I honestly wouldn't be surprised if someone makes the argument that this automated flagging is an indicator that chess's language is inadvertently racially charged. And think about the concept of "white goes first." All it takes is a few viral tweets, and suddenly the game of chess is in the crosshairs.
In my opinion, that might be a sign that the idea of drawing abstract connections between words and concepts, that are several layers of indirection apart, may be going too far.
Yeah using language that upsets people is bad, but if you allow enough layers between words and concepts, _everything_ can be argued to be offensive for one reason or another. Or will be soon once something else becomes a hot button issue.
Shouldn't be. Intent should be the grounds for upset, intent only. Otherwise you get a Euphemism Treadmill, and that's a goddamn fucking waste of time.
This would save so much time wasting. When someone says "Can you push that to the master branch" there is nothing that ties that statement to slavery or racism so there is nothing wrong with it.
The best thing to do is to ignore these people, they will never be happy so there's no point trying to please them.
If you ignore someone who is never happy then in time they may respect you, but if you always comply then they will never respect you and their perceived power over you simply increases, which means they feel empowered to ask for more and more.
> there is nothing that ties that statement to slavery
I would say there is. That's where the language comes from. BUT I do not think that necessarily means that this is a callback or reference to enslaved _people_. Master/slave model accurately describes the model in a way that people can hear the terminology and understand what is happening without knowing details. It doesn't condone/promote slavery, it doesn't have anything to do with enslaving people, and in no way does it even encourage such behavior.
Context matters, a lot. And to be honest I didn't hear anyone complaining about this (and I live in an extremely liberal place), so it came off (to me) as a grab for social currency (_especially_ since GitHub didn't use the term "slave". GitHub was using "master" in the sense of "main" or "principle" and so I didn't get even understand). If you try hard enough you can make anything reference race, but at the end of the day what really matters is context and how people perceive things. If no one (or realistically few people, because there are people looking to make issues) are making these connections AND no one is being harmed, then we shouldn't really be worried about it.
Edit: wanted to make clearer that I'm talking about two different terms of the usage "master". One from master/slave model[0] and one that GitHub uses (which uses the adjective version of the word which means "main" or "principle"). And that the GitHub version does not reference the former version. I know we're talking contentious subjects here but I'm trying my best to convey what is in my head. I'm open to new opinions but bear with me. Language is complicated.
> Master/slave model accurately describes the model in a way that people can hear the terminology and understand what is happening without knowing details.
Except it has absolutely nothing to do with slavery at all. The master branch is akin to the master record, that holds the true and complete copy. A master branch evokes mastery of a subject, like a Masters degree.
Except now, everyone just submits to the idea that the word master only has context in master/slave terminology.
Yeah so there is a master/slave model but I agree that that's not what GitHub was using. I tried to clarify this with my parenthetical statement but apparently did not do so sufficiently. Any suggestions of how to edit?
> A master branch evokes mastery of a subject, like a Masters degree.
I would actually say that that a Master degree is using a different definition (though both part of the adjective usage). For a master branch (or master document, master copy) I'd say it is the definition that is "main" or "principal". Whereas a Masters degree is having mastery over something, which is akin to high proficiency.
Master/slave model has nothing to do with git's master which is "master copy" like as in record mastering. What you say is valid for SCSI or whate et though.
Sorry I was trying to convey that. But language is often messy. I completely agree with you. I thought my parenthetical mention of Github clarified this but I guess I wasn't clear. I'm not sure how to edit to resolve. Any suggestions?
That link doesn't say anything contrary to what I said, and indeed includes a link to a twitter thread saying that Bitkeeper may very well be the origin of the 'master' terminology in git.
ah, but which people? the most reasonable and intelligent people? the traumatized and most sensitive people? The former I'd say yet, the latter I'd say go get some therapy and keep your trauma to yourself, it shouldn't drive the larger discussion.
Sure, it's organic, but there's no god-of-the-gaps in there. It is knowable. A language isn't as complex as a human brain. Nor is it living, it can be decomposed at will.
Linguists have been working like gang busters to iron it all out. Steven Pinker, Noam Chomsky, et al...
It reminds me of all the synonyms and symbols, homophones and homographs Chinese use when referring to mr Xi on Weibo, etc., including the now censored Winnie the Pooh. To get around the censorship which blocks mentioning of me Xi in unflattering light. It’s ever evolving to keep ahead of the censors.
I've never got why people don't understand this. Judging people by their intent resolves a lot of ambiguity, for both political sides.
If someone gets up infront of a room of 1000 people and says "hey guys!", clearly intending to reference the entire audience, they're not being fucking sexist.
And if you're standing there with 5 racists showing a pepe flag or an ok sign or whatever random garbage it is this week, then you're a fucking racist.
There's absolutely no need for nuance or ambiguity in either case.
You can argue the toss all you want about how to determine whether someone is intending to do something (it's not like you can read minds so that can obviously have a ton of complexity to it), but if you're starting from a position that people can unintentionally do something offensive then everything that follows is just pointless bullshit. You've just built a trump card for both sides into the argument so they can just scream past each other like morons without contributing anything meaningful.
Communication is a multiple party activity. It's not just a speaker and a speaker's intent. The recipient and how it's received absolutely matter (and should). I've said plenty of things I didn't intend to be stupid. Still stupid.
Is it ok for the Washington football team to be the Redskins because no current fan or owner intends to be using a racist name?
It's not only the hearer getting upset that matters either. There's room for error and for grace and tact on both sides of a conversation. But it's definitely not just intent only. Humans don't work like that. Hell, even computers don't work like that.
Yeah, this “intent is the only thing that matters” mindset is a naive perspective on communication. People like to act as though there's some liberal bogeyman reaching for social currency by acting “woke”, when what has generally happened is someone was thoughtless/inconsiderate and an offended party spoke up (this whole experience was, of course, quite traumatizing for the thoughtless/inconsiderate person).
Text is text, and you can't encode intent without assuming that the reader has a similar level of internet experience to be able to pull such hidden intent using context clues.
I disagree. Intent matters, a lot, and you're right, but it isn't the only thing. Right now I think we fall on the other side, that reception is all that matters (in the bias training I receive they specifically mention that it is 100% reception and not intent). I believe the law works on reception because that's easier to quantify. Intent is very tricky. You can do something that most people would consider wrong and just say "well I didn't mean it that way." (the inverse can happen too, but less people are likely to start a legal case out of spite compared to people defending themselves. It is tricky)
I believe that there is a middle ground somewhere. Where that is I'm not sure and I think we need to work together as a society to figure that out. I think somewhere in there there is a "reasonable" set of norms, and we have other laws to suggest that we can use this as a basis. But even this can be tricky as there are many different cultural norms and customs. It isn't even just ethnic customs. In America we have very different regional customs that often butt heads. I think we need to recognize that people are different and operate based on different values and often this is fine.
But I think a big thing we've lost in our current standing is good faith. There's three parts to any form of communication. 1) The idea that is within one's head that they are trying to convey to the other person. 2) The words, body language, inflection, etc that are used to codify this idea (aka: encoding). 3) The understanding of that language that was used to convey the idea (aka: decoding). Humans are pretty good encoders and decoders (we wouldn't have made it here where we are if we weren't) but there are limitations. Language is extremely messy and we often don't think it is because we're so used to it. But you can look at words being used today and you'll often find that people are talking past one another because they are using different definitions of the same word and actively refuse to interpret the other person's intended message (as an example, every internet conversation about capitalism/socialism/communism).
The point of communication is to pass one idea from one head to another head. It requires understanding that there are these three components. If we do not act in good faith then we cannot communicate. With that knowledge it suggests there are two different actions to take if one wants to act in good faith. The communicator should try to encode their thoughts as best as they can, attempting to understand their audience (aka: speak to your audience). BUT we often forget that the listener's job is to decode, to do their best to determine the idea that the communicator is trying to convey (aka: __intent__). In fights we will say "but you said..." even knowing what was intended as a way to win. This is not in good faith but is so prevalent.
When conversations are about mic drops and one upping another person, communication cannot be had.
To you point about intent vs reception, I think the way the law works is actually more along the lines of "how a reasonable person might receive this". Which is perhaps harder to quantify, but IMO strikes a good balance. However I totally agree with your point about how some communication has become more about scoring points than having an empathetic and thoughtful dialogue
Yelling fire in a movie theater is perfectly legal and protected speech, even if false. It's only illegal if what is said is "likely to incite imminent lawless action," like a riot.
It's funny, this is often presented as a supporting example to limit citizens' free speech or other rights, typically paired with something along the lines of, "no freedom is limitless." Of course many people don't realize this example is a) outdated and currently false, and b) the argument used against citizens speaking out against WWI using the Espionage Act of 1917, which is considered by many to be one of the worst and oppressive laws to our rights ever written.
You may recognize the names of some of the act's victims:
Among those charged with offenses under the Act are German-American socialist congressman and newspaper editor Victor L. Berger, labor leader and five-time Socialist Party of America candidate, Eugene V. Debs, anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, former Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society president Joseph Franklin Rutherford, communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Cablegate whistleblower Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Defense Intelligence Agency employee Henry Kyle Frese, and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Surely though if you cause panic and people get trampled you would face consequences no? You probably won’t get accused of hate speech but I hope it could go up to manslaughter.
Do you think that the people who panic would bear some responsibility? If someone yelled fire in a movie theater that I was attending, I would at least look around and smell for it before I started flipping out trampling people.
Let's use another hypothetical just for fun. Let's say I called someone a bad name and they punched me, would I bear the legal responsibility for their lack of self control? I would think not. I would think the person who threw the punch would be charged for assault and I would be charged with nothing. If that's the case, how would that be different from the fire example? Someone spoke and someone reacted with no self control. I would think the person who reacted with no self control would bear at least some responsibility.
I'm not sure that has been tested in court yet. If based on precedent, I would assume it would also be legal, but it would take a brave soul with a lot of money and free time to find out for certain.
SCOTUS could always overturn the existing precedent but if we assume they won't then it's legal right up until someone gets injured as a direct result. (Unless it somehow ends up running afoul of our ridiculous obscenity laws? I doubt it but you never know.)
Agreed that anyone who decides to demonstrate the above is definitely going to want plenty of money and free time at their disposal.
I remember many years ago when colour schemes/UI themes were still called "skins", and forum discussions about them often yielded amusing racist-if-taken-out-of-context sentences like "do you like white or black skin" and "I have dark skin, but I prefer the white skin." Not a single person was offended or outraged, everyone saw the racial associations but clearly understood the context and was more amused than anything else.
I'm of mixed opinion whether people were actually more intelligent or level-headed back then, or whether the current "ultra-PC/SJW-ism" trend actually started as a joke that got taken too far and adopted as truth by the gullible.
I have no knowledge of the example situation you provided (I don’t recall any such jokes about software skins), but consider the possibility that in some cases where “back in the day we did it and no one was offended” it was in fact the case that people who were offended weren’t welcome or weren’t able to voice their opinions.
I think they're talking about forums, where most phpbb forums back then offered a theme selector to the user, with 'dark' and 'light' being some common names.
I’m very familiar with skins, Winamp skins being the archetypal example for me. I meant that I don’t remember any such jokes deliberately conflating software skins and human skin tone.
> whether the current "ultra-PC/SJW-ism" trend actually started as a joke that got taken too far and adopted as truth by the gullible
It started with a few German philosophers and social theorists in the Western European Marxist tradition known as the Frankfurt School in the interwar period.
Jokes that evoke racist hatred are not good, though. You don't actually know that NOBODY - literally you said that not a single person - was offended.
Also, so what if someone was offended? Isn't that mostly irrelevant to this debate? The goal isn't to stop people from offending others, the goal of changing our speech is to reduce the unknown harm that words can do re: normalization of hatred of minorities. The 'jokes' you describe aren't funny and do in fact have a potential to cause real harm in the world.
I would posit that unchecked hatred towards minorities online for decades is one of the reasons we are in this 'mess' of language today.
That's an opinion, and it's not a supportable opinion, because we don't really know much about the jokes. Parent's comment wasn't intended to convey the material faithfully-- just a bare description. We don't know the exact wording, the delivery, the timing, or any other context. Maybe they were lame (another opionion), but it's also possible that I (or even you) would have gotten a chuckle out it.
Regardless, there's no reason to assume that humor of this nature serves to normalize racial hatred. But if you assume the worst of people, you're certainly more likely to get it in return.
> The results were very clear. Subjects that held anti-homosexual views supported significantly higher cuts for the gay and lesbian organization after they were exposed to anti-gay humor, compared to subjects who were not prejudiced against gays and lesbians who were exposed to the same jokes.
So, let me rephrase that
> after hearing jokes featuring homosexuals, the anti-homosexuals (however those where determined and chosen for the study) where anti-homosexual. The not-anti-homosexuals where not anti-homosexual ater hearing jokes featuring homosexuals
How excactly? The anti-homosexual people apparently did not change, while the normal people also did not change. The study thus proofed that the presence of the jokes is moot, no?
Ah yes a progressive claim backed up by psychology papers. A field currently drowning in a reproducibility crisis, and a group who believe that lying and slander is not only okay but should be actively utilised in every goal they pursue.
I'm sorry, are you dismissing all psychology papers?
> A field currently drowning in a reproducibility crisis
My peers have told me that chemistry and biology also suffer from results that are difficult to reproduce, and I've certainly read a number of articles here that decry the lack of reproducibility in computer science too.
> a group who believe that lying and slander is not only okay but should be actively utilised in every goal they pursue.
I'll be honest, I'm not really sure what this is in reference to. If it's in relation to psychology experimental methods, then I believe you're incorrect. Methods that involve actively deceiving subjects would be rejected by ethics boards (at least, it would in the UK). On top of that, there are many papers that do not use observations of human behaviour, and so would not find use in lying to them - for example, many neuropsychology papers discuss the physical makeup of body parts.
Psychology has been around for a long time, and some psychology results have deeply influenced society. Some of these papers cover the placebo effect, and various mental health conditions. If you are dismissing all psychology papers, do you also reject these influential papers?
I'm sorry if this reply is a bit full-on, but dismissing a claim's provided evidence by dismissing an entire academic field seems a bit extreme to me.
> I'm sorry, are you dismissing all psychology papers?
Following the reproducibility crisis they can't be trusted on face value. When used to promote SJW and progressivist causes they can be almost certainly dismissed.
> I'll be honest, I'm not really sure what this is in reference to
That was in reference to progressivism, hence why I stated that in the comment.
> Ah yes a progressive claim backed up by psychology papers.
I'm no expert, but I thought the black and white thing originates really from night and day. It is easier to see when there is light (often perceived as white) than it is at night (often perceived as black). We used white and black to convey the color of the sky. A white color reflects light while a black color absorbs light. This is how I've always thought about it. I never associated this with skin color until someone told me. I still have never internalized this because it just doesn't make sense to me.
I'm open to being wrong but to be this connection of archetypal meanings and skin color is a stretch. I don't look at a white phone or black phone and think good or bad (in fact I have a black phone and prefer dark colors while my skin tone is the opposite). One which requires a lot of fundamental change in language and how we think. Because I'm sure I'm not the only one that has codified this representation in my mind. And most of us should understand archetypes are not how you go about judging the world or people. I don't see a person dressed in red and think "angry" (which would be a different emotion in a different culture), or yellow and "happy". I just see colors.
Star Wars - “come to the dark side”. Lord of the Rings, Sauron is the “dark lord”. The Dark Ages vs. the Age of Enlightenment. Yin and Yang.
I don’t believe all these authors were racist. “Roughly 40% of Americans claim that they would be afraid to walk within 1 mile of their homes at night… 54% of all participants rated the dark within their top five fears”
Perhaps this would be solved if we used different words to describe skin tone than we did light. If “white skin” was called “wumbo skin” and “black skin” called “mumbo skin” it would be more clear the etymology of which terms were referring to day vs night rather than skin tone.
There are people who get upset about the language used to communicate results of scientific studies proving the efficiency of vaccines against the ongoing pandemic.
Kids get upset at the language “No” even when uttered to tell them that they can’t go out and play with a chainsaw, purely for their own protection.
You cannot determine if language or language usage is bad purely from the response of others even if they get extremely upset about it.
“Political correctness: is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.” ― Theodore Dalrymple
Or cooler heads prevail like at the Académie Française who recognize that sexual genders are completely unrelated to grammatical genders despite what activists try to say.
So we may just get some people who push back and tell people that chess isn’t racist and it’s people who are injecting race where it doesn’t exist (such as here in chess) who are the problem.
Have cooler heads prevailed in this regard? “Progressive” Americans degendering Spanish by referring to Latino people as “Latinx” seems to be going as strong as ever, despite the protests of actual native Spanish speakers. In their haste to appear progressive, people who say “Latinx” are ironically engaging in linguistic colonialism, as it were.
But that’s the problem with progressives. They trip over themselves trying to be at the front. And yes, I’ve asked people of Latin descent if they use latinx in their speech to which they respond no and that it’s a North American invention and that in Spanish it’s Latino for sing male, Latinos for plural males or combo males and females, and Latina for singular female and latinas for all female but never latinx for any combination of the above.
> Americans degendering Spanish by referring to Latino people as “Latinx”
Depends, do you speak Spanish? If so, there's a governing body - the Real Academia Española (RAE) - and they have referred to the "x" ending as an abomination. It is rejected from the style guide and not acceptable Spanish.
If you want to speak Woke Proto-Spanish, by all means do. Just realize it's not Spanish and it's spoken by a tiny fraction of a percent of - generally American woke-sters desperate to cling to Latin or Spanish culture as they realize they are actually American and as such - not oppressed minorities (the worst of fates!). This is why Oxford recognizes "Latinx" but the RAE does not.
That’s a perfect example of something that literally every single time I’ve seen it mentioned was in the context of people expressing outrage at other people’s activism, and never in the context of an activist actually advocating for it.
I've heard people actually, earnestly, use it. It was high school students, though, so I cut them some slack on the rope of pretentious foolishness. We were all there to some degree when we were teenagers.
I've heard several PhDs use it. They were white English speakers and liberal in their political leanings. It comes across as even more pretentious than high schoolers aping the latest wokeness.
Related: Referring to American Indians as 'Native Americans', which is often seen as over-inclusive by American Indians themselves since it implies you're talking about Natives to the entire North and South America. While not the worst thing, when you are specifically talking about the native tribes the United States pushed out and forcibly moved to reservations, the term 'Indian' is codified in law[0] and is what the group themselves embraced as their identity so that, as a whole, they could bargain with the United States government to obtain compensation for the tragedies endured.
The problem seems to stem from 'American' being synonymous with the United States, when in a literal sense it means the entire North and South America continents. People will probably know what you mean with context but it can be confusing, so adding on 'Native American' just requires more explaining whenever you bring it up when not among peers.
This is a good point, but I'd also be interested in seeing the opinion of Americans with heritage from India, since using 'Indian' to refer to Native Americans might inconvenience them.
It's none of my business but personally I prefer latine[1]. IMO there's no need for white English speakers to tell Spanish speakers their language. We're all on the journey to a world with more than two genders together. Spanish speakers will figure out their own path to inclusivity.
Isn't this connecting a Latin conjugation? Which in turn would be westernization? I understood westernizing people to not be the right thing to do. (Which to be fair, Spanish does originate from Europe but Latin people are not). I never understood this. If someone has a good explanation I'd love to hear.
Isn't Latinx supposed to be Latino+Latina? Surely those two words areactually gendered (in the biological sex way), unlike most words which are gendered in a purely linguistic way.
Latinos is how you gender Latino+Latina in a "purely linguistic way", but some people don't like it, so they made a new word. The masculine word is either gender neutral or "truly" masculine depending on the context, but the feminine counter part always refer to girls/women.
> Or cooler heads prevail like at the Académie Française who recognize that sexual genders are completely unrelated to grammatical genders despite what activists try to say.
But that's not really true. I always learned that, for example, ils (grammar-masculine they) should be used when referring to a group of people where any of the people are sexual-gender-masculine, but elles (grammar-feminine they) should be used when referring to a group of sexual-gender-feminine people. Ils and elles have the same rules when referring to a group of inanimate objects depending on the grammar-gender of the objects.
You're both right. In grammatically gendered languages, various situations and context are present. Sometimes, people get worked up on a non-issue (like the latinx example other commented). Other rules have a more debatable impact, like the famous "in groups, the masculine prevail".
Interestingly, other approaches existed in the past like the rule of proximity where the gender of the closest element will dictate how the verb and adjectives will be written.
Languages are an ever-changing thing. I think it's healthy to propose and discuss grammatical changes if it makes sense, but everyone should be aware of what they are actually talking about.
In Germany we had the same. That didn't stop most newspapers to use some form of weird gendering of language. I think it will fade out since people don't use it.
It also underscores why some people think the media is a partisan mess. It is to some degree at least. They even asked people and most didn't like it. Didn't stop them.
> In 2019, Magnus Carlsen and Anish Giri – who as of July were the number 1 and number 10 players in the world, respectively – promoted a #MoveforEquality campaign as a way of acknowledging social inequalities. In their game, black moved first and the line was, “We broke a rule in chess today, to change minds tomorrow.” It was billed as an anti-racist statement, but some took it as a suggestion to change the rules of chess to black having the first move.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Google moderator AI becomes the source of truth on what is offensive. If google doesn't delete it than clearly it is ok. If google does delete it then it is offensive regardless of anything else.
Or it will at least become a cheap barometer used by journalists: Materials so offensive that they are automatically rejected by all major social networks.
Others have pointed out it's been done -- so it will continue to be done again and again until something gives. But I'd like to point out at least Go is safe for now, since black goes first! (However, white is used by the stronger player when not doing nigiri or playing a handicap game... And I'm sure some artificial drama could be manufactured based on which color you want to give draws to by giving or taking 0.5 from the perfect komi of 7. There's no safe space.)
Or what actually happened was the radio show asked if white going first was racially based, concluding that it was not. But conservative media spent days getting themselves outraged over it before it even aired.
Yes, not too dissimilar to Github changing the branch "master". Is there a list of things like this that match this pattern that would be easy for people to go after given a few viral tweets? I feel like if there is such a list, it'd be less shocking when the inevitable happens.
White goes first because black was considered a lucky color. So if black went first it would have double advantage, from being first and from being the lucky color.
Chess is not only racist but also sexist. How come the king is the most important piece on the board but the queen is completely expendable?! And, for goodness sake, the game features actual white knights.
The Queen is a significantly better piece. The King needs to be protected and is borderline unusable until end game, where the Queen is the most powerful piece from start to finish. This is so evident that in higher levels of play, people just resign when they lose their Queen.
If by higher you mean 1000 ELO then sure. In actual tournament play it's very rare for someone to blunder a queen and resign. Queen exchanges happen in most games and queen sacrifices are fairly common. There are no king exchanges or sacrifices.
