It sounds way less offensive to those who decry the original terminology’s problematic roots but still keeps its meaning intact.

  • @[email protected]
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    13 months ago

    It’s better to identity specific facets of society that are problematic […] as opposed to “treating the symptom” so to speak.

    I think it’s difficult to separate the two, they form a feedback loop. It’s like the broken window theory.
    People see these little ambiguously exclusionary acts, and if they see enough of them then they get the subconscious message that exclusionary acts are ok, and the (possibly accidental) targets of the acts get the subconscious message that they’re not welcome which makes the subject raw and sensitive and primes them to look at acts through that lens.

    In college I took a class on how humans and computers interact, and one of the things my professor was passionate about was how the terminology of programming languages tended to be exclusionary to women. Not explicitly so, but just using violent language that women were raised to find uncomfortable (eg killing a process), and it was pushing women out of computer science.
    This was like 15 years ago, and he was already passionate about it at the time, so this isn’t really a new thing, its just getting broader attention.

    I don’t know if that’s happening here, but it costs nothing to change so even a potential minor improvement is worth it.

      • @[email protected]
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        13 months ago

        Did they ever mention the history of the CS field generally being sexist towards women? Yes, of course. WTH? Why would you ever think someone passionate about this would not bring that up?

        I would also argue that women being “averse” to terms like killing is equally presumptive Ok I think you’re intentionally misinterpreting my words now. This is not a dichotomy.

          • @[email protected]
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            13 months ago

            There are many problems and many solutions. We don’t need to focus on one problem and pick only one solution.

            My entire point here was that there is concern that industry jargon can be accidentally exclusionary to some demographics, interest and research on it isn’t new, and the effect is usually a “death by a thousand cuts” type thing, like migroaggressions are.

            I didn’t specialize in this, so my knowledge on it is from one part of one class I took like 15 years ago, but I can absolutely see how it could matter.

            People aren’t rational and society doesn’t raise us rationally. We can be perfectly ok with something in one context but not ok with it in another context. We can be ok with one thing, but not ok with another similar thing.

            I agree there are deeper societal issues about how we raise boys and the incentives/traumas we put on kids. That doesn’t mean we cant pick off this low hanging fruit at no cost.
            It’s important to meet people where they are, not where we think they should be.

              • @[email protected]
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                13 months ago

                probably more important to fix that problem where the bike crumples

                This solution is zero effort

                microaggressions […] question of whether it even exists to any significant degree

                It does. Ask POC

                with a really hard solution

                It’s zero effort to change jargon like this.

                we could move to stop microaggressions, or we could like, move to stop racial bias hiring practices

                We can do both. That was a bold false dichotomy

                do not have normal behaviors

                If your argument is that neurodivergent people can’t switch from “whitelist” to “allowlist” I think that says more about your personality than neurodivergency.

                we may actually just be making things more complicated for people who do not function inside of the bubble of normality.

                Ok there, that sounds like a pile of FUD to prevent progress

                simply prime people to not care

                Ok there psychology genius. Tell us how to do this and receive your nobel prize

                I’m done replying to your novel length piles regressive bullshit and excuses dressed up in polite language.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    13 months ago

                    Tldr your novella of regressive FUD.

                    You can’t get a perfect solution so you refuse to accept any solution is the Hallmark of the disingenuous redpill in disguise.

                    Go sell your snake oil elsewhere