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“Forbidden-word” lists are a symptom of administrative bloat
- low_tech_love 4y agoCargo Cult Social Activism
- hackernewds 4y agospot on. these are the outcomes of excess employment and printed money just sloshing around
- version_five 4y agoI agree this (and related religious-political thought policing) are a dark side of what amounts to UBI which it where much of society is at. Do and say the right things, give up freedom of choice, and you're taken care of for life. Think for yourself and you're left in the cold. It reminds me of the movie 300, where all Xerxes demands is that you kneel.
- drxzcl 4y agoI see a lot of people struggling to make ends meet around me and they have all sorts of politics. I find your comment fairly tone deaf and reeking of unwarranted victimism.
- luckylion 4y agoThe people around you should try to get into political positions where all they'll need to do is to have the right political opinions and enforce that then. Which opinions those are depends on the organization. The problem of course is that many people couldn't stand to work in such an organization, and there's definitely suffering involved unless you are a certain type that loves that kind of work.
- low_tech_love 4y agoAbsolutely, but "all sorts of politics" is not "any sort of politics". Also, I'm pretty sure none of the teams who made these word lists are struggling to make ends meet. For example, what does the guy who's out there in the middle of a cold night making soup for homeless people think about these lists?
- shadowgovt 4y agoDo and say the right things, give up freedom of choice, enter into a social contract where in exchange for refraining from exercising some of one's natural rights to others' detriment, they agree to refrain from... ... wait.
- candiddevmike 4y agoI don't follow the UBI thing at all. If anything, this illustrates that we should have UBI or try and reduce the amount of folks working in bullshit jobs somehow.
- kthejoker2 4y agoYou said a forbidden word, so no UBI for you? Straight out of 1984.
- candiddevmike 4y agoI guess I have a different definition of universal than you.
- UncleEntity 4y agoDo you really believe that it is going to be dolled out “universally” and not, like every other human endeavor, based on political vote wrangling?
- dr-detroit 4y ago[dead]
- butterNaN 4y agoI dunno, I think it's good that a racial slur is not thrown at me in my workplace. I know at least some people who would love to do it as a """"joke"""" Could be just me though
- subjectsigma 4y agoRacial slurs have been banned for a long time in the average workplace and that’s a good thing. These lists are talking about banning words like “crazy” (offensive to the mentally ill) and “felon” (offensive to … felons, I guess)
- cool_dude85 4y agoSo some banned word lists are fine, obviously you can't call your students racist slurs. But these ones are bad (presumably because I personally don't understand why some of the words on the list might be offensive.)
- subjectsigma 4y agoNo, it’s because I read the list and they don’t give convincing justification for their choices. Most of the banned words are banned because “someone somewhere maybe might interpret this as offensive in the worst possible case.” Everyone agrees that certain words are slurs. Stanford and their ilk have just started designating things slurs that aren’t used that way. Did you read the lists in question?
- calvinmorrison 4y agoWhy do we need a end all list anyway? What happened to "be professional"?
- UncleEntity 4y agoThat’s offensive to unemployed people?
- nonethewiser 4y agoDon’t forget a fucked up value system.
- noduerme 4y agothat implies there's a thought-out value system underpinning any of this signaling to begin with.
- shadowgovt 4y agoThis is just "People don't complain about social justice when they have real problems" couched in an academic setting, and that argument is quite tired.
- A_D_E_P_T 4y agoIs it, though? And is the ritual proscription of harmful words (where the definition of "harmful" keeps expanding, into frankly ludicrous territory,) truly doing anything at all for "social justice"?
- flappyeagle 4y agoit's... demonstrably true though? Inflation up, layoffs, ukraine... no more social justice news, google searches down, mentions in NYT down, voters stop responding to it on both sides in elections.
- magicalist 4y ago> Inflation up, layoffs, ukraine... no more social justice news, google searches down, mentions in NYT down, voters stop responding to it on both sides in elections. "transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely" was like three days ago
- UncleEntity 4y agoDon’t you worry none, it will fully ramp up while we get closer to the presidential primaries.
- flappyeagle 4y agoIt’s a losing message from republicans. Look at their recent election results. Their voters don’t care.
- hprotagonist 4y agoWe must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this. or as a black friend of mine is fond of saying about such signaling acts, “the powers that be will go to great lengths to be seen to be doing something while maintaining the status quo”
- butterNaN 4y agoWould your black friend be okay with racial slurs thrown at him?
- flappyeagle 4y agono one likes to be insulted. I don't think he would be ok being called a moron either. therefore we should ban "moron".
- drxzcl 4y agoExactly that most places actually do ban ‘moron’ in official communications and have done so for ages. It’s an extremely ableist term, it’s does not simply mean “stupid”.
- Macha 4y agoI have to say, most places that go so far as to ban moron also ban stupid.
- enkid 4y agoWho's banning? None of the lists the author talks about actually bans any language. They advise.
- Avicebron 4y agoI think the point is that if someone does not comply with their advice they might have their life impacted in a negative way, can't get job, grants, ostracized, etc. Which de facto becomes a ban.
- LegitShady 4y agoWhen you can afford to have political commissars it's because you have bloat and corruption. When you can't afford to not have political commissars it's because society is corrupt.
- enkid 4y agoYou can't call it a forbidden word list if no words are actually forbidden. This is a purposeful choice by the author to make these harmful word lists as bigger deals than they actually are.
- wonderwonder 4y agoIf you work at these institutions and frequently use these words it will likely affect your career. So if you want to keep getting paid, these words are for most purposes, forbidden.
- cool_dude85 4y agoIs it unfair, though? If I work at an academic institution and I'm sending out a bunch of emails to other professors using the n-word, is it wrong that I could get investigated based on that?
- Invictus0 4y agoThe forbidden word list contains such violent words as "man".
- codekansas 4y agoBy n-word do you mean "no-can-do" or "normal person"? Both on the Stanford Elimination of Harmful Language list
- alpaca128 4y agoNobody here talks about the n-word, but things like "master branch" or "sanity check". And the main problem is that organizations trying to ban those terms never even ask people with disabilities, different cultural origins etc for their opinion or permission. What gives them the right to decide what is hurtful for other people than themselves? Also it doesn't prevent problems like racism, it just hides them behind fake politeness.
- ParetoOptimal 4y ago
- jsemrau 4y agoAlles Entartete Kunst
- heisenbit 4y ago> —administrators have increasingly become enforcers of workplace discipline. Even if forbidden-word lists are presented as “advisory,” they exist as weapons in administrators’ arsenal for penalizing faculty. The risk of abuse is significant as is the chilling effect on speech.
- shadowgovt 4y agoWhat kind of speech?
- mhuffman 4y agoInteresting that you seem to imply that you would be just fine with canceling people or with the chilling effects of speaking if the "kind of speech" fit some criteria that you personally have.
- ParetoOptimal 4y agoWould you cancel the speech of people infringing on free speech?
- mhuffman 4y agoI don't understand what you mean by that. How do you infringe on free speech with free speech?
- ParetoOptimal 4y agoGetting someone cancelled by revealing heinous crimes they committed. Making forbidden word lists and convincing your company to adopt them.
- mhuffman 4y agoOk, I see. No I would not cancel or end the careers of those people that did that. My true hope is that people can come to the understanding that ignoring people that try to do that is the proper approach. Just like I don't want to hurt people that believe in flat Earth. I just ignore them as kooks. People that make forbidden word lists and people that call the employers of people because they disagree with them should be ignored and this should become socially acceptable. Also, I will note that in both of your examples it wasn't free speech but specific actions taken by a person.
- SilverBirch 4y ago>Many are written not by faculty but by ambitious university administrators. I think it's a pretty poor form of argument to immediately impugn the motivations of the people you disagree with. It's also quite frankly a little comical to suppose that ambitious university administrators would decide this was how to direct their ambition. One thing that really struck me about this article is that it points to policies, and language lists, but there's one thing that's missing. Any actual details about anything at all that's bad. Like, ok, this policy exists where you can report a book for being offensive and they'll consider your complaint. That sounds... fine? If you want to follow that up and say "Hey look! Here are the books they banned!" I'm interested, but that policy just sounds... fine. What's the actual problem here? I think the problem here is the right wing intellectual sees a harmful word list and thinks "Oh my god they're stifling academic inquisition"- but as the author points out, these word lists don't operate actually within the academic setting. What is actually happening is school administrators don't want you referring to another student in the university cafe as "sugar tits".
- Vaslo 4y agoSo a harmful word list like this is acceptable to you? I don’t see any mention of “sugar tits”. What I do see is people trying to use their authority to tell you how to speak. Almost no one is offended by words on the Stanford list, yet it exists and can be used against you when you don’t speak the way they want.
- SilverBirch 4y agoYeah, I think it's absolutely fine to have a harmful word list. I don't think you're really engaging with the issue of why this type of list exists either. There is a genuine balance to be made between the chilling effect of this list vs the chilling effect of a work/university environment where routine use of racist/sexist/other"ist" language creates an unwelcome environment for minorities. I think a core disagreement here is people on the right say "These academic institutions are being politicized" but that's not true, the institutions were always political, it's just that previously they were political in a way that favoured rich straight white men and now an effort is being made to counteract that.
- 1-6 4y agoExample: We cannot use master/slave in code.
- yieldcrv 4y agospeaking of which, my git client on my computer makes master branches, while github wants to use main branch. its a little annoying, I would be open to switching my git client to do main by default, how do I do that? I'll look it up now that I've typed it out edit: the answer https://superuser.com/a/1572156 https://superuser.com/a/1572156 git config --global init.defaultBranch main
- a2800276 4y agoOut of curiosity, how did this affect you? This is only an issue the very first time you set up a repo, no? As soon as you push 'master' to an empty GitHub project, that becomes the default branch. And if you clone a repo there is no expectation from the local git that a branch with any particular name exists. What am I missing?
- smcl 4y agoYou're missing nothing, it's a non-issue. You can use master or main and neither git nor GitHub care, employers might have some guidelines but they generally have a bunch of things like coding conventions, codes of conduct or other office policies designed to make workplaces somewhere you can actually work without, for example, worrying about colleagues saying or doing hateful, racist or sexist shit
- yieldcrv 4y agoAffect? I just like congruence. I often use the push instructions that a new empty github project prompts, and do it frequently enough that I want my system defaults to match those instructions. Its not important to me to know that my system could overwrite those instructions successfully because "master" or whatever my local branch is called can be written into the command line. Its not important to me that "main" is a contrived replacement for "master".
- 4y ago
- wonderwonder 4y agoIts all so tiresome.
- noduerme 4y agoAnd administrative bloat is a symptom of... anyone? The overproduction of elites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction
- euroderf 4y agoThe way to more fully employ elites in an environment of oversupply is to employ more of them at levels appropriate for their qualifications - but for reduced hours (like, maybe about 25 a week?). Problem solved!
- noduerme 4y agoPerhaps they aren't qualified to do anything that needs to be done whatsoever. Maybe they and their degrees are completely superfluous and unnecessary. Historically, the way to employ such educated sons was to either make them priests or send them to die in wars or to the colonies to get drunk and slaughter indigenous people; when all three of those strategies failed, societies with too many of them usually collapsed under stupid and poorly planned revolutions run by young rich idiots.
- euroderf 4y agoI think your dots almost connecting; your points are taken. A fairly clear threat to any society is masses of un(der)employed young males. People with capability+ambition but no outlet. So what about all those surplus advanced degrees ? What if they start an evil organisation along the lines of SPECTRE ?
- mcdonje 4y agoThis is a conservative think-tank article about how the people who are actively passing laws against teaching black history and sex education shouldn't have their hate speech infringed. Conservatives have been attacking institutions of higher education for decades. There is nothing new here. Why is it on the front page of HN?
- throwaway290 4y agoThere are plenty of US conservatives and their sympathizers here... But to anyone else: just check out some other articles on the linked site to understand who is writing this. Ask yourself why them, and why you don't see others have the same opinion.
- ParetoOptimal 4y ago> just check out some other articles on the linked site to understand who is writing this. Ad-hominem! This site can be perfectly neutral and balanced while containing titles like: - Wokeness Is Creeping into Continuing Legal Education - Buckle Up, All Ye Unvaccinated!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jimbokun 4y agoLol, it obviously isn’t. And you use language in the same silly way as the bureaucrats and administrators cited in this article. That words don’t have meanings to be used to engage ideas, but are simply signifiers of which political tribe you belong to.
- mcdonje 4y agoIt absolutely is a conservative think-tank. Look at their "about" page, or their Wikipedia page. I looked those up before I made a claim about them. Your claims about me and my language are also not correct. I am not engaging in tribalism. I am pointing it out.
- nobodyandproud 4y agoIf Republicans would take a harder, pro-legal immigrant stance they’d find many immigrants and children of immigrants would be hard set against this nonsense. It’s indeed quite tiresome.
- foogazi 4y agoWhat does embracing immigrants have to do with this ? There are slurs for immigrants too The last Republican president had a word he liked to use to describe the countries these immigrants come from
- nobodyandproud 4y ago> What does embracing immigrants have to do with this ? > There are slurs for immigrants too > The last Republican president had a word he liked to use to describe the countries these immigrants come from I mean treat them on equal terms. You just demonsrated that they’re viewed as second-class .
- poszlem 4y agoAlso let's not forget of the "Third Law of Politics": > The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. Which in this example if even more true, as many of the HR/administration staff are openly revolutionaries and activists.
- exabrial 4y agoThings like renaming master to main unfortunately fall into the same category: make it appear you’re trying to do something without actually doing anything useful.
- groestl 4y agoWhich is evidently not true. You think about it, therefore the topic is thought about, so a goal is achieved. The goal is to not mindlessly employ a brutal term that stands for horrible abuse in a completely unrelated area, just so, and as a result trivializing it. There are other things you can complain about, "master" is not one of them.
- ToValueFunfetti 4y agoIf your contention is that when I listen to a remastered Beatles album and think that they were masterful musicians, I'm also somehow convincing myself that slavery was not a big deal, you'll have to provide some kind of evidence for that. When you say 'a goal is achieved', are you trivializing the accomplishment by using a word from sports? When I think someone who leads is doing a good job, am I trivializing lead poisoning?
- ParetoOptimal 4y agoI think they mean the very fact that people have to be conscious of their words and view them critically through the lens of hundreds of years of oppression is meaningful all by itself.
- groestl 4y agoExactly.
- ToValueFunfetti 4y agoThey said that "mindlessly employ[ing] a brutal term that stands for horrible abuse in a completely unrelated area, just so" trivializes it, and that's what I took issue with. If they only intended to say that thinking about slavery is meaningful, I am happy to agree.
- ParetoOptimal 4y agoirony: The groupthink in this thread is that words like master/slave don't matter, but everyone expressing that opinion feels like a victimized free thinker.
- gpderetta 4y agoUsing victimized in this acception is insulting to actual victims.
- doctormanhatten 4y agoThe central point of the article seems dubious to me. I think it's more likely that administrators are simply in charge of implementing forbidden word lists. This is of course their job. However the central political impetus for doing so is likely elsewhere. (E.G. faculty leadership or something). I also personally struggle to see the harm caused by such lists.
- andrewmcwatters 4y agoOf all of the corporate departments I perceive qualified to write “lists,” IT is perhaps rock bottom. It seems to consistently result in visible productions of over reactions that are disconnected from reality. For example deaf and blind people that I know of prefer to be called deaf or blind. Brown bagging in my life time has always referred to making one’s own lunch and taking it to work or school in a paper brown bag. Black box refers to an electrical literal black box which one is unable to see its implementation details without opening it. The thinking of individuals who produce these works seems to seep into everything they perceive, and so ironically they shouldn’t be producing these lists. Red, in my experience in most people’s minds, does not refer to Indians predominantly. BIPOC seems to elevate “capital B” black people and “indigenous” people over others. This seems to be the current initialism in-vogue but I find it inappropriate. I would err on creating too short of a list over an ever expanding one. But I digress. That’s not the point of the article. Ideally we don’t have these at all. Not because of administrative bloat being something to avoid but because hopefully you learn how to speak to people with nuance as a result of living life and talking to people with different backgrounds and working continually on your own simple ethical decisions. As a final comment, much of the social discussions we have in the states are really limited to US centric social perspectives. People don’t talk like this in many other countries. There’s some irony in being so concerned about how one communicates with other communities that one doesn’t see how myopic this is on an international scale. It’s so American.
- theshrike79 4y agoWhen I read BIPOC, my brain goes to "bisexual person of color". Every. Single. Time. Actually as I'm writing this I still draw a blank what it's actually meant to be. But Americans love their acronyms.
- mhuffman 4y ago>There’s some irony in being so concerned about how one communicates with other communities That "concern" in modern United States is literally the end of your professional life! So these self-appointed thought and speech police have, and will employ without a second-thought just for twitter points, through social media, a way to amplify their power to the extent that they can do something previously impossible and end your career over a (possibly imagined) thought "crime" or speech "crime". So from that perspective, all the walking on eggshells and concern about this is absolutely real not just a socially imagined construct or idea.
- doctormanhatten 4y agoThe central point of the article seems dubious to me. It seems more likely that administrators are simply in charge of implementing these lists. This is of course their job. However it seems likely that the central political impetus for their doing so lies elsewhere. E.g. faculty heads or university leadership. I also struggle to see the harm of such lists personally.
- cowl 4y agoIt contributes to polarize the opinion. Never a good thing. It accuses People of things that have never crossed their minds. When I do a BlackBox testing never have I or those that I know Associated the "Black" of the Box with the skin of people (for good or bad). When we talk about Blacklist/WhiteList there is no Connection with skin colour. Black and white have those connotations not because they are associated with Skin color but because Black/white is more often culturally associated with dark/light(unknown/known). You are saying to me that My human Instinct to not like the Darkness are because I have associated them with Dark Skin People? When I cried as a baby because I was afraid of the Dark, I was afraid of the Dark Skin People although I Didn't know yet what color was or what people are? You are saying to me that all my Cultural background has no value because someone somewhere might read it wrong? That I am incapable of having a judgment or instinct without it being just that without further sinister meanings? Is that what these movements are saying? these movements are doing more to imprint this racial divide on the minds of this generation that anything they are are trying to protect from. Saying "Poor" is offensive and non inclusive? Saying "my self-reported income was in the lowest income bracket" is way more offensive. What does it really say? What does self-reported have to do with the my financial status? Is It my fault that I am Poor? If I self-Report more Am I not poor anymore? And countless other examples....
- sebastianconcpt 4y agoWhere are the scientific studies, not humanities politically loaded essays, showing that behavioral design through compelled language (a self-evident opposite of freedom of expression a a blatant social breach to state-totalitarianism) leads to reduction of interpersonal violence—notably sexual assault and domestic abuse?
- b1c1jones 4y agoWhy should I care what some institution does with their language?
- wonderwonder 4y agoIf I was into conspiracies and my country had an adversary that created 100 year plans I would think that this is a pretty good way to sow discord and weaken both economic and social bonds. If I was into conspiracies.