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Is there a word for the type of verbal shell game where a purposefully-ambiguous phrase is used to imply an indefensible position? For example, the old joke abo

Is there a word for the type of verbal shell game where a purposefully-ambiguous phrase is used to imply an indefensible position? For example, the old joke about functional vs "non-functional" languages. In one sense, saying "X is not a safe language" could mean that X is not a language that exclusively allows proven-safe constructions. One might say that Rust is not a safe language because it has `unsafe`, or Ada is not a safe language because SPARK isn't mandatory. But this isn't what a typical reader should be expected to understand from the quoted phrase -- to say that Rust is "not safe" is to say that it is unsafe. It feels unreasonable to claim Rust is "not safe" when the same accusation would never credibly be leveled at Go, Java, C#, or other languages that encourage (without mandating) memory-safe programming. -- > The people saying that safety is all or nothing are toxic and > Rust community needs to stop turning a blind eye. There is no such thing as a "Rust community". There cannot be a community for a programming language when (1) there's no way to prevent someone from using that language, and (2) the barrier to entry is an HTTP download and 15-minute tutorial. I never hear about people discussing the "C++ community", or writing on Twitter about how the "Java community" needs to do something or other. It wouldn't fly, there's too many people known to use those languages to ascribe a common motivation to them. Yet when there's a smaller language -- Rust, Haskell, Go, Zig, whatever -- suddenly people start treating them as if they are a group, and criticizing people who use Rust for the behavior of other people who (claim to) use Rust. It's madness. At best there can be a "posters on Reddit's /r/rust subforum" community, or "posters on Twitter's #rust hashtag community", but these are even more dubious. The only requirement to be a member of these "communities" is an email address and enough sense to not get banned. Nobody would say "the Twitter #rust hashtag community needs to ..." because it would be obviously silly to expect good behavior from freshly registered user "PmMeToePhotos123456".

cwillu 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
hitekker 4y ago
> There is no such thing as a "Rust community". Actually, there is: https://www.rust-lang.org/community https://www.rust-lang.org/community. It's centralized and they even have appointed moderators https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/moderation https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/moderation. A bunch of them resigned recently due to alleged toxicity in the rust community and governance. https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/23/rust_moderation_team_quits/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/23/rust_moderation_team_.... Rust's community structure, and its accountability for its members misbehavior, runs counter to other programming languages like Zig https://kristoff.it/blog/interfacing-with-zig/ https://kristoff.it/blog/interfacing-with-zig/ which explicitly claims to be decentralized.
- jmillikin 4y ago
  Do you think that the linked Twitter post, quoting from Reddit, is using the same definition of "Rust community" that you are? This seems like another instance of the above pattern, where "Rust community" is simultaneously: (1) The set of people who talk about Rust online in major forums, such as Twitter and Reddit, and (2) The set of people who post on the moderated low-traffic official forum. I don't think most people, when someone says "Rust community should ...", would consider that to be scoped to people posting on rust-lang.org. Consider that according to https://users.rust-lang.org/u https://users.rust-lang.org/u there are 22,000 registered users on the rust-lang.org forums. There are currently 191,000 people subscribed to /r/rust, and since it's Reddit there's no need to be subscribed to post or comment. The number of people talking about Rust on Twitter is less practical to count, but probably at least the same order of magnitude.
  - pverghese 4y ago
    I think he's probably refering to something like the actix situation where the insults and vitriol because of the use of unsafe for performance, made the author quit. Which is unfortunate for any open source contributor

cwillu 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

hitekker 4y ago

> There is no such thing as a "Rust community". Actually, there is: https://www.rust-lang.org/community https://www.rust-lang.org/community. It's centralized and they even have appointed moderators https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/moderation https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/moderation. A bunch of them resigned recently due to alleged toxicity in the rust community and governance. https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/23/rust_moderation_team_quits/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/23/rust_moderation_team_.... Rust's community structure, and its accountability for its members misbehavior, runs counter to other programming languages like Zig https://kristoff.it/blog/interfacing-with-zig/ https://kristoff.it/blog/interfacing-with-zig/ which explicitly claims to be decentralized.

jmillikin 4y ago
Do you think that the linked Twitter post, quoting from Reddit, is using the same definition of "Rust community" that you are? This seems like another instance of the above pattern, where "Rust community" is simultaneously: (1) The set of people who talk about Rust online in major forums, such as Twitter and Reddit, and (2) The set of people who post on the moderated low-traffic official forum. I don't think most people, when someone says "Rust community should ...", would consider that to be scoped to people posting on rust-lang.org. Consider that according to https://users.rust-lang.org/u https://users.rust-lang.org/u there are 22,000 registered users on the rust-lang.org forums. There are currently 191,000 people subscribed to /r/rust, and since it's Reddit there's no need to be subscribed to post or comment. The number of people talking about Rust on Twitter is less practical to count, but probably at least the same order of magnitude.
- pverghese 4y ago
  I think he's probably refering to something like the actix situation where the insults and vitriol because of the use of unsafe for performance, made the author quit. Which is unfortunate for any open source contributor