Re: technical terms overhaul

["Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>]

Hi,

Joe wrote:
> What *ought* to be done is make the skin colour descriptions more
> representative of reality.

Correct observation. But i expect that racists would just replace the
discrimination of "black" people by discrimination of those who are
"darker than RAL 1015".


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Not in particular in reply to Joe:

The original proposal to fix social problems by renaming reminds me of
the short story "The New Reality" by Charles L. Harness of 1950. It is
based on the funny idea that the evolution of scientific views on the world
actually shaped the respective physical reality of their ages.

But the world is not like this. Words shape verbal expression, not reality.
To confuse both, one must confuse a library with the universe.

Enslaving humans is abominable regardless of the name that is given to it
or the means used to enforce it.
Discrimination of humans based on their ancestry is not disestablished
by reserving the word "black" to only positive contexts which involve
people with dark skin color.

So what about the two terms and the contexts in question:

Is it immoral to enslave a deterministic program or device ?

If i try to imagine a future civilization which looks back on our times
and our coarse biotope of humans, machines and software, i don't see my
relation to my computers less moral than a grazer's relation to the meadow.
The true victims are the wood and the sea which suffer from the fallout of
my readiness to buy hardware, to get or make software, and to supply power
to them. That's injust to nature, but not injust to computers.

Do blacklist and whitelist have anything to do with skin color ?

A "black list" is nothing nice, but i find no indication that in english or
german language it would be especially related to people of dark skin.

So where - except the coincidence of words - is the connection between the
fight against discrimination of black people and the terms that shall be
changed ?
Coincidence of words with widely different meanings is quite common in
english language. Just lookup "race" and "serve" in a dictionary.

In contrary, i think that the inavoidable connotations of the terms
"blacklist" and "master/slave" can positively remind their users that
there are still injustices in the world which go by the same names.
I hope for times in which the bad meanings are dim history.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas