Fine. Lets expand the semantics and context of the saying to avoid the apparent confusion. "One's feelings are apparently taking precedence before objective reality".TomWest said:"Feels before reals" absolutely implies that "feels" or feelings are not real (you can't be before something if you're part of it), and thus not worthy of consideration amongst the literally hundreds of factors that go into any well-considered technical decision.Areloch said:Hm, this part makes me think you interpreted my usage of 'Feels before reals' as to imply that their feelings are not real.
Since you agree with me, I'll consider my main point won - feels are real and thus the statement "feels before reals" is nonsensical.
So we're changing the usage of a word because it's offensive to NOT use it in context of humans? That's bizzare.As for expunging the words from history, now you're just being silly. Especially with master/slave, the complaint is that using the term 'slave' for something other than ownership of another human being diminishes the impact of the word. They would like it used exclusively for its historical meaning.
Firstly, if we're having a reasonable discussion, I would highly recommend avoiding the snark/sarcasm. That's a fast way to annoy everyone involved and kill an otherwise level-headed discussion.Honestly, if there are a few millions people who are deeply affected by certain terms, then common courtesy is clear that I should minimize their use where practical. I have long since abandoned terms like "gypped" and "niggardly" because even if I never knew or meant their racial implications, they had racial implications. When I learned better, I stopped using them. Is there a cost to me? Sure, a minor one. Is the cost worth reducing the discomfort of those affected. Depends on how many people are affected, and their level of discomfort.
But I'm pretty comfortable in saying if it's several million people who have been direly affected by racism, claiming that the cost of switching terminology is just way too high to be worth my effort makes me... insensitive. Especially when alternate terms are already in common use.
But I understand. The sanctity of our language, which otherwise never changes, is way more important than millions of people not actually feeling excluded.
Unless the word's usage is DIRECTLY inciting harm, you are correct, I see no sufficient reason or cause to change an otherwise perfectly valid word's usage. It also sounds like you think a relatively small group of people get hit with racially charged insults, hate or violence, and you're assuming I've never seen insults utilizing my race as a spring-off point, or other people of my race being attacked BECAUSE of their race.Okay, so you won't go out of your way to actively cause more discomfort to others. You just don't think it's worth it to spend effort to cause less discomfort. Fair enough. I am, however, going to guess that you, like me, are not members of a culture that have been (and still are to an extent) victims of racism and racially directed violence.I think most people can agree that using slurs or other targeted, specifically derogatory or offensive language is something you shouldn't direct at other people.
It's close enough currently to make me raise my eyebrow, at least.Luckily, no-one is claiming that.However, someone reading a word, completely ignoring the context of it's usage, and deciding that "This word shouldn't ever be used, no matter the context or reason" does a LOT of damage to our communication mediums, and isn't something that should be endorsed, let alone paid for.
Indeed, it's only *truely* a problem if it goes into the extreme. I'm voicing my opinion on it because it'd like to avoid it ever getting there, however minimally likely it is to do so. I feel it's a bit akin to voting, these days. My vote's not really worth anything, but I can at least say I tried.Silvanus said:It would be untenable if taken to the extreme, or applied in all cases. It's very unlikely that will be the case, though; people have been replacing words in various contexts since language began, and we've never tipped over into the extreme of replacing everything potentially problematic. I don't see any particular reason to think it has much chance of happening now.Areloch said:Oh, to be sure, and I'm 100% cognizant of the 'Societal Compromise' game, where it's not "make everyone happy" but "make everyone the least angry".
The root of my problem with this, is it's removing a word or words from usage while completely ignoring the context in which they are used. As I mention above, this line of logic can be very readily applied to other words that MAY make someone uncomfortable and if we toss any and all context out the window, that means that fictional and historical usages of the word should also be game for removing words over the possibility that someone could be offended.
I find this to be untenable, which is, indeed my subjective opinion.
But as I said above, the objective reality of the word's usage in this case does not endorse, cause or propagate actual human slavery, and is merely an accurate, technical descriptor of the relationship between two objects in software/hardware, and whether someone feels offended by it or not does not change the objective reality of it's usage in this context.
Of course, this is quite aside from whether I think this instance was silly or not.
To interject: my stance on it is if an entity displayed enough cognizance to be close to or at the level of human, then they should be afforded the same treatments and rights. Until then, however, the machine is just a tool. Come to think of it, an interesting sci-fi story would be how people would react to a 'dumb' AI, where it's more aware than your average animal, but not fully sapient. Do you afford it human-level rights, or delegate it to just the general respectful treatment animals get.Revnak said:I don't think understanding what a machine is devalues the living, though I would argue that your misunderstanding of what constitutes life does. Life is a highly complex machine, occasionally with the capacity for reason, generally with the capacity for self development and adaptation. Is a machine that meets all those standards inherently any less valuable than another?beastro said:And there's always that wonderful retort that both means nothing and devalues actual living beings.Revnak said:And in all honesty, you're just a machine.
Actually, robot in terms of robotics was a term coined by a Czech play writer by the name of Karel Capek, the play was Rossum's Universal Robots. Robot derives from the made up word "roboti" which is similar to the Czech word "robota" which refers literally to "corv?e", or "serf labor", figuratively means "drudgery", or "hard work" and generally in Czech means "work", or "labor". Capek coined the word "roboti" to mean "worker", or "laborer" in this particular case. So in short robot does not mean slave. Source. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot#Etymology]Corey Schaff said:Guess they should probably remove any variation of the word "robot" too while they're at it, given the etymology. No robotics, no "-bot" suffix.
Robot means slave.(Spoiler removed, because it was inconvenient.)
Source snobbery in this case is counter productive, as Czech linguists have contributed to the generally accepted meaning of a word. I say this because I'll take a source which backs up the common accepted etymology contributed to by native speakers and scholars alike, over a publicly available research archive made by a single person.Corey Schaff said:Actually, it means "Forced Labor", aka slavery. Roboti derives from Robotnik, which is Slavic for Slave, Robota, "compulsory servitude"(aka slavery), and the Old Slavic word for slave, "rabu".KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:Actually, robot in terms of robotics was a term coined by a Czech play writer by the name of Karel Capek, the play was Rossum's Universal Robots. Robot derives from the made up word "roboti" which is similar to the Czech word "robota" which refers literally to "corv?e", or "serf labor", figuratively means "drudgery", or "hard work" and generally in Czech means "work", or "labor". Capek coined the word "roboti" to mean "worker", or "laborer" in this particular case. So in short robot does not mean slave. Source. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot#Etymology]Corey Schaff said:Guess they should probably remove any variation of the word "robot" too while they're at it, given the etymology. No robotics, no "-bot" suffix.
Robot means slave.(Spoiler removed, because it was inconvenient.)
My Source, which I may say is not wikipedia, which I would personally only use to find sources to cite, not actually cite them:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=robot
Robotics was the technological solution to the moral problem of slavery.
EDIT: The play "Rossum's Universal Robots" was also an allegory of Slavery itself.
part is probably a bit more significant in that decision than theiamzim101 said:", and also to make improvements so Buildbot works better in the Amazon EC2 cloud".
part.... remove the term "slave" from all documentation, APIs and tests
Silvanus said:It would be untenable if taken to the extreme, or applied in all cases. It's very unlikely that will be the case, though; people have been replacing words in various contexts since language began, and we've never tipped over into the extreme of replacing everything potentially problematic. I don't see any particular reason to think it has much chance of happening now.
Of course, this is quite aside from whether I think this instance was silly or not.
Indeed. And people with entirely different stables of words-- those from other cultures, or other time periods, or even just those with different vocabularies-- are still entirely capable of speaking and thinking. The line is not drawn in what phrases are present in some technical documents.PhantomEcho said:You try to diminish the danger of this by implying that "It's unlikely EVERY word will be changed", but that is not and has never been the danger inherent to the purging of potentially inflammatory words. What we are at risk of losing is not merely a word, but the UTILITY of our language. Each word purged, each word rendered taboo, is an IDEA that someone is attempting to cull from the collective consciousness. We use our words to THINK... the language we speak is the language our brains are programmed in.
You're assuming, quite irrationally, that the intention of removing the word in this one instance is to remove it, somehow, from the English language. It is quite clearly not that. Nobody wants us to "forget slavery", least of all the people who find slavery immoral. They merely don't want the word used here.PhantomEcho said:It's the intellectual equivalent of a lobotomy, with the hope being that if we just lobotomize enough people then eventually whatever idea said words might cultivate will die alongside them as public consciousness fades.
Today it's Master/Slave in the tech sector, with the clear hope that we'll all just forget that slavery was a thing... unless of course forgetting about slavery is offensive... (which it is, naturally, to many)... so we'll just hypocritically make it okay to talk about in the VERY context we're hoping people will forget about whilst stripping an important technical term out of the tech sector because 'what could possibly go wrong?'
The concepts will still exist. Nobody is trying to make us "forget" slavery, and nothing anybody is doing could possibly make it happen anyway. Being discerning about its use is not-- in any way at all-- somehow destroying the word.PhantomEcho said:It's untenable because there will ALWAYS be one more word that upsets somebody, somewhere... and the loss of that word will forever damage our ability to THINK about the concepts and ideas it represents.
Despite the fact that I think this has been mentioned at least once on each of the three pages of this thread, I don't think that people will take the time to stop getting angry about the "reactionary response" to actually find out the details of this story before commentingrenegade7 said:I also have to think that the
part is probably a bit more significant in that decision than theiamzim101 said:", and also to make improvements so Buildbot works better in the Amazon EC2 cloud".
part.... remove the term "slave" from all documentation, APIs and tests
The original concepts of many things as we know and understand them today have been forever lost to time, in an unending linguistic game of Telephone in which the meanings of various words and the intentions behind them have been mistranslated, deliberately sabotaged, and in many cases simply overlooked and forgotten.Silvanus said:Indeed. And people with entirely different stables of words-- those from other cultures, or other time periods, or even just those with different vocabularies-- are still entirely capable of speaking and thinking. The line is not drawn in what phrases are present in some technical documents.
Correction: You are assuming, quite irrationally, that I believe the intent of this maneuver is to somehow remove it from the English Language. What I have deduced, through my many years studying linguistics and propaganda, is that Mozilla is pandering lazily to a crowd of people it knows care more about the appearance of change than any kind of actual change. By making a grand showing of altering a word in the name of being 'Discerning', they're hoping to draw in new support and donations from a group of people who already don't support them for a myriad of different reasons and certainly aren't likely to change their minds.You're assuming, quite irrationally, that the intention of removing the word in this one instance is to remove it, somehow, from the English language. It is quite clearly not that. Nobody wants us to "forget slavery", least of all the people who find slavery immoral. They merely don't want the word used here.
Say, a lecturer marks an essay, and tells his/her student that their use of a particular term is confusing/misplaced/wrong. Does this mean the lecturer wants to remove the word from the English language, and from thought itself?! Of course not. They just think it shouldn't be in that place.
We pick and choose our words every time we speak. Every time we speak or write, we choose some words above others, and deselecting some is not deciding that they must be purged.
Yep, there's definitely no historical precedent for the destruction of literature, art, and ideological opposition as a means to subjugate and oppress a population... no sirree.The concepts will still exist. Nobody is trying to make us "forget" slavery, and nothing anybody is doing could possibly make it happen anyway. Being discerning about its use is not-- in any way at all-- somehow destroying the word.
What you're describing here seems to be the evolution of language and technology. As any linguist will tell you, it's both inevitable and beneficial for our continued understanding; and as any etymologist (or perhaps historian) will tell you, that process need not result in these old concepts being forgotten or "purged".PhantomEcho said:The original concepts of many things as we know and understand them today have been forever lost to time, in an unending linguistic game of Telephone in which the meanings of various words and the intentions behind them have been mistranslated, deliberately sabotaged, and in many cases simply overlooked and forgotten.
So much of History has been spent re-inventing the wheel, so to speak, trying to catch up to technologies we had in some cases two or three thousand years ago. Much of this is due to warfare heavily emphasizing the destruction of historical archives, libraries, and places of learning.
Concepts may "persist" without their words of origin in some form or another, diluted or mistaken attributed as a regional/cultural idiom, but they will not survive in our society. They will not retain their significance and importance to us. In the past 50 years, we've reached the point of advancement where concepts like actual physical Phone Books and Land-Lines are foreign to our children. As the usage of these "obsolete" technologies dwindles, fewer and fewer of them are passed down as concepts to the next generation.
This is the organic, natural process by which words pass out of usage.
No, I'm not assuming. You explicitly said there is a "hope that whatever idea these words might cultivate will die". You're making a big (and rather silly) assumption about someone's thought process there.PhantomEcho said:Correction: You are assuming, quite irrationally, that I believe the intent of this maneuver is to somehow remove it from the English Language.
That's a grand showing? If that's a grand showing, this thread must be a full-on parade.PhantomEcho said:By making a grand showing [...]
No, I never made any assumption about my hypothetical lecturer. He/she existed only to demonstrate that we make calls on which words fit best where all the time, in countless contexts. It is, in fact, utterly unavoidable. To quibble about whether I agree with my nonexistant lecturer is to miss the point.PhantomEcho said:However, let's say a lecturer DOES mark an essay with such a comment as you have stated. You again seem to be assuming that the lecturer is CORRECT, without any accounting for the biases and personal agenda of the lecturer as an individual. Under even the most basic of critical analysis, it's easy to see that if "Mozilla" is the lecturer in question, the reasoning behind their claim that the term in question is misplaced is absolutely irrefutably wrong. It is standardized terminology that has been in use for more years than Mozilla has existed, and serves a limited but very specific purpose which YES... can (is capable of) be replaced... but SHOULD NOT BE without any adequate reasoning to do so. So what is their reasoning? Does it hold water? Does changing very basic terminology do more good than the confusion and misunderstanding it will create? Is this a reasonable course of action?
Where are these outside sources? This pressure? I've genuinely never seen any.PhantomEcho said:However, you're conflating the picking and choosing of words under pressure from outside sources, under penalty of being declared "wrong-headed" or "bigoted" or "confusing/misplaced", with the natural process by which words pass out of usage over time... and that's not good. That's exactly how language devolves and degrades, which opens it up to exploitation and abuse.
Oh, there's plenty of historical precedent for those things. Those things are, however, related only in a highly superficial way to the instance under discussion (in that both involved someone not wanting a word somewhere). They differ in magnitude, severity, intent, outcome, target, and context. Everything that matters. What remains is a comparison between throwing a stone at a window and blowing up parliament.PhantomEcho said:Yep, there's definitely no historical precedent for the destruction of literature, art, and ideological opposition as a means to subjugate and oppress a population... no sirree.
Oh, me too!PhantomEcho said:-EDIT- I just want to add that I'm quite enjoying this, even if we do disagree. I'm not arguing against you on a personal level, I'm just having fun flexing my philosophical muscles with someone who doesn't buckle and fold the minute I throw a few heavy terms their way. If I come across as condescending, it's an unintentional byproduct of my usual debate opponents being the local drunks.
Except that opposing same-sex "marriage" is not anti-gay in the slightest, no matter your opinion on the subject.CaptainMarvelous said:Unless it's to anti-gay organisations of course [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10767104/Mozilla-appoints-new-CEO-after-gay-marriage-controversy.html]