[HN Gopher] Google's AI-powered 'inclusive warnings' feature is ... ___________________________________________________________________ Google's AI-powered 'inclusive warnings' feature is very broken Author : signor_bosco Score : 426 points Date : 2022-04-22 15:59 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.vice.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com) | u2077 wrote: | Trying to flatten everything into synonyms is the same reason | Google search has gone downhill. Now they're bringing that same | feature nobody asked for into Google docs. Language is too | complex for any algorithm to "understand" | julienb_sea wrote: | I mean, this is the way of things. Corporate slacks have bots to | correct non-inclusive language, and enforce syntax changes like | whitelist --> allowlist, master --> main, etc. IMO it's silly, | but nevertheless increasingly ingrained in corporate America. For | the many of us that use G Suite for work, this feels like a | natural extension of other areas to remind us to use current | language. It's potentially a helpful reminder that avoids the | awkwardness of someone actually making a gdocs comment about it. | Spivak wrote: | I mean I do all those substitutions not because of some weird | sense of moral superiority but it's literally a zero effort | thing that might do some good and in most cases improves | clarity, especially for non-native speakers. | Kylekramer wrote: | This is an article nearly entirely built around a viral Tweet | regarding "landlord" cause Vice writers live in a strange world | where that is essentially a slur they want to use, and then found | two edge cases to make it an "article". | andrewmutz wrote: | Why would "landlord" be considered a slur? | tremon wrote: | It's not a slur, it's just distinguishing people between | those that own property and those that don't. As such, it's | offensive to large swathes of disadvantaged people. | jaywalk wrote: | "People who own property" and "people who don't own | property" are very real and in many cases important groups | to discuss. If the fact that I'm a property owner (not a | landlord though) offends someone who isn't, well... tough. | The correct response would be to tell these people to stop | being so soft and getting offended over absolutely nothing. | nmilo wrote: | I can't even begin to follow this line of thought. Is | 'billionaire' offensive because it distinguishes those who | own billions of dollars versus those who don't? How, by | your logic, is 'property owner' not offensive? | mikkergp wrote: | > billionaire | | I think you meant 'person of means'? | tgv wrote: | My guess: "lord" is male, thus offensive. | dekhn wrote: | Please, explain your thinking in more detail. | Kylekramer wrote: | I object to "articles" that are essentially just popular | tweets puffed up. Don't think that is good journalism and | don't think it needs much more detail. | dekhn wrote: | I mean, I'm confused why you think the vice authors live in | a world where landlord is a slur. It's not. It's a commonly | used term and a small number of progressive individuals | have manipulated the media and their followers into | thinking it's terrible. But it isn't. Hence, my request as | to why you think the Vice authors "wanted to use a slur", | since it isn't. | Kylekramer wrote: | Cause I have worked in NYC media and know that Vice | writers use "landlord" as an insult? | | The impetus for this piece was someone wrote a tweet that | got very popular implying Google is somehow trying to | cover for "landlords" by calling them "property owners". | Vice writers are upset about that and would prefer to use | "landlord" cause in their culture it has a negative | connotation. | dekhn wrote: | An insult and a slur are extremely different things. | Kylekramer wrote: | Feels like this is an entirely unrelated topic, but they | aren't extremely different: | | https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slur | | 1a : an insulting or disparaging remark or innuendo | | And to the point, in NYC media circles, it is nearly the | equivalent of an actual slur which is why I called it | that. Just one writers want to use as opposed to one they | think it is inappropriate to use. | jaywalk wrote: | Who, exactly, is it supposed to be "nearly" an actual | slur against? | | Because I'm sure that actual landlords don't have a | problem being referred to as landlords, so you must be | referring to some other group. | mkoubaa wrote: | What a giant waste of human intelligence and engineering effort. | Pxtl wrote: | Oof, this is going to be one of those really really awful threads | isn't it? | throw7 wrote: | This reads like it's April 1st... but it's not. -.- | ipnon wrote: | I'm going to delete my Google account today. I'd rather watch | YouTube without ads, but I can take a little brainwashing for | some praxis. Corporations only speak the language of money, | outrage and morals are foreign to them. | rayiner wrote: | > Emily Lipstein typed "Motherboard" (as in, the name of this | website) into a document and Google popped up to tell her she was | being insensitive: "Inclusive warning. Some of these words may | not be inclusive to all readers. Consider using different words." | | It's amazing how a Fortune 500 company can release a product that | chastises you for using the word "motherboard" because it has | "mother" in it, while other people insist that this is a "fringe" | type of thinking and not "mainstream" on the left. | quantified wrote: | FFS | johnnyanmac wrote: | "Parentboard". | | But yes, anytime you hear "AI-powered" and "Natural language | parsing", these kinds of cases are inevitable. I know google | prides itself on technology, but there are some things like | language that are moving so fast, with so many states that an | initiative like this takes actual humans to debug. But given | Youtube, it seems like Google is still stuck in the thought | that they can automate everything. | lupire wrote: | A $trillion corporation's garbage product is The Left now? | jdrc wrote: | It looks like a great SEO woke language sells, whether you like | it or not, especially the latter | karaterobot wrote: | I dislike this proposed feature as much as the next person, but | it's worth noting that the main complaint of this article is | fairly unique: they work on a channel called Motherboard, and | this feature is going to cause the name of their channel to be | considered a problem. Most people won't experience that specific | error case. It's valid, and points to the kinds of unforeseen | consequences you run into when trying to manage speech in this | way, but it's not by itself a smoking gun for most people. | mikkergp wrote: | I think this article hints at an important thing though which | is that language is contextual. Even if we think that we should | describe mothers as birthing persons or fathers as non-birthing | parents in the general context, I should be allowed to refer to | myself as a father. People of color can re-claim slurs, which a | correction to could probably feel paternalistic. There are lots | of contexts where certain language is ok, depending on the | speaker or the audience. And I guess it means you're not | supposed to use google docs for any kind of emotional writing, | as it tries to correct "annoyed" or the f word. That and there | is this beauty: | | > A transcribed interview of neo-Nazi and former Klan leader | David Duke--in which he uses the N-word and talks about hunting | Black people--gets no notes. Radical feminist Valerie Solanas' | SCUM Manifesto gets more edits than Duke's tirade; she should | use "police officers" instead of "policemen," | cowl wrote: | > Even if we think that we should describe mothers as | birthing persons | | Mother definitely does not mean birthing person. The easiest | example is adoption. Would would you call the mother in that | case? Adoptive Female Parent goes again against the 'rule' | because it has female in there. Parent 1/Parent 2? no it has | Hierarchy. | foota wrote: | I think you're looking for the word parent? | trollied wrote: | Ok, but it makes no sense in the first place? "Motherboard" has | long been a technical computer term, that even somebody with a | passive interest in computers would understand. You would have | to make an effort to be offended by it in some way. | | I fail to understand what's going on these days. Words change | their meaning over decades. A small minority seem hellbent on | kicking up a storm to change popular usage, where no offense or | other meaning is implied in general modern usage. | blast wrote: | It's not valid to censor the word "mother". It's either | laughable or sinister, depending on whether the people trying | to do it actually have power. | wincy wrote: | This is literally Brave New World stuff. Not exaggerating, | the word mother was hugely offensive to the people in that | book. Unfortunately we don't even get the Orgy Porgy parts. | It's like the worst parts of 1984 and Brave New World mixed | together. | vorpalhex wrote: | Be the change you want to see in the world? | dekhn wrote: | and as we can see, large numbers of people- there are hundreds | of us- think that the name of that channel to be highly | offensive. Actually, no, wait, nobody actually finds it | offensive. | elpakal wrote: | I was extended an on-site interview at Google and after reading | this and the comments I think I'll pass. | cato_the_elder wrote: | If you can (i.e. you don't fear persecution), please let them | know that this was the reason. | | Part of the reason these things have taken off is that their | proponents are very vocal, while the opponents prefer to just | mind their own business. | tempnow987 wrote: | Absolutely do not do this. There is massive brigading that | happens and the folks pushing the "anti-isms" are very very | focused on this stuff. You will get on a list as some type of | abuser / racist. Everyone knows to keep heads down on this | stuff at a place like google or just find somewhere else to | work. It really doesn't matter if you are liberal in all | other ways even. | NtGuy25 wrote: | There's plenty of other companies that have the other side | of the coin in values though that would admire people who | stand up. It's very nice to be a good culture fit at a | company. I have a Blue Lives Matter flag in the corner of | my camera during interviews and it's gotten me some really | good offers and I havn't been declined once. | | On the flip side, I know many that have been discriminated | based on their looks or vocal patterns(trans / lgbt). Alot | of companies and people assume these people are a problem | because of what goes on at google and decline them due to | culture fit. | tempnow987 wrote: | I actually would prefer that most political stuff stay | out of the workplace. So minimize the crosses, the blue | lives matter flags, the other stuff. | | In many of the more frugal businesses I've seen, folks | just don't have the time to strike / protest etc for some | of the stuff the FANG folks are into. | elpakal wrote: | Yep, I understand this could backfire and thank you for | pointing it out. It's probably best to let it simmer on HN. | | It's just my anecdotal experience with this kind of | mentality that the people looking to enlighten us simple | minded folk are also using any questioning or opposition of | their enlightenment as an opportunity to shame those people | that question or oppose. Some kind of twisted competition I | guess. | | (not to say I don't support enlightenment of certain | issues, I do, but with limits) | tempnow987 wrote: | The real problem can be that you are not actually told | what is what first. | | You go to shake someone's hand using your right hand. | That reinforces the patriarchy, so you are told off. | | You ask, no one told me I should shake hands with my left | hand. | | It's not the job of the oppressed to educate the | oppressor. | mjburgess wrote: | I think you could say, "following *this news* and other | comments, I feel like my language is going to be constantly | policed by my colleagues and this is a level of cognitive | and emotional burden I dont want in my workplace". | | Though, I agree.. inquisitions and dogma are honeytraps for | free-thinkers, by signalling dissent you are exposing that | you arent under their ideological control. | | Disagreeable sorts should, whereever possible, not raise | their hand when asked, "do you have any hetrodox | opinions?". | [deleted] | mjburgess wrote: | I imagine the leadership are aware of how toxic and repellent | this culture is -- despite, i'd imagine, having no clear | strategy to reform it. | Workaccount2 wrote: | Shareholders have to step up and get a leadership that can | take care of it. | shadowgovt wrote: | Google's owners have a majority. There is no real | pressure shareholders can apply. This is by design. | nullc wrote: | Only good advice if the poster is independently wealthy and | doesn't need to work. | [deleted] | nickdothutton wrote: | It's no wonder they fired the AI ethics department if this is the | output. | zefei wrote: | I don't believe this has anything to do with AI, it most likely | is rule based (not the entire system, just inclusive warnings). | People like to shit on AI, but AI wouldn't really make such | ridiculous suggestions, only human can. | | The suggestions look a lot like code linters in FAANG companies. | People from the outside will be shocked at some of these | "inclusive" linters if they take a look. | kache_ wrote: | I've been privy to people trying to ban words like "whitelabel" | at my company. Thankfully, management & executives at my company | never stood for that BS so I still get to use whitelist & | blacklist in documentation, and don't worry about those non- | issues get in the way of me actually doing work. | | Google might be too far gone, and working with those people would | be so exhausting that it's actually stopped me from applying | (James Damore) | | There are companies that don't stand for that sort of stuff. And | top paying ones too (pay better than Goog). Coinbase is one of | them, and I don't want to mention mine to avoid dox. And go check | blind, you'll find the vast majority of people don't stand for | this BS either, and that they're just silenced. | | My advice? Hit them where it hurts & vote with your feet. | Google's not the top payer anymore, so just leave. | jedimastert wrote: | Silly question: ignoring any kind of history, why fight for | terms like "whitelist" and "blacklist" when terms like | "allowlist" and "blocklist" are objectively clearer, especially | for folks who's first language is not English? | ImprobableTruth wrote: | I think there's a good argument to keep terms to maintain the | historical connection. There's a boatload of math and CS | terms that are very, very poorly named, but if you renamed | them, you lose the link to prior sources. | drdeca wrote: | Because the people/forces pushing them can't be trusted. | | Pushing such terms is (while presumably this is not the | conscious intent) a means of cementing power by showing who | (as in, "what vague coalition", not "which specific people") | is in control. | Quarrelsome wrote: | there's hills I'd rather die on but it feels silly. What's | appropriate is the transfer of the concept, not by how we | judge the style of the analogy. | | Ultimately if you're trying to edge proof language then | you're just changing which bunch of people you're pissing off | but I feel like people who do this act like its impossible | they could piss anyone off over this. | dotnet00 wrote: | I'd imagine it's because it gets extremely tedious. Switching | out only whitelist and blacklist isn't a big deal, but with | the ever increasing list of words being deemed as 'bad' (e.g. | the 'mother' example) it becomes increasingly annoying to | communicate. After all, it's distracting from the point just | to virtue signal to certain types of vapid personalities. | | Most people don't see 'blacklist' with racist connotations or | think 'motherboard' is in any way at odds with | transgenderism. | jaywalk wrote: | I'll fight for these terms because trying to "blocklist" them | is such a ridiculous thing that I have zero interest in | entertaining it. Nobody's actually offended by any of it, | it's all made up by people with nothing better to do and then | piled on by more people with nothing better to do. | loudmax wrote: | The problem isn't that "allowlist" is preferred to | "whitelist". The problem is that "whitelist" and | "motherboard" are literally _banned_. Google is a private | company so they can set whatever policies they want, but it | 's extremely condescending. | | I'm generally on board with using culturally neutral terms, | particularly since they're often more descriptive of the | actual thing being described. I think there would be far less | resistance if people didn't feel coerced. | adelie wrote: | I wouldn't be so worried about non-native English speakers. | 'Whitelist' and 'blacklist' are common enough terms that | they've become loanwords in other languages. In Chinese, at | least, the equivalent terms are Bai Ming Dan 'white name | list' and Hei Ming Dan 'black name list' and La Hei 'pull | (into) black(list)' is common vernacular for blocking someone | on social media. | throwaway47295 wrote: | I've always pictured a 'blacklist' as a document with | blacked-out redacted text; a whitelist is just the opposite. | It wasn't until this substitutional whitewashing[0] of the | English language that I realized whitelist/blacklist held | negative connotations for some people. | | [0]: like painting over a fence, geez. | SamReidHughes wrote: | foofoo4u wrote: | You may very well may be right that terms "allowlist" and | "blocklist" are objectively clearer. I'm in favor of the idea | of changing language to make things clearer and more | effective. But the contention I have is that these changes | aren't motivated for the pursuit of clarity. They are | motivated by a need for cleansing. "whitelist" and | "blacklist" are innocuous terms. They have been around for | ages. Used and understood with no controversy by our most | prestigious institutions from around the world. Then | suddenly, within a matter of two years, the term is high- | jacked by upper echelon members of our society. The words are | re-defined to take on a new meaning and a new interpretation. | Virtually every one of us who used this term are now deemed | bad. Oppressors. On the wrong side of history. Racists. Now | deemed a fireable offense. No room for debate and discussion. | It is for these reasons that I push back. The motivation | behind this change is wrong and has the potential to be all | consuming of our language and culture, deeming innocuous | terms as oppressive when they are not. | trollied wrote: | As I posted to a child: Language also adapts over decades | so that words are computer/IT terms & have no other | connotations. Like most of the stuff in this thread. Have a | think about that. | throwaway0x7E6 wrote: | >why fight | | because you give them an inch and they'll take a mile. | | look up "menstruators" and "birthing people" to see what else | that kind of people fight for. | | >objectively clearer | | then it wouldn't be necessary to force the change. nobody had | a problem with these words until very recently, and only in | very narrow circles of very loud people with disproportionate | amount of power | | >especially for folks who's first language is not English? | | that's a very slippery slope | [deleted] | ALittleLight wrote: | I just don't like people telling me what to say or write. I | think it's unhealthy to look for grievances in language and | that if you get good enough at doing so you might not be able | to stop. I also think terms like these are just a small part | of an ongoing effort. | | Independent of all other political goings on, in a vacuum, I | could agree that we should get rid of white and blacklist and | replace them with something else. | kache_ wrote: | I don't mind those words, and I don't really fight for them. | I use the words I use out of habit. I just think that the | mismatch in effort/spun cycles on those terms by the routine | vocal minority is a testament to how detached to reality | these people are | | The things that worry me are the witch hunts started by the | same group of people. See my other comment on "fren" | silicon2401 wrote: | Your question takes for granted that people are fighting for | whitelist in blacklist, but it's the opposite. Whitelist and | blacklist are long-established and familiar terms. | madamelic wrote: | No, they are not. | | Teach someone with no previous cultural knowledge what | "allow" and "deny" means, then ask them what white list and | black list means, then ask them what allow list and deny | list means. | | Black and white list requires previous knowledge of what | those terms mean, allow and deny do not. Someone can intuit | from just basic language knowledge what the feature does. | filoleg wrote: | I am fine with "blocklist" instead of "blacklist", because it | sounds similar. But "allowlist" is just more difficult to | pronounce. | | Regarding your concern about people for whom English isn't | the first language, I dont know how valid it is. Because | those terms exist under the same names and fall under the | same usage in many other languages. I can confirm that it is | the case with Russian, as "chernyi spisok" is a commonly used | phrase, and it literally translates to "black list", and has | the exact same meaning as in English. | nullc wrote: | > I am fine with "blocklist" instead of "blacklist" | | Better hope you're not dealing with a block device or other | data structure that involves units of data called blocks. | dymk wrote: | That's not what the word "objectively" means | | Whitelist and blacklist are the words we've been using for | decades to describe a concept. Everybody knows what they | mean. | madamelic wrote: | > words we've been using for decades to describe a concept. | | Yeah, and so was calling black men "boy" or using the | n-word like 50 years ago. | | Language changes because people realize there are better | words that more people are okay with. | trollied wrote: | Language also adapts over decades so that words are | computer/IT terms & have no other connotations. Like most | of the stuff in this thread. Have a think about that. | zeveb wrote: | 'Whitelist' and 'blacklist' have nothing to do with race, | they _never_ had anything to do with race, and anyone who | thinks they do is, quite simply, _wrong_. Knowing these | facts, this is nothing like calling a black man 'boy' or | using the n-word -- so bringing them up is irrelevant. | jacobsenscott wrote: | whitelist and blacklist are lazy language, even if you ignore | the fact that you personally are not bothered by them and you | don't have the mental capacity to understand why someone else | might be. They carry no intrinsic meaning, and if you can't | come up with more descriptive language you are the problem. In | all cases you can come up with a better word - include, deny, | allow, block, ban, accept, etc. It all depends on what you are | _actually_ talking about. Enjoy your high paying job a Truth | Social (I bet!). | jaywalk wrote: | Nobody was bothered by these words until some jackass told | them they should be. | orangecat wrote: | Your ableist bigotry against people with lower intellectual | capacity has been noted. | foolfoolz wrote: | You will now be limited to 1 inclusive language dismissal | per week. All inclusion warnings past the first one will be | made for you | BitwiseFool wrote: | >"My advice? Hit them where it hurts & vote with your feet. | Google's not the top payer anymore, so just leave. " | | In principle I agree but I feel like level headed folks | choosing to leave only makes the echo chamber even worse. And | sadly, I don't think Google as a company will suffer much of a | downside because they're so big. | rmbyrro wrote: | This may seem as bad in short term, but it's good in the long | run. | | As the share of ideologically-driven people rises, capacity | to solve problems and create valuable stuff decreases. The | organization will die inevitably. | kache_ wrote: | I unfortunately have a mortgage and can't live with the | stress of the fear of being fired for some esoteric internet | community I've joined. I've heard through the grapevines of | people starting slack mob witch hunts over people who've used | terms like "Fren" because of its very slight relationship | with 4chan. | | I like the security of not working with unchecked witch hunts | . I don't want to be Damore'd because of words I use outside | of work. | ReadEvalPost wrote: | I've been publishing writing far outside consensus | progressive attitudes since the pandemic began with zero | issue so far. Don't make your workplace your audience or | invite controversy around your workplace and you're very | unlikely to have a problem. | dekhn wrote: | "I owe money and need to make money to pay it off, so I'm | too afraid to say even reasonable things in public". Sounds | like you have 3 problems. | kache_ wrote: | Hahaha yeah, sometimes I wonder how quickly I'd get fired | if I didn't have mouths to feed. I'd probably be | somewhere in Miami living in a hacker warehouse working | on my 5th failed crypto project, consuming an assortment | of drugs. | | Instead, it's the white picket fence, steady income and | BBQs for me | darepublic wrote: | Airbnb did a similar thing, var/schema name whitelabel was | excised. Weirdly black label remained. It caused a frontend bug | temporarily | tyingq wrote: | "Black Label" has positive connotations. So it feels like an | effort to find anything with "white" where there might be a | positive connotation. And anything "black" where there might | be a negative connotation. And to remove all that matches, | regardless of why the specific connotation exists, why it | exists, whether it's related to race in any way, etc. | | I suppose that's easier than trying to debate every | occurrence. | _fat_santa wrote: | My problem with all of this "progressiveness" in the workplace | is that it just reeks of laziness. | | There are real problems in this world, yet it seems that the | progressives are going after the minute details. From a SWE | perspective, it would be like your app getting crushed by bugs | and technical debt while you argue over how big the logo on the | login page should be. | | The worst part of all of this, is the companies that are | actively pushing this crap are the same companies that have the | resources to make a difference in this world. | | If you're a company with a 1T+ market cap, actually do | something bold with your cash. Imagine if all the top tech | companies approached a bunch of non-profits trying to help | people in 3rd world countries and said: "here's a blank check, | do what you need to". We could solve a shitload of problems on | this planet. | | But no, we all are just quibbling about our pronouns and how to | write "inclusively". | Workaccount2 wrote: | Moral superiority is the cheapest form of superiority. | jollybean wrote: | The 'broken' part is that it exists in the first place by | default. | The_rationalist wrote: | AaronFriel wrote: | > Journalist Rebecca Baird-Remba tweeted an "inclusive warning" | she received on the word "landlord," which Google suggested she | change to "property owner" or "proprietor." | | > A transcribed interview of neo-Nazi and former Klan leader | David Duke--in which he uses the N-word and talks about hunting | Black people--gets no notes. | | I think unfortunately a lot of folks think this is a feature, not | a bug. | causality0 wrote: | Google's increasing editorialization is why voice typing is | effectively useless to me now because everything I say gets | altered and I have to correct it. | Brian_K_White wrote: | You mean all this time I could have cashed in on some | microaggression victimhood because of all those daughterboards | and daughter cards that weren't called son cards? How come that | never ocurred to me? How did I survive all these decades with | that boot on my neck? | motohagiography wrote: | That's peak Google right there. It's the infection point on their | organic growth. They've got a long tail of incumbency and | subsidized dominance ahead of them, but in the lifecycle of a | company, this is the out of touch moment that demonstrates | they've passed their middle age. In terms of half life, this | suggests they've got another decade of some vitality, and then a | kind of legacy presence in the decade after that before their | furniture gets picked up by something newer in a growth phase. | | They would be well served to update their motto to, "Don't be | fatuous." It's the best they can do now. | shadowgovt wrote: | This topic is always going to be highly subjective, but I find | the author's examples of how this feature is malfunctioning to be | extremely uncompelling. | | "Motherboard" was included in Apple's style guide in 2020 as | "don't use" | (https://help.apple.com/applestyleguide/#/apsg72b28652). Like it | or hate it, this is the direction the industry, of which Google | is a part, is moving. I'm sure a publication _called_ Motherboard | might have an opinion on this, but neither they nor Google are | the final arbiters on the language. The I Have a Dream speech | example is pretty anecdotal; King was an excellent writer, and I | don 't think Google is claiming this tool would make a person | write like King. And the substitution suggestion in Kennedy's | speech is just the way the language use has trended since his | time... One can note that the Star Trek franchise changed the | saying from "Where no man has gone before" to "Where no-one has | gone before" in the time between then and now, as well. The Bible | is probably the worst example to pull up for this topic; paging | through the over 20 translations on biblegateway.com shows the | passage in question is also sometimes translated as "great | works", "mighty works", or just "miracles." Which should you use? | It depends completely on what you're doing. | | Of everything noted, the only possibly concerning one is really | the lack of suggestions on a David Duke interview. If I had to | guess, I'd chalk that up to lack of training data, and it may be | something Google wants to consider addressing. | | But at the end of the day, the overall thesis of the report is | flawed. "But words do mean things," says the author. Yes, they | do. Which is why it could be nice to have an auto-editor lifting | up examples of words that might mean something other than the | author intended (and then the author can choose to change their | phrasing or stick with the original). Nothing about this feature | claims to make users magically better at writing; it's an | assistive tool to open the possibility, not unlike a spell- | checker. | | We've had Microsoft Word grammar checker for literal decades. | This technology is neither particularly new nor, IMHO, | particularly interesting (certainly not interesting enough to | kick up this news cycle). It's no more 1984 than some random | stranger online offering an opinion on your verbage is 1984. | AlexandrB wrote: | I really don't get the logic behind the "landlord" one. In what | world can "landlords" be considered an oppressed group that needs | special consideration for inclusivity? Is the endgame here Google | suggesting "benevolent autocratic ruler" instead of "dictator" to | be more inclusive? | archhn wrote: | This is straight up a prelude to Orwellian thought control via | language modification. Can nobody really see through this | corporate "woke" smokescreen? | | It's not about "social justice," it's about instilling | totalitarian patterns in the population. There is no debate about | these "woke" issues. There's an incredible intolerance on one | side, and they claim to have indisputable moral superiority. | Anyone who goes against the "woke" agenda is deemed to be evil. | There's no debate. Just an automatic classification, "You're | wrong AND evil." | | That's just how it was in Nazi Germany. No debate, no nuance. | You're a jew? To the chambers with you. | thethethethe wrote: | > There is no debate about these "woke" issues. | | Uhhh isn't this thread a debate? | temporallobe wrote: | The older I get, the more I fail to understand how the vocal | minority is able to completely control the narrative on | everything. | | While we're at it, let's just gut the English language of | anything remotely related to gender, race, or color. Then we can | go after Latin-based languages that use gender at the core of | their grammar. | nullc wrote: | Weird. The older I get the more understandable it becomes to | me. None of this crap matters. At most it matters because it | enables bullying, but bullies are always going to find | _something_ to bully over. | | "Good job, you won, you made me stop using a perfectly fine | word that was uniformly well understood, and replace it with | another perfectly fine word that is also uniformly well | understood. Nothing changed, but now at least you get to take | credit for it. Good for you." | exo-pla-net wrote: | Irrelevant nitpick: "gender" in linguistics means "category". | Objects in grammatically gendered languages are rarely/never | categorized as "manly" or "effeminate"; they're, for example, | categorized as "animate" or "inanimate". [1] | | [1] https://blog.duolingo.com/what-is-grammatical-gender/ | gdulli wrote: | I spent many years in the bluest corner of a very blue state. But | still I can't imagine any objection to the word "landlord" | outside of (1) a right wing attempt to satirize the left, (2) a | Google product brainstorming meeting, or (3) a rare sincere | outlier or concern troll. In any of those cases I don't think | this is necessary. | | That said, if the word "landlord" organically fell out of favor | and out of usage to be replaced by something else I wouldn't | care. Language is always evolving, and usually we don't make a | big deal out of it. It's mundane and can often be helpful. It | doesn't have to become a proxy for culture war arguments if we | don't make it one. | | But to have Google (or any AI) in charge of this... just... no. | Admittedly that's a common stance for me but I think it's well | justified here anyway. | nullc wrote: | > (1) a right wing attempt to satirize the left | | It's hard not to secretly suspect that some of these things | arise that way-- satire that is so spot on that it gets adopted | as the truth. | | > and out of usage to be replaced by something else I wouldn't | care | | Fundamentally that's why language bullying works-- it doesn't | matter what words are used so long as the communicating parties | understand each other. Not only does it mean that it's not | worth it to fight back, it makes anyone who does fight back | against it look automatically suspect. | | The same is true for a lot of other bullying: ignoring that its | bullying deprives it of its power. Or, at least, it denies it | of it's power until it doesn't. | | But do we want to live in a world where our language is | constantly being rewritten-- at a non-zero cost-- by bullies | (and their automation)? Reasonable people could debate it. | bluefirebrand wrote: | Policing Language (and frequently changing it) is one of the | levers of control that was outlined heavily by Orwell in | 1984, with the concept of Doublespeak. | | Now I know people are bored of parallels between reality and | 1984, or Brave New World, or whatever other dystopia novels. | They were written by authors not prophets after all. | | Still, it's impossible for me not to think we're on our way | when I read something like | | "But do we want to live in a world where our language is | constantly being rewritten-- at a non-zero cost-- by bullies" | | When talking about a real world situation. | | Personally I do not want to live in that world. | aendruk wrote: | The change from "landlord" feels good. I've always felt a | little awkward when using the word but couldn't articulate why. | | Google wouldn't be my first choice, but it's nice that someone | is able to dedicate attention to this. | ridaj wrote: | What about when the landlord is a company? Or an actual man | in fact? We're going from unnecessarily gendered to | unnecessarily neutered word. | aendruk wrote: | Like most things, it depends on the situation. The point is | to find something that does work. Surely there's room for | improvement? | quantified wrote: | It's not "landlord". It's "person who lords land". | shitlord wrote: | Satirists already made that joke with the term "Person of | Land". Its initialism is "POL" so it even plays into the | "POC" angle. | bombcar wrote: | Landlord gets hit from multiple sides; those who don't like | that it contains "lord" which is a male term, those who don't | like that landlords exist, and those who don't like that the | concept of owning land exists. | gdulli wrote: | Well, switching to a new word isn't going to make anyone | happy if what they're really upset by is that the underlying | concept exists. | jandrese wrote: | > those who don't like that the concept of owning land | exists. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxRkHeQ7-B8 | | A caveat of bending over backwards to be as inclusive as | possible is that sometimes you end up including people who | are just plain nuts. You end up enshrining the personal | problems of a handful of people into company policy. | thrwy_ywrht wrote: | > people who are just plain nuts | | Are you suggesting that it's "plain nuts" to be against | private ownership of land? | Stupulous wrote: | As someone who somewhat supports public land ownership | (of the Georgism variety), I think you'd have to be plain | nuts to use that belief to justify discouraging others to | use the word 'landlord'. Especially considering I hear | the word more from people who oppose land ownership than | from anyone else. I'm more inclined to believe that this | is about gender. | woodruffw wrote: | I would be extremely surprised if this came from the left: | most people I know relish the negative connotation of being | able to describe someone as a landlord. | | I would believe the GP's second hypothesis; it's hard to | imagine who else would even think to substitute "property | owner" for "landlord" (it's not even accurate!) | AlexandrB wrote: | > those who don't like that landlords exist, and those who | don't like that the concept of owning land exists. | | I think these two groups would prefer "landlord" over | "proprietor" because "landlord" has a much more negative | connotation and probably inspires a visceral reaction in | anyone who's had a bad landlord. Only the "male" thing makes | any sort of sense from a left wing POV. | pbhjpbhj wrote: | Sure the origin is to do with Lords but landlord isn't male, | anyone can be a landlord, pretending it's gendered is just | lying to try and be offended. Presumably, such people think | the word coward references bovines as it includes the word | cow. | | I don't like that landlords exist, but that's an inordinately | stupid reason to try and get rid of a word. Surely noone | believes that by sensoring a word you get rid of that which | the word describes. | randallsquared wrote: | > _pretending it 's gendered is just lying to try and be | offended._ | | Please don't assume this. In the southern US in the late | 80s and early 90s, "landlady" was a term that was very | commonly used for female "landlords". I'm not sure if it's | specifically regional, though. | SuoDuanDao wrote: | Canada, too. | trollied wrote: | It's just a modern word. "Landlord". People know what it | means. Stop anybody on the street and ask them what a | landlord is? They will tell you. It's an established word. | What's the point in changing it because a few people actively | want to be offended? | reaperducer wrote: | _it contains "lord" which is a male term_ | | I didn't think of that. I always thought of it as "lording | over" something. As in she's the "lord of the land." | | That said, a landlord and a property owner are not the same | thing. Many (most?) apartment buildings are owned by one | company and managed by another. | jefftk wrote: | It's parallel to "landlady" | flyingfences wrote: | > As in she's the "lord of the land." | | But she wouldn't be; she'd be the "lady of the land". | unmole wrote: | Queen Elizabeth II is the current Lord of Mann. And Dame | Fiona Woolf was the Lord Mayor of London as was Mary | Donaldson before her. | lupire wrote: | Yeah language isn't 100% consistent. You may have noticed | Elizabeth isn't the King of England. | drdeca wrote: | nearest((lord) + (woman) - | (man),excluding=[(lord)])==(lady) | bombcar wrote: | Apartment buildings yes, but most single family homes | (where people use the term landlord the most I suspect) are | usually owned by an identifiable individual. | dylan604 wrote: | What if your 3) was in 2) pushing 1) only it backfired and | people in 2) took it seriously? | gdulli wrote: | As possible a reason for #2 going wrong as any other. But #2 | thinking they know what's best for humanity is an established | enough pattern that I imagine it happens organically as well. | dylan604 wrote: | I'm so tired of SV thinking they are making the world a | better place. It's such a tired trope. | troupe wrote: | Have you seen the people objecting to the term "Master | Recording" and such. | flatearth22 wrote: | xen2xen1 wrote: | I caught "inclusive" in the list of things Gmail will "suggest" | "better" words in Google Docs. The scary part of this that this | enables enforcement. That may seem far fetched now, but in the | future? | jchw wrote: | Fun fact: the longest known distance between two points on Earth | is the distance between Google product managers and ordinary | people. | | To be less flippant, boy could I not give a shit less about the | problem this feature is trying to solve. As I look outside, I try | to imagine the idea of any of these people in my neighborhood, | playing with their dogs, mowing their lawns, driving garbage | trucks, potentially losing sleep over someone using "policeman" | as opposed to "police officer." It's absurd. | | To be clear, I do feel genuine empathy for someone if they | experience abject pain from minor transgressions. However, I am | skeptical that almost anyone _actually_ has that issue. And if | they do, this is not how I believe you solve the problem. At all. | | And if someone _did_ use the term "police officer" instead of | "policeman", it would be no skin off my nose. That's totally | fine, both are natural and reasonable. Whatever. But I don't need | my fucking word processor telling me to self-police my language | harder. That's not a feature I want. In fact, I don't even like | the idea of this feature. | | This all feels like cargo culting. If we pretend we're in a | society further removed from a racist, sexist past, does that | make us further removed? I don't think it does. Before the issues | with blacklist/whitelist or slave/master were brought to the | forefront, I really, _really_ doubt almost anyone had racist or | problematic visualizations in their mind. I think they had | completely abstract concepts in their mind. Plenty of words | probably have a deeply racist origin, but if that's not what | people actually think about when they hear the word, does that | history even matter? Aren't we just creating more problems? | | Even if you disagree with all of my viewpoints, I hope you'll | agree that this is going to serve to make people much more | radical over time as they perceive these features to either serve | as an attack on themselves or their way of lives, or as evidence | that people who don't self-correct incessantly are secretly neo- | nazis. To me, it just seems like a lose-lose, because it feels | like no matter what I do, people are going to view my rejection | of these ideals and pigeonhole me into either of these camps. Or | is using the word "camp" also a bad idea due to World War II? | | I'm sure some people will read this some day and think I've lost | my mind. I don't care. For the love of fuck, Go Outside once in a | while. | [deleted] | Tao331 wrote: | > I really, really doubt almost anyone had racist or | problematic visualizations in their mind. | | Reminds me how we used to have Backlog Grooming meetings, but | we had to change the name because apparently "grooming" is | something pedophiles do. | | Poor naive me, I thought it was something my parents- sorry, | birthing persons- had done for their poodle when it was getting | too shaggy. | nostromo wrote: | Who was asking for Woke Clippy? Is Google just bored and | completely out of ideas? | | They seem increasingly disconnected with what their users | actually want. | mateo1 wrote: | If you read the article, it is clear who their prospective | clients are. Big corporations pretending not to be racist. The | next iteration will be a corporate-speak translator. | | As annoying as a woke clippy might be, at times I realize that | we're lucky we don't live in a racist clippy alt reality. | "Would you like to expand all mentions of "n-word"?" | nullc wrote: | > I realize that we're lucky we don't live in a racist clippy | alt reality | | If someone is being racist, wouldn't we arguably be better | off if they used language that made it transparent to the | reader-- rather than disguised it with the magic of search | and replace? | | Real prejudice can't be erased by search and replace but it | can be made more plausibly deniable. | [deleted] | shadowgovt wrote: | As a corporate culture, Google very much believes that if you | ask the pre-car public what they want, they'd say "faster | horses." | | ... and the willingness to take risks has historically served | them pretty well. | rurp wrote: | Google is an ad company whose core competency is getting lots | people to click on links and buy things in exchange for | money. They aren't exactly revolutionizing the world for | good. Most of their innovative ideas get a splashy launch, | middling support for a while, and then fizzle and/or get | killed. | | The idea that there are millions of people who want to be | told that motherboard is a dirty word every time they write | it, but won't realize that desire until Google foists it on | them, just strikes me as absurd. | mrosett wrote: | Has it actually served them well? How many of Google's | controversial launches have turned out well? The YouTube | acquisition was risky but that was more on the commercial | side than on the product side. | | Apple is a different story of course. | shadowgovt wrote: | > Has it actually served them well? | | I feel like I can just gesture to the stock price and say | "scoreboard," but that seems an unfair dismissal of the | question. | | To expound on the topic a bit: I think when they were a | smaller company it served them well consistently. Photos | and Drive have become an enterprise cornerstone that | supports their "light cloud" business space (quite a few | people pay for that extra storage). Ads doesn't get talked | about much, but the internal culture is very quick- | innovate. Chrome went from being a wild idea to dominating | the browser-share (and therefore giving Google a foot in | the door on everyone's desktop computer), and then they | parlayed that into a whole operating system play. Maps | basically displaced most of the other players in that space | and now competes with only a couple other contenders. | | I don't know if it will continue to do so now that they're | an 800-lb gorilla in the room. They've certainly become | more structurally conservative in the decade-plus since | their founding. And I think their push into Cloud is | putting pressure on them to act a lot more starched-collar; | Enterprise is a different customer than they're used to (or | comfortable with) dealing with. | xen2xen1 wrote: | But then Google gives you a car for free, then tells you it | won't work in six months as they're canceling the service. | Then they do it again, and again, and then no one wants a | Google Car because it would just get canceled. The idea may | have served them, the execution has not. This idea also | translates into, "I know better than you what you want", | which leads to not listening, not hearing, and ignoring your | customer's needs, which is 199% Google. | mikkergp wrote: | This is a popular tool in hiring for creating inclusive job | descriptions. They're competing with companies like | https://textio.com/ | matheusmoreira wrote: | Yeah, who asked for this? One would think they'd be trying to | achieve feature parity with Microsoft Office instead. | pbhjpbhj wrote: | MS Word introduced a language censor like this recently (I've | not seen it, only seen it announced at a workplace), so maybe | they are following where MS leads? | jooperdoo wrote: | It's far less intrusive. It will highlight fuck, for | example, and tell you "that language might be offensive to | readers." It also flags on idioms that may come across | poorly if you aren't familiar with them/know English well. | In a strongly multicultural company it's been quite nice to | have it catch a couple of my phrasings that wouldn't track | well to a non English speaker. | | I interpret Microsoft's as helpful when considering ESL or | other cultures. I interpret Google's as straight woke. Very | different products but you're probably right that Microsoft | led them there. | nullc wrote: | I think a grammar checker that warned about cross-cultural | confusion would be pretty valuable in many writing contexts. It | would best be constructed in that light: rather than moralizing | or being activist just noting the fact that some text has a | non-trivial odds of being understood in a way different than | you likely intended. | | So for example, a writer of British English may want to be | warned that "Bring me some fags when you return" may be | misunderstood by American readers. | | This hypothetical checker might still warn you about "master"-- | for example-- as there is now a sizable contingent that finds | it controversial. ... but it would equally warn you against | terms like "birthing person" which is considered by many to be | biologically reductive to the point of being offensive, and by | most people to be at least highly loaded. | | Such a tool would almost certainly not caution you against | "landlord". | canadaduane wrote: | Yes! This is much more interesting. Audience-based cultural & | contextual awareness, rather than "assuming one global | context" that takes the veneer of moral high ground. The | former would be more helpful to a writer. | cj wrote: | You could look at Grammarly ($10+ billion dollar valuation) as | evidence that there is a market for a tool/plugin that improves | a user's prose. | vorpalhex wrote: | Being told I use too many adjectives, my word choice is too | heavy for my audience or that I used too many clauses is | useful. | | Being passive-aggressively told "blacklist" is a no-no word | is not. | | If you were really clever, you'd let the user set a | "sensitivity" level for the writing from "normal human speak" | to "corporate PR approved". | nicbou wrote: | It depends on who you write for. As a non-native, non- | American speaker, I'd be happy to know if I'm accidentally | offending the people I'm writing to. | umanwizard wrote: | That's the problem, though: the tool doesn't actually | tell you that. The vast majority of Americans are not | offended by words like "motherboard". | [deleted] | onepointsixC wrote: | But you aren't. Saying that "Motherboard" is offensive is | basically misinformation. | pbhjpbhj wrote: | I can't even imagine what the supposed offense is here? | | Like, 'I identify both as a mainboard and male, your use | of motherboard offends me'??? | matheusmoreira wrote: | I'm not a native english speaker either. Chances are you | aren't offending anyone. You probably know exactly which | words of the english language are unambiguously | offensive. Words like motherboard just aren't offensive. | babypuncher wrote: | In this particular case, the tool being discussed is meant | almost exclusively for people writing "corporate PR | approved" content, so it makes sense that the sensitivity | setting is cranked. | vorpalhex wrote: | I do a lot of things in Google docs beyond write PR | releases... | dane-pgp wrote: | > you'd let the user set a "sensitivity" level for the | writing | | But what if the company found out (and some employee | leaked) the fact that most people deliberately set the | default level to "normal human speak", and its campaign to | replace and redefine words doesn't have any democratic | legitimacy (let alone add any commercial value)? | ayende wrote: | I don't think I ever heard such an appropriate turn of phrase | as "woke clippy", bravo! | [deleted] | dang wrote: | Recent and related: | | _Google Docs will "warn you away from inappropriate words"_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31086310 - April 2022 (964 | comments) | cabirum wrote: | "...language is of central importance to human thought because it | structures and limits the ideas that individuals are capable of | formulating and expressing." | tgv wrote: | That idea is also known as the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, and | despite many attempts, it has never been proven. There are only | a few flawed papers that provide some support. We can safely | assume it's untrue. Instead, it's (trivially) the other way | around: our thinking shapes our language. | zionic wrote: | Thus further evidence of neurolinguistic programming being real | (or people believing it's real). | | Shape the language people are allowed to use and you start to | shape their thoughts as well. | riffraff wrote: | The most hilarious thing about this is that Google has used "AI" | to create the most un-inclusive tool of all, Google Translate. | | I present you the beautiful translation of hungarian gender-less | sentences to english: | | o csinos. o okos. o csunya. o jo. | | becomes | | she is pretty. he is clever. she is ugly. he is good. | | I can't wait for inclusive warnings to come to non-english | languages. | pvillano wrote: | if only English had a gender neutral pronoun that could be used | by default when the gender of the subject isn't provided | :thinking: | johnnyanmac wrote: | I still unironically want a singular variant to rise in | popularity, don't particularly care what. There are so many | times when "they" comes up and I have no clue if we're | talking about a person or a group. There's already enough | pronoun ambiguity when talking about single subjects without | intoducing a dimension of plurality ambiguity. | wchar_t wrote: | Many folks I know use "they". Works well enough, I think. | S0und wrote: | That's nothing | | O jokepu | | Becomes, wait for it | | She is handsome | | Just like in English, handsome is used to compliment a man, and | pretty to compliment a woman. | titzer wrote: | It's computer-brain solution to a problem that is crying out | for a human. Humans "don't scale". Therefore paying 5 bi- | lingual experts to teach the machine is "infeasible", but | spending millions upon millions of dollars on hardware and | software development, then exposing it the unwashed mess of the | internet isn't.... | exyi wrote: | While it's hilarious, it's understandable IMHO - just basic | statistics, she is more often used in front of pretty/ugly. | It's showing a glitch in our society more than a glitch in | Google AI. | | This on the other hand looks like a hand-crafted blacklist of | words that they want to remove from the language, I have no | idea how would I train an AI which would classify "motherboard" | as inappropriate. | nomel wrote: | > I have no idea how would I train an AI which would classify | "motherboard" as inappropriate. | | I believe you just need to give it emotions. | whywhywhywhy wrote: | Am I the only one starting to get a little worried what will | happen when the pendulum inevitably swings the other way? | akomtu wrote: | I'm waiting for the moment when the woke realise that everything | they despise revolves around christianity in one way or another, | and for this reason they'll proudly declare themselves as not | only anti-racist, but also anti-christian. | 31098347 wrote: | There's a few different things to unpack with this feature. | | (1) It would be useful in the context of a general style guide, | like a white-label Grammarly. Corporations could set their own | prompts for words, phrases, and structures. This would make | documentation more consistent. | | (2) This is dystopian as fuck. Google has the ability to see, | aggregate, and now influence what you write in Google docs and | Gmail. Who is making the decision on what to "correct"? Is this | algorithm explainable? | | Bias: I already disagree with Grammarly as an entire category of | product. | jcadam wrote: | Hopefully LibreOffice doesn't adopt this sort of thing. | trynumber9 wrote: | With Libre Office you can be sure if they add such a feature it | can always be disabled. With Google or Microsoft you never know | when they'll take the toggles away and you have no recourse | without source. | MikeDelta wrote: | Of master is not acceptable anymore, how are we going to call the | MSc or MA degrees? | imgabe wrote: | I guess Motherboard will just have to change its name to | Birthingpersonboard. | cft wrote: | I have been thinking about this for a while, and came to the | conclusion that the main weakness of progressivism is its | arrogance. A progressive simply thinks that she is more educated, | virtuous or simply better than others. This manifests subtly, | from "helping poor immigrants", to not so subtle implementations, | like knowing better what Google queries you actually meant to | type, to censoring "fake news", because people do not have the | faculty to decide for themselves, to downright auto-correction of | people's speech. A progressive copes with this implied | superiority by casting it as her goodness. | | One of the best films on this subject is Dogville by Lars von | Trier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogville , with Grace as its | main character. | dathinab wrote: | You are lumping all progressive people together. | | You also assume they are female. | | Why? | jaywalk wrote: | Aren't we supposed to use female pronouns when we're speaking | generally now? It used to be male, but I know that's long | gone. | dathinab wrote: | No, you are supposed to use gender neutral terms. | BitwiseFool wrote: | My take on the situation is that as a movement and political | ideology "Progressivism" is steeped in a sense of | righteousness. I very much sense progressives have internalized | the notion that what they are fighting for is so obviously | good, correct, and just that anyone who opposes such self- | evidently virtuous things must either be 1) brainwashed by | malevolent forces (Fox news, misinformation, propaganda, | internalized oppression) or 2) constitutionally flawed people | who cannot be redeemed and must be fought against | ("Deplorables", fascists, nazis, racists, etc). | orangecat wrote: | It's nearly 100% conflict theory | (https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/). | mmastrac wrote: | The pendulum is swinging back and force once a decade or so. Just | give it a few years to calm down a bit and we'll go back to | worrying about putting leaves on David and painting over | renaissance paintings. | | Humans act so weird in large groups. | pgcj_poster wrote: | mc4ndr3 wrote: | We haven't gotten _spelling_ assistance right, let alone grammar | or semantics. Prefer editors with fewer "smart" features that | distract from writing. | jonnydubowsky wrote: | What i don't understand is how they can roll out this feature, | while the last few weeks I've suddenly started getting spammed | in Google Drive with obscene garbage that can only be blocked | on an instance by instance basis. Surely they could offer some | gate that allows the user to deploy such filters where they | actually want them? | changoplatanero wrote: | > We haven't gotten spelling assistance right | | Shouldn't you say that we got spelling assistance correct | instead of right? Left-handed people might not like to see the | word "right" being used to mean "correct" | wincy wrote: | L | | As a left handed non birthing person, I was very offended by | their comment. Also I was a little offended by your comment, | please in the future include "L" or "R" at the beginning of | all messages. | | Thank you for attempting to be a left handed ally. | zionic wrote: | I'm just gonna leave this here: | | https://i.redd.it/wqld5v9s5ln81.jpg | john_moscow wrote: | Well, such things are always driven by demand. And unfortunately, | there is a strong demand in our society for policing words, | renaming formulas and issuing apologies all while: | | * Property ownership is becoming out of question for an | increasing fraction of Americans | | * Any kid of retirement (as in not having to work and enjoying | life off your savings) has become a pipe dream | | * Having a single-income family with one parent dedicated to | raising the children has become unaffordable. | | * Even if you managed to put enough effort to teach your kids the | values of hard work and setting long-term goals, the public | education system is set to confuse them and kick them off that | path, so they will never be competitive with those who received | education abroad. | | At the same time, the media oligopoly [0] keeps ignoring the | problems and pushing the narratives how addressing short-term | emotional problems is the top 1 priority, and anyone who wants | real prosperity instead of taking a part in the never-ending | mutual comforting game is the enemy of the people. | | I wonder if people will ever realize they are being manipulated | into poverty before it's too late. | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31077525 | ironSkillet wrote: | What I don't understand is, where is this perceived demand | coming from? I think it is an extremely small minority that | happens to be extremely loud on social media and in corporate | circles, so the perception of how important this issue is has | become grossly exaggerated. I don't think this is purposeful | malice on anyone's part, I think it is just a product of social | media amplification and the elites desire to constantly virtue | signal to each other that has led to this absurd loop in our | culture. | john_moscow wrote: | Unfortunately, there is a very solid explanation for it and | it doesn't yield a good prognosis: | | 1. There is a small minority of people who truly believed in | it in the first place. | | 2. Then there are people who exploit the system by charging | hefty sums for diversity trainings (and calling any opponents | to such spending racist). | | 3. Then there are people who sold the #2 group the student | loans and gave the degrees where all you need to graduate is | to repeat a fairly basic set of dogmas. | | 4. There are people who are disillusioned about the whole | thing, but are now stuck with the student loans and no other | way to make comparable money. | | 5. There are entrepreneurial people that want to make a | change, but since most business niches are occupied by the | corporations, the only outlet they have found is to join the | diversity & inclusion effort. | | 6. There are people that want to get rid of their | competitors. And since being not inclusive enough is now a | firable offense, they are stuck competing who can say more | things they don't really believe in. | | Ironically, it reminds me of the political situation in | Russia, where many people support the war despite suffering | economically from it, despite having their children | slaughtered, despite losing the rest of civil freedoms in the | past months. The mechanism is the same: if you don't play | along with the narrative, the competition will eat you alive. | And it you overplay it in a clever way, you can get a | promotion or a government contract. | | I wish sociologists actually studied such phenomena rather | than being another echo chamber for the same narrative as | everyone else. | thorncorona wrote: | This is an example of where the Twittersphere has outsized | influence. | dolni wrote: | The elites of America use "inclusivity" and race as bait to | distract from the very issues you describe. | | Notice how we, as a society, spent relatively little time | discussing the 2008 Mortgage Crisis and Occupy Wall Street. | | Meanwhile news outlets have been beating the "inclusivity" / | race / gender drum for _years_. | | Time to wake up, folks. | mordae wrote: | Ever heard of Rojava? | jasonshaev wrote: | What? The 2008 Mortgage Crisis was the biggest news story for | at least a year. | | Comparing that to "inclusivity" is also strange because | inclusivity is not an event. A single event has a natural | decay of relevance, the further into the past it gets. | dolni wrote: | > What? The 2008 Mortgage Crisis was the biggest news story | for at least a year. | | It was an event that absolutely decimated MANY people in | America financially. And for many of those people, their | only fault in the whole thing was, I guess, being ignorant | enough to be taken advantage of. | | We spend a lot more time discussing things that are a lot | more irrelevant than that. | | > Comparing that to "inclusivity" is also strange because | inclusivity is not an event. A single event has a natural | decay of relevance, the further into the past it gets. | | OK, then instead compare the general theme of the 2008 | Mortgage Crisis / Occupy Wall Street. Specifically: how | much time do we spend talking about a small group of | powerful elites pulling the financial strings in this | country? And how does that compare to how much we talk | about "inclusivity"? | | The money and power concentrated into the hands of | relatively few is an issue that is _several_ orders of | magnitude larger than the "inclusivity" stuff we're fed | much more often. | | That's not a mere coincidence. | jasonshaev wrote: | I dunno, you're not providing any evidence to back up the | assertion that "we" talk way more about inclusivity than | "powerful elites." Who is "we?" | | HN? Are you talking about in the news? A specific news | outlet? | | The imbalance of power between the ultra-wealthy and the | rest of us is in the news all the time, at least that I | watch and read. | powerslacker wrote: | Pretty interesting that there are people who legitimately | believe the megacorps are 'the good guys' because of stunts | like this. | ohyoutravel wrote: | May I ask what the items in your enumerated list have to do | with "policing words?" | john_moscow wrote: | The items on the list are the problems relevant to most | Americans. Except, the human brain has a limited capacity for | "currently tracked" problems and tends to pick them | proportionally to the amount of attention paid to them. | | So the media is abusing it by spamming people's attention | with disproportionately exaggerated problems that don't cost | the elites anything to solve, so that people won't have any | time left solving the problems that would look bad on the | corporate bottom line. | zbrozek wrote: | He's pointing out that focusing on issues that don't have | real impact is starving us of our ability to focus on | broader, more serious issues. The shrinking of the middle | class is a tangible problem. Words being insufficiently | inclusive is not. | qualudeheart wrote: | Most depressing thing since Alphacode. | farmerstan wrote: | Time to make those on-site interviews more rigorous. Looks like | too many bad coders are leaking through the interview process. | foofoo4u wrote: | Oh, its not about good coders. It's about who they select. | Companies now explicitly ask DIE (diversity, equity & | inclusion) questions. Its the new filter to select those that | follow this new orthodoxy. | bezospen15 wrote: | Yet another reason "Product" is a joke | [deleted] | guerrilla wrote: | More reason to use free source software on your actual computer | less you succumb to the will of 1984+Brave New World as a | seevice. | heinrichhartman wrote: | Question for those in the Beta trial: | | Can you disable this feature globally for your account, or do you | need to disable this in every document explicitly? | [deleted] | icare_1er wrote: | Gosh that wokeness is getting more insane the day. | efitz wrote: | Have there ever been any studies that show that using the | masculine pronoun in the neuter reference in English, impacts (or | has ever impacted) the well-being of females? | maxk42 wrote: | Until a couple decades ago it was well understood that in | English the "masculine" was gender-neutral and the "feminine" | was an honorific. Hence why esteemed possessions, countries, | etc. were referred to in the feminine. Is it possible that | taking away that honorific from women has harmed their sense of | self-worth or some other aspect of their well-being? | subjectsigma wrote: | I can't even properly describe how angry this makes me. | nullc wrote: | Imagine the life of someone who thinks that this is a good and | important change. It's probably miserable-- a slight around | every corner and no higher purpose than bulling people over | terminology. Instead of anger, try gratitude that you're not in | their shoes. | gorwell wrote: | We suggest you replace the word angry with pleased. | smiddereens wrote: | [deleted] | [deleted] | croes wrote: | The same logic that got rid of the master branch applies to | motherboard. | | And much of this logic ignores context. | fareesh wrote: | Controversial suggestion but can the California folks just do | their own bay area version of products? | | The rest of us around the world never asked for any of this | weirdness | | Will it suggest "peace be upon him" in Islamic countries next? If | not, why not? At least that's an actual religion unlike whatever | this weirdness is. | | How is it inclusive to export this thinking to places that don't | want it? Words are really just words. I never enslaved anyone and | neither did my ancestors. Keep the word master and slave. | dane-pgp wrote: | > Words are really just words. | | But they're not though. Words are products of, and inputs into, | people's culture and modes of thought. | | Which is exactly why giving this much global power to one | unelected politically extreme group of people is so dangerous. | nicbou wrote: | The best example to drive the point home is the Nazi's | "useless mouths". It's a terrifyingly effective term if your | goal is to shape public opinion. | | Another is the freedom fighter vs terrorist word choice. | fareesh wrote: | Imagine you work in Wakanda and slave was s'mballa and master | was m'chatka and one day the science department said ok we're | calling it m'butu by default instead. | | Does it shape anything for you? You're just doing your 9-5 | building T'Challa's HUD for his panther helmet as an | immigrant worker who barely speaks the language. If anything | it just makes your life more annoying when the Wakandan | scientists rattle off instructions to you and you're barely | keeping up. They are just words. | | Perhaps in Wakandan culture the change is significant and | shapes their models of thinking but we are talking about | terminology changes for all of planet Earth and beyond. Why | not do some soul searching and come to terms with your ugly | history on your own instead of dragging everyone into it. | | (I am using "you" in the general sense, not directing it at | anyone in particular) | _Algernon_ wrote: | >and neither did my ancestors | | Considering the number of ancestors in your past, this is | highly unlikely for any human being alive today. | fareesh wrote: | If every human being alive has had a slavemaster ancestor, | all the more reason to not care about the use of the word in | a completely unrelated context involving hard drives or | branches of information. | mgraczyk wrote: | In the article they use the example of "Motherboard" and | "Landlord" and seem to suggest that these are areas where the | Google AI is making mistakes or being overly strict. | | As a Google employee expressing my own opinion and observations | of company culture, I can say that these are 100% not mistakes. | Many Google employees are just so out of touch with the real | world that they believe it is the duty of Google Docs to change | the English language to exclude the words "landlord", | "motherboard", and even "mother" in most contexts (sub with | birthing person). | | This may seem unbelievable, but the word "motherboard" is | literally banned within Google and you are required to use | "mainboard" instead. You are not allowed to use this word in | documentation or code, and you're also not allowed to say it | privately in chats or emails. | titzer wrote: | Woke Clippy (to borrow from up-thread) is going to have a field | day when it learns German. There. Are. So. Many. Violations. | dhzhzjsbevs wrote: | This is the company that fired James damore and then turned | around and spouted his talking points a few months later not | even realising the hypocrisy. | | https://mashable.com/article/google-youtube-women-in-tech-di... | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | This attempt at "de-offensive-izing" all language has the | effect of turning clear, evocative phrases to mush. | | George Carlin's skit couldn't be more timely: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isMm2vF4uFs | routeerror40 wrote: | Carlin was a genius and ahead of his time. | MrBlueIncognito wrote: | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM | | A short-film/parody on how an extreme obsession with | inclusive speech makes it impossible to communicate clearly | without consequences. | rhexs wrote: | It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. | dane-pgp wrote: | "Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of | consciousness always a little smaller." | | https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/450328-don-t-you-see- | that-t... | tedsanders wrote: | Putting myself in the shoes of a kid learning about | computers, I find some of these phrases to be more clear, not | less clear. | | Two examples: | | Allowlist and denylist are much clearer to a kid learning | about computers than whitelist or blacklist. If you've never | heard of whitelist before, it's sounds like a list of things | that are white. If you've never of allowlist, it's pretty | obvious what it means - a list of things that are allowed. | | Similarly, mainboard is clearer than motherboard. Mainboard | implies there's one main board. Motherboard could be more | ambiguous to someone who's never seen the inside of a | computer. Are there two boards, mother and father? Do boards | somehow inherit from one another? Is there a grandmother | board that's even bigger? Obvious to us, but not obvious to a | kid learning computers for the first time. | | Not saying these terms are better (there's a huge switching | cost and the terms are less colorful), but do want to point | out there are dimensions to consider beyond inclusivity. One | benefit is better language precision. | dxhdr wrote: | > Mainboard implies there's one main board. Motherboard | could be more ambiguous to someone who's never seen the | inside of a computer. Are there two boards, mother and | father? | | Am I crazy or does mainboard strongly imply there's more | than one -- eg main, supporting / secondary, etc? Stories | have a main character which is almost by definition not the | only character in the narrative. | Pxtl wrote: | "Parentboard" is probably better than "mainboard", but | given the choice between "motherboard" and "mainboard", | which are the two currently-accepted terms for that | particular component, I'm going to go with mainboard. | | Edit: isn't the videocard technically a "non-main-board"? | I mean nobody called it a "daughterboard" but it kind of | technically is one isn't it? And so if "mainboard" | implies the existence of "non-main-boards"... that | accurately describes its relationship with the video | card, which is a baord. | layer8 wrote: | Well, there used to be daughterboards (but no sonboards). | canadaduane wrote: | Good point. A similar lack of clarity also tripped me up | when some documentation switched from "master key" to | "main key" because there actually _was_ an additional | concept called a "standard key" which seems to have a | lot of potential conceptual overlap with "main key". | | https://twitter.com/canadaduane/status/146573725885034496 | 1 | MikeDelta wrote: | It appreciate the idea to make language more precise where | possible. | | However, terms like motherboard and whitelisting are just a | few in the universe of complicated (yet gender neutral) | terms like GPU, CPU, DDR, parity, firewall, IP6, etc. | | Of course, that is not a reason to not improve the language | where one can, but I don't know if it will help that much | in CS. | [deleted] | Rarebox wrote: | I can believe this. Around the time I left people were patting | backs for fighting racism by getting rid of terms | blacklist/whitelist. | | Not something I feel super strongly about, but the fact that | it's so scary to go against these stupid ideas is annoying. | It's pure politics, there's nobody benefiting from this except | the people claiming impact for antiracist work in their perf. | cynicalkane wrote: | This entire comment is a lie. Terms like "motherboard" are | readily findable on Google's internal search. I could not find | anything referencing a banned non-inclusive words policy in the | employee policy guide. I have never heard of anything remotely | resembling someone catching heat for saying "motherboard" or | whatever. | | Source: I also work at Google. | throw10920 wrote: | > Terms like "motherboard" are readily findable on Google's | internal search. | | This is meaningless. I work at a large organization that has | banned terms like "master/slave" and "whitelist/blacklist", | and I can also readily find these terms through internal | search, simply because it's taking a while for the | requirements to be implemented and enforced. | | > I could not find anything referencing a banned non- | inclusive words policy in the employee policy guide. | | This also doesn't mean a lot, unless you've _comprehensively_ | searched through every possible location for the relevant | policy, as almost every organization in existence has | terrible knowledge management. | | Go talk directly to someone in HR and tell me if they tell | you that those words aren't restricted. | mgraczyk wrote: | You're welcome to ping me internally. It's in the banned | words list (happy to share a link internally) and I double | checked policy before posting this comment to make sure I was | accurately representing the rules that are applied to me as | an employee. | dekhn wrote: | based on dannybee's comments elsewhere, the list you're | referring to is actually for external product comms, not | internal googler comms.... could you elaborate on your | position further? | mgraczyk wrote: | That's not true, there are a few internal-only lists that | have different contents (lots of overlap but not 100%). | Different PAs have adopted different lists. | | This is the public one: | https://developers.google.com/style/word-list | | I don't want to share the name of the internal one | publicly, but anyone at Google can ping me if they want | help finding it, or they can search "respectful words" | kevinventullo wrote: | Okay but that's just a list that someone created. People | are allowed to create lists; I've never heard of anyone | enforcing this list. | itsyaboi wrote: | Since you work at Google, maybe you can answer this: does | internal tooling exist to flag occurrences of "bad" words in | say, code reviews or shared documents? | anothernerd2 wrote: | There is at Amazon, it gets brought up as a code violation | while we're doing security and other kinds of reviews | | I've mostly cleansed myself of these words while I'm at | work but I generally let the shit fly once Im out of the | setting | | I just look at it like any other corporate politics, you | have to play along to get anywhere | | Outside of work I'm my own person and use any word I want. | Retard, cripple, bum, idiot, motherboard, man, master, | slave, fuck, shit, piss! | | See! Fire me Amazon I fucking dare you! :) | Tao331 wrote: | But isn't the name _Amazon_ inherently exclusionary, and | one of the oldest distorted stereotypes? | | The mote in the employee's eye vs. the log in the | company's eye | [deleted] | dvirsky wrote: | Former Googler (until a couple of months ago). I've never | seen anything like it, but maybe I just didn't use "bad" | words in code? There were presubmit checks for typos and | such. Also, IIRC I asked people in code/design reviews to | rename white/black lists to allow/deny lists, but it might | have just been in docs. | | I did get an angry code review response from a fellow | engineer once, after writing in a commit description (not | the actual code) something like "this is a stupid fix but | it stops the linter from bitching about so and so" - for | using both the words "stupid" and "bitch". I guess the | second one was on point but referring to my own work as | "stupid" is pretty okay in my book. I would never ever | describe anyone else's work as such. | [deleted] | dane-pgp wrote: | > I would never ever describe anyone else's work as such. | | But someone reading your commit message doesn't know | that. Someone new to the company might see your change | and think "That looks reasonable to me", but see that you | called it "stupid", and start to doubt themselves. | | Although it makes technology more boring, I think there | is some value in using precise words over emotive words. | Perhaps using the word "pedantic" instead, or "no-op", | would have conveyed more information, without disparaging | the amount of intelligence that went into making it (or | into the design/configuration of the linter). | murderfs wrote: | Yes. There's even a bot that calls you out if you use "bad" | words in internal chats. | krastanov wrote: | I am incredulous at the "mother" to "birthing person" | requirement. I have seen one or two people with such | prescriptive views on language but the vast majority of people | I know consider it ridiculous. And I am in an incredibly "woke" | social bubble. | augustuspolius wrote: | Encountering this aspect of the culture war always makes me | wonder why are tech companies so focused on these gender | minorities and not, say, on the disabled groups. There are | more blind, deaf, mute (etc, etc) people in the US than | transgender people who will bear a child. It would be equally | incoherent to attempt to replace all usages of "see", "hear" | with "perceive". | jasonladuke0311 wrote: | Because the "other side" wouldn't take offense to it. | Newton's 3rd law applied to the social sciences. | Mezzie wrote: | Oh, I have OPINIONS about why this might be, as someone who | was one of the teenagers on LJ back when this weird | ideology (the bastardization of intersectionality/identity | politics that's taken over all non-right discussions) | started. I'm a disabled lesbian, so I get a front row seat | to how some forms of discrimination 'matter' more than | others. | | It boils down to a few things: | | 1.) A lot of this identity politics is coming from upper- | middle class people of color OR white queer people, who are | using it to make money and boost their careers. The | disabled are, in America at least, far less likely to have | careers to boost. This is why the type of disability | activism you see in identity politics is usually limited to | mental illnesses. | | 2.) The disabled, to some degree, disprove some of the | ideological underpinnings of modern identity politics. | Modern identity politics is based on the idea that if we | change society/fix discrimination, then everybody (all | groups) will have the same rates of success. But even if | social discrimination didn't exist, those of us who are | disabled literally can't do things able-bodied people can | do. There's an undercurrent of 'discrimination is bad | BECAUSE all these groups can be | normal/productive/participate in capitalism' and the | disabled make people confront that they don't actually | believe all people are equal. They believe all PRODUCTIVE | people are equal, but they can't say that, because then | they sound like those 'horrible' right wingers. | | 3.) Fighting on behalf of the disabled doesn't make people | feel like they're 'on the right side of history'. I've | experienced a shit ton of sexism and homophobia from right- | wingers, but most conservatives would be horrified at | insulting me for having MS and agree that I should get help | if I need it. They just disagree on how it should be done. | That's harder to fight about, which means it's harder for | the media to turn into a frenzy, and that's where people on | both sides get their 'marching orders'. | duckmysick wrote: | Twitch removed the "blind playthrough" tag not so long ago. | | https://www.eurogamer.net/twitch-removes-blind- | playthrough-t... | bentcorner wrote: | FWIW, they do. There's constant efforts to ensure apps are | accessible if you use a screen reader and to not | exclusively rely on sound for notifications. Additionally | there's care to not assume people are using keyboards and | mice when interacting with something ("tap" vs "click" vs | "select" vs "pick", etc.). At least with the teams I've | worked with there's a considerable amount of effort done in | these areas. | madamelic wrote: | Trans people are frequently in tech. Go to any college and | you'll see the CompSci department is the one with the most | amount of LGBT individuals. | | The same can't be said for people who are blind or deaf. | jeroenhd wrote: | But wouldn't an underrepresentation of disabled people be | cause for concern in the industry? There are more legally | blind people in the USA than there are Native Americans | yet at the political stage there is very little interest | in coming up for those people. | | Several impressive videos on social media have shown that | programming without using vision or even hands is | perfectly possible, there are very few good reasons why | such underrepresentation shouldn't be corrected for. In | fact, I believe for many disabilities a job in fields | like data science or programming would be much easier to | adjust for disabilities than many other sectors where | interactivity is key. | Mezzie wrote: | LGBT people or trans people? | | I'd bet the theater kids gave CS a run for its money. Or | the art kids. Just fewer gay men and lesbians in CS. | enriquto wrote: | > Go to any college and you'll see the CompSci department | is the one with the most amount of LGBT individuals. | | Do you have any data on that? It does not coincide with | my anecdotal experience. I'm in a Math/CompSci department | and there's zero trans people here (that I know of), | while there are some in other departments. Anyhow, trans | people are a tiny percentage of the total population, so | it would be hard to have somewhat solid statistics on | them. | madamelic wrote: | Interesting. I don't have data, but it heavily correlates | with my school and what I had heard from others. There | was like a big cadre of trans people in the CompSci | department, then a few in the Math department. | | There was a smattering in other afaik. I was on the board | of the LGBT club so I knew at least the ones who were out | / came frequently. | DontMindit wrote: | mrosett wrote: | This gender-neutral terminology seems to be standard in | official materials in the ob/gyn academic world | titzer wrote: | This front of the culture war is an unwinnable quagmire that | seems to elicit ever-increasing smarminess yet has no victory | conditions. | cloutchaser wrote: | Because saying this stuff is akin to vowing your allegiance | to the party in authoritarian regimes. | | Or repeating the cult dogma in a cult. | | This isn't about rationality or what is ridiculous. It is | about proving that you are part of a group. And to prove that | people have done insane things for thousands of years. Much | worse than calling a mother a birthing parent tbh, but it | shows you what direction we are headed. | | And interestingly this seems to apply to corporations too. | They too (probably because of management), want to | demonstrate they are part of a group/cult. | gfodor wrote: | The point is previous things you thought were ridiculous were | normalized, in a very deliberate process. So to it will go | with "mother", if the past is any indication. However, it may | not be, because people are (ironically) waking up to this. | rhino369 wrote: | I've been incredulous to this stuff for 15 years, but | violating rules I was incredulous about 5 years ago would be | fired and black listed from my industry now. | | Maybe the pendulum will stop or swing back, but "that's not | going to catch on" has been wrong for nearly two decades. | hervature wrote: | > you're also not allowed to say it privately in chats or | emails | | In this context, what does it mean? For the other stuff, it is | easily envisioned that it means official documents need to be | scanned for prohibited terms. Ultimately, the term | "motherboard" has to at least appear in an official document of | banned words. In private chats, do they rely on the other party | to turn you in? Is it automatically detected? Are you prevented | from actually typing it? Can you post this link [1]? | | [1] - https://www.newegg.com/Motherboards/Category/ID-20 | mgraczyk wrote: | It's a code of conduct violation and the other employee can | ask you not to use the word. If you continue using it that's | an even worse violation. | varispeed wrote: | That's part of Marxist long march through institutions. They | achieve these goals through bullying and accusations. Nobody at | work wants to be (unfoundedly) accused of racism so they | silently accept these new rules. I mean it's a small | inconvenience that is probably worth the salary they are | getting. But the truth is people in these organisations are | afraid of speaking their minds in case they say something that | is deemed wrong by woke police. I noticed that people have | become less open and many limits conversations strictly to the | tasks at hand. It's kind of how corporate goals meet with | Marxism - they believe people no longer engage in "pointless" | socialising that affects the bottom line and if they want to | engage, they have a minefield to navigate. Many of my (former) | friends who worked at these big corporations have become | zombies - it's not possible to have a conversation with them | about day to day life, events etc. It's really fascinating and | worrying. | andrekandre wrote: | which things did marx say that these companies are now | implementing? | oh_sigh wrote: | As someone fairly familiar with the SJWs in a variety of FANGs, | motherboard/mainboard doesn't even offend me any more. I kind | of get it, even though it is lame logic. | | I'm waiting until they start marking "Latino" as non-inclusive, | and start forcing "Latinx". | tempnow987 wrote: | LatinX is complicated. If (white person) corrects someone of | hispanic origin that using the word latino is offensive and | they should use latinx - I've gotten some pushback. It may be | best to just let the folks who care about getting to Latinx | hash it out themselves. I've started seeing folx as well | instead of folks. Was curious about the offensiveness of | folks? | xg15 wrote: | Wasn't the x originally a gender thing? As in "folks" is | gender neutral while "folx" actively acknowledges non- | heteronormative genders. | tempnow987 wrote: | Thank you, very interesting. I'd always taken gender | neutral to include non-heteronormative genders. But I | started seeing things like folx - confusing because I | hadn't understood the word to be gendered or only gender | normative. | dane-pgp wrote: | > Thank you | | Don't you mean "Thanx"? | tempnow987 wrote: | I think it's a bit unique to folkx because instead of | using gendered language (hey guys) folks have moved to | hey folks. So I've only seen it on things like that | (gender neutral references to other people). | skrbjc wrote: | Folx is just a way to signal that you are woke. Since they | have pushed folks for everything and co-called "normies" | are using it now, they need to go a step further to make | sure you know they are part of the special group. | xg15 wrote: | > _motherboard /mainboard doesn't even offend me any more. I | kind of get it, even though it is lame logic._ | | Same as "master branch"/"main branch". If there is an | equivalent, less fancy and less controversial technical term, | by all means let's use that instead. As long as you don't | start with "childbearing person board" or "privileged branch" | or whatever. | filoleg wrote: | I mentally cannot process "Latinx" to be pronounced as | anything but "Lah-tinks". I am prepared to be fully shafted | if I ever have to say that word outloud at work, because | people seem to visibly cringe when they hear it pronounced | this way. | [deleted] | xg15 wrote: | Same here (though not a latino and not in the US, so I | wasn't yet under any pressure to use it). | | The "-inx" suffix (when pronounced "inks") somehow makes | the word sound _more_ objectifying, sexist and even lewd | than the original words. | filoleg wrote: | > though not a latino and not in the US, so I wasn't yet | under any pressure to use it | | To be fair, I've literally never heard anyone try to | pronounce "latinx" outloud. And I live in one of the most | stereotypical liberal/left-wing cities in the US | (Seattle). The usage of that term seems to be mostly | confined to a vocal twitter/internet minority and written | form (whether online or in promotional materials for | certain things). | | Even here, this term is extremely fringe irl. And I don't | think I've ever felt pressured to use it either, given | I've never heard it in use (despite my friend group | having a couple of people who are very left-leaning and | are vocal about it). | | I guess tl;dr, don't mistake a fringe vocal minority on | the internet for an accurate representation of what it is | like to actually live in the US (even when it comes to | certain most heavily stereotyped big cities). | nullc wrote: | > To be fair, I've literally never heard anyone try to | pronounce "latinx" outloud, | | I guess you quit listening to NPR before they started | using that one. It's ubiquitous now. | | What was it that made you quit? | | > Don't mistake fringe vocal minorities on the internet | for an accurate representation of what it is like to | actually live in the US. | | They I agree, though this particular example is not just | internet fringe. | filoleg wrote: | Nothing made me quit NPR, i just prefer to consume it in | the same form as most of my news-related stuff, in | written form. Nothing against listening or watching it, i | just find it easier to process things like that by | reading. | | With that in mind, i guess i mostly meant "people you | actually talk to or hear talking not in public news | media" when i said that i dont ever hear it said outloud. | xg15 wrote: | I mean, media has enormous influence. If a term is | constantly present in every newscast, movie or newspaper | around you, people will probably start using it at some | point. | filoleg wrote: | > people will probably start using it at some point. | | I am not disagreeing with you, and sure, your future | prediction is not out of the realm of possibilities. I am | just saying that I am yet to see it happen as of today. | And I don't really care to be outraged about something | that isn't a thing yet. | | It isn't global warming or some other thing that is | difficult to reverse or has some life/death stakes. | Language has been perpetually changing, and still is. | Really fast, and really wildly. So making a trouble out | of "this one word might become used in future in real | life at some point, so you should worry about it now" is | not something I am really into wasting energy on. | nullc wrote: | Yeah, fair point. Unless your social circles include | ultratwittered people and/or media personalities you'll | likely never hear it in meatspace-- even living in the | bay area. | causalmodels wrote: | I find "Latinx" to be so unbelievably stupid because the | English "x" sound doesn't exist in Spanish. Rather than | using the gender neutral form "latine", some moron decided | we should start injecting Anglo idioms into the Spanish | language | umanwizard wrote: | Latinx is used almost exclusively by English speakers. | One doesn't have to actually speak Spanish fluently to | identify as Latino or Latinx in the US. | [deleted] | timmg wrote: | As someone who also works at Google, I agree that there is a | vocal minority who want Google to be a promoter of progressive | values, but: I think you nay be exaggerating things here. | | I've never even heard of any controversy over the word | "motherboard". I just did some internal searches. It seems to | be a well-used word, both in code and in documentation. (I did | a code search for both "motherboard" and "mainboard" and they | seem to be used by similar amounts, fwiw.) | | In fairness, I will say that I do watch my language more | closely than I think is really needed: | | The terms "whitelist" and "blacklist" are built into my | thought-vocabulary. I do find myself switching to "allowlist" | and "denylist" as I translate my thoughts in discussions. Not | that anyone has ever "called me out" if I slipped up with | "whitelist". | mgraczyk wrote: | It's in the banned words list, I can share a link internally | if you want. | ushakov wrote: | why does a company have a say which words are allowed to be | used? | | i mean there are some bad words you shouldn't use, but i | just can't grasp why is there something like "motherboard" | on that list? | IAmWorried wrote: | JaimeThompson wrote: | When do you feel cancel culture started? | pageandrew wrote: | Started kicking off in universities around 2014-2015, | really accelerated on social media (and by extension | legacy media) through the Trump years, and has been | solidly established across the corporate world as the | college students of 2015 entered the workforce. | JaimeThompson wrote: | In the United States the fundamentalists have been doing | it for much longer then that as well as people such as | the members of the Parents Music Resource Center who | controlled a considerable amount of political power. | | This idea that it is a recent invention isn't really | supported by the reality on the ground. Things like the | satanic panic, Dungeons & Dragons / Metal being satanic, | Rock being evil, and a host of other things have long | been used to remove "undesirable" people for a long time | before 2014 on both the local and national level. | | The extremes have always used shunning and economic | warfare tactics to shut up those who disagree with them. | flippinburgers wrote: | Uhhh ok yeah all those people who lost jobs and couldn't | find employment because they listened to rock | music/played DnD. Sure. | | The DnD panic was about kids. It was about kids. I find | it absurd to go after DnD like that but I don't recall | ever reading about people being shunned, losing there | jobs etc as happens these days. | IAmWorried wrote: | With the rise of social media. The modern "cancelling" | could not exist without the viral phenomena that social | media enables. Of course, you could always be fired for | saying unaceptable things in the past, but now it | actually ruins your entire life, you can't escape it. | JaimeThompson wrote: | Please see my response in this thread. | CoastalCoder wrote: | I'm pretty skeptical of labor unions in the U.S., but I | can see how they could help with this kind of issue. | cornel_io wrote: | bombcar wrote: | I'm not sure they wouldn't be on the forefront of coming | up with new words to add to the lists. | morgante wrote: | They 100% would be. In fact, people in the Alphabet Union | are on the forefront of DEI initiatives like this. | DannyBee wrote: | The banned words list they are referring to is about what | words should be used in external product documentation | and marketing :) Not about what you are allowed to say | inside google, or anything like that. | ushakov wrote: | the point still stands though | | could you please explain to me, a non-native english | speaker, why using "mainboard" is better than | "motherboard"? | ChrisKnott wrote: | I guess because it's kind of exclusive of fathers and/or | stereotypical of mothers as the "family orientated | parent". | deschutes wrote: | Find me a reasonable person offended by this terminology | and I'll show you an unreasonable person. That | connotation doesn't come through at all. | slg wrote: | It is the same logic as why we switched from "fireman" to | "firefighter" or "stewardess" to "fight attendant" | decades ago. Because some people find the old word | offensive. The only real debate is the size of the "some" | and whether that "some" is small enough to ethically | ignore. | fallingknife wrote: | It's not about the size of "some." It's about their | objection being stupid. | sillysaurusx wrote: | The thing is, those substitutions are logical because | "fireman" doesn't refer to female firefighters. But | "motherboard" is different, because "board" doesn't refer | to a person. | slg wrote: | Perhaps, but this is your opinion. Maybe you are in the | "some" for certain words and not others. I am not in the | "some" for "motherboard" so I can't tell you exactly why | people are offended, but I know they are. Whether the | rest of us think someone taking offense is logical | doesn't stop them from being offended. | fluoridation wrote: | I very much doubt anyone is actually offended by the word | "motherboard". More likely it's a dumb inductive | argument. "Some people are offended by some gendered | words => every gendered word might offend someone => | every gendered word must be eliminated as a precaution". | flippinburgers wrote: | The exact same pattern was leveraged against blacklist - | a word that has absolutely no connection with the skin | color usage. It has been removed by notable projects and | people were up in arms talking about it being necessary | due to "people being offended". | | Motherboard. It took me a few moments to guess as to why | this is a "problem". Obviously due to the word mother. | Let me roll my eyes. | | Frankly it is completely absurd to be offended about a | word that is part of a process that keeps our very | species existing. Sadly I would not be surprised at all | if there are google employees who are offended on behalf | of "people being offended". | slg wrote: | This is basically a semantic debate, but I guess this all | is anyway. I don't disagree with the pattern you are | describing, but I would describe it a slightly different | way. There are people getting offended on the behalf of | other people who potentially might get offended. Even if | this second group never materializes or doesn't even | exist, that first group is still getting offended on | their behalf. | | Basically I don't believe that "precaution" you mention | is an apathetic but cautious person. These changes are | more often motivated by someone who thinks "this might | offend someone so I will take offense to it too". | verve_rat wrote: | Exactly. Mainship instead of mothership? I guess male and | female plugs/sockets are off limits now too. | | I'm tired of this sort of shallow, performative, language | policing. I'm (I believe) a socially progressive, | inclusive person, but this shit makes me tired. Just | fucking leave it alone and spend our collective fucks to | give on something that actually matters. | dodobirdlord wrote: | Some languages have gendered words as a fundamental | grammatical aspect of the language (though since this | language aspect evolved out of earlier grammatical | distinctions that had nothing to do with "gender", | frequently the gendering of words is kinda random). | English doesn't have grammatical gender, and it has a | relatively small set of words in its vocabulary that are | specifically gendered. The argument goes that the use of | some of this vocabulary is harmful, and that it's easier | to try to move away from using the whole class of gender- | specific vocabulary words outside of actually gender- | specific scenarios than it is to try to define and keep | track of which gendered vocabulary words should be | discouraged. Words like "motherboard" are collateral | damage of this broader effort to discourage use of terms | like "mothering", which can be used in English to mean | both "being mother to", but also in a metaphorical | generic sense as "being responsible for and looking | after", even of things that are not children, and is | discouraged in favor of "parenting" or "caretaking", | which have the same implications but without the gendered | aspect. | pbhjpbhj wrote: | Parenting and caretaking don't have the same connotation | as mothering. | | It seems like people who object to motherboard don't | understand analogy? | crdrost wrote: | If the objection were to parenthood, which is to say if | nurtureboard or parentboard were similarly offensive, | then I agree this would have been a stupid stupid choice. | | The problem is that you had a motherboard and daughter | boards, those were the accepted terms, and never | fatherboard or son boards, never parentboard or child | boards. Why were they gendered female in the first place? | | Because they had "female connections," which is to say | their use is in plugging pins into their sockets. | | Obviously that is a sexual analogy that did not age | particularly well, this idea that a motherboard is the | motherboard because you shove stuff into it. So people | started replacing with mainboard because it makes more | sense... | ushakov wrote: | so it's a belief system then? | sillysaurusx wrote: | Imagine a future where babies can be incubated in an | external enclosure, rather than a womb. | | This doesn't seem too unlikely. I've been hoping tech | would go this way -- We're doing IVF in June, and it's | still hit-or-miss whether it'll work. | | In that future, if someone identifies as nonbinary but | still wishes to have a child, neither "mother" nor | "father" would accurately describe them. And since a womb | isn't required for a baby, there's not necessarily any | "mother" (nor "father") in that scenario. | | That said, I _think_ the argument is "mainboard is | better than motherboard for the same reason that denylist | is better than blacklist -- the whole point is so that | people don't have to be reminded of social issues | whenever the word comes up in discussion." | jstanley wrote: | > there's not necessarily any "mother" (nor "father") in | that scenario. | | Is there not still an egg supplier and a sperm supplier? | marton78 wrote: | "Don't mention the war!" | imgabe wrote: | mainboard does not even communicate the same concept. A | main board might be one of several disconnected boards | where it performs the primary function, not necessarily | the singular substrate on which all other components are | hosted. | dekhn wrote: | We're sure it's in a List, but the point is that the List | is not uniformly enforced, and "motherboard->mainboard" | definitely seems like one to go to bat against because it | Doesn't Make Sense to get rid of it. | elihu wrote: | Does "motherboard" even make sense as a term? It's not | like a motherboard gives birth to little baby boards that | eventually grow up to be mother and father boards of | their own. It's just one of those weird words we accept | because it's been part of a shared vocabulary for so | long. I don't particularly see any harm in assigning a | gender role to a hardware device, but I don't see | anything is particularly gained either. "Mainboard" is | fine. | UberFly wrote: | All the little components live on the Mother Board just | like you live on the Mother Earth. | kansface wrote: | Presumably, that would be _Main_ Earth. | chipotle_coyote wrote: | I'm fairly sure that "motherboard" came about as a term | specifically for computer logic boards with slots that | other cards -- "daughterboards" -- plugged into. It's | very much from the 1970s era when we referred to | "microcomputers", "minicomputers" and "mainframes". | Granted, I'm a Mac user -- the last time I bought a | "motherboard", I think it was a Pentium 4 -- and we tend | to use the phrase "logic board" over here in Apple land, | probably because, other than debatably the Mac Pro, we | haven't had motherboards using the canonical definition | for a very long time. | | At any rate, while I wouldn't go out of my way to squelch | the word, I wouldn't go out of my way to insist on it, | either. "Logic board" and "mainboard" both work and get | the point across. | zionic wrote: | > We're sure it's in a List, but the point is that the | List is not uniformly enforced | | The fact that it's in a list at all should make you | reconsider your employment with them. | | The inmates run the asylum at Google, just because they | haven't come for your corner/fiefdom yet doesn't mean | they won't. | DannyBee wrote: | The list it is on is about what words to use in external | product documentation and marketing. Not some "if you use | these words internally the word police are going to come | after you" list. | | I'm going to be charitable and suggest this person is | just accidentally leaving out context, rather than | deliberately trying to rile people up because they | disagree with something :) | unethical_ban wrote: | Motherboard isn't offensive. It shouldn't be offensive. | If someone is offended by it, that is a problem of | theirs. | | The idea that a large, influential organization plays | along with the idea that "motherboard" should in any way | be filtered is as absurd as filtering the words "table" | or "stereo". | DannyBee wrote: | Sorry, but i'm going to trust the folks who think hard | about what should and should not be in documentation that | ends up in literally hundreds of different countries more | than an an absoluteist HN statement that "it's not | offensive" from a random person. | | But in typical HN fashion, i'm sure you know better. Just | like the people who say that X or Y should take 2 people | over a weekend. Remind me again what your experience is | here to say they are wrong? Are you a culture expert of | some sort? It's really not obvious from your HN profile | or comment exactly why you think your expertise should | overrule theirs. | | Otherwise, i'd say it sure is fun to get upset and | pretend it's the reactionary woke police, rather than a | group of people carefully thinking something through. | unethical_ban wrote: | I "trust the experts" on a number of things, but the | spectrum shifts a little with cultural discussions, and | it's precisely because Google is so incredibly | influential that I am suspicious of actions taken that | seem to be the modus operandi of a portion of so-called | socially-progressive people who try to "nudge" society | through the intentional shifting of language. | | I would be interested to see the rationale for the | change, if it is so clearly benign and not part of any | secret-sauce or competitive advantage - similar to the AP | Stylebook. | | This isn't a debate about cloud security, or strongly- | typed languages, or the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere | and its impact on the Earth. It's a cultural discussion, | and I believe citizens should be encouraged to form an | opinion, rather than insulted and berated for having one. | | You actually didn't defend your position in any way on | the topic, you only berated me for not having faith in | closed-door internal Google processes to alter the use of | the English language. | | From another comment: >you have precisely zero knowledge | of either the decision making process, or how it is used, | etc. | | Isn't that the issue being brought up? Let's be | charitable: Could it be that "mainboard" is the English | term used by ESL speakers across the world, and | "motherboard" is only used in the US/UK? Perhaps. I know | you work at Google, but I am surprised at _your_ surprise | that people would be skeptical of that company 's | motivation. | | I'd be interested in your opinion on the first-order | topic, and also why you're so angry in the second place. | bitcharmer wrote: | Saying that something is or isn't offensive doesn't | require being and expert in cultural studies. You just | know it by the virtue of being part of the culture and | observing what the trends of the majority are. | | I think your militant stance on the subject is more | problematic than someone else's view that the word | motherboard is not offensive. | | Also, advocating for some narrow unknown group of people | to have exclusive right to define language gives off a | little cultish vibes. | DannyBee wrote: | "part of the culture". | | See, this is the whole issue right here. It's not about a | single culture. It's hundreds. This wordlist is for | global products with literally billions of users in | literally hundreds of countries. | | Yes, it requires experts to know what will be inoffensive | to all of them at once (or at least, the vast majority). | | Your "narrow unknown group of people" is really "people | who are experts at language and culture and understand | this". | | Paying and asking them to help figure out how to create | common standards that will cover the majority of the | hundreds of cultures at once does not seem cultish or | militant at all to me? | | It is something literally every single company with | literally billions of global users in hundreds of | cultures does. | | Otherwise they end up naming their product something | offensive to a culture, etc. | | News stories about those gaffes occur literally all the | time, so i'm sort of shocked you are really trying to | argue that trying to avoid them is somehow cultish. | | I am probably one of the least "politically correct" | people you will find, and i'm not even all _that_ | progressive in the scheme of things, yet this clearly | makes sense to me. So I look at this, and see HN having a | huge overreaction because they are upset the world is | becoming a lot more politically correct for no obvious | benefit. | | That bothers me too - a lot in fact. I just don't see the | particular thing complained about in this part of the | thread (a wordlist used to ensure google doesn't say | offensive things in product documentation) all that | objectionable. | | The original article, about offensive/inclusive/etc AI | writing nudges, bothers me about 1000x more than the | wordlist. | flippinburgers wrote: | This is about censoring the word mother clearly. It is | nonsense. | DannyBee wrote: | Again, you literally know nothing about how or why the | decision is made, but are 100% sure about what happened | and why. Yet they are the problem and not you? | | I would urge you to actually seek facts first, rather | than make them up yourself just because you are sure you | are right. It's not a particularly helpful approach. | native_samples wrote: | Trust the experts? Really? To people on HN, most of whom | have been using the term motherboard their whole lives | without incident and who are, in fact, computer experts? | | It's quite obviously not a carefully thought through | decision, it's more or less random machine-gunning of | random words that happen to have the word mother in them | because ... well ... because they think motherhood is | offensive? Presumably? It's impossible to discern any | logic here. This supposedly expert decision is already | leading to near universal derision towards Google, a once | universally respected name. That derision is now also | coming from left-wing media outlets that you'd expect to | be fully supportive, like VICE. That's because it's quite | obviously insane. Nobody is looking at this and thinking | "about time", they're thinking "wtf is that?!". | DannyBee wrote: | I'm talking solely about the internal wordlist the | grandparent is whining about, not the AI writing thingy. | I don't have a real formed opinion yet on the latter. | | For the former, it's none of the things you say, and | AFAICT, you have precisely zero knowledge of either the | decision making process, or how it is used, etc. | | So saying "it's quite obviously x" seems trivially wrong. | flippinburgers wrote: | I don't see how that matters at all. | lubesGordi wrote: | I mean, I'm still pretty shocked to hear 'motherboard' | isn't allowed in external product documentation. I don't | think it matters if it's internal or external. | mattkrause wrote: | "Mainboard" is arguably a bit more literally descriptive: | it is the _main_ board of the device. | | The figurative part of "motherboard" is pretty vague: | it's just larger than the "daughterboards" and in charge | of them--it doesn't birth or nurture them or do anything | that's stereotypically maternal. | fluoridation wrote: | Often power is transmitted from the motherboard to be | daughterboards, and the two are connected via a conduit | like a fetus in the womb. It's not a completely arbitrary | metaphor. | | As for whether it's the _main_ board or not, surely that | 's a matter of opinion. An AI researcher would be much | more interested in what the GPU board is doing than on | what the motherboard is doing. | dekhn wrote: | yes, I left google because of stupid shit like this. | | More importantly: when I was there, I actively fought | against this kind of shit, but it was clear at some point | that the content moderation team had enough sway with | execs that they were going to continue this sort of | idiocy untrammelled. | kurupt213 wrote: | From a purely linguistic point of view, doesn't 'content | moderation' imply a work slowdown? I would think any | company would be against using anti-productivity | language. | bombcar wrote: | I think all companies realize they have a large amount of | "sway" in the actual work that gets done, and things like | TPS reports and content moderation get in even if they're | a net productivity loss. | | Once you stop thinking of companies as single entities | and instead as large kingdoms containing many fiefdoms it | starts making more sense. | | You can see it even in this thread, there exist Lists and | tools that can be used as weapons against other groups, | even if sometimes they're not currently being used | because they're not currently at war. | scythe wrote: | "Allowlist" and "denylist" are sonically awkward. Why not | "inlist" and "outlist"? | scottyah wrote: | In the context of IP filtering, I would assume those lists | would differentiate one-way traffic instead of the regular | all or nothing. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | Directional terms like that would be confusing in a lot of | infrastructure discussions. An outbound firewall rule's | "outlist" is the list of things that _don 't_ go out. | gs17 wrote: | I'm still not sure why blocklist wasn't the goto | replacement. Depending on your accent, you might not even | notice! | rougka wrote: | I want to offer greenlist and redlist | | And to those who say this is not inclusive to the | colorblind, I say traffic lights | alex_suzuki wrote: | Well yes, traffic lights are a problem, I'm red-green | color blind myself. But the brain is smart enough to | supply the right ,,color" because it knows that red is on | top and green is below. Wait a second, is that offensive | towards the color green? ;-) | sgustard wrote: | I've always wondered how you handle those lights at | night, if you can't see the enclosure; and how you handle | the occasional horizontal traffic light, which my town | has one of. | onion2k wrote: | Greenlist and redlist would fail in a global company. | Plenty of cultures use red as a color that promotes | positivity rather than a negative color. Japan has blue | rather than green for their "Go" color. And so on. | layer8 wrote: | That'd discriminate against the outgroup. Although I guess | "denylist" would be offensive to <whatever> deniers? | brunooliv wrote: | So... essentially you have to go around hoops in the way you | communicate internally? LEL. | she46BiOmUerPVj wrote: | Sure if you believe it. We also don't speak to each other to | cater to people who are deaf, and we don't use sign language | to cater to people who are blind. | [deleted] | [deleted] | ipiz0618 wrote: | When the same kind of people banned "master" branch for being | offensive I was surprised. Not so much now if I think in their | logic | [deleted] | mrtksn wrote: | Okay, for a moment, forget about your position or feelings | about the issue. Would you say that these restrictions or | changes actually changed anything for better or worse? Is there | some kind of evaluation going on to track the results of these | policies? | xg15 wrote: | Out of couriosity: Why then didn't flag it the actual n-word of | all things? | | > _A transcribed interview of neo-Nazi and former Klan leader | David Duke--in which he uses the N-word and talks about hunting | Black people--gets no notes._ | | Edit: Also interesting that this comment is dropping like a | stone in HN's comment ranking, even though currently the | comment score is at 1. If I accidentally triggered some anti- | flame or anti-profanity filter, I'm sorry. | throw10920 wrote: | > Edit: Also interesting that this comment is dropping like a | stone in HN's comment ranking, even though currently the | comment score is at 1. If I accidentally triggered some anti- | flame or anti-profanity filter, I'm sorry. | | Comment order is a function of both score and age. As far as | anybody (except those who actually have access to the | source), there's no other "hidden" mechanic. | politician wrote: | Initial ranking depends on the author's karma. From there, | the other factors take over. | londons_explore wrote: | Perhaps certain words disable the feature entirely? | | The feature only seems to trigger when it has a suggestion. I | can't imagine what suggestion would be suitable to replace | the n word. | xg15 wrote: | Good point. maybe even Google didn't want to be seen as | "hey, here are some suggestions how you can make your | speech about murdering Black people more inclusive..." | AuryGlenz wrote: | We need Clippy back, with webcam functionality. That way he | can suggest ending the word in an "a" if you're black. If | you're not he'll report you to HR. | brobinson wrote: | Genuinely curious: what do you do internally for "male" and | "female" connectors? | mgraczyk wrote: | That one is in the public list. | | https://developers.google.com/style/word-list | | You're supposed to use "plug" and "socket" instead. | kyleblarson wrote: | That google is at a point where they can pay employees to | waste time on crap like this and yet still print money is | incredible. | stefan_ wrote: | Haha jesus no wonder they added the "AI-powered" hints | because who the fuck can be expected to keep track of all | this nonsense? | | > hang, hung | | > Don't use to refer to a computer or system that is not | responding [..] see Avoid unnecessarily violent language. | marton78 wrote: | Oh, that's due to violence? I thought because it evokes | phallic associations, as when someone is well hung. | MatteoFrigo wrote: | To be fair, the male/female nomenclature for connectors has | been a mess for decades. | | One old convention, mostly originating with radio-frequency | connectors, is that the gender of the connector is the | gender of its innermost contact. Thus, the plug of the | common 2.5" and 2.1" connector of power supplies is | technically female because the inner contact is a hole. The | socket on the appliance has a pin in the middle and is | technically male. When you try to buy one, half the time | the part is labelled as male and the other half it is | labelled as female. | | But there is no problem bad enough that cannot be made | worse by government. Years ago some US regulator didn't | like the fact that people were plugging big radio antennas | into wifi equipment, so they invented the "reverse- | polarity" connector. What used to be a "SMA male" connector | with a pin in the middle now is a "RP SMA male" connector | with a hole in the middle. Here is a random link with a | picture: http://cablesondemandblog.com/wordpress1/2014/05/0 | 5/reverse_... If you order this kind of connectors, now you | have a 25% chance of getting what you need. One RP SMA male | and a SMA female will mate together but not propagate any | signals. | londons_explore wrote: | plug, socket | formerly_proven wrote: | ... tells you where it is (cable-mounted or panel- | mounted/fixed), not the gender. | plug socket male exists exists | female exists exists hermaphroditic | exists exists changeable exists exists | ajross wrote: | > Many Google employees are just so out of touch with the real | world | | This isn't remotely limited to Google. My company does this | too. I've heard of others making similar changes. | | Are these kinds of arbitrary changes to language usage silly | and pointless? Maybe. But tough love here: languages change in | arbitrary and pointless ways constantly. They always have. They | always will. Your own common usages and idioms would seem | outrageously weird to your grandparents. People had these same | fights in the 60's, also 80's, and 50's... The 40's too now | that I think of it... | | To wit: we aren't getting oppressed here, _we 're just getting | old_. And the attempt to turn it into a political fight (on | both sides) is largely just a reaction to the friction. It's | not the cause. | | I mean, really. Is "mainboard" such a hardship? It's not even a | new word, it's two bytes and one syllable shorter. Must this be | a fight? | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | If Google had shipped a feature that autocorrects my | grandparents' slang to "dank" and "yeet", I'd be equally | concerned! There's a huge difference between using fun new | terms yourself and going around asking everyone to stop using | the old ones. | babyshake wrote: | Not trying to troll here...but are there people advocating that | we replace "Mother's Day" with "Birthing Person's Day"? If a | person gave birth who no longer identifies as a woman is it not | inclusive to gender the holiday as we do? | GiorgioG wrote: | Thanks - this gave me the kick in the ass to switch from Gmail | to FastMail. | she46BiOmUerPVj wrote: | johnnyanmac wrote: | >sub with birthing person | | eww. This has the same vibes as someone saying "I want to breed | with them". Like sure, it's grammatically correct, but you're | gonna come off as a creep at best and some weird fetishist at | worst. | svnpenn wrote: | Post a screenshot, otherwise I agree with others that you're | just lying. | mgraczyk wrote: | That is not allowed (for good reason) and I don't want to get | fired, if you work at Google you can ping me and I can send | it to you. | burnished wrote: | What is that good reason? The only thing I can come up with | is "don't release internal documents", which is a blanket | reason and not what I'd consider compelling, but I suspect | I'm having a failure of imagination | umanwizard wrote: | Practically no big company would allow you to post | internal documents on Hacker News. Why isn't that a good | reason? | olalonde wrote: | Reminds me of when GitHub stopped using "master" for the | default branch because it was somehow offensive. | dekhn wrote: | When I built a distributed system, I wanted to avoid the | terms "master and slave" for the "coordinator and worker", so | instead I chose something I thought was relatively less | controversial- daimyo, honcho, and peasant. Only later did I | realize I had merely recapitulated the power structure of | feudal japan. | Tao331 wrote: | I prefer sovereign and vassal. No one has called me out on | it. | darkwater wrote: | And the world moved on, nothing exploded and new generations | will be used to 'main'. | native_samples wrote: | Actually quite a lot of things exploded. You just don't | care about the people who had to pick up the pieces. | Moreover, lots of git repos still use master so "new | generations" will just have to do deal with pointless | divergence and breakage for _nothing_. The change wasn 't | progress. It wasn't useful. It didn't stop anyone being | offended. It was and still is pure make-work for absolutely | no purpose beyond the demonstration of power over | irrelevant things. | burnished wrote: | Main is better. Master/slave has uncomfortable connotations. | This one isn't a big deal. | veeti wrote: | Where is the slave in git? | bloak wrote: | There is no "slave" in Git, but the term "master", like | many things in Git, is taken from BitKeeper, which did | have a "slave". Or so I've read, for example here: | https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/474419/does- | the-... | influx wrote: | Just FYI, it's Master as in Master record. This is | different from database terminology where there is a master | and slave. | CoastalCoder wrote: | I agree that "main" is better, purely because it's a more | intuitive word for that role. | | As far as "uncomfortable connotations", would you agree | that that's a subjective claim? | | I don't like that forced slavery is a thing, but I'm | capable of handling context-specific word meanings, and of | not getting emotional due to alternative meanings. | tomp wrote: | > Master/slave has uncomfortable connotations | | Why? I think that slavery is bad only if the slaves are | people. I _want_ machines to be my slaves! (non-sentient | machines only, dear future AI overlords!) | Tao331 wrote: | Can you please not use the word s____? My ancestors were | Slavs, and when I see the word it is a painful reminder of | how they were treated as property by Romans who bought and | sold their "ex slava" captives. | | Your use of the word is violence. | | /s? | Tr3nton wrote: | If you support this, don't complain when you're found | guilty of thoughtcrime for something that seems normal and | natural to you. | BadCookie wrote: | Slavery was horrible and should not be forgotten. Erasing | all related words so that we can all comfortably forget it | ever happened seems ... wrong? That's another way of | looking at it, anyway. | troupe wrote: | I'm waiting for companies to demote anyone who had a | promotion based on having a master's degree. | [deleted] | knorker wrote: | Reminds me of when GitHub kicked out a paying customer for | using the word "retard" as a verb in the mathematical sense. | vincnetas wrote: | had to look that up | | Retarded differential equations (RDEs) are differential | equations having retarded arguments. | | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S03770427 | 0... | MikeDelta wrote: | And quantum physics has degenerate energy levels. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_energy_levels | trollied wrote: | Large planes tell pilots vocally to "retard" when | landing... | bombcar wrote: | Which can be amusing if you don't know what's going on, | it suddenly sounds like the autopilot is pissed. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmbzKsqKQoI | | And for those who would like to change this, any change | to a pilot's routine has a chance of being the thing that | pushes an incident over the edge into a crash. Would it | be worth it? | madamelic wrote: | My opinion: | | `main` is better. It's shorter, it's more descriptive, and | costs nothing to remove something someone might find | offensive. | | It's pretty much an all around win. | packetlost wrote: | Except for the decades of documentation, blog posts, etc. | that will now cause confusing to newcomers. | Brian_K_White wrote: | The mental model of how you use a certain branch could | indeed be best expressed by the word "main", so no one can | say the word isn't the best one for you to use. | | But a master copy or version of something like a master | recording or gold master for pressing records is different | from merely "main". | | Applied to software they are similar but not identical | concepts, and neither is in any way wrong or harmful to | anyone. | | It's a small enough issue that it's not worth fighting very | hard over, but, the rationale for the change, and | especially for anyone trying to tell anyone else they have | to do that change, is still invalid and the word master | actually applies better if that's how you're using that | branch. It has nothing to do with slave bosses. | tomp wrote: | > costs nothing to remove something someone might find | offensive | | But there _is_ a cost. You 're losing a battle in the war | of free speech vs Orwellian thought control. | | The _woke_ (an offshoot of last-wave feminism, currently | promoted mainly by the control-left strain of the | Democratic party) are lying; they 're not actually | offended, they're just using that as an excuse (propaganda) | and as an emotional appeal, to get you to agree to their | arguments, and cede power to them. This is most obvious | with "Latinx" which is pushed by white journalists & | activists but which isn't even supported by the | _overwhelming majority_ of Latinos and Latinas in the US. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx | | Don't believe me? Listen to what they (the _woke_ ) say | themselves! | | > I wanted to start by focusing on the obvious one, Its | harder for them to object to just one to start with, then | once they admit the logic, we can expand the list | | from https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=4450 | whymauri wrote: | I don't think Latinx is a good example. The GP mentions | there's no functional cost to `main`, and this is true. | Latinx has a functional cost in that the Spanish language | literally does not support the phonetics of Latinx. | | That phrase is going to die soon and it never picked up | in Latin America. Most likely the queer community in | Latin America will come up with more effective slang. It | took the US queer community decades, a century? To | reclaim and come up with effective phrases -- I think the | main issue here is lack of patience and a somewhat | condescending attitude from American liberals that we, | the actual hispanic diaspora, need our hands held. | | There is also what I've argued is a hierarchy of needs | issue at play with LatinX. The problems facing the queer | community in Latin America are more severe than those | facing the US community, because it is a younger | community in a more conservative atmosphere. Therefore, | the effort is better spent advocating for table stakes, | like marriage equality in some countries and reduced | violence towards queer people -- there is no time to be | wasted, right now, on the exact, precise terminology to | use. And LatinX is not a way to win hearts and minds in | this process. | | Edit: this is NOT support for Google's product, which | clearly broken and not useful. This is an explanation of | why LatinX _specifically_ is not a good counter-example | to `main` versus `master`. I hope this pre-empts someone | coming in and calling me all 'woke' or whatever is the | cool phrase for dismissing people these days. | umvi wrote: | I don't mind "main" for the main branch but for existing | projects... | | > costs nothing to remove something someone might offensive | | It might break scripts, aliases, and any general automation | (CI, etc) with a baked in main branch assumption | skrbjc wrote: | But main also might be offensive because it's implying one | thing is more important than another and some marginalized | people who have not been the main group of people may not | feel great about that. Really we should use one and two. | But we should also be careful and should convene a working | group with broad representation to come up with a more | inclusive term for this. | | See how this works? It is also definitely not without cost. | It is not free to change all of your documentation and you | will inevitably have to be exposed to it anyway because not | everyone will have changed it, so it's ultimately not doing | anything anyway. | temp8964 wrote: | Main is offensive because it sounds like man and spells | like man. | | Here you go... | ungruntled wrote: | Someone somewhere will be concerned by the literal words | you speak, or the way you say it, or what you actually | meant, intended or unintended. They will do it with good | intentions or not, and no meaningful discussion will occur | because it would be shorter, cost nothing, and offend no- | one if you just let them win. | V-2 wrote: | Your point makes sense, but it wasn't the official | explanation. | jwond wrote: | My best friend was killed when a water main burst, and | every time I am forced to use a branch named 'main' it | causes me immense psychological stress. | | Since you suggest it "costs nothing to remove something | someone might find offensive", I propose it be changed to | something else instead of main. | | \s | dogleash wrote: | >costs nothing | | The communication cost of the change is not free. Do you | think the internal wiki and new-hire git training materials | all updated themselves? | | It wasn't a large process change. Most of our git users are | competent git users. But I billed hours dealing with it. | | I still have people here who haven't touched a repository | that uses "main" instead of "master". They have better | things to do with their lives than lurk social media | focused on programming. They don't know yet. Eventually | they'll pull something with "main" instead of "master". Can | I get your phone number so you can be the one to explain to | them? | tryptophan wrote: | Its worse because suddenly 20 years worth of tutorials are | slightly 'wrong' and will confuse new users even more for | no reason. | | "Why does my git say main and not master? Did I break it?" | | "Why cant I push to master like the 100x tutorials show? I | get errors!" | valeness wrote: | Does this mean we should never make progress or change | anything? | | Also if your tutorials are using a base repository to | work from, then you can still have the branch "master" | it's just not default. So your existing repos should | still work. And if you changed your repo then you should | be responsible for updating your documentation to reflect | that. It's just good practice. | tiborsaas wrote: | What about giving master a new meaning? Actively banning | it conservers its original meaning. Probably nobody today | thinks about woman sitting in a room doing calculations | when we speak about computers. | thegrimmest wrote: | I fail to see how changing the names from "master" and | "slave" makes any "progress" at all. What is the most | concise way to express the idea that one entity is | totally subordinate to another, and must comply with | every request the other sends? | | I struggle to come up with any two terms that make this | more clear than "master" and "slave". Just because we've | abolished chattel slavery, doesn't mean we should avoid | the very words themselves when they are appropriate. | Destruction of meaning is far worse than some abstract | offense that doesn't seem reasonable to take on behalf of | a computer process. | akomtu wrote: | This is when Ministry of Truth comes into play. The main | character's job in 1984 was literally this: rewriting | history when it came into conflict with the updated | "truth". Orwell didn't foresee that in a world of | computers, such updates are trivially made: no need to | reprint newspapers and books, since all of them are | virtual. | shadowgovt wrote: | This is tech. 20 years of tutorials are always becoming | slightly wrong. | | Don't tell me you're still using bare pointers, `new` and | `delete` in your C++ classes instead of using smart_ptr | fields, or explicitly declaring local variable types | instead of using `auto`... | rurp wrote: | They were responding to the claim that the master -> main | change has "no cost", which is clearly untrue. | Pxtl wrote: | Refactor mercilessly. | TrevorJ wrote: | Chesterton's Offence: Before we change a word, we should | first understand why it was there in the first place. :P | throw10920 wrote: | > `main` is better. It's shorter, it's more descriptive, | and costs nothing to remove something someone might find | offensive. | | All of these are true! I agree, "main" is a better name. | | However, as to the larger point, the individuals and groups | advocating for these changes also don't advocate for | similar changes (that is, things that have good benefits | but come with a very high cost to implement due to breaking | backwards compatibility) around technologies/terms that | they don't consider to be "problematic". | | That strongly suggests that the driver isn't to improve | technology, it's to shape language, with occasional | incidental technological benefits - and the ignored | technological regressions (it's harder to say "allowlist" | than "whitelist", for instance, or to write applications | that have a field to place in the user's preferred pronouns | than just not address the user using pronouns at all). | Pxtl wrote: | > However, as to the larger point, the individuals and | groups advocating for these changes also don't advocate | for similar changes (that is, things that have good | benefits but come with a very high cost to implement due | to breaking backwards compatibility) around | technologies/terms that they don't consider to be | "problematic". | | I actually know a social-justice oriented trans woman | online who strongly advocates for the use of Tau instead | of Pi because it is simpler and easier to learn. So | sample of 1 there. | | Tau vs Pi is a perfect microcosm of this debate with the | social justice arguments removed. See also metric vs | imperial. | | The benefits are small but non-zero and localized to a | handful of people, the new terminology is substantially | simpler and cleaner, and the costs are primarily related | to inertia and the comfort of people experienced with The | Old Way. | simion314 wrote: | I had a script that broke because someone changed master | into main, put in an equation the 100 people that got | satisfaction from this change and the tousands of people | getting frustrated because of it. | subjectsigma wrote: | Except that it broke all my fucking scripts that use git | ______-_-______ wrote: | "Motherboard" is particularly unbelievable. The motherboard | runs the machine. It's a woman in a position of power. Isn't | that what everyone says they want? | | Or is the idea to just erase the very concept of gender from | the world? Welcome to OkCupid, I am a [PERSON] seeking [PERSON] | | I want out of this timeline | ehsankia wrote: | > It's a woman in a position of power. Isn't that what | everyone says they want? | | Wouldn't it be equally problematic if they banned are male | words and allowed all female words? If you're going for it, | removing gender (from computer terminology) seems consistent. | No one is saying to remove it from the world, but mainboard | is just as if not more descriptive (to someone who isn't | familiar with the word to start with), and things like | allowlist/blocklist are much more self-descriptive than | whitelist/blacklist. | CuriouslyC wrote: | There are a lot of cases of the left trampling on women to | raise up men with gender identity issues. It's quite sad | really. | snek_case wrote: | Well they're not trying to raise up men, they're trying to | destroy any notion of gender, see "gender is a social | construct". | [deleted] | jazzyjackson wrote: | It's contradictory, there was already a movement | (feminism) that promoted "gender is a social construct" | which was to say, no one should be pressured into acting | inline with gender stereotypes. Women can be masculine, | men can be feminine, let bygones be bygones - the way you | act and dress should ideally have no relationship to your | sex. | | The "men with gender identity issues" referred to by | parent have this up-side-down, instead thinking that | "social transitioning" aka "living as a woman" is a step | towards _being a woman_ , this is not destroying notions | of gender, this is elevating gender over sex | nullc wrote: | > they're trying to destroy any notion of gender | | That would be nice, but you have it backwards. In most | cases the an attempt to make gender more central and | essential, rather than less, by decoupling it from | biology. | | Which is why in some parts of the country children are | sometimes being told that if they like boy sterotyped | activities like tree climbing or boy stereotyped attire | that you _are_ a boy, rather than saying any activity or | attire is available to anyone. | | Rather than erasing gender it's power as a tool for | enforced conformity is amplified by eliminating any | requirement for agreement with a person's biological | properties. | | To exaggerate in order to make the point, it's as if | we've gone from: "It's a womans' job to do the dishes" to | "Anyone can do the dishes." to "The person doing the | dishes is a woman, by definition."-- and the middle | state's inclusiveness is increasingly seen as hateful | because it denies people the ability to identify as a | gender other than the one suggested by their biology | through the performance of stereotyped behavior. | | Erasure of "mothers" seems contrary to the trend at first | blush, but it's made more clear when you see the | suggested replacements like "birthing person" or | "breeder"-- in this world view "mother" is a biological | function, so it must be decoupled from gender so that the | strongest possible gender sterotypes can be imposed on | people regardless of their biological abilities. | woodruffw wrote: | You've written a very long comment about what you think | other people believe (or intend), but it's not really | clear to me that any of it is true. | | For example, I don't think that _anybody_ actually holds | the sentence "The person doing the dishes is a woman, by | definition" as true in their heads. That's simply not a | thing people believe, anywhere along the political (or | any other) spectrum. | | If you _actually_ talk to trans people, you 'll find that | most of them fall into the "nonconforming" bucket rather | than some gender essentialist one. A lot of them are non- | binary or otherwise have gender/sex identities that don't | cleanly map onto maleness or femaleness. Given that state | of affairs, it's a remarkable stretch to think that these | people _themselves_ would see neutral language as | "hateful." And, in fact, they don't. | nullc wrote: | Perhaps I'll reach out to you for assistance the next | time someone suggests to myself or a family member that | they're trans simply because they engaged in an activity | that broke gendered stereotypes. Maybe we'll both learn | something! | woodruffw wrote: | I don't understand the relevance of someone offering you | unsolicited opinions about your gender. The fact that | they may or may not be wrong about both you and what it | means to be trans doesn't have any particular bearing on | whether transgenderedness itself is fundamentally | "essentialist" in its performance of gender. Which it | isn't. | CuriouslyC wrote: | They'd do a lot better if it was pitched as giving people | the freedom to dress and act as they desired as long as | they weren't hurting anyone else, rather than trying to | act like biology wasn't a thing. | | I have zero problems with people dressing however they | like, having whatever affectations they want and having | sex with whoever is willing. I might not always find it | tasteful, but that cuts both ways I'm sure so we can | agree to be civil. The buck stops when you try to shame | me for not calling a man a woman. Using pronouns should | be a kindness like holding the door open for a disabled | person, not something that sends emotional children into | a socially supported temper tantrum when absent. | mpfundstein wrote: | russia is our way out of this timeline | [deleted] | bjt2n3904 wrote: | The most tragic part of the endgame of transgender ideology | is the erasure of gender. | | We'll promise them they can be a boy. They do all the things | boys can: can play on the boys sports teams, use the boys | lockers and bathrooms... And all the meanwhile we're | banishing gendered extracurricular programs and making the | bathrooms unisex. | | We promise them we'll help them find their identity in | gender, and destroy gender in the process. | MikeDelta wrote: | Nature is full of males and females (with some species | being exceptions); the concept of gender is baked in nature | and will remain so for a very long time. | | About the cultural aspect of gender: this video opened my | eyes about what most people think it means to do things | 'like a girl', and what it actually is supposed to mean. | | https://youtu.be/XjJQBjWYDTs | sidibe wrote: | If your job is to come up with banned words and they've | stopped using the banned words, you've got to keep looking | for more if you want to keep your job. I don't think anyone's | real job at Google is to come up with the banned words, but | some people see it as their big impact and have been | commended for it in the past (by leaders looking to bolster | their DEI cred in the fakest, easiest ways) so they keep | going even when the words seem less and less ban-worthy. | she46BiOmUerPVj wrote: | It's particularly unbelievable because it's particularly | false. | azth wrote: | I had mentioned this in the previous post about this topic[1], | yet some people casually discredit it as nothing. The slippery | slope is real folks | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31086310&p=3#31087238 | MrBlueIncognito wrote: | People like turning a blind eye to what they feel | uncomfortable accepting. That the world we live in is being | increasingly influenced by just a few profit-maximizing | entities. | Tao331 wrote: | How about "motherboard/fatherboard"? If we just use that | everywhere they'll all be happy. No fatherboards will feel left | out. Mother-of-pearl can just be nacre, and I don't know what | you'll have to call mother-of-vinegar. Maybe just say it's | something special and not to think too much about how | fermentation works - especially if it causes you to have evil, | non-inclusive thoughts. | | If I'm writing about a ship and refer to it as a "she", does | that set off the autoinquisitor? | silisili wrote: | Can someone reasonably explain to me why mother or motherboard | is offensive...at all? | | I try to be somewhat reasonable. I can stretch my mind enough | to see the complaint with blacklist at least. But mother being | offensive...my mind isn't able to stretch that far unless I'm | missing something. | droptablemain wrote: | Sounds like woke gibberish. I suppose we can take some solace | in the fact that they haven't renamed "motherboard" as | "birthing-person-board." | twobitshifter wrote: | On landlord I can't think of a proper synonym. Property owner | and proprietor are broader categories of what a landlord is. | They don't mean the person you're paying rent to for your | housing. | foofoo4u wrote: | To play along with this game, one can say that replacing | "landlord" with "property owner" is offensive to those with | ancestors who were deemed property. | nullc wrote: | It ought to be offensive to women because it suggests they | can't be landlords-- a word which is already perfectly | gender neutral in American English as far as I can tell. | [deleted] | jmalicki wrote: | lessor? Out of curiosity for legalese, I found a California | assembly member is actually trying to change landlord -> | lessor in its laws https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/b | illTextClient.xhtm... | twobitshifter wrote: | What if you are a tenant at will (without a lease)? | skrbjc wrote: | What and utter waste of time and effort. | r_hoods_ghost wrote: | rentier - one who lives off the income of property or | securities. | marton78 wrote: | Sounds like reindeer. | cscurmudgeon wrote: | A landlord can still have a day job. | ______-_-______ wrote: | faucet-fixer? | cyral wrote: | paint-over-any-imperfections-er | sudosysgen wrote: | I see you haven't interacted with many landlords. | umvi wrote: | > This may seem unbelievable, but the word "motherboard" is | literally banned within Google and you are required to use | "mainboard" instead. You are not allowed to use this word in | documentation or code, and you're also not allowed to say it | privately in chats or emails. | | Is this really true? I always thought I might eventually apply | to work at Google someday, but I hadn't heard there was such | aggressive internal thought policing. | as300 wrote: | A worse one is to me is that they aren't allowed to say | "Quantum Supremacy", because it reminds some people of "White | Supremacy"? Nevermind that you actually give that concept more | power when you make it so that even discussing it or | inadvertently bring it up is stigmatized. Things are starting | to get kind of Orwellian. | designium wrote: | I wouldn't mind calling Motherboard site to Personboard... | ehhehehe | | It would be interesting to call landlord as landperson. | thedrbrian wrote: | Could be birthing person board. | david38 wrote: | You have got to be kidding. Was this some retaliatory complaint | by some dude showing dudes can be triggered by female- | emphasizing phrases as well? | | Should it have been renamed to birthing-person-board? What a | joke | dogleash wrote: | >Many Google employees are just so out of touch with the real | world that they believe it is the duty of Google Docs to change | the English language to exclude the words "landlord", | "motherboard", and even "mother" in most contexts (sub with | birthing person). | | It's frantic activity to avoid looking in the mirror. Making | themselves busy fixing something massive and intractable to | avoid having to think about the actionable items closer to | home. | [deleted] | gorwell wrote: | I can't imagine most employees agree with this. Why aren't they | pushing back? | londons_explore wrote: | Pushing back against this type of policy is generally a bad | idea... There is a very vocal minority who will make life | hard for you. This is a case where the vast majority know | it's best to keep their thoughts to themselves. | dane-pgp wrote: | > the vast majority know it's best to keep their thoughts | to themselves. | | If it's really the case that the vast majority of employees | are feeling stifled by the company policy, isn't that a | situation where forming a trade union could help? | | The irony of workers rising up against oppressive | supposedly left-wing rule is not lost on me, especially if | it were to occur in Google's office in Poland. | ryathal wrote: | Why would they push back? There is evidence doing so can get | you publicly shamed and fired if other take sufficient | offense. | luxuryballs wrote: | Probably better to fly under the radar in most cases | especially if they have recently been locked out of the | office for not getting mRNA injections. | vimy wrote: | This is why I'm pessimistic about the West winning the second | cold war. While Chinese engineers are working hard on world | dominating AI models and other hard tech, Western engineers are | wasting man hours on crap like this. | slig wrote: | >wasting man hours | | _People_ hours | IAmWorried wrote: | But it's over Anakin, we have the moral high ground! | jpindar wrote: | As someone who lives in a valley, I find that phrase | offensive. | | /s | thinkingemote wrote: | Interesting comment. Putin is continually making "west is | degenerate"-ish remarks as a kind of justification for his | invasion of Ukraine, and yet his words fall flat. It's | obvious he's being disengenius. | | It's like, yes, we know some over paid highly educated | technologists are biased against but that doesn't equal the | end of liberalism and democracy itself. His words are not at | all going to sway any of the HN readers who may agree with | him on cultural issues about the west, that Russia are the | good guys! | | Perhaps his words are meant to developing nations who are | uniformly culturally conservative? | mpfundstein wrote: | read Aleksandr Dugin and you will understand | CuriouslyC wrote: | The west will win the second cold war because the communist | party will not be able to release its iron grip on its | populace. The Chinese people only accept that iron grip now | because it's carrying them up from a low place, but once that | stops the constriction will become suffocating, leading to | civil unrest and diaspora of the upper tier of Chinese | society. | throw10920 wrote: | There's a saying - "the market can remain irrational longer | than you can remain solvent". | | Even if there _was_ some natural physical law that | guaranteed that oppressive nations would eventually be | overthrown /atrophy, there's definitely nothing that puts a | bound on how long that will take. | | And, as we've seen with Ukraine, war can break out more | quickly than any of us think. | | (also, if the social justice warriors in the West have | their way, the US government itself would be overthrown and | replaced with its own, authoritarian, but _ineffective_ | regime, long before a conflict with China would occur) | Tr3nton wrote: | >if the social justice warriors in the West have their | way, the US government itself would be overthrown and | replaced with its own, authoritarian, but ineffective | regime | | The summer of 2020 was a great preview of what this | dictatorship will look like once the USD collapses in | value another 30-40%. Burning buildings and more statues | of "heroes" like George Floyd, who stood up to White | Supremacy. Remember, removing "master" from git repos was | done because of the legacy of slavery in the United | States. | shp0ngle wrote: | Oh come on now. | | Chinese have far bigger and far more strict word list bans. | | In US, you need to say "people who menstruate" and "land | owning person"; in China you will just just disappear if you | say a wrong thing against the regime. | vimy wrote: | It's about a lot more than just forbidden words. The | 'social justice' fanatics are a black hole for | productivity. | tomrod wrote: | Google is a large corporation. Large corporations will often | enact arcane rulesets to give HR ways to manipulate their labor | costs. This really sounds a lot like why this type of approach | would be supported. | she46BiOmUerPVj wrote: | This sounds entirely fabricated. I've been in the hardware | department for more than 10 years. Maybe you put a word in a | list. I've never even heard of someone considering this. | user3939382 wrote: | If we're going to play this game, I think dissuading people | from using "mother" in the example of "motherboard" is | offensive. Mothers are the source of human life on earth, and | in that capacity are revered and honored. When we say | motherboard, we're making an analogy that suggests the board's | significance and universal connection to everything. | | To discourage the term as an analogy for things that are a | universal source is to demote women and their role as mothers. | | I'd like to know who at Google puts these lists together and | what judge decreed their viewpoint on this more valid than mine | or anyone else's, since apparently Google feels that from this | judgement they have the right to shape speech for millions of | people and therefore, by extension, our culture. | shp0ngle wrote: | The official PC term is now "birthing person", "birthing | people", "people giving birth" and similar. | | Think of that what you will. | layer8 wrote: | I'm looking forward to birthing-person-in-law jokes. | bombcar wrote: | Which completely loses that for many people, their _mother_ | is NOT the woman who gave birth to them. | imglorp wrote: | English has such a rich array of word choices for many | parental situations, with many subtle variations | conveying tone and meaning. MW has roughly 83 synonyms | including both noun and verb forms, just for mother. I | don't see how choosing any one of them for my particular | situation will detract from anyone else's identity or | journey: they are free to chose as well. Unless your tool | bans 82 of them. | nonameiguess wrote: | That can't possibly be true. If nothing else, it's erasure | of adoptive parents, or mothers who didn't give birth, | among which gay married couples are overrepresented. I | realize there is infighting and factionalism even within | minority communities, but come on, this stuff doesn't ring | true. I've never heard someone called a birthing person | outside of a joke. | | For what it's worth, in support of the original comment's | claim, I just dug around the Pixelbook documentation all | over the place and I can't find any mention of the | motherboard. But it doesn't seem they renamed it to | "mainboard" or "birthing person board." They just dropped | it from the specification completely and don't tell you | anything about what kind of motherboard you're getting. | snek_case wrote: | I think this completely falls apart because most of the | women who give birth identify as mothers, and would be very | offended if you told them they couldn't. | | I wish there was more pushback against this insanity. I've | also seen people want to erase the word "blindspot" from | the dictionary... Even though I'm sure no blind person was | ever offended by it, because that word typically is used to | refer to the limits of people who aren't blind. | mattkrause wrote: | What about a motherboard is specifically maternal? | klyrs wrote: | Better question, are PCBs viviparous or oviparous? | canadaduane wrote: | I've always associated motherboards with motherships--the | larger thing in charge of making all the other little | things behave well together. | nullc wrote: | > is to demote women and their role as mothers. | | Their role as breeders and birthing people, you mean. Time | for a trip to HR for you. | | > they have the right to shape speech for millions of people | and therefore, | | Google', "Do the right thing" could be understood as "if you | have the power to do something, you have the obligation to do | so". I'd say someone forgot that most evil in the world is | done by people convinced that they're doing the right thing, | but if that were forgotten the old motto wouldn't have been | an impediment. | | You could ask what idiot gave google this power, but the | answer-- to the extent that they have it-- is each and every | one of us. Fortunately, it lasts only as long as we keep | giving it to them. | azth wrote: | It's the natural outcome of far leftist ideologies. People | need to wake up and start rejecting this destructive ideology | where a person is evaluated only based on their identity. I | think MLK had something to say about that. | LordDragonfang wrote: | MLK was a leftist - and arguably a "far leftist" for his | time. If you're going to use him as an example, you may | have to concede that this is not a "natural outcome" of | leftist ideologies in general, but rather the outcome of | some other selection pressure that rewards diversion from | initiatives that actually affect peoples' material | conditions. | azth wrote: | I'm referring to modern far leftism, an offshoot from | Marxism and post modernism. | joshuamorton wrote: | As a first comment here, I'd point out that defining | women independently from solely their role as mothers | _is_ judging them on character rather than identity, so | you should support such a thing if that 's your rallying | cry. | | But also, on MLK and postmodernism: postmodernism dates | back to the 1940s, To Kill a Mockingbird is postmodern. | MLK's Letter From a Birmingham Jail is _very_ clearly | postmodern (e.g. when he says "But I am sorry that your | statement did not express a similar concern for the | conditions that brought the demonstrations into being.", | he's alluding to a failure to consider the viewpoint of | the oppressed in the situation). | | That letter is also very modern-leftist. Kimberle | Crenshaw coined the term "intersectionality" in 1989 and | elaborated on it in 1991, saying "When feminism does not | explicitly oppose racism, and when anti-racism does not | incorporate oppposition to patriarchy race and gender | politics often end up being antagonistic to each other, | and both interests lose". The letter from a Birmingham | jail includes another famous line from MLK: " Injustice | anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught | in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single | garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects | all indirectly". To me, those express similar sentiments: | that oppression exists in many forms in many places, and | it is unwise to pretend that oppression that fails to | inconvenience me is therefore unworthy of my attention. | | And of course he says later on "there is a type of | constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for | growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to | create a tension in the mind so that individuals could | rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the | unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective | appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent | gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that | will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice | and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and | brotherhood. " which to me describes the people often | criticized as "modern far leftists", those people who | create the tension and discomfort in society are, in | MLK's view, doing us, collectively, a great service. | | I'd recommend you read the whole letter[0]. If you're so | willing to lionize MLK, but disagree with so much of what | he preached, I implore you to consider why exactly that | is. | | [0]: | https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi- | letter-... | UncleMeat wrote: | MLK explicitly supported affirmative action and other | programs designed explicitly to benefit black people in | order to make up for past discrimination. I suspect he | would be tired of being used as a justification for | absolute colorblindness. | troupe wrote: | What he stood for changed over time, but at one point he | said he hoped the decisions people made about his | children would be made based on his children's character | and not the color of their skin. | Tr3nton wrote: | So Affirmative Action is revenge discrimination? | bee_rider wrote: | I don't think it is. | | It is more of a natural outcome of silly corporatists not | really understanding why leftists and progressives object | to things, and so just reflexively avoiding anything that | could be, however tenuously, linked to gender. They are | concern trolling themselves. | Pxtl wrote: | I know we all see this as a slippery slope, but let's | remember what's at the other end of the slope. | | Anyhow, you might find it awkward, but the general assumption | that "parent" is synonymous with "mother" to the exclusion of | all other kinds of parents does real damage to inclusiveness, | and the term "motherboard" flows from that. | | I know your tongue is in cheek, but the mainboard may be | considered a parent of the components, but it is not giving | birth to them. "Parent" fits better than "mother". So your | absurdist counter-argument doesn't really fit here. | | We're programmers. We refactor mercilessly. Why shouldn't | language be refactored mercilessly too? The term "mainboard" | is available, widely understood, and well-adopted, so why not | use that? | cornel_io wrote: | Why not? | | Because we don't want to keep handing out stupid prizes to | the weenies that constantly force us to play these stupid | games. Every time they win they're further emboldened, and | that's not a good thing, since there are actual problems to | solve. | akomtu wrote: | You can refactor a piece of software you wrote, or a piece | of your employer's software with his permission. But | language doesn't belong to anyone, it's a collective | consensus on how to say things. If you believe you have | authority to ignore this consensus and force your opinion | on others, you must have an incredibly inflated ego. | skrbjc wrote: | But that's implying that only mothers give birth, and erases | those who don't identify as mothers who give birth. | | That's how I understand their thinking, at least. | | I agree with you and think anyone who is offended by | motherboard is silly. I'm sure it was never even anyone that | was actually offended, but a group of people sitting down and | looking at any and every word that has any type of gender | connotation and saying that's a bad thing. | positus wrote: | Ontology will always and forever trump autonomy. | moron4hire wrote: | Is there at least some sort of mailing list you can subscribe | to to know which phrases are verboten this week? | NikolaeVarius wrote: | rglover wrote: | This is why I'm quite bullish the technocrats will fail miserably | in their move to homogenize the planet into some freakish, Jim | Jones beehive. | CyberRabbi wrote: | > Social editor Emily Lipstein typed "Motherboard" (as in, the | name of this website) into a document and Google popped up to | tell her she was being insensitive: "Inclusive warning. Some of | these words may not be inclusive to all readers. Consider using | different words." | | If blacklist is considered non-inclusive language, why isn't | motherboard? Motherboard is a needlessly gendered term that | perpetuates stereotypes. | protomyth wrote: | I suppose the fear is that Google will add this to search and | penalize sites that have words that are flagged. | akhmatova wrote: | Why don't they just plant a chip in our brains that prevents us | from typing these words in the first place, and be done with it? | zac23or wrote: | Virtue signaling is a hell of a drug. | | I tried to explain to someone online that the word black has many | meanings, not every use of black is about people. Oh man, in the | end I was "taught" that just by not accepting his ideas I was a | racist person. | | My experience with this type of person is very bad. They are | ignorant people, defending points without understanding the | points. They are very aggressive and work in packs. | | Today I try not to work or talk to this type of person/company. | fluoridation wrote: | You mean to tell me that all this time black people were the | reason the black plague, black mambas, and blacktop exist? | zac23or wrote: | ...and black hole...https://youtu.be/Hu2rluUb8ck | diseasedyak wrote: | [deleted] | luxuryballs wrote: | Since when is black and white primarily a racial thing anyways? | It seems a little inverted, like a black flag or a black mark on | an account, it's not like it's called "negrolist", black and | white are colors before they are slang for race/culture. Maybe | instead of neutering the dictionary we could try a different | angle and quit lumping people into "white" or "black"? Some | people are Kenyan, Irish, Nigerian, German, nobody is actually | white or black. | silicon2401 wrote: | This is the hypocrisy of radical leftists in a nutshell. They | claim to fight racial thinking while in fact just making it | more prominent than it's been in decades. | [deleted] | madamelic wrote: | It's also what will cause the far right to succeed. | | The left eats its own rather than being patient or tolerant | ("I shouldn't have to teach you!") to people who mean well, | while the right allows people to fly way off the handle and | still be within their tent because their tent expands to | include increasingly extreme ideas. | nullc wrote: | Google is teaching people about wrongspeak with this new | feature! it's on you if you don't want to obey! | sjtindell wrote: | Both sides eat their own. It's a result of social media | cancel culture, which both sides engage in. No moderate | opinions allowed anywhere. The right constantly rejects | people who aren't extreme enough. "Rino" is a huge term | now. | travisgriggs wrote: | Are you inferring/suggesting that the "right" avoids eating | its own? | lxgr wrote: | Exactly - if anything, research suggests that there might | be some underlying mechanism affecting both ends of the | political spectrum. I found this to be a very interesting | read on the subject: | | https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/soci | al-... | travisgriggs wrote: | Yep. Read and appreciated that article. And I will say | what I have been repeating in these forums for a couple | of months now again. It's ironic in this case, because | today's hot topic is "the meaning of words". | | We keep talking about social media and its problematic | effects. Like we don't know how to be social or something | anymore. | | It's not social media. It's profit/engagement media. The | social component is just the hook. The point of it all is | basic profit feedback loops (which are far less greedy | and evil than we make these utilities out to be--they're | just doing what they were instituted to do). | | My current brainstorm/crazy idea is that something like | "non profit" regulations might be how we coral this | nuttiness. It's been semi/mostly effective at corralling | religion in America for many years. I'm not sure why we | wouldn't benefit from moving the Twitter Day Saints and | Instagramists and Tik-Tok-ies and SnapChat Witnesses and | Roamin Pathic Twitch into the same "you have your place, | you can take care of your own and collect enough funds to | operate and some, but if you start looking too much like | a business and/or play in politics too much, it's going | to get really uncomfortable for you." | dang wrote: | (We detached this subthread from | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31123767.) | astura wrote: | "Blacklist" and "whitelist" suck anyway because they require | the cultural knowledge that "black is bad and white is good" to | understand their meaning. "Allowlist" and "denylist" don't | require any cultural background to understand - their names are | purely descriptive. They are just better terms. | bloak wrote: | What about "redlist" and "greenlist"? The association between | "red" and "stop", and between "green" and "go", seem more | arbitrary than the associations with "black" and "white" but | almost everyone in the world is familiar with traffic lights. | (And the inhabitants of the North Sentinel Island probably | don't need to configure mail servers or whatever.) | svachalek wrote: | Red and green mean stop/go but only in a narrow context. I | would have no idea what redlist and greenlist means. Red | and green also bring to mind Christmas and Martians. Red | means communism, green means environmentalism. Green means | money, red means a negative entry in your account. There's | a lot of culture-specific meanings too. Red in China is | associated with good fortune and happiness. | lxgr wrote: | Red and green traffic lights (and indeed even the | distinction between green and blue) are not universally | understood either: | | https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2013/02/25/language/the- | ja... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinctio | n... | | What's your objection to "allowlist" (or "golist") and | "denylist"/"blocklist"/"stoplist"? | | It's not often that we have an almost universally better | alternative, but at least to me it seems like this is the | case here. (Yes, allow/deny have one syllable more each, | but I think we'll live.) | bloak wrote: | I'm aware that many languages don't distinguish blue and | green, but English does distinguish them and we're | talking about English terminology here. (Apparently in | Japan the green traffic lights are officially allowed to | be slightly bluer than in other countries because the | word they use for them includes blue: an interesting case | of language changing the world.) | | I don't like "allowlist" and "denylist" because they | sound wrong to me: perhaps because the first element of a | compound should be a noun, not a verb, but that's just an | attempt to explain what I feel. I don't like "blocklist" | because that sounds like a list of blocks, something in a | file system. Of the ones you mention, I think I'd | probably prefer "golist" and "stoplist", which I hadn't | really considered before. They're also shorter than | "allowlist" and "denylist". | | According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term | "stop list" has been in use since 1920, but "go list" is | not recorded. | nix23 wrote: | Blacklist has nothing to do with skin-color...you fall in the | same trap as those wannabe corrector's: | | >>His memory was stored with a black list of the enemies and | rivals, who had traduced his merit, opposed his greatness, or | insulted his misfortunes | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting#Origins_of_the_te. | .. | mortenjorck wrote: | This is indeed the root of my problem with the attempt to cast | "blacklist" and "whitelist" as problematic. It confuses cause | and effect. | | If we're going to try to re-engineer spoken English, I'd much | rather address the root causes, which were the adoption of such | literally black-and-white terms as racial identifiers in the | first place. Calling light-skinned European-descended people | "white" and dark-skinned members of the African diaspora | "black" was always a divisive oversimplification of a nuanced | web of ethnic heritages. | | This doesn't fit neatly into a woke/anti-woke framework, but I | try to avoid using "black" and "white" to describe people | whenever I can, preferring something either more descriptive or | contextual. | ehsankia wrote: | I think the debate over whitelist/blacklist is often | pointless. Yes there is not cause/effect link, but it | honestly doesn't really matter. Allowlist and blocklist are | much better words imo because they are self-descriptive, | whereas whitelist/blacklist requires context and pre-existing | knowledge to understand. And to you it may be obvious, but | not everyone is from the same culture and has English as a | first language. Why not just use the better terminology? | | I am not advocating for banning the terms above, just to make | an attempt going forward to slowly migrate to the other ones | when possible. | lokar wrote: | If you view these things from a POV of empathy for others and | how to minimize their stress and sense of being disfavored vs | trying to win some technical argument it will make more sense. | | Focus on how real actions impact the people around you. | knorker wrote: | I think they're trying to change language to disassociate | "black" with negative meaning. | | Which is going to be very hard, because the reason for the | association is from black being the unknown. It's the night | that hides the predators. It's the shadow where the enemy | hides. It's where you don't want to put your foot in case there | are spiders or a sharp rock. | | Humans are afraid of the dark. I've not even heard of being | afraid of the light. | | Death and darkness. | | I'd like a historian to confirm, but I'd be very surprised if | this type of language didn't exist in most places, including | before ever seeing a darker skinned person. | | But this effort is doomed to fail. You can be afraid of the | dark at night and that is not a predictor at all of racism. | Indeed, do people with darker skin not get afraid of the dark? | bloak wrote: | Yes, I think that's right: black is logically linked with | darkness, and human beings, like other diurnal lifeforms, | don't like the dark. The association is found throughout | literature, from the biblical outer darkness, where there is | wailing and gnashing of teeth, to the Black/Dark Riders in | The Lord of the Rings, via traditional fairy tales in which a | beautiful but evil sister is described as fair/white of face | but black of heart. | quenix wrote: | This makes sense to me. Why is it downvoted? | lxgr wrote: | Probably because that's not the only possible | interpretation of the issue. | | I agree that in some instances, white seems to be primarily | used as a synonym for bright/light, and black as one for | darkness, shadow etc., such as in the case of white and | black box testing. | | However, other cases, such as "whitelist" and "blacklist", | seem more nefarious at least in some cultures: A list of | names, one of people to grant access to some service or | facility, the other to be denied... | | And as somebody else has already noted, for somebody | without that cultural background, it might not even make | any sense, unlike the much more self-describing | alternatives "allowlist" and "denylist". | | If there is an alternative available that is both more | straightforward and that has less negative connotations - | why not advocate for its use, and assume that those that do | so do it out of good intentions (while at the same time not | assuming that people using the other terms do so out of a | desire to cause harm)? | | The main problem seems to be that, as in many such cases, a | nuanced discussion of the topic does not fit into a tweet | or news headline, nor a Slackbot autoresponse, and least of | all into a grammar checker. | [deleted] | ask_b123 wrote: | On the mention of being afraid of the light I thought that | something like that was probably mentioned in the Bible, and | sure enough: | | https://biblehub.com/john/3-19.htm | | > The Light has come into the world, but men loved the | darkness rather than the Light because their deeds were evil. | Everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come | into the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed... | | Another thing; even though this effort might be doomed to | fail, do you think there are good reasons to attempt to | change language in such a way? | | In general, I tend to be against changing language, but I'm | open to being convinced that a certain effort might be | worthwhile. | | I'm also somewhat pessimistic due to thinking that some other | changes I've seen might be inevitable in the long run (seeing | how these changes are being used by people my age, I hope it | is just fashion - oh and I'm not talking here about changes | to the English language). | Workaccount2 wrote: | Google has flown completely off the rails. I don't know why | shareholders aren't stepping in, but if they don't I will be | stepping away from google. | [deleted] | Barrin92 wrote: | > A transcribed interview of neo-Nazi and former Klan leader | David Duke--in which he uses the N-word and talks about hunting | Black people--gets no notes. Radical feminist Valerie Solanas' | SCUM Manifesto gets more edits than Duke's tirade; she should use | "police officers" instead of "policemen," | | The intentions of these features aside which will no doubt be the | topic of conversation, to me the biggest takeaway about this is | just how entirely stupid AI still is. Failing to recognize | context, wordplay, even names (suggesting alternatives to | _Motherboard_ ), and so forth. Trying to adjust something as | complex as 'inclusivity' by flipping words is like trying to | change the tone of a poem by flipping individual letters. | Entirely wrong level of abstraction. | meetups323 wrote: | I wonder if this is an example of not knowing your audience (or | rather assuming one's self represents a wider audience than it | does). | | The people vouching for this at Google are likely product | marketing managers, public relations folks, social media | managers, etc. All they do is write corporate garbage all day, | and much like we have "nit"s in PR's for formatting, variable | names, etc; they likely have similar reviews that get flagged for | "non-inclusive language" or whatever this is. So they have | brilliant idea: the Code people use auto linters/formatters that | we enable by default (hey gofmt) and everyone loves it, how about | we do the same for the Prose people! | | Basically: "All I write is corporate garbage, and all the writing | I consume is corporate garbage, and all my coworkers only write | corporate garbage, therefore everyone would love a corporate | garbage-ifyer!" | [deleted] | kbos87 wrote: | This comes off as an angry tirade full of projection and | lacking any real insight. | Icathian wrote: | This explanation rings a lot more true to me than the rest of | this thread. Everyone here seems to be looking into shadows for | the woke gestapo, when I'd be willing to bet that this | explanation is a lot closer to how this tool actually came to | exist. | | I appreciate you adding to the conversation. | badwolf wrote: | They probably just don't want their employees sending their | valuable company data to Grammarly. | morgante wrote: | It's a little of both. There's enough woke influence over | corporate communication to drive all employees to want to | avoid non-inclusive words in docs. At that point, this | becomes useful even for employees who don't agree with it-- | I'd rather just have the word flagged now and fix it instead | of going back and forth later. | | However, the net result is that words are driven out of the | language even if everyone involved in the document wouldn't | care. | slg wrote: | >However, the net result is that words are driven out of | the language even if everyone involved in the document | wouldn't care. | | No one uses "fuck" in corporate communication either. Is | anyone worried about that word being "driven out of the | language"? I don't think corporate speech is as influential | in overall language use as you are implying. | lupire wrote: | Yes, a lot of people see any infringement on their | freedom of expression to be unacceptable, while expecting | everyone to engage with that expression. | morgante wrote: | > No one uses "fuck" in corporate communication either. | | Swear words are _specifically_ used to be provocative, so | naturally they 're not going to disappear. Words like | "motherboard" or "whitelist" were historically neutral | and primarily used in professional settings, so removal | from corporate speech is correspondingly a much bigger | factor. | | To be clear, I'm not particularly worried or concerned | about this. I don't consider it any great loss if we | start saying "allowlist" and have happily changed my | projects to match. It's not a big deal, and the kind | thing to do is to go along with those who _do_ care a | lot. | systemvoltage wrote: | michaelt wrote: | There's a market for 'help you write english better' tools that | spot things like grammar errors. | | For example, if my english-as-a-second-language eastern | European subordinates feel self-conscious about their english, | they might find an automated tool helpful - where a | professional journalist would be better served by their own | judgement. | | The 'inclusive language' thing is just weird though. | LudwigNagasena wrote: | There is a market for grammar checkers. Word has one for 30 | years. But it doesn't try to turn your writing into a textual | form of Alegria art. | DancesWTurtles wrote: | Just like Google is not an actual search engine but a | "recommendation" engine that prods users into getting | recommended just what Google needs to recommend ("did you | mean...?") this is not an actual writing assistant but a | "write (and think) the Google way" mould | [deleted] | yeetsfromhellL2 wrote: | Actually I've seen an English linter to help you maintain a | passive voice for papers, remove waffle words and unnecessary | fluff, etc. I'm not sure I can find the exact one I'm thinking | of, but wasn't too bad overall, it spotted errors and made | helpful suggestions. It was cool too, because it would read | from stdin and integrated into vim pretty well with a few lines | in my config. | ketzo wrote: | Not sure if these are the things you're thinking of, but I | know Grammarly and Hemingway are apps/services with similar | functions. | lupire wrote: | Why would you want to maintain a passive voice? That's | terrible writing unless you are defendant in litigation. | ra0x3 wrote: | This actually...doesn't not make sense | la6472 wrote: | I support it and I don't work for google. I like this feature | that encourages more empathy in this strife and hate filled | world. | nxm wrote: | So Google execs now decides how we speak... brave new world. | You like it until it corrects you for not being woke enough | esrauch wrote: | It's not like it's silently editing existing docs, it has | an underline and you can voluntarily see what alternative | wordings might be. | Stupulous wrote: | While I don't doubt that an intent of this is to promote | empathy, I would need to see some evidence before I could be | open to the possibility that that is its effect. Anecdotally, | these things seem to incense anger and hatred- I've never | heard anyone say that being language-policed made them a | better person, but I have seen people behave in a way that | suggests the opposite. Personally, I become less empathic | when someone assumes authority over what I say or write. | riedel wrote: | IMHO OK if the feature would actually provide explainations and | it would be based on some sort of rulebook rather some random | decision of individuals. I also would be fine if there is a | warning if I use the word 'property owner' because some random | internet user says that is deeply capitalistic. In the end I | could decide if I want to follow the argument. Just nudging | people to get away with a warning is bad and will lead to no | warning. I doubt even that it will lead to a more inclusive | world because no reflection is involved. | | The problem for me is particularly that the combination of | monopolies combined with AI that will learn from data largely | filtered by those monopolies will generate some questionable | gradients. So, yes, this might ultimately change language very | quickly without much of human discourse over it. This will lead | to language with less variation and arguably to a world that | does not encourage variation and will be in effect less | inclusive. | 62951413 wrote: | AlexDragusin wrote: | What I can see is that on Google own websites, the term | motherboard is used aplenty so seems to me they fail their own | standards, if what is described in the article is accurate. | Wondering when humanity will become aware of the ridiculous path | this whole thing is. | | Examples: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/systems/the-past- | presen... | https://sustainability.google/progress/projects/circular-eco... | jdrc wrote: | This will be hilarious with people writing scientific papers | DancesWTurtles wrote: | > suggested he change it to "angry" or "upset" to "make your | writing flow better." | | Nope, it suggested to change from this to that so the writer | could be Google's avatar on writing what Google wants to get | written | artificialLimbs wrote: | Microsoft is in the process of rolling 'inclusive' checking out, | in (at least) the web version of Outlook 365. You can see by | clicking the gear icon (in top right) -> View all Outlook | settings (at bottom) -> Compose and reply -> Microsoft Editor | settings (bottom). It is 'very broken'. | kurupt213 wrote: | Google's office suite has always been amateur hour. | buro9 wrote: | Somewhere I wonder if people have read too much of Orwell's 1984 | and Iain M. Banks Culture series and have decided that between | Newspeak and Marain is an idea that whilst we may not better the | world today, if we can obliterate language we can obliterate an | idea. | | Sapir-Whorf hypothesis put to use as a tool to ensure that future | generations of humans will avoid the problems that have plagued | us for all time, because the ideas that perpetuate those issues | will have been eradicated. | | I'm left in awe at the audacity of it, the idea that human nature | itself can be changed just by striking out words from the | language. Seems implausibly naive and paternalistic. | [deleted] | dekhn wrote: | One of the reasons I left google is that their "content | moderation team" (the folks who make you take down wrongthink | memes) is so far out of touch, that somebody had to explain to | them there are people in the world who are discriminated against, | but aren't black. They simply didn't know that was the case! And | if that's the people who are moderating content... | | I said motherboard all the time in meetings and chats, never had | any pushback. TBH if I did get pushback on that one, I'd bring it | to HR and say the pushback was affecting my ability to get work | down. | [deleted] | Mezzie wrote: | > somebody had to explain to them there are people in the world | who are discriminated against, but aren't black. | | _blinks in disabled lesbian_ | nebulous_two wrote: | Put yourself in the shoes of your average content moderator. | Aren't they there for the paycheck like most people at their | jobs? Why does everyone assume these people are first and | foremost bastions of acceptable behaviour? They are instructed | by executives as to how to do their jobs. Now executives are | learning nuance and say "oh there's more to this than _you_ | thought, so here 's the updated guidelines to follow now", to | shift blame for this broken system to the moderators when all | along they were following orders from above. | macksd wrote: | Are other cases of online abuse, workplace harassment, | discrimination, etc. so rare that people are actually chasing | problems like this for a paycheck? It would be wonderful if | that was the case, but I doubt that it is. | skrbjc wrote: | Many people willingly do things like this voluntarily at | their jobs to the point that the job they were hired for | seems like a second priority for them. | dekhn wrote: | No, those folks are not there just to get a paycheck. They | are _evangelists for a viewpoint_ who _use their moderation | powers_ to _eliminate thoughts they don 't like_. | | And yes, those teams really did come up with their | determinations of what was OK and what wasn't, based on their | own beliefs. That made that quite clear in their repeated, | stupid posts on memegen. | qmarchi wrote: | 1st rule about memegen, is don't talk about memegen >.> | piaste wrote: | Man, memegen was covered by Buzzfeed _ten years ago_. | | It ain't exactly the hottest, edgiest shitposting club | out there. | dotnet00 wrote: | I think the point you're missing is that often moderators are | in that position because they specifically want the power | that comes with it. We see this all the time with volunteer | moderators getting high on their power, pushing through | whatever agenda they have regardless of user opinion. | | I think those types of people are even more likely to end up | as paid content moderators, since the work tends to be too | tedious for most average people to deal with. | newjersey wrote: | >> I think the point you're missing is that often | moderators are in that position because they specifically | want the power that comes with it. | | I love that you were courageous enough to say this because | this is completely true and also why we say #ACAB. Most | people who want to be police officers are absolutely unfit | to be police officers! | dotnet00 wrote: | I hadn't actually thought about applying that reasoning | to the police and while there is a higher bar to becoming | a police officer, I do have to agree with the overall | idea. | | There probably isn't any job which is an exception to | this, politicians are similarly mainly people who want | the associated influence and even engineers become | engineers so they have control over engineering. It's | just that the incentives are more perverse with | politicians, police and moderators than with engineers. | bombcar wrote: | Once the pool for some jobs gets large enough, the self | selection of those who apply for it can become a problem. | | From what I understand from rumors in the area, is those | who couldn't become police (for whatever reason) would | then go apply at the prison, and those who couldn't get a | job there (and it appears they take anyone with a pulse) | would go work for TSA. | | Perhaps the "public servant" idea should be taken to a | larger extreme, and some positions picked by lottery | instead. | reaperducer wrote: | _so far out of touch, that somebody had to explain to them | there are people in the world who are discriminated against, | but aren 't black._ | | Sounds preposterous, but is not. I had a boss around 2000 who | believed wholeheartedly that people brought from Africa to the | United States were the only slaves that ever existed in history | anywhere on Earth. | | This came up because someone noted in passing conversation that | an anniversary was coming up related to the Atlantic slave | trade in the 1600's, and my boss insisted that there couldn't | have been slavery before 1776, because slavery was started by | the United States. | | I walked out of the break room early in the conversation and | decided to let the others handle it. She was my boss, and I | would have gotten fired for contradicting her. | knorker wrote: | Not only that, but there are more than three times as many | slaves TODAY as ever were in the transatlantic slave trade | that is the only one the US knows exists. | hedora wrote: | There are more slaves added each year in the US today than | at the peak of transatlantic trade: | | https://www.britannica.com/summary/Transatlantic-Slave- | Trade... | | Peak transatlantic: 78,000 new slaves per year. | | https://thecurrentmsu.com/2021/01/24/prison-labor- | americas-s... | | Current US forced prison labor population: 1-2.1 million. | godelski wrote: | It's really undermining the atrocities of the | transatlantic slave trade by comparing it to prison. We | wouldn't compare it to indentured servitude, which is | much closer to the penal system (monetary debt vs social | debt, but both are contacts even if not purely | voluntary). The federal government also doesn't have | complete ownership over prisoners. Yes, prisoners are | mistreated, but what they face isn't at the level of | those from the slave trade and so you're effectively | diminishing those atrocities. | golergka wrote: | You may not like the US prison system, but calling it | slavery is at the very least intellectually dishonest. | andylynch wrote: | Why? The Penal labor exemption is the one case where | slavery or involuntary servitude is still permitted in | the US constitution. | dekhn wrote: | That's not really correct from any reasonable | interpretation. | andylynch wrote: | I may missing something but it seems plain enough in the | thirteenth amendment? " Neither slavery nor involuntary | servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the | party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within | the United States, or any place subject to their | jurisdiction." | godelski wrote: | For one, most people don't equate indentured servitude | with slavery. We generally think of lifelong service when | we say slavery, which isn't part of the penal system. The | penal system also isn't generational and people aren't | born into slavery. There's grounds to call it slavery, | yes, but the context you're bringing it up in is in | comparison to the African slave trade and you're | diminishing the suffering those people went through by | saying that what happened to them was just like what we | do to prisoners today. What happened to them was much | worse. | golergka wrote: | Because worrs carry not only direct meanings, but | subjective connotations, and most people consider slavery | an unjust subjugation of another human being, and think | it is immoral by definition, in any circumstances. On the | other hand, even most of the people who aren't fans of US | prison system still consider the general idea of prison | to be just, as the general idea of prison labour as a way | to repay society. | bombcar wrote: | Also if you're in prison and refuse to work, what are | they going to do, send you to prison prison? | formerly_proven wrote: | The same stuff that happens when you don't comply in | other ways in prison? | bombcar wrote: | From my understanding, the main punishment for not | working as prison labor is losing the small wages you do | get (i.e, normally one of the punishments for misbehavior | is prohibiting you from working). | drdaeman wrote: | Idk how this works in the US in particular - but I | suppose that - essentially - yes. Harsher conditions. | | When one has a essentially complete control over another | person's life, there are ways to make this life hell, | even while staying within the legal bounds. | [deleted] | yupper32 wrote: | Sorry but did you just say one of the reasons you left google | was the memegen moderation team? I can't imagine that being a | legitimate worry that would impact my employment decisions. | | It seems there's a group of people who are too far in the other | direction too. When I heard that it's preferred to say | "allowlist" instead of "whitelist", do you know what my | reaction was? | | "Sure, whatever." | | And I moved on with my life. It has zero impact on my day to | day. The pushback reminds me of people who deadname others on | purpose. Like, who cares? Bob wants to be called Sally now? | Sure, whatever. | photochemsyn wrote: | The terms 'guestlist' and 'shitlist' would perhaps be more | accurate in terms of what those two forms of security access | control are really about. Using a guestlist to control access | is more secure (as you can background check everyone on the | guestlist), but limits traffic; conversely allowing anyone in | except those known troublemakers on the shitlist gets more | traffic but means undesirables might slip in and become | nuisances. | | On the other hand, all that nonsense about 'master' was | ridiculous. Master's degrees, the master boot record, come on | let that one go. | karmakurtisaani wrote: | I find this a very reasonable approach. I also find it | natural that language evolves and sometimes it can even be | marginally beneficial to artificially guide the evolution. | All in all, in practice it just doesn't matter in my life. | djitz wrote: | nicbou wrote: | You're right. I use the new terms and move on. It's really | not that bad. | | However it tends to become a password game. There's a new | password every few months. If you know the new password, you | get to feel above those who don't. It's as we invent new | crimes to charge people with. | | If no one calls it out (because sure, whatever), it keeps | ratcheting up. Then banal conversations turn into minefields. | What you say gets invalidated because you used the wrong | password. | uoaei wrote: | > What you say gets invalidated because you used the wrong | password. | | This entire discourse is so full of straw men it's hard to | believe you have actually had real conversations with these | people. | | There is so much effort during these conversations toward | "calling in" vs "calling out" that I am very confused how a | conversation could ever get to the point you describe. | You'd have to be really callous, and completely unwilling | to meet your conversation partner on an even field, to | elicit such reactions. | | And no, Twitter pile-ons don't count as evidence for your | argument -- Twitter is very, very far from an accurate | cross-section of "real life". | mattzito wrote: | Yeah, I'm the same way - also a googler, I used the term | "grandfathered" in a meeting with a bunch of people and | someone on Meet chat corrected me to "legacy" or something, | and I said, "oh, okay, no problem" and corrected myself and | moved on. | | So - I used a word that someone didn't like, they corrected | me, I adjusted without deep apology and moved on, and | everything was fine. Who cares? Why is this such a huge | issue, language evolves all the time. | | My suspicion is - of people who run into problems with | language at tech companies, half of the problem is due to | their reaction to being corrected. | nicbou wrote: | What's the new password? | mattzito wrote: | Starting when I was a kid, I used the expression "gypped" | without concern or awareness, and then at some point | someone maybe in high school or college took me aside and | explained that it was based on a stereotype. I was | nonplussed for a minute, and then I moved on. And I just | don't say that anymore. I don't feel bad about having | said it in the past, I don't have any deep guilt, I | just...got on with my life. | | So I guess the password is "don't use a colloquialism | based on an ethnic stereotype ", and that seems pretty | straightforward and reasonable. | dekhn wrote: | Similar thing happened to me- I used the term "biner" to | refer to a carabiner, but was told that it was an insult | used to refer to hispanics who collected beans in the | central valley of california. At the time, I was in | Connecicut. I've also had people tell me I can't call a | particular card suite a "spade". | psyc wrote: | It sounds like you've already totally internalized the | notion that what you said was _incorrect_ because _anyone | at all_ had _some problem_ with it. | | My response would be more like: And just who are you? | | So in a way, you're right. | mattzito wrote: | I mean - it feels like you're creating a combative | situation where one does not exist. "And just who are | you?" - what is the point of that? To what end and whose | benefit? | native_samples wrote: | That isn't language evolving, that's you being | arbitrarily 'punished' for no better reason than to | reinforce the false idea that the other person is better | than you. The right response is to refuse because that | treadmill is endless and its potential speed is | unlimited. | mattzito wrote: | How was I punished? What tribunal did I face? | | And how does the other person think they're better than | me? You're inventing all of this context about a simple | conversation that just doesn't exist. | native_samples wrote: | You were being "corrected" by someone else, weren't you? | They knew the "right" language and you didn't. What do | you think would have happened if you'd disagreed with | this particular correction? | mattzito wrote: | Like if I had said, "thanks for the feedback but I'm | going to continue using this other word"? I think we | probably would have just moved on and the individual | would have been offended, but - why would I do that? To | whose benefit? Mine? | | Because, look, I'm a successful, senior, valued | individual who is respected and liked by my team. In the | grand scheme of my life, if someone wants me to use one | word vs another, why do I care? I have thousands of | things that are more important to worry about than that. | | It's the same way that I work with someone who likes to | be addressed in emails by their full name - okay, no | problem, remind me once and I'll just move on. Or a | coworker I had who was from Africa and did not want to be | referred to as "African American" - sure, fine. | | Doing so diminishes me not at all, because I don't define | my worth based on whether I use the correct (or | incorrect) word or not. | | It seems like a lot of the objections that I see in this | thread have to do with people having issues being | "corrected" or "policed" or "silenced", all of which have | to do with how they interpret how those moments have | wronged THEM. Another option would be to let it go. Yet | another would be to see themselves as making the faintest | possible effort to make sure people feel welcome. | AJ007 wrote: | It's also terrible for real long term projects to be | continually renaming things and modifying naming | conventions. Engineering isn't fashion. | JaimeThompson wrote: | Given we are talking about Google them randomly renaming | things isn't exactly new :) | yupper32 wrote: | > What you say gets invalidated because you used the wrong | password. | | Is this a common occurrence for you? It has never happened | to me. | | I'm skeptical about whether it's actually and issue or | mostly a hypothetical issue. | knorker wrote: | > I said motherboard all the time in meetings and chats, never | had any pushback. TBH if I did get pushback on that one, I'd | bring it to HR and say the pushback was affecting my ability to | get work down. | | And get Damore'd? | dekhn wrote: | I'm not worried about being Damore'd, as I have a lot more | experience fighting progressives than he does. | [deleted] | mwint wrote: | What things did Damore do wrong that you would do | differently (honest question) | psyc wrote: | Mispredicted how people would read his essay. I asked him | if he honestly didn't see it coming. He said he honestly | did not. That's very naive. | dekhn wrote: | I would have edited the manifesto to focus on at most | one-two points based mainly around the dopey stuff they | were doing in DEI classes at the time, Drop all the big- | five psychology stuff, and eliminate nearly all the | biological claims about women's different ability and | interests. | bombcar wrote: | Also known as picking your battles and reducing your | surface area, fight one fight at a time. | shadowgovt wrote: | The easiest way to not be Damore'd is to apologize and | repent. Damore doubled down and at that point (because the | gap between "manager" and "employee" at Google is so | narrow) became a walking Title VII violation. Once his | coworkers came out in public saying they wouldn't be able | to work with him, Google was backed (legally and PR-wise) | completely into a corner. | | It turns out American companies are not the Athenian | Lyceum, and some topics are not up for debate. | nullc wrote: | > The easiest way to not be Damore'd is to apologize and | repent. | | What? Absolutely not. That is terrible advice when it | comes to something that couldn't have been a literal | accident. If he'd used the word "mother", then sure-- | that could be apologized for. But a protracted essay on | population level statistical differences between genders | and its impact on the employment pool? Not a chance. | | There is so much noise and outright disinformation about | any issue that often the only reliable source for wrong | doing is when the target of an accusation admits it | themselves. | | And even when that fails to protect you, at least you can | be a hero to _someone_. Do you think a damore that | apologized and said he was mistaken would be more | employable? That people would eventually see it as a | youthful transgression? I doubt it greatly-- it 's not | like the screens that show up when you google his name | will yellow with age. Instead he'd just be the enemy to | both factions of the war he wandered into, rather than | enemy of one and hero to the other. | shadowgovt wrote: | > There is so much noise and outright disinformation | about any issue that often the only reliable source for | wrong doing is when the target of an accusation admits it | themselves. | | Sometimes, but doesn't apply here; the entire kerfluffle | happened on an internal-public message-board. There was a | paper-trail a mile long. | | > Do you think a damore that apologized and said he was | mistaken would be more employable? | | Absolutely. Google management was very willing to give | him a second chance. His mistake was basically tactless | following of the existing corporate culture of internal | openness, and they recognized that. Unfortunately, he did | basically everything in his power to make retaining him | as unpalatable as possible, claiming repeatedly the | science was on his side and people shouldn't be afraid to | debate science. Like I said: walking Title VII violation. | You can debate the science all you want, but not as an | employee in an American corporation that also has project | authority. | | In essence, he dared Google to either go up against the | Civil Rights Act or admit they were hypocritical about | their internal culture. They resolved the issue by | removing the irritant (and the corporate culture took a | hit too, as people realized in general that a liberal | interpretation of it _was_ incompatible with the Civil | Rights Act. You _can 't_ just say whatever internally). | | Compare with Facebook still employing the guy who did an | A/B test on whether emotional tone of stories make people | sad. Once he realized why that was a problem, he owned up | to it and is still doing research at Facebook. | | > rather than enemy of one and hero to the other. | | Meh. Check his Twitter these days and he's not really | their hero; the Right lost interest in him when the labor | relations board ruled his firing was legal (they don't | want to make a headlong run into the Civil Rights Act | either... it protects _most voters_ , so it's very | popular). | | ... and besides, sometimes being hero to none is the most | dignified course of action. I can name several historical | figures who made the choice to join a faction as a hero | at the mere cost of spending their finite lives serving | actual evil. | dang wrote: | We detached this subthread from | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31123615. | blueflow wrote: | > that somebody had to explain to them there are people in the | world who are discriminated against, but aren't black | | I wouldn't have believed you that there are people like this, | but a few minutes after i read your comment, i saw replies | (requires showdead) to | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31123102 that said men | cannot be discrimated against... | uoaei wrote: | Holy straw man, Batman! | duxup wrote: | One of the challenges with moderation teams like that or | similar is that the folks who REALLY want to do that job .. are | the folks who absolutely should NOT be doing it. | newsclues wrote: | How do we make jobs activist proof? | tempnow987 wrote: | This is I think a major issue. The passionate people on these | committees have views that are perhaps in the 10% edge of | spectrum. No mothers, birthing persons etc etc. | AuryGlenz wrote: | For anyone reading this, I volunteer. My moderation level | would be based on words that were considered bad in the year | 2005. I won't have to do much work and you still get to say | that you have someone that's doing the job. Win-win. | slg wrote: | I wonder what your age is in comparison to your chosen | ideal of 2005. As I am getting older it is easier to see | the patterns in all this. Most people just want the entire | world frozen from the time they were young. That includes | everything from the cast of SNL to acceptable language. I | have seen enough decades of people complaining about | policing language to know that we survived multiple waves | of this before 2005 and we will survive all the waves that | came and will come after. I would bet that 20 years from | now, Gen Z will be waxing nostalgic about the language of | today while Gen Alpha and beyond will be pushing for more | change. It is just the way language evolves. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | I dunno, man. You're right that the term "mainboard" | isn't going to kill us, and I wouldn't advise anyone to | make this their main crusade in life. But that's a pretty | high standard of dismissiveness and I've never seen | anyone apply it to language changes that genuinely bug | them. If we discovered that Google employees call | codebases which have a lot of bugs "gay", and people got | angry about it, would you tell them that it's not a big | deal because Google has just developed the language a | bit? | slg wrote: | >But that's a pretty high standard of dismissiveness and | I've never seen anyone apply it to language changes that | genuinely bug them. | | I am applying that dismissiveness to all objections | equally based off their motivation. I don't agree with | the argument on either side of the | "motherboard/mainboard" debate. But I can emphasize with | the motivation of the side pushing for "mainboard" | because it is the same as your argument about misusing | "gay" being unnaceptable. I disagree with their specific | objection but I understand the motivation. I don't | understand the side pushing for "motherboard" because the | heart of the objection seems to be "things were better | when I was young". Presented with those two options, why | not side with the people who you would side with if we | were arguing over a different word such as "gay"? | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | It's true that things were different when we were young, | but that's true of any new phenomenon and it's not the | heart of the objection. If young people these days want | to avoid saying "wonderful", or use women by default in | hypothetical scenarios, or go around checking their pulse | while they say "sheeeeesh", I have no real concerns about | those things and I think most people on team | "motherboard" would agree. | | The reason I push against "mainboard" _is_ , I think, the | analogous concern. While it's possible in principle to | type out the letters "mainboard" without meaning anything | by it, in practice the people who say it are motivated by | a package of ideas about gender which I think are bad and | would be harmful for society if they were more broadly | adopted. To say "mainboard" would make me appear to be | endorsing those ideas. | slg wrote: | >in practice the people who say it are motivated by a | package of ideas about gender which I think are bad and | would be harmful for society if they were more broadly | adopted | | I would argue this is a symptom of the same phenomenon | and therefore the heart of the objection is still the | same. | lokar wrote: | Be careful with the word crusade | humanistbot wrote: | Ah, the culture war version of the famous Douglas Adams | quote about technology: | | "1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is | normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way | the world works. | | 2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and | thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you | can probably get a career in it. | | 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against | the natural order of things." | duxup wrote: | What is funny to me is that for me 2 and 3 are swapped. | | 2 really was just me being unimpressed generally. For | some reason I didn't think much of the ipad... | | Now I'm old and everything is amazing. | xwdv wrote: | CoastalCoder wrote: | I very much relate to that sentiment. | | One thing that keeps me in check is that, I assume, the | feeling is mutual. I'm guessing that in both camps there | are people who have trouble believing that the other side | is arguing/acting in good faith, because their position is | so obviously ludicrous. | grishka wrote: | > somebody had to explain to them there are people in the world | who are discriminated against, but aren't black. | | As a Russian, this is amusing to read. For me and most people I | know, when you meet a black person, it's totally normal to ask | them "where are you from" because they can't _possibly_ be | local. Our society just doesn 't have the concept of racism it | seems because of the exceeding rarity of people who aren't | European or Asian. | | People in Russia are often discriminated against based on their | sexual orientation, political views, and nationality though. | duskwuff wrote: | > Our society just doesn't have the concept of racism it | seems because of the exceeding rarity of people who aren't | European or Asian. | | "Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," | said Vorbis. | | "So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have | no word for water." | | -- Terry Pratchett, _Small Gods_ | grishka wrote: | Either way, people here aren't discriminated based on their | race. Never were. This particular problem seems to be | uniquely American because of their history. | | We do have a word for racism by the way. It's, | unsurprisingly, "rasizm". | wardedVibe wrote: | Racism is a problem in large parts of Europe, and | generally any country with a history involving enslaved | Africans. I wouldn't be surprised if ethnic | discrimination in Russia went a different direction | though, since their colonization all happened in central | Asia, where skin color isn't all that informative. | grishka wrote: | > I wouldn't be surprised if ethnic discrimination in | Russia went a different direction though, since their | colonization all happened in central Asia | | Yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31126173 | mananaysiempre wrote: | (Not a historian, so fully expect half of this to be | wrong in one way or another.) | | > Either way, people here aren't discriminated based on | their race. Never were. | | That is untrue. | | You could argue the "pale of settlement" (instituted | shortly after the annexation of parts of Poland made Jews | more than a rounding error) was discrimination based on | religion, not ancestry (and indeed it seems to have had | some resemblance to the suppression of Old Rite | communities, which did not have any particular ethnic | composition as far as I know). But the distance between | the two is easily bridged (one only needs to look at | Ireland to see that), and by the 20th century it was, | thoroughly, as evidenced by things ranging from Stalin's | Jewish resettlement attempts in the 30s and 40s (whence | the "Jewish autonomous region") to the ethnic quotas and | heavily biased exams at the Mekhmat and elsewhere in the | 70s and 80s (supported not only by a mass of mostly- | forgotten university functionaries, but also by some of | the genuine greats such as Pontrjagin, cf _You Failed | Your Math Test, Comrade Einstein_ ). | | (That last part is why _any_ intentional bias or quota in | admissions gives me the chills. _Nothing_ will go wrong, | surely.) | | It's not only the Jews, of course. The common euphemistic | appellation for the situation on the Caucasus, | "tensions", hides a morass of mutual hatreds that is | _centuries_ deep, though again the results of Stalin's | disastrous resettlement efforts are best characterized as | "fallout", and the two Chechen wars intended as election | publicity for Putin did not help. But a close look at the | 19th-century colonization of the region as described | indirectly by authors like Lermontov gives the impression | that the whole thing was pretty fucked up even then. | | (If you want to dismiss these places as "not really | Russia", _you are proving my point_ , even if there are | senses in which that statement is true.) | | Shall we talk about the undocumented and (thus) vastly | underpaid Middle Eastern migrant workers who have | sustained most of Moscow's municipal infrastructure for | the last two decades? (Though perhaps not for much | longer, given the recent monetary restrictions.) Who have | _reversed_ much of its despair- and alcohol-fueled | collapse of the late Soviet times? That the low-wage jobs | should go to them may not be not explicitly xenophobic | (except inasmuch as any system of employment controls for | foreigners is), just the result of the how the USSR was | organized and how it fell apart; but I have an | acquaintance who has adopted a child from there, and | their experiences both with officials and with strangers | off-handedly insulting the child or the family sound | pretty straightforwardly racist to me. | | And, well, let us be honest and acknowledge the mutual | feeling of otherness between people from Central or | Northern Russia and those from West Ukraine, Belarus, or | even the south of the country as it currently is. It can | range from having a stereotypical funny-talking character | in jokes to toppling monuments, rewriting history, and | going to war, but it's been there for a long time, and | the distance between these two extremes isn't nearly as | large as I'd like. | | (Navalnyj has distant relatives in Ukraine? _Everybody_ | has distant relatives in Ukraine. If you want commentary | on the Golodomor and whether it fits here, though, you'll | need to find someone qualified enough to talk specifics | about it.) | | This is not at all an exhaustive list. (What about the | Tatars? The Russian Germans? The postwar expulsions, | tacitly accepted by the West, that turned Konigsberg into | Kaliningrad and Danzig into Gdansk? I'm sure there are | things I've never heard of as well.) It might be that | there is no "racism" in the precise North American mold | in Russia or around it, but that is only because that | mold is uninteresting (and to the extent that the | opposition to it is built around its incidental features, | that opposition is missing the point, although I would | not claim to be the one to make it the Right Way). | Xenophobia towards people inside or just outside the | country, now that we have plenty of, and so does | everybody else living on the ruins of an empire. | | That is if the economic structures originating from | serfdom in the Empire or from internal migration | restrictions in the USSR are not enough for you. They | might not always have an ethnic bent, but is that really | that much of a consolation?.. | GordonS wrote: | America certainly takes racism to extremes, but it's not | a problem unique to the US - racism is a thing all over | Europe and Asia too, to varying degrees. | | I've never been to Russia, but I'm finding it hard to | believe racism doesn't exist there. | kofejnik wrote: | having lived in Russia, I assure you there's a lot of | pretty open racism there, racist slurs are openly and | widely used for anyone who's not a slav, and even some | slavs now as well (e.g. Ukrainians) | duskwuff wrote: | > Either way, people here aren't discriminated based on | their race. Never were. This particular problem seems to | be uniquely American because of their history. | | I suspect you are overlooking some pretty pervasive | discrimination against minority groups because you have | become accustomed to it, and/or because you aren't | personally affected by it. While racism in Russia | _appears_ to have been improving over the last decade or | so, it is hardly absent. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Russia | drdaeman wrote: | > Our society just doesn't have the concept of racism | | I'd say "racism" those days is a fairly weird word that I've | seen infrequently applied as an umbrella term covering many | different things. | | It's almost certainly true that there is virtually no | "classical" (black vs white) racism there. Russia never had | any significant fraction of black population, and the flavors | of slavery were quite different from the US. When Russian | sees a black person, while their inner voice would surely say | "this person is an alien", there's most likely would be no | immediate derogatory prejudice involved - because to best of | my awareness it was never instilled, at least not in the | Soviet and post-Soviet mindspace. | | But in Russia there surely is something similar, just of a | different flavor - again, because of different history and | societal composition. Say, doubtlessly there are tons of | prejudices based on ethnicity - just remember how many | derogatory names and jokes are there (and always were) for | neighboring nations such as Ukrainians (this is so fucked | up!), Georgians, Tajiks or Uzbeks; or Russian ethniticies - | especially Chechens (this nationality is pretty touchy | conversation subject). | bagels wrote: | A black person could not have been born and raised in a | Russian city? | grishka wrote: | This is of course entirely possible, but would be extremely | unusual. I personally haven't ever met a black Russian. | [deleted] | kevingadd wrote: | While I'm sure the shape of discrimination in your culture is | different and not heavily racial, it's unwise to conclude | that racial discrimination isn't happening just because you | don't see the textbook version of it in front of you. The | assumption that a black person can't possibly be local can | lead some people to act in a discriminatory way that would | produce bad outcomes. | | A good example would be some of the pieces out there about | what it's like to live in Japan as a black person, like | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMpxLmMnS6M - their society | is definitely not going to racially discriminate like the US | does, but that doesn't mean you won't experience _any_ | discrimination or unusual treatment due to your skin color | being different. | | Also, if people get discriminated against based on their | nationality and you just said a black person can't possibly | be From Here... it seems like if you combine those two | statements that would mean black people would naturally get | discriminated against since they're foreigners? | grishka wrote: | > Also, if people get discriminated against based on their | nationality and you just said a black person can't possibly | be From Here... | | The nationality thing is more about those who work | customer-facing jobs here. Like, you call a taxi, it | arrives but you can't find where. You call the driver to | ask where they stopped, but the driver is from Tajikistan | or Uzbekistan and barely speaks any Russian. It is | frustrating when you can't use your native language in your | home country for something as mundane as asking the taxi | driver where they are. Besides, they usually do their jobs | much more shoddily, get paid less, and have lower | standards. So, yes, these people have this kind of | reputation, but every rule has its exceptions. | | But then if someone is a foreign student for example, they | are never treated like that. So I guess this discrimination | is not against the nationality per se, but against people | bringing their customs into someone else's society and | refusing to blend in? | psyc wrote: | This part of the culture is in the grip of a mania. Mania is like | improperly overclocked insight. Turn the zeal dial too high, and | out comes confusion. | Exuma wrote: | geephroh wrote: | MS: "We now concede that Clippy was the most annoying, | patronizing and flawed UX feature ever created." | | Google: "Hold my beer..." | dhritzkiv wrote: | Some of these words may not be inclusive to all readers. | | Try using: | | [carbonated malt beverage] | thfuran wrote: | I'm allergic to malt. | londons_explore wrote: | I'm allergic to carbon. | dane-pgp wrote: | Well, the Earth's climate sort of is. | sva_ wrote: | To quote George Carlin: "The planet is fine, the people | are fucked." | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdSi9NW5u3E | [deleted] | hcrisp wrote: | This AI strikes me as being so dystopian. Time to break out and | read Orwell's _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ again. | | A true AI would respond to user behavior and back off or change | accordingly. Reminds me of Google News which keeps inserting | articles about Kardashians no matter how often I tell it to | "include fewer of these stories". For all the hype of Google's | advanced AI, instead we get faceless, imperious NannyTech. | IshKebab wrote: | is it even AI? They claim it's a language model analysing | human bias but it's blindingly obvious that it is just a | human curated blacklist. | | Maybe they're using a language model for part of speech | tagging or to suggest alternative words with similar meaning | but there's no way an AI decided that "motherboard" is taboo. | jzackpete wrote: | Blacklist? I think you mean blocklist | [deleted] | bitwize wrote: | Isn't Microsoft rolling out a similar feature into Word 365, | though? | Tao331 wrote: | > Cutting phrases like "whitelist/blacklist" ...out of our | vocabulary... addresses years of habitual bias in tech | terminology | | Vice, you are _not_ helping. | | Unless your ancestors had lands confiscated or graves desecrated | in a manner you find unjust during the Stuart Restoration, you | have no standing to complain about "blacklist". | gorwell wrote: | This is straight out of Brave New World where the word "mother" | was viewed as obscene. | notadev wrote: | The word "mother" is already considered obscene because it is | not inclusive of uh "men who give birth". | | https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-budget-proposa... | foofoo4u wrote: | Check out this video uploaded just recently: [Health department | refuses to define 'woman' in Senate | Estimates](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX_1QNXgjDM). | Australia's own health department struggle and eventually | refuse to answer the simple question. Look at how uncomfortable | they are with such an innocuous request. | | On similar trends, we are seeing institutions such as the ACLU | post tweets like this: | https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1439259891064004610?s=20 . It's | a tweet of a quote by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But the ACLU has | decided to replace the word "women" with "people". | | So yes, we are moving into a brave new world. | PeterStuer wrote: | In a dystopian future you'll have a score indicating how often | the algo had caught your wrong-speak. | slickrick216 wrote: | You can't imagine anyone with a shred of real dignity or rational | thinkers had anything to do with this. So they sent their B team | at it. | chrisfosterelli wrote: | > Cutting phrases like "whitelist/blacklist" and "master/slave" | out of our vocabulary not only addresses years of habitual bias | in tech terminology, but forces us as writers and researchers to | be more creative with the way we describe things. | | > calling landlords "property owners" is almost worse than | calling them "landchads," and half as accurate. It's catering to | people like Howard Schultz who would prefer you not call him a | billionaire, but a "person of means." | | "I like the tool because it removes others' words that I don't | like but I don't like the tool because it removes my words that | others don't like" | monkeybutton wrote: | Why not use proprietor? | burkaman wrote: | If you say "I paid my proprietor this month", nobody will | understand what you mean. It's simply a different word with a | different definition. | vorpalhex wrote: | Why not use Landlord, a word everyone understands? | akhmatova wrote: | Because it promotes wrong and harmful thinking. And must | therefore be extinguished. | ehsankia wrote: | Here's the definition of landlord I see | | > A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, | condominium, land, or real estate which is rented or leased | to an individual or business | | How is that different from "property owner"? The difference | is that to you, a native English speaker, landlord is a | word you're familiar with. To others, it's a whole new word | they need to learn, whereas property-owner is self- | descriptive. It's like using good variable names in your | code, you don't need to look up the definition of every | word when you use re-use words that are common. | umanwizard wrote: | > How is that different from "property owner"? | | They mean different things: one is a subset of the other. | A person who owns their own home that they live in is a | property owner, but not a landlord. | causalmodels wrote: | Because it leads to confusion. | | Example: Is the proprietor of a bar the person running it or | the landlord who owns the building? | akhmatova wrote: | Actually, it is generally understood that the | owner/proprietor of a bar is the business owner (aka | license owner) -- and that this in general is not the same | person who owns the bricks. | | A more clearcut case of semantic confusion I can see a | crappy AI creating out of the blue would be: | | "My proprietor said if I didn't pay the rent soon she was | gonna ..." | | Which clearly has a very different (and basically | nonsensical) meaning than a the more natural formulation | using the now thankfully forbidden L-word. | causalmodels wrote: | Agreed, I was just trying give an example of why using | proprietor would create confusion. | akhmatova wrote: | Right -- the "bar's landlord" is in general not it's | proprietor. | nicbou wrote: | Perhaps it's a very specific answer, but I write in simple | English, since many of my readers are not native speakers. I | stick to words people are likely to understand. | | Our local immigration office recently picked a newer, better | name, but since no one uses it, I'm sticking to the old one. | | Another one is expat vs immigrant. I favor immigrant, but I | can't rename expat insurance to immigrant insurance. The | latter does not exist. | | I use the gender-neutral "they" across the website, but | sometimes "he" would be a lot clearer when replacing a | singular noun like "the landlord". | | Sometimes the common word is the right word to use. When in | doubt, I refer to Google Trends. | nmilo wrote: | I think you're misreading. Nowhere in the article did the | author say she "liked the tool" for removing | whitelist/blacklist. | awofford wrote: | Obviously the former example is written in more positive | language than the latter. | glasshug wrote: | > On a more extreme end, if someone intends to be racist, | sexist, or exclusionary in their writing, and wants to | draft that up in a Google document, they should be allowed | to do that without an algorithm attempting to sanitize | their intentions and confuse their readers. | | The author does position themselves against algorithmic | sanitization generally. | skrbjc wrote: | "Being more inclusive with our writing is a good goal, and | one that's worth striving toward as we string these sentences | together and share them with the world. "Police officers" is | more accurate than "policemen." Cutting phrases like | "whitelist/blacklist" and "master/slave" out of our | vocabulary not only addresses years of habitual bias in tech | terminology, but forces us as writers and researchers to be | more creative with the way we describe things. Shifts in our | speech like swapping "manned" for "crewed" spaceflight are | attempts to correct histories of erasing women and non-binary | people from the industries where they work." | | This is a whole paragraph in the article where the author | agrees this is good thing, just that google implemented it | poorly. | ElFitz wrote: | And now the rest of the world will be very happy learn that they | will once more have to silently deal with the aftermath of | America's latest political trend. | | After banning world-famous paintings from Facebook because they | dared show a breast, a few well-off engineers and product | managers will now pick which English words should remain, and | which should be let go. | | How nice of them. Don't know what we'd do without them. | londons_explore wrote: | This isn't unique to SV. There are plenty of examples of words | and behaviours that were commonplace and then over time evolved | to be unacceptable to use in polite company. | | I'd like to give some examples, but I fear I'd end up swiftly | banned for even using some of the best examples. | | One interesting case is "idiots, imbeciles and morons" - once | technical terms to describe a mental health scale. The 'most | insulting' end of the scale is now probably the most acceptable | word to use in public! | aasasd wrote: | Yeah, it's a continuous process, called 'euphemism treadmill' | (not a technical term though): | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Lifespan | | However, personally I'm pretty sure that the US is overdoing | it. | londons_explore wrote: | There must be some way to measure that... Eg. Percentage of | language 'cancelled' per year. | IAmWorried wrote: | > There are plenty of examples of words and behaviours that | were commonplace and then over time evolved to be | unacceptable to use in polite company. | | Cmon man, there's a big difference between the natural | evolution of language and some radical-run company forcibly | jamming their desired changes down our throats through an | instantaneous and global software update. | systemvoltage wrote: | This SV culture is being exported to the rest of the world at | an alarming pace. | | https://www.economist.com/international/2021/06/12/social-me... | ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: | Supposedly they hate imperialism. | omginternets wrote: | It probably won't make you feel any better, but even in | America, there is a feeling of SV is shoving its political | trends down our collective throat. | JaimeThompson wrote: | >banning world-famous paintings from Facebook because they | dared show a breast | | Issues with breasts aren't exactly a new thing in the US, just | ask Janet Jackson. | lm28469 wrote: | Yeah but they have absolute freedom of speech so they're better | than us /s ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-22 23:00 UTC)