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This is why I refused to go along with the git master->main rename. Beyond being incredibly dumb and zero people being actually offended by this ever, if you ge
by nvm0n2 3y ago
This is why I refused to go along with the git master->main rename. Beyond being incredibly dumb and zero people being actually offended by this ever, if you get hyperstitious slur cascades in system identifiers that are hard-coded into a bajillion places, the result is an endless series of bugs and timesinks that will still be blowing up in people's faces a decade later.
The worst thing about these cascades is that they make people who jump on them early incorrectly feel virtuous and powerful, and that's seductive. Allow them to get away with it and before you know it there's yet another attempt at starting a cascade, and then another, and then another, and suddenly everyone is at each other's throats all the time over nothing. This is how we end up with people being attacked at work for using the word female (https://twitter.com/JoshPower80/status/1722675156017889607 https://twitter.com/JoshPower80/status/1722675156017889607).
The only fix for this is for enough people to start proactively spotting such cascades when they start and plant stakes in the ground. "That isn't offensive and you are being disruptive by claiming it is" is a line that needs to start being heard much more often in the workplace. Otherwise there seems to be no real end to how fast this particular wheel can spin.
- quantified 3y agoThe most intolerant wins: [https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...]
- flashback2199 3y ago[flagged]
- nvm0n2 3y agoIt's already obvious, the article is literally about that.
- flashback2199 3y ago[flagged]
- nvm0n2 3y agoMaster-slave in distributed systems has as much to do with slavery as "click the mouse" has to do with animal torture. Get a grip. Language is full of words that have different meanings in different contexts, and computing especially so due to its reliance on metaphors.
- flashback2199 3y agoI agree that it's not about actual slavery, but it goes deeper than that, and they were named that because the concepts do borrow the metaphor of slavery I mean, the master controls the bus and the slave(s) have to listen to the master.. I first heard about master-slave with IDE drives in the early 00s, I think I was in 6th grade or something trying to put a second hard drive in my computer, and I remember it seemed racist to me at the time, soo I'm pretty sure it's occurred to lots of other people as well.. Shouldn't have to be invoking slavery just to learn some comp sci or computer engineering concept..
- zug_zug 3y agoI'm gonna defend the article from this claim (despite disagreeing with most people on this thread who see this article as some vindication of their victimhood mentality). I think the article comes from a good place, if a bit out-of-touch. If you grow up in an area that has no overt racism (or no racism against your race and you don't notice it against other races) then it's possible for somebody (especially us pedantic and socially imperceptive nerds) to think that the "cure" (political correctness) is more frustrating than the disease. Then hopefully you grow up, and realize that only a small part of the world is even a democracy, and that at least half the world is racist (e.g. apparently 30% of chinese were comfortable saying some races are better than others) [1]. Hopefully along the way you learn a little bit more about America too (even 1/20 Americans admitted to not believing in interracial marriage in 2021). [2] But not everybody moves out of their hometown, or reads the news. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage
- nvm0n2 3y agoSo people who disagree with you are all dumb hillbilly child nerds who don't read the news? Putting aside the inflammatory name calling, your evidence for your position is China (not the place where English language hyperstitions are a problem), and that 5% of Americans answered that they don't believe in interracial marriage on a survey. But 5% is a trivial number and within the noise floor of surveys. Helpfully Scott Alexander has also written about that: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and... So where's the actual problem here? The west is not a racist part of the world, you selected the best numbers you could find for your case and they don't support that belief. The obsession with "racist" language isn't really anything to do with race. It's a power trip by nasty people who enjoy the feeling of taking part in and driving along these cascades.
- flashback2199 3y ago[flagged]
- barneygale 3y ago[flagged]
- anm89 3y agocompletely agree. I'm not going to raise a stink if a project uses something other than master but I will continue to use master.