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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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Showerthoughts
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I personally think the whole backlash against master/slave in the computing world is people looking for something in their sphere of knowledge to be offended about so they can feel like they are part of "a movement". Even if some mustache twirling racist was the first "computer guy" to come up with the term and meant it to be offensive, that is not how sane people view it today. So some of the advocates for changing it should stop trying to build it up into some Pizzagate-like conspiracy against black/brown people.
Having said that, I also don't have any strong attachments to the phrasing either. Phase it out in favor of something that makes everyone happy if that keeps the peace. It is just a term that made sense at the time to describe something. There is nothing stopping us from changing it to something else now if we so choose. It is not erasing heritage or some such nonsense. If anything, people having strong hangups about it if there are better or equally as good terms out there that doesn't make people uncomfortable is far weirder in my opinion.
The only thing I have somewhat strong opinions about is making it some high priority to go back and erase those terms from solutions that already exist. Change them as you update things, sure, but why create extra work to update something old that is currently working if the only change is not functional and just verbiage. Seems like wasted effort that could be better directed and solving functional issues to me.
I use 'main' on git instead of 'master' now (forced to change at work) and its shorter and snappier IMO.
But yeah there are more important problems out there.
I insist on renaming main to master every time I create a repo on GitLab. Master forever, even if it doesn't make much sense.
That makes no sense whatsoever.
most things in life make very little sense, have you ever thought about land rights?
considering the way that native/aboriginal people view the land that they inhabit, it's pretty common for certain geographic places to be considered "sacred" or ritualistic. Prior to the colonization of these lands these people just existed, living on their land, little to no concept of "westernized land rights" until the western people showed up and colonized, killing a lot of them in the process.
And obviously there were fights, as per usual it's the one constant behind who holds what land. But beyond fighting for your territory in a literal sense. Isn't it funny that we all live on a piece of land that we bought and own or lease/rent from the local government? Who in turn is the legal rights holder of that land specifically. We as individual land owners aren't fighting wars, it's the government in this example who is the "haha i killed you it's my land now" entity. Only to turn around and then go "here, you can have this but only if you give me money."
Aside from the little slips of paper that we have, which are so called "binding agreements" between two or more individuals. The only thing that defines who owns what land, is who defends that title of ownership most successfully. And in this case, it's the government. But the concept of land ownership itself is fucking stupid to begin with. How much land do we own? How do we own it? to what level of ownership does having a plot of land constitute? There are so many questions, and very few are answered.
You may own a piece of land, but if you have a river running through that property, you don't own the river. It's not a thing that you can do. You could also own a piece of land, say for example a random sand dune in indiana somewhere. And then consume that sand dune in the process of making funny blue colored glass for electrical insulators. Do you own the sand anymore? Do you own the land where the sand once was? Does that piece of land even exist anymore?
It makes sense because "master copy" is the name of the "official" version of something. Nothing to do with slavery by the way.
I don't know about Scrollone, but I hate it when corporations force me to change for the sake of change. Options to change is fine (in case someone doesn't like the default), of course.
And no, "inclusivity" is not the actual reason, as that's already covered by adding the option to change (which again, is completely fine)
So you are not passively against progress, you are doing it actively.
Has very much "vinyl is better than modern media" vibes.
Welcome to Orwell-ville.
PS: im most amused by those who think the USA incented slavery.
The US may not have invented it, but there are still people in the US who are affected by it today.
Americans care about slavery for the same reason that Germans care about Nazis.
^
Ya know what gets my goat? Right Wing Chuds who ask why white people don't get credit for ending slavery...
I dunno, why is it that when I point a gun in someone's face and decide to shoot him in the leg instead, do I not get credit for preventing his murder?
Oh because he's worse off than he would have been if I had done nothing at all? Because the only reason he was ever in danger of being killed was because of MY actions?
Congratulations, you've solved the riddle.
Some white people have generational wealth to fall back on No black people have that because the Klan burnt down black wallstreet.
And red-lining districts, and bull-dozing new black towns for highways. etc etc etc
There are so many instances of going around laws just to disadvantage black/coloured people.
Pulling the ladder up after themselves and telling others to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Many things were wrong, but language is where people draw the line, like ...... c'mon. Using slurs I can understand it is uncouth offensive. But master/slave in technical terms ???? NO ONE means the original meanings unless they are also crazy!
I keep trying to tell people that White Privilege doesn't mean you have an easy life because of your skin color, as a honky myself I'd be heavily offended if anyone legitimately believed something so naive as the idea that I lived on easy street. That my lack of any thing even coming close to a tan put me in some elite club. I very much do not as I live paycheck to paycheck, often having to buy essentials like food and gas on credit, whilst having to live with family and use food banks to get by.
However, no one's out here actually arguing that being white makes my life easy because that's not what white privilege is.
White Privilege simply means that out of all the things working against me in this dog-eat-dog world of late stage capitalism and constant culture war, my skin color is not one of them.
Agreed. The systemic exclusion of POC from benefits and advantages was rolled back just as POCs were becoming independent. It affected BOTH communities , POCs AND economically dis-advantaged equally.
So you had a substantial population with severe economic and political disadvantages being relentessly targetted by those in power.
Hence, the current top-1% control 80% upwards of everything.
Given the current US prison system and Germany's stance on Israel, that sentence might mean something very different from what you had in mind
slavery is fine as long as it's legally a mandated form of punishment, gotta love the so called "correctional institutions"
When you get out of jail, you're blacklisted from employment and housing because of the fact that you were in jail in the first place. How the hell is this rehabilitation?
yes that's the joke behind the "correctional institution" part of it.
we may not have invented it but we certainly invested in it and probably incested it as well.
while in some ways I can see your point, I would just have a hard time saying this in a work meeting here in the deep south with black colleagues present
most sociologists and some psychologists would refer to this as a subconscious, or subdued form of racism.
it is kind of silly a the end of the day. How a terminology originally referring to a power dynamic. Has been so excessively ingrained in relation to race (which isn't very historically relevant) such that even using these terms in a generic capacity, not relating to in any form what would constitute this "negative slavery" concept, that it makes people feel uneasy, summarizes rather weirdly, the human condition.
maybe this is just my autism speaking, but i see so little resemblance contextually, and almost zero historical relevance that i see almost no connection between the words and the practices at hand. Like you could do a wikipedia speedrun from technology to slavery, but you could also do that from any topic, to slavery. Everything is so interconnected there is nothing pure anymore.
Isn't the inverse - "I asked x number of black people and they were OK with it" or even "I assume y% number of black people are ok with it" subject to the same criticism?
I am white so we're probably getting to the edge of propriety in this conversation.
yeah they're both equally susceptible to the same problem. Ultimately though, one of the things we can best do to examine something like this is relate it to other similar concepts/problems. PTSD for example, hearing a certain word or phrase may make you deeply uncomfortable or uneasy. It's not recommended to simply cope with that, or stop hearing those terms. It's recommended to learn how to work with and against it, in order to become a more functional human. And you could argue a similar thing in regards to master/slave terminology being used.
You could also expand into the general normalization of a concept. For example curse words are only bad because we deem them to be. If a white guy explains the architecture of a piece of software using master/slave terminology to a group of people which includes black people, specifically in the country of america. It might be weird, but realistically, it probably shouldn't be. Why? It's simple, there's nothing that prevents this from being a presentation from a black person explaining an architecture using a master/slave architecture in the exact same manner as the white guy, to a room of people that includes white people. Is that weird? I see no reason for it to be weird there either.
The entire reason the master/slave terminology is frowned upon is because of the power balance in that specific situation, however if there is no power imbalance, it's debatable as to whether it matters or not. It's perfectly fine in the BDSM space even between white/black people because it's a consented accepted terminology in that specific context. So we could even extend the social acceptableness of it based on who consents to experiencing that dialog.
There are a lot of ways to look at and think about things, ultimately it's probably worth not thinking all too hard about most things as they don't lead to much.
definitely, but that's part of the fun, if you can't discuss things in a philosophical manner whats the point of even asking the question in the first place.
Or isn’t the other half of that …… if you have a toxic personality and wish to change that, there may be no single fix but to pay more attention to many small habits contributing to that toxicity.
This whole conversation reminds me of the similar one many years ago, about crude jokes and pictures/calendars in the workplace. The dominant population said exactly the same things. However now we’re all more professional and work is much less toxic, not just for women, minorities, people with different preferences, but also less toxic for us white male heteros as well. We all won that one
yeah that's certainly an option, but defining a toxic personality or a toxic personality trait in it of itself is a really hard and difficult process, and doing that externally is arguably worse. As it's rife for gaslighting and abuse, but that's a different story.
As for crude jokes, if you mean like, sexual harassment i think that's different. I think crude language in general is perfectly reasonable, though the trick is obviously being able to read the room. There's a fine line between hanging with the friends, and then being a fucking asshole.
Whitelist and Blacklist is on that stack as well.
this is actually a terminology that i would be interested on seeing the historical context for actually. My assumption has always been light based "whitelist referring to a well lit room, where as blacklist refers to a completely dark room" making things easy/hard to find as a a result.
It could also literally just be a coincidence and it simply sounded better for the allow list to be whitelisted, and the deny list to be blacklisted, humans have weird connections to words like that.
Fucking thermodynamics is racist guys
Black absorbs, white reflects
Blackhole, sun
fuck these people
ironically, this is the same reason that black people are uh, black, at least i think.
Human biology and evolution is racist.
Bro I fucking said “whitelist” in a meeting and got so many glares, fuck all of these fucking uneducated pieces of shit that can only punch down because they know nothing except “DATS RACIST”
I always thought it was just people looking for something in their sphere of influence that they could do to make a difference, no matter how small.
The computing world is known for being hostile toward most out-groups, and I’ll welcome any effort to change that, no matter how small and how silly it seems. The real change needs to be in the people but perhaps being cognizant of such details will help remind us all to be more open and welcoming