by the suggestions?
  - esrauch 4y ago
    It's not like it's silently editing existing docs, it has an underline and you can voluntarily see what alternative wordings might be.
  - Rastonbury 4y ago
    Where is the line drawn? MS Word suggests style corrections too, despite the meaning being totally understandable. As an enterprise feature, enterprises would interested in this because they wouldn't want their employees communications to get them cancelled or put on woke twitter. Despite their writing style guide[1] being a bit too woke for my liking i'm sure some people find it a good reference, especially if they don't have capacity to create their own corporate guide. [1]https://developers.google.com/style/word-list https://developers.google.com/style/word-list
- Stupulous 4y ago
  While I don't doubt that an intent of this is to promote empathy, I would need to see some evidence before I could be open to the possibility that that is its effect. Anecdotally, these things seem to incense anger and hatred- I've never heard anyone say that being language-policed made them a better person, but I have seen people behave in a way that suggests the opposite. Personally, I become less empathic when someone assumes authority over what I say or write.
kbos87 4y ago
This comes off as an angry tirade full of projection and lacking any real insight.
ra0x3 4y ago
This actually…doesn’t not make sense
- nickff 4y ago
  >"This actually…doesn’t not make sense" I don't understand what you are referring to when you say "this"; what is "this"? Are you referring to a specific statement by the parent poster, or something described in the OP? I also don't understand whether the double-negative is intentional (and meant to cancel itself out, and become a positive), or if it is a colloquialism.
  - Shared404 4y ago
    This = 'the comment being replied to'. This actually !(not make sense). V This actually does make sense. The reason they wrote it the way they did was to convey that (not making sense) was what they expected from GP, but that instead it did make sense.
slaymaker1907 4y ago
This kind of feature would be very handy for an email client. I don't think many emails are being sent out these days that aren't corporate garbage.
DavidSharff 4y ago
Love it. I do think there is more activism at play than you might. At a minimum it provides the fear mechanism that prevents employees from challenging the work, particularly if they aren't even on the project (why stick your neck out?). However, the code format for prose analogy illuminates the writing quality angle brilliantly. I'm sure I'm not alone in having distinct communication modes in work documents, each with their own reasons to be excluded from the ML dataset: 1. Keep it simple -- when achieved it is highly effective for communicating a work memo, but would be terribly dry if used in auto suggestions for an English major struggling through crafting moving prose. 2. Lazily verbose -- going long is more expedient than crafting a compact message. It's mostly unrefined garbage. (exhibit a this comment) 3. Everything is awesome (positivity inflation) -- a deluge of great, love, awesome, wonderful, perfect, etc. all applied to far too many things, far too often. Imagine if an ML code formatter included psudeo code inputs, or was given a data set of every local file change (pre-commit) instead of what is sitting in a main branch? My Docs are filled with things that I'd never commit much less pass a code review. If Google Docs was only used in corporate settings, and we wanted to double down on our drab corporate communication styles, I guess the feature would make some sense.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

systemvoltage 4y ago

michaelt 4y ago

There's a market for 'help you write english better' tools that spot things like grammar errors. For example, if my english-as-a-second-language eastern European subordinates feel self-conscious about their english, they might find an automated tool helpful - where a professional journalist would be better served by their own judgement. The 'inclusive language' thing is just weird though.

DancesWTurtles 4y ago
Just like Google is not an actual search engine but a "recommendation" engine that prods users into getting recommended just what Google needs to recommend ("did you mean...?") this is not an actual writing assistant but a "write (and think) the Google way" mould
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
LudwigNagasena 4y ago
There is a market for grammar checkers. Word has one for 30 years. But it doesn't try to turn your writing into a textual form of Alegria art.

riedel 4y ago

IMHO OK if the feature would actually provide explainations and it would be based on some sort of rulebook rather some random decision of individuals. I also would be fine if there is a warning if I use the word 'property owner' because some random internet user says that is deeply capitalistic. In the end I could decide if I want to follow the argument. Just nudging people to get away with a warning is bad and will lead to no warning. I doubt even that it will lead to a more inclusive world because no reflection is involved. The problem for me is particularly that the combination of monopolies combined with AI that will learn from data largely filtered by those monopolies will generate some questionable gradients. So, yes, this might ultimately change language very quickly without much of human discourse over it. This will lead to language with less variation and arguably to a world that does not encourage variation and will be in effect less inclusive.

Icathian 4y ago

This explanation rings a lot more true to me than the rest of this thread. Everyone here seems to be looking into shadows for the woke gestapo, when I'd be willing to bet that this explanation is a lot closer to how this tool actually came to exist. I appreciate you adding to the conversation.

badwolf 4y ago
They probably just don't want their employees sending their valuable company data to Grammarly.
morgante 4y ago
It's a little of both. There's enough woke influence over corporate communication to drive all employees to want to avoid non-inclusive words in docs. At that point, this becomes useful even for employees who don't agree with it—I'd rather just have the word flagged now and fix it instead of going back and forth later. However, the net result is that words are driven out of the language even if everyone involved in the document wouldn't care.
- slg 4y ago
  >However, the net result is that words are driven out of the language even if everyone involved in the document wouldn't care. No one uses "fuck" in corporate communication either. Is anyone worried about that word being "driven out of the language"? I don't think corporate speech is as influential in overall language use as you are implying.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Yes, a lot of people see any infringement on their freedom of expression to be unacceptable, while expecting everyone to engage with that expression.
  - limelight 4y ago
    > No one uses "fuck" in corporate communication either. Swear words are specifically used to be provocative, so naturally they're not going to disappear. Words like "motherboard" or "whitelist" were historically neutral and primarily used in professional settings, so removal from corporate speech is correspondingly a much bigger factor. To be clear, I'm not particularly worried or concerned about this. I don't consider it any great loss if we start saying "allowlist" and have happily changed my projects to match. It's not a big deal, and the kind thing to do is to go along with those who do care a lot.

62951413 4y ago

yeetsfromhellL2 4y ago

Actually I've seen an English linter to help you maintain a passive voice for papers, remove waffle words and unnecessary fluff, etc. I'm not sure I can find the exact one I'm thinking of, but wasn't too bad overall, it spotted errors and made helpful suggestions. It was cool too, because it would read from stdin and integrated into vim pretty well with a few lines in my config.

ketzo 4y ago
Not sure if these are the things you’re thinking of, but I know Grammarly and Hemingway are apps/services with similar functions.
lupire 4y ago
Why would you want to maintain a passive voice? That's terrible writing unless you are defendant in litigation.
- yeetsfromhellL2 4y ago
  I think it was made for publishing scientific research, and you could flag the options for what you wanted checked. If you were okay without the passive voice hints, you could still make whatever you were writing very direct and concise, or less wishy washy.
- Fomite 4y ago
  It's extremely important in a lot of policy positions to be able to use things like "a decision was made".
  - alanh 4y ago
    Is it extremely important to omit who made the decision?
    - Fomite 4y ago
      If one wishes to maintain continuous employment? Yes.

la6472 4y ago

I support it and I don’t work for google. I like this feature that encourages more empathy in this strife and hate filled world.

account42 4y ago
Neither hate or empathy are in words being written but in the intention behind them. If anything, corporate writing is all about feigning empathy while having none. Or do you actually believe that corporations care deeply about your privacy or all the other things they claim to do.
nxm 4y ago
So Google execs now decides how we speak… brave new world. You like it until it corrects you for not being woke enough
- la6472 4y ago
  No they don’t decide. They suggest. Are you also offended by the suggestions?
- esrauch 4y ago
  It's not like it's silently editing existing docs, it has an underline and you can voluntarily see what alternative wordings might be.
- Rastonbury 4y ago
  Where is the line drawn? MS Word suggests style corrections too, despite the meaning being totally understandable. As an enterprise feature, enterprises would interested in this because they wouldn't want their employees communications to get them cancelled or put on woke twitter. Despite their writing style guide[1] being a bit too woke for my liking i'm sure some people find it a good reference, especially if they don't have capacity to create their own corporate guide. [1]https://developers.google.com/style/word-list https://developers.google.com/style/word-list
Stupulous 4y ago
While I don't doubt that an intent of this is to promote empathy, I would need to see some evidence before I could be open to the possibility that that is its effect. Anecdotally, these things seem to incense anger and hatred- I've never heard anyone say that being language-policed made them a better person, but I have seen people behave in a way that suggests the opposite. Personally, I become less empathic when someone assumes authority over what I say or write.

kbos87 4y ago

This comes off as an angry tirade full of projection and lacking any real insight.

ra0x3 4y ago

This actually…doesn’t not make sense

nickff 4y ago
>"This actually…doesn’t not make sense" I don't understand what you are referring to when you say "this"; what is "this"? Are you referring to a specific statement by the parent poster, or something described in the OP? I also don't understand whether the double-negative is intentional (and meant to cancel itself out, and become a positive), or if it is a colloquialism.
- Shared404 4y ago
  This = 'the comment being replied to'. This actually !(not make sense). V This actually does make sense. The reason they wrote it the way they did was to convey that (not making sense) was what they expected from GP, but that instead it did make sense.

slaymaker1907 4y ago

This kind of feature would be very handy for an email client. I don't think many emails are being sent out these days that aren't corporate garbage.

DavidSharff 4y ago

Love it. I do think there is more activism at play than you might. At a minimum it provides the fear mechanism that prevents employees from challenging the work, particularly if they aren't even on the project (why stick your neck out?). However, the code format for prose analogy illuminates the writing quality angle brilliantly. I'm sure I'm not alone in having distinct communication modes in work documents, each with their own reasons to be excluded from the ML dataset: 1. Keep it simple -- when achieved it is highly effective for communicating a work memo, but would be terribly dry if used in auto suggestions for an English major struggling through crafting moving prose. 2. Lazily verbose -- going long is more expedient than crafting a compact message. It's mostly unrefined garbage. (exhibit a this comment) 3. Everything is awesome (positivity inflation) -- a deluge of great, love, awesome, wonderful, perfect, etc. all applied to far too many things, far too often. Imagine if an ML code formatter included psudeo code inputs, or was given a data set of every local file change (pre-commit) instead of what is sitting in a main branch? My Docs are filled with things that I'd never commit much less pass a code review. If Google Docs was only used in corporate settings, and we wanted to double down on our drab corporate communication styles, I guess the feature would make some sense.