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This is a terrible use of the phrase "social construct". What things are vs what things are used for is not interesting by category, only in the specifics. Hamm

This is a terrible use of the phrase "social construct". What things are vs what things are used for is not interesting by category, only in the specifics. Hammers are a social construct, because some people use them for nails, and some people use them to bash other people's heads in.

viraptor 3y ago
I don't think that's a good analogy. Hammer would be a social construct if some group of people used "hammer" as a technical term for the tool and another group used the word "hammer" specifically for tools used to hit someone. In your example everyone agrees about what a hammer is, they just use it for different purposes. That is not as interesting to analyse. The distinction between the uses is important, because you may end up talking to one of the groups and not realise you're using the same word for different things.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Sorry to hammer the point home, but I'm not saying "words can't have different meanings". I'm saying it's not useful to rename "meanings" as "social constructs".
  - viraptor 3y ago
    You're missing a specific property where social constructs need to not exist without people agreeing they exist. It's not just about the multiple meanings - it's a social construct if it didn't exist before. "hammer" did exist. "hammer as a description of tools used to hurt people" doesn't until people agree it does. The interesting parts are that enough consensus emerged due to (some factors) to create that meaning, how did that consensus emerge, if it's isolated to some groups, etc.
pjc50 3y ago
> What things are vs what things are used for is not interesting by category On the contrary, this is the entire field of UX design, and quite a large chunk of material anthropology. At some level everything we relate to is a social construct, once we use it to discuss things with other humans. A computational linguist friend of mine once wrote a long LJ post on "Ether is a social construct" after spending his PhD extracting chemical information from papers. His point was that ether, like various acids and other substances, behaves differently at different concentrations, in ways that are important for reactions but must be inferred from context and prior knowledge of chemistry. In other words, technical terms are more precise than everyday language, but are rarely fully precise because they cannot capture all the context in which they are used.
- devnonymous 3y ago
  Abstraction is not the same as social construct. A branch as a term is very much a part of git porcelain (which is an abstraction of the plumbing, ie: the 'git branch' command exists), it's not just some term that organically evolved and was agreed upon by convention. Furthermore, the meaning of it isn't going to further evolve into something different as people learn more about it. Unlike social constructs
  - dartos 3y ago
    Have you seen the different git branch development strategies? Some places use branches for versions instead of tags. Some places religiously follow git flow’s branch rules. Some just have a master production branch and feature branches. Some have staging branches too. In this way, branches become a social construct, as the use (and thus meaning) of a branch can change from organization (eg, small social circle) to organization.
    - devnonymous 3y ago
      Sure, so a development process is perhaps a social construct (or rather, using the term scocai construct to describe a development process is not entirely incorrect). However, the idea of a git branch exists independent of the manner a certain population agrees on its use. It doesn't cease to exist just because you haven't agreed on how to use it.
      - pjc50 3y ago
        > idea of a git branch exists independent of the manner a certain population agrees on its use. No! A set of bits exists on disk. A piece of software (git) interprets those bits as a branch. The idea of a branch exists in the heads of the users - subject to the usual human limitations. While quite a lot of users will be able to be precise about what a branch means in terms of git blobs, there will be people using the tool and talking about branches who don't know that. But an idea, whatever it is, exists only in the way that people think and talk about it. Even in this thread we have people fighting about what it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38999486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38999486
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
LudwigNagasena 3y ago
Par for the course. I don’t think I have ever seen the use of the phrase “social construct” which wasn’t terrible.
- blowski 3y ago
  Yeah, it's usually a cliched pseudo-sceintific way of saying "I don't think it's necessary", and that seems to be the case here too.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
devnonymous 3y ago
...and some people use them to describe things you can't touch (ba dum tss)
crabbone 3y ago
I don't know if the author uses the term intentionally, or as a kind of parody. The "social construct" term has been applied over and over to many phenomena in different branches of human knowledge, mostly to produce plenty of confusion resulting from "everything is everything" kind of situation. The humanities are, probably, the most avid user of this term, and that's why the irony. I.e. because we couldn't find a decent definition for what "race", or "ethnicity", or "culture", or "country" etc. is, every such problematic term was labeled a "social construct". So, I think you might be too harsh on the author. I doubt they use "social construct" completely unironically. What they are actually trying to say is that "there's more to branches than meets the eye, and it turns out that it's hard to define what a branch actually is".

viraptor 3y ago

I don't think that's a good analogy. Hammer would be a social construct if some group of people used "hammer" as a technical term for the tool and another group used the word "hammer" specifically for tools used to hit someone. In your example everyone agrees about what a hammer is, they just use it for different purposes. That is not as interesting to analyse. The distinction between the uses is important, because you may end up talking to one of the groups and not realise you're using the same word for different things.

robertlagrant 3y ago
Sorry to hammer the point home, but I'm not saying "words can't have different meanings". I'm saying it's not useful to rename "meanings" as "social constructs".
- viraptor 3y ago
  You're missing a specific property where social constructs need to not exist without people agreeing they exist. It's not just about the multiple meanings - it's a social construct if it didn't exist before. "hammer" did exist. "hammer as a description of tools used to hurt people" doesn't until people agree it does. The interesting parts are that enough consensus emerged due to (some factors) to create that meaning, how did that consensus emerge, if it's isolated to some groups, etc.

pjc50 3y ago

> What things are vs what things are used for is not interesting by category On the contrary, this is the entire field of UX design, and quite a large chunk of material anthropology. At some level everything we relate to is a social construct, once we use it to discuss things with other humans. A computational linguist friend of mine once wrote a long LJ post on "Ether is a social construct" after spending his PhD extracting chemical information from papers. His point was that ether, like various acids and other substances, behaves differently at different concentrations, in ways that are important for reactions but must be inferred from context and prior knowledge of chemistry. In other words, technical terms are more precise than everyday language, but are rarely fully precise because they cannot capture all the context in which they are used.

devnonymous 3y ago
Abstraction is not the same as social construct. A branch as a term is very much a part of git porcelain (which is an abstraction of the plumbing, ie: the 'git branch' command exists), it's not just some term that organically evolved and was agreed upon by convention. Furthermore, the meaning of it isn't going to further evolve into something different as people learn more about it. Unlike social constructs
- dartos 3y ago
  Have you seen the different git branch development strategies? Some places use branches for versions instead of tags. Some places religiously follow git flow’s branch rules. Some just have a master production branch and feature branches. Some have staging branches too. In this way, branches become a social construct, as the use (and thus meaning) of a branch can change from organization (eg, small social circle) to organization.
  - devnonymous 3y ago
    Sure, so a development process is perhaps a social construct (or rather, using the term scocai construct to describe a development process is not entirely incorrect). However, the idea of a git branch exists independent of the manner a certain population agrees on its use. It doesn't cease to exist just because you haven't agreed on how to use it.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      > idea of a git branch exists independent of the manner a certain population agrees on its use. No! A set of bits exists on disk. A piece of software (git) interprets those bits as a branch. The idea of a branch exists in the heads of the users - subject to the usual human limitations. While quite a lot of users will be able to be precise about what a branch means in terms of git blobs, there will be people using the tool and talking about branches who don't know that. But an idea, whatever it is, exists only in the way that people think and talk about it. Even in this thread we have people fighting about what it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38999486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38999486

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

LudwigNagasena 3y ago

Par for the course. I don’t think I have ever seen the use of the phrase “social construct” which wasn’t terrible.

blowski 3y ago
Yeah, it's usually a cliched pseudo-sceintific way of saying "I don't think it's necessary", and that seems to be the case here too.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

devnonymous 3y ago

...and some people use them to describe things you can't touch (ba dum tss)

crabbone 3y ago

I don't know if the author uses the term intentionally, or as a kind of parody. The "social construct" term has been applied over and over to many phenomena in different branches of human knowledge, mostly to produce plenty of confusion resulting from "everything is everything" kind of situation. The humanities are, probably, the most avid user of this term, and that's why the irony. I.e. because we couldn't find a decent definition for what "race", or "ethnicity", or "culture", or "country" etc. is, every such problematic term was labeled a "social construct". So, I think you might be too harsh on the author. I doubt they use "social construct" completely unironically. What they are actually trying to say is that "there's more to branches than meets the eye, and it turns out that it's hard to define what a branch actually is".