General > General Technical Chat
'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts
james_s:
--- Quote from: John B on June 20, 2020, 08:43:16 pm ---We're still stuck flip-flopping between Liberal and Labour parties, although there are major alternatives for representation in the house and senate.
Sadly, one of the major alternatives is the Greens, whom I used to like the idea of, thinking that they were focused on sustainable environmental practices. However, for years now they have devolved into the ultra woke far left party.
--- End quote ---
It seems they are all doing that, drifting outward toward the extreme fringe. In the US the republican party was the first to do that, they shifted further to the right and became much more homogenized at least as far back as the 80s when they pandered to the evangelical christians. The democratic party was a broad spectrum from center to left but now it seems it has followed and gone full leftist while the libertarian party has gone to the extreme of their idealism of essentially no government and zero taxes. Each of them pandered to their extremists and created monsters they could not control. The rest of us are left flopping between choices as each pisses us off as soon as they get into power. At some point they started viewing each other as enemies to be defeated rather than fellow citizens who need to compromise and work together.
JPortici:
--- Quote from: EEVblog on June 20, 2020, 01:13:44 am ---
--- Quote ---this whole debate is retarded to begin with.
--- End quote ---
Careful, you'll get people complaining about that term!
--- End quote ---
:)
still on the verge of publishing a wall of text, but still hanging on it because i know that it would be pointless debate.
Words have different meaning.
Blacklist was a thing long before european knew that there were black people (well, not quite, but the point is the king didn't think of african americans when the term was coined)
African americans were not the only slaves in existence. I would like to remind EVERYBODY that serfdom was a thing up until about 1960s in northern italy and now we still have some sort of slavery in the south. It is a concept i am unable to graps because the way i was raised it is unthinkable to me that people can be this evil to still want to own another person or have a control on someone else that is basically of ownership.
Americans should have stopped imposing their views on the world decades ago, they have done too much harm already.
I'm sorry i could not keep myself but i am really pissed of by this whole situation
Another edit: I know, i know, how can i, a white middle class male, ever have a say in this topic? It's hypocritical both ways. I feel it's impossible to have a discussion, at least in forums
G7PSK:
Whit listing and black listing are related to 1700's gentlemen's clubs where members would cast secret votes as whether to admit a person as a member or to remove a member by placing ivory balls into a box. White balls were a vote yes and black balls a no vote.
If we are going down this road are we changing the name of a certain colour or two, do I have to change my name which derives from the latin for black.
SilverSolder:
--- Quote from: james_s on June 20, 2020, 08:57:23 pm ---
--- Quote from: John B on June 20, 2020, 08:43:16 pm ---We're still stuck flip-flopping between Liberal and Labour parties, although there are major alternatives for representation in the house and senate.
Sadly, one of the major alternatives is the Greens, whom I used to like the idea of, thinking that they were focused on sustainable environmental practices. However, for years now they have devolved into the ultra woke far left party.
--- End quote ---
It seems they are all doing that, drifting outward toward the extreme fringe. In the US the republican party was the first to do that, they shifted further to the right and became much more homogenized at least as far back as the 80s when they pandered to the evangelical christians. The democratic party was a broad spectrum from center to left but now it seems it has followed and gone full leftist while the libertarian party has gone to the extreme of their idealism of essentially no government and zero taxes. Each of them pandered to their extremists and created monsters they could not control. The rest of us are left flopping between choices as each pisses us off as soon as they get into power. At some point they started viewing each other as enemies to be defeated rather than fellow citizens who need to compromise and work together.
--- End quote ---
Proportional representation is the way around this polarisation - the different parties have to "horse trade", meaning some of the good ideas from smaller parties get a chance to be adopted in return for supporting a larger party or group - but this would take a lot of work to implement, a different political culture, and a battle with vested interests. The largest Western country with something like this working, is probably Germany.
Nominal Animal:
I have some good friends who are either for banning terms that are claimed to offend others, or at least consider it not a bad idea because it placates people.
I know their hearts and intentions are good.
Which is exactly what makes it so painful to try and show them what that attitude and those actions have always lead to, in human history.
They refuse to consider the problem in long term, and they refuse to consider that their own attitude could be wrong.
I've mentioned the tribalization and seeing humans not as individuals but as groups is a fundamental source of the problems, and I do believe some of the responses to that are a proof of how vehemently opposed even otherwise good-intentioned people are to consider the inevitable effects over their intentions. Wishes are not actions.
I have now come to the conclusion that there is no way to engage these people in a beneficial manner: there is nothing to be gained by talking with them. They will not reason, and they will not think; they will not provide any new insights, as they can only repeat their ideological programming.
This is painful, because these people have good intentions, and some of them are dear friends. Yet, it is exactly their actions and demands that are driving wedges into the society. You cannot treat individuals equally, if you insist on "positive" discrimination through a class-based system; you only perpetuate a class-based approach of people relating to other people. At some point, the pendulum will swing again, and it'll just be a different group being discriminated. Nothing changes, except new individuals are fed into the grinder.
What to do? :-//
On one hand, let them live life like they want to. On the other hand, they're ignoring their own behaviour and the effects of their own behaviour, and simply telling others how to behave, because they feel morally superior. They're being destructive assholes, but with good intentions.
They claim that "master" and "slave" are offensive to people who have never been slaves themselves, but have built themselves a self-image based on their assumed progenitors being subject to "slavery". This is utterly ridiculous, because there are currently as much real slaves right now than the entire total population in Nordic countries, and these people are not willing to do anything about that – except to tell people to not talk about it. (Possibly because slavery is prevalent in South Asia and Africa, and forced marriages and honor violence in Middle East; and because people connected to those regions are in particularly protected groups, mentioning this is a bigger crime than slavery itself.)
This is not theoretical in any way, by the way. In Finland, the exact same happened with regards to prostitution in the last decade or so. In order to reduce street prostitution, the laws were changed in a way that resulted in significant increase in human trafficking (especially for prostitution). But, because the trafficking is underground, and out of sight, and does not involve the politicians' own daughters, this situation is widely considered more preferable. Out of sight, out of mind. Clicking "thumbs up" on a social media post is now more important than actually helping your neighbor carry a heavy load, because the former is visible, the latter invisible in the social world.
In all Nordic countries, honor violence and forced marriage is a huge problem, because the legal system lacks any tools to fight against this. Any attempts to do so, are countered as "islamophobic" and thus utterly racist. Women who have a fatwa but still talk about their own experiences and why something should be done about this are shunned and "disinvited", because they don't fit into the narrative. They don't get silenced, just shadowbanned.
And herein lies the true core.
Just like "Codes of Conduct", redefinition and banning of terms will only enforce the divides between people. This is particularly visible in technical mailing lists, where it can be difficult or even impossible to get any of the maintainers to react to a difficult situation, because any negative reaction has huge negative social impact, but ignoring people is utterly safe.
It is also increasingly visible in scientific research, where delving into a new topic is frowned upon, and doing the same research others are doing is easiest to get funds for. "Do not rock the boat."
The true core of this, and I believe even Karl Marx was well aware of this, is to divide et impera: to categorize people in groups where inter-group interactions are frowned upon, because such groups – especially when ostensibly "anti-authoritarian" – are much easier to control completely, than individuals.
(As a trivial example, consider traffic patterns. We can model traffic flow very precisely using very simple models, except they all fail at the individual motorist level. Groups are modelable and controllable, individuals much less so.)
So, it is truly not about not offending people: it is about teaching them to limit themselves to intra-group interactions, and avoid all inter-group interaction as dangerous.
(You can see this already popping up in the various popular movements: if you aren't X, bend the knee and be silent. This space is for Y only.)
I do not believe there is a fix to it that does not involve massive amounts of suffering and destruction.
I am seriously contemplating dropping all my academic endeavours – even though I made a very hard decision 15 years ago to drop business and switch to low-level physics research and simulator development –, and instead move to a small city or a large village, and limit my interactions to a group the size of humans have evolved to deal with (~ max. 2000), and to hell with the rest of the world: humanity is not sane. But, on the level of individuals, a good example, a good pattern, has at least a chance to spread.
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