8 ms·

I saw a conversation on Twitter a while ago back when it still was Twitter. The OP with many followers was laying out words and classes of words with negative c

by donatj 3y ago

I saw a conversation on Twitter a while ago back when it still was Twitter. The OP with many followers was laying out words and classes of words with negative connotations that shouldn't be used. Someone replied in good faith to OP and asked how we should express negative thoughts. OPs answer was basically that we shouldn't. I find that kind of thought very off putting and minorly disturbing. An important part of the human experience is being able to express when someone else has screwed you over; to do so using flowery over the top hyperbole is the catharsis we need to live good lives.

dijit 3y ago
Such language policing is double-plus-ungood. (For those that haven’t read the classic Nineteen-eighty-four book by Eric Arthur Blair (pen name: George Orwell) one of the core themes of the story is how the ruling party controlled language, calling it “newspeak”, in order to remove the ability to express certain thoughts or opinions, most notably those that could be used to incite revolution or allow you to express discontent.)
- swayvil 3y ago
  We have a local mind-control cult where I live. When asked they'll retort "why yes, we are a mind control cult. We teach you how to control your mind." ...but that isn't what I meant. Controlling the language. It's a big thing.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > Controlling the language. It's a big thing. And that's underselling how big it is. Language is the API to our brains. That's at least half the point Orwell's 1984 makes.
    - pstuart 3y ago
      Chomsky has entered the chat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
    - swayvil 3y ago
      I get what you mean. But we also have this thing called Science. Where a firsthand encounter with nonlinguistic reality is considered key. And Science has proven its power over and over. And you'd think that would impress people. Even if you lay the forms and products of our modern scientific culture aside. Just that philosophy. The supremacy of observation. You'd think it would lead to a momentary pause in the babble. But no.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        I don't think that what you're saying and what I'm saying are mutually exclusive at all. Science is how we tease out truths about reality. Language is about how we communicate and is closely linked with cognition.
        swayvil 3y ago
        I didn't mean to suggest that they are mutually exclusive. Just that this sphere of language definitely has a limit. (Which leads to various important stuff)
  - everdrive 3y ago
    It's interesting that you have a local cult. What's it called?
    - swayvil 3y ago
      School of the Prophets (or something like that). A flavor of Sufis.
      - pstuart 3y ago
        A dear friend was, if not a follower, at least quite friendly to sufism. I found her points about it intriguing and worthy of contemplation. If I was going to join a cult then that might be the one to join ;-). Of course there's a significant difference between a belief system and a group that practices that belief under a charismatic and dogmatic leader....
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- paulluuk 3y ago
  I find that conservatives most often quote "Nineteen-eighty-four" as a comment on "politically correct" language. But when asked about "family values", "obamacare", "right to work" and other conservative double-speak, they often don't feel like those apply. My point is not that conservatives use more double-speak/newspeak then progressives, rather my point is that this is used and applied across the political spectrum, and even in the military ("enhanced interrogation", "collateral damage") and corporations ("restructuring", "cost engineering").
  - bigDinosaur 3y ago
    How is 'collateral damage' newspeak? It's a useful concept even if you want to avoid it at all costs, but beyond that euphemisms have existed forever and are not the same as newspeak (which wanted to make something literally unthinkable, not merely euphemistic).
    - lc9er 3y ago
      It's soft language for 'civilian casualties', even though it can include other things like property destruction.
      - SenAnder 3y ago
        Which term would you use to distinguish between deliberate and accidental civilian casualties?
        Swizec 3y ago
        Does the father whose daughter didn’t come home from school care if the “civilian casualty” was deliberate or accidental? “Stop killing kids” sounds much more impactful than “establish rules of engagement to minimize collateral damage”. Language matters. Similarly: Does the worker without a job care whether they were fired, laid off, or affected by a reduction in force? Probably not. But “affected by a reduction in force” sure makes it easier for leadership to press the button.
        3y ago
- paulddraper 3y ago
  If time travel exists, 1984 is exhibit A.
- lightedman 3y ago
  "Such language policing is double-plus-ungood." And yet such behavior happens right here on this very site. Why do you tolerate it?
  - dijit 3y ago
    You should take a dive in my comment history. I very much do not tolerate it.
Waterluvian 3y ago
Something I was rather ignorant to for the longest time was how fascism can exist at both ends of the spectrum. My last day on Mastodon was the day a few people ganged up on me quite aggressively for not putting Alt text in an image. Tolerance isn’t acceptance. It’s letting things you don’t like exist without making a big fuss over it. You can dislike certain speech patterns without having to go on a crusade against them.
- zoogeny 3y ago
  I recently saw several mentions of image alt text including a poll about alt text on social media. The question was something like "Would you ever post an image without alt text" and something like 99% of responses were "never". I mean, I've literally never even thought about it so it surprised me that such a high number of respondents would have chosen that. Which I guess is kind of the point. There is an idea that ignorance is bad, but once you have been informed then non-compliance is treated as intentionally malicious. That is, if you know why you ought to add an alt-text and yet you refuse to do so then you are deemed to be complicit in the oppression of those who require alt text to enjoy the Internet. It is a subtle reframing from "being polite and courteous is good" to "non-compliance is evil". It also reminds me of a lot of behavior I see in tech spaces. One that comes to mind is the notorious dog-piling on the maintainer of Actix-web framework by well-meaning Rust evangelists who were upset by his use of unsafe language features. Another I recall is when a company had a mix of open source libraries (MIT license) and some other kind of business license in the same repo. They were being harassed for mentioning the product was open source in their marketing. What is interesting to me is that some people will see some of these examples as justifiable harassment while they will see others as crossing a line. It is just a sad fact that the mechanism to get people to adhere to social norms is often through bullying and shame.
  - lukeschlather 3y ago
    Style guides exist for good reason. Also a simple suggestion that people adhere to the style guide is often heard as harassment even when it's simply asking people to adhere to the style guide. Also, if 99% say "never" and that sounds too high, what about "Would you ever send an image without alt text to a blind person?" Does it make sense to post a message when you know a significant number of people are physically incapable of interpreting it?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
JasserInicide 3y ago
A great recent example is everyone changing whitelist/blacklist to allowlist/blocklist because Americans are so fucking obsessed with race politics that they see it absolutely everywhere
- mock-possum 3y ago
  That, or they refuse to see it at all.
- llbeansandrice 3y ago
  Allowlist/blocklist is more clear and accurate tho? The software community loves to complain about this stuff like the change from master to main branch but I always get the sense that people just liked to complain rather than any meaningful objection.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Always_Anon 3y ago
    >Allowlist/blocklist is more clear and accurate tho? No it's not, not at all. Is "blocklist" a list of file system blocks? Bitcoin or other crypro blocks? As someone who speaks English as a second language, the first time I read "whitelist/blacklist", I simply looked them up in a translation dictionary and immediately understood what they mean. Those are actual words with definitions spanning centuries. >The software community loves to complain about this stuff like the change from master to main branch but I always get the sense that people just liked to complain rather than any meaningful objection. Yes we love to complain, but there were many meaningful objections that were ignored. There was a reddit outage that occurred due to the madness around "inclusive language" and removing the word "master": https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng/comments/11xx5o0/you_broke_reddit_the_piday_outage/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng/comments/11xx5o0/you_brok...
    - lfowles 3y ago
      Is a blacklist a list of black pixels on the screen?
paulmd 3y ago
I mean, you are posting this in a hugbox forum where overtly suggesting that certain opinions don’t have merit or rigor is forbidden because it hurts peoples fee-fees. You, too, participate in society. Some say taping aquarium rocks to your cables improves the sound, some say it’s rubbish, let’s have a discussion and if you are really so sure about your ideas I’m sure you can refute the idea right? Let’s have a debate! (And now just continue refuting it every day for the rest of your life…) https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina17.htm https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina17.htm https://i.imgur.com/296fTdq.jpg https://i.imgur.com/296fTdq.jpg Effectively that’s outlawing the opinion of “no that’s dumb, you’re dumb for suggesting that”, which is unfortunately rather a necessary one, science doesn’t work if everyone has to treat the idea that the moon is cheese with equal weight. At some point you can believe whatever you want but the scientific discourse doesn’t have to include you, and people don’t grow if they’re not told their opinions are wrong and objectively incorrect from time to time. The moon is not made of cheese and unless you got a real good reason then you’re dumb for suggesting it, and you’re worsening the discourse for all of us too by even entertaining it. Discourse does not benefit from entertaining facially outlandish ideas without some evidentiary backing etc just “for the sake of discussion”. At some level, enforced politeness and forced equality-of-merit for all opinions is a thought-terminating cliche and becomes destructive to discourse. It’s a little bizarre how people love having legislated “truth in the middle” outcomes to discourse. The truth often is objectively not in the middle and it worsens the discourse to pretend it is. (Same for the way this forum treats hanlon’s razor tbh. 99% of the time when people invoke it, it’s a handwave to excuse some pretty conveniently malice or self-interest. That’s effectively using it as a thought-terminating cliche. Any time profit or PR spokespeople are involved you should never invoke it, because malice is indistinguishable from profit-seeking in most circumstances etc.) The same is true of certain openly callous and cruel perspectives etc. It’s not just factual perspectives that can be destructive and noxious if tolerated as though they held rigor and merit, and extreme indifference etc is just as toxic as wishing harm directly etc. Just because you don’t care about litter, or masking during a pandemic, or climate change, doesn’t mean the rest of society isn’t going to set expectations etc, and “I guess you’ll have to die then” is not exactly sympathetic, but it’s uncouth to point out the callousness here. And that is, itself, an editorial lean towards the legitimacy and integrity of such positions. You’re treating “I don’t want to die” with the same weight as “I guess you’ll have to die for me”, and tutting when people get upset about it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by donatj 3y ago

dijit 3y ago

Such language policing is double-plus-ungood. (For those that haven’t read the classic Nineteen-eighty-four book by Eric Arthur Blair (pen name: George Orwell) one of the core themes of the story is how the ruling party controlled language, calling it “newspeak”, in order to remove the ability to express certain thoughts or opinions, most notably those that could be used to incite revolution or allow you to express discontent.)

swayvil 3y ago
We have a local mind-control cult where I live. When asked they'll retort "why yes, we are a mind control cult. We teach you how to control your mind." ...but that isn't what I meant. Controlling the language. It's a big thing.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Controlling the language. It's a big thing. And that's underselling how big it is. Language is the API to our brains. That's at least half the point Orwell's 1984 makes.
  - pstuart 3y ago
    Chomsky has entered the chat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
  - swayvil 3y ago
    I get what you mean. But we also have this thing called Science. Where a firsthand encounter with nonlinguistic reality is considered key. And Science has proven its power over and over. And you'd think that would impress people. Even if you lay the forms and products of our modern scientific culture aside. Just that philosophy. The supremacy of observation. You'd think it would lead to a momentary pause in the babble. But no.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      I don't think that what you're saying and what I'm saying are mutually exclusive at all. Science is how we tease out truths about reality. Language is about how we communicate and is closely linked with cognition.
      - swayvil 3y ago
        I didn't mean to suggest that they are mutually exclusive. Just that this sphere of language definitely has a limit. (Which leads to various important stuff)
- everdrive 3y ago
  It's interesting that you have a local cult. What's it called?
  - swayvil 3y ago
    School of the Prophets (or something like that). A flavor of Sufis.
    - pstuart 3y ago
      A dear friend was, if not a follower, at least quite friendly to sufism. I found her points about it intriguing and worthy of contemplation. If I was going to join a cult then that might be the one to join ;-). Of course there's a significant difference between a belief system and a group that practices that belief under a charismatic and dogmatic leader....
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
paulluuk 3y ago
I find that conservatives most often quote "Nineteen-eighty-four" as a comment on "politically correct" language. But when asked about "family values", "obamacare", "right to work" and other conservative double-speak, they often don't feel like those apply. My point is not that conservatives use more double-speak/newspeak then progressives, rather my point is that this is used and applied across the political spectrum, and even in the military ("enhanced interrogation", "collateral damage") and corporations ("restructuring", "cost engineering").
- bigDinosaur 3y ago
  How is 'collateral damage' newspeak? It's a useful concept even if you want to avoid it at all costs, but beyond that euphemisms have existed forever and are not the same as newspeak (which wanted to make something literally unthinkable, not merely euphemistic).
  - lc9er 3y ago
    It's soft language for 'civilian casualties', even though it can include other things like property destruction.
    - SenAnder 3y ago
      Which term would you use to distinguish between deliberate and accidental civilian casualties?
      - Swizec 3y ago
        Does the father whose daughter didn’t come home from school care if the “civilian casualty” was deliberate or accidental? “Stop killing kids” sounds much more impactful than “establish rules of engagement to minimize collateral damage”. Language matters. Similarly: Does the worker without a job care whether they were fired, laid off, or affected by a reduction in force? Probably not. But “affected by a reduction in force” sure makes it easier for leadership to press the button.
      - 3y ago
paulddraper 3y ago
If time travel exists, 1984 is exhibit A.
lightedman 3y ago
"Such language policing is double-plus-ungood." And yet such behavior happens right here on this very site. Why do you tolerate it?
- dijit 3y ago
  You should take a dive in my comment history. I very much do not tolerate it.

Waterluvian 3y ago

Something I was rather ignorant to for the longest time was how fascism can exist at both ends of the spectrum. My last day on Mastodon was the day a few people ganged up on me quite aggressively for not putting Alt text in an image. Tolerance isn’t acceptance. It’s letting things you don’t like exist without making a big fuss over it. You can dislike certain speech patterns without having to go on a crusade against them.

zoogeny 3y ago
I recently saw several mentions of image alt text including a poll about alt text on social media. The question was something like "Would you ever post an image without alt text" and something like 99% of responses were "never". I mean, I've literally never even thought about it so it surprised me that such a high number of respondents would have chosen that. Which I guess is kind of the point. There is an idea that ignorance is bad, but once you have been informed then non-compliance is treated as intentionally malicious. That is, if you know why you ought to add an alt-text and yet you refuse to do so then you are deemed to be complicit in the oppression of those who require alt text to enjoy the Internet. It is a subtle reframing from "being polite and courteous is good" to "non-compliance is evil". It also reminds me of a lot of behavior I see in tech spaces. One that comes to mind is the notorious dog-piling on the maintainer of Actix-web framework by well-meaning Rust evangelists who were upset by his use of unsafe language features. Another I recall is when a company had a mix of open source libraries (MIT license) and some other kind of business license in the same repo. They were being harassed for mentioning the product was open source in their marketing. What is interesting to me is that some people will see some of these examples as justifiable harassment while they will see others as crossing a line. It is just a sad fact that the mechanism to get people to adhere to social norms is often through bullying and shame.
- lukeschlather 3y ago
  Style guides exist for good reason. Also a simple suggestion that people adhere to the style guide is often heard as harassment even when it's simply asking people to adhere to the style guide. Also, if 99% say "never" and that sounds too high, what about "Would you ever send an image without alt text to a blind person?" Does it make sense to post a message when you know a significant number of people are physically incapable of interpreting it?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

JasserInicide 3y ago

A great recent example is everyone changing whitelist/blacklist to allowlist/blocklist because Americans are so fucking obsessed with race politics that they see it absolutely everywhere

mock-possum 3y ago
That, or they refuse to see it at all.
llbeansandrice 3y ago
Allowlist/blocklist is more clear and accurate tho? The software community loves to complain about this stuff like the change from master to main branch but I always get the sense that people just liked to complain rather than any meaningful objection.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Always_Anon 3y ago
  >Allowlist/blocklist is more clear and accurate tho? No it's not, not at all. Is "blocklist" a list of file system blocks? Bitcoin or other crypro blocks? As someone who speaks English as a second language, the first time I read "whitelist/blacklist", I simply looked them up in a translation dictionary and immediately understood what they mean. Those are actual words with definitions spanning centuries. >The software community loves to complain about this stuff like the change from master to main branch but I always get the sense that people just liked to complain rather than any meaningful objection. Yes we love to complain, but there were many meaningful objections that were ignored. There was a reddit outage that occurred due to the madness around "inclusive language" and removing the word "master": https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng/comments/11xx5o0/you_broke_reddit_the_piday_outage/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng/comments/11xx5o0/you_brok...
  - lfowles 3y ago
    Is a blacklist a list of black pixels on the screen?

paulmd 3y ago

I mean, you are posting this in a hugbox forum where overtly suggesting that certain opinions don’t have merit or rigor is forbidden because it hurts peoples fee-fees. You, too, participate in society. Some say taping aquarium rocks to your cables improves the sound, some say it’s rubbish, let’s have a discussion and if you are really so sure about your ideas I’m sure you can refute the idea right? Let’s have a debate! (And now just continue refuting it every day for the rest of your life…) https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina17.htm https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina17.htm https://i.imgur.com/296fTdq.jpg https://i.imgur.com/296fTdq.jpg Effectively that’s outlawing the opinion of “no that’s dumb, you’re dumb for suggesting that”, which is unfortunately rather a necessary one, science doesn’t work if everyone has to treat the idea that the moon is cheese with equal weight. At some point you can believe whatever you want but the scientific discourse doesn’t have to include you, and people don’t grow if they’re not told their opinions are wrong and objectively incorrect from time to time. The moon is not made of cheese and unless you got a real good reason then you’re dumb for suggesting it, and you’re worsening the discourse for all of us too by even entertaining it. Discourse does not benefit from entertaining facially outlandish ideas without some evidentiary backing etc just “for the sake of discussion”. At some level, enforced politeness and forced equality-of-merit for all opinions is a thought-terminating cliche and becomes destructive to discourse. It’s a little bizarre how people love having legislated “truth in the middle” outcomes to discourse. The truth often is objectively not in the middle and it worsens the discourse to pretend it is. (Same for the way this forum treats hanlon’s razor tbh. 99% of the time when people invoke it, it’s a handwave to excuse some pretty conveniently malice or self-interest. That’s effectively using it as a thought-terminating cliche. Any time profit or PR spokespeople are involved you should never invoke it, because malice is indistinguishable from profit-seeking in most circumstances etc.) The same is true of certain openly callous and cruel perspectives etc. It’s not just factual perspectives that can be destructive and noxious if tolerated as though they held rigor and merit, and extreme indifference etc is just as toxic as wishing harm directly etc. Just because you don’t care about litter, or masking during a pandemic, or climate change, doesn’t mean the rest of society isn’t going to set expectations etc, and “I guess you’ll have to die then” is not exactly sympathetic, but it’s uncouth to point out the callousness here. And that is, itself, an editorial lean towards the legitimacy and integrity of such positions. You’re treating “I don’t want to die” with the same weight as “I guess you’ll have to die for me”, and tutting when people get upset about it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]