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> The mental contortions required to conclude that "committed suicide" trivializes something, but "died by suicide" doesn't, are so extreme that I cannot believ
by jlebar 4y ago
> The mental contortions required to conclude that "committed suicide" trivializes something, but "died by suicide" doesn't, are so extreme that I cannot believe anyone honestly holds that opinion.
I think the notion is that "committed suicide" is like "committed a crime" and harkens back to the Christian notion that suicide is a crime (against God). And so it's moralizing language that blames the person for killing themselves.
You can verify that this is a common notion among people who work in the field by Googling. For example, the first hit when I search for "why shouldn't we say committed suicide" is https://www.irmi.com/articles/expert-commentary/language-matters-committed-suicide https://www.irmi.com/articles/expert-commentary/language-mat... which says:
> For example, the phrase "committed suicide" is frowned on because it harks back to an era when suicide was considered a sin or a crime. Think about the times when we use the word "commit": "commit adultery" or "commit murder."
> That leaves as the most likely conclusion that this document is not an honest effort to eliminate 'harm', but a mine-field, a list of sins and prohibitions, to be used as ammo against opponents.
It's interesting that you arrived at this conclusion before doing a minimal amount of research!
- zamadatix 4y agoI always knew GitHub was a place full of sin I just couldn't figure out where these feelings were coming from.
- Pigalowda 4y agoI'm committed to my partner. She's evil, I knew it.
- csande17 4y agoI say we should form a commission to investigate this further.
- Pigalowda 4y agoThe commission might find that I’m mostly at fault so I might have to walk back my original claim.
- claytongulick 4y agoMy wife's commitment is concomitant to mine. I hope.
- the_cramer 4y agoJokes on you, but they changed the default branch to be named "main" instead of "master" for reasons of appropriation.
- ghostpepper 4y agoI wonder if they take points away in an interview if you have a master's degree.
- soundnote 4y agoIt's still one of the most stupendous pieces of harmful slacktivism that I've seen. So, so much pointless work fixing thing that didn't need to break, and all for the stupidest reasons possible.
- amluto 4y ago“master” never made much sense to begin with. I’m still a bit disappointed that the default wasn’t set to “default”. I argued for either that or having no default at all. Seriously, ignore political correctness for a bit. The “master” branch is generally not in charge of anything. It’s not like a master recording of which everything else is a copy. It has no special rights and isn’t even necessary more important. It made a limited sort of sense in Linux where torvalds/linux.git’s master branch is the branch that everyone else’s development eventually follows, but my git clone of that is not any sort of master despite being called “master”.
- henrikschroder 4y agoCrazy, it's almost as if the same word can have different meanings and connotations depending on context!
- pannSun 4y ago> Committed to a cause, lives up to one's commitments, committed a patch, etc. It's so easy. Almost every word has positive and negative connotations. Find such a word in your opponent's vocabulary, claim they intended the negative connotations, and thus declare him a sinner. Reference this Stanford document to support your accusation.
- sicp-enjoyer 4y agoIf you want to take a Christian perspective, the word "commit" is used to emphasize that the individual took specific action as opposed to "omit" meaning they failed to take proper action to prevent evil. "Died by suicide" implies passivity. It just happened to them.
- khazhoux 4y ago> "Died by suicide" implies passivity. It just happened to them. Like "Officer involved shootings."
- sicp-enjoyer 4y agoExactly.
- Ticklee 4y agoWell with officer involved shootings I can kind of understand the passive perspective, seeing as cops are not really acting on their own accord.
- khazhoux 4y agoI genuinely don't understand this comment. In the olden days, a news report would say "A suspect was fatally shot by a police officer." Now, they'll only say "A suspect was fatally injured during an officer-involved shooting." Which is like, yeah no kidding the officer was "involved" -- he pulled the trigger!
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoOne has to be fully committed to the act of ending their life in order to commit suicide.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lstodd 4y agoCOMMIT should be banned from SQL.