'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts

[nuclearcat]

I don't mind people getting upset or offended at something I said, that's ok. But once I explain to them the context and the intention, that should be that, end of discussion. But sadly in the vast majority of cases that doesn't happen, these people are simply incapable of understanding nuance and context. And it is impossible to hold any rational conversation with them.

Some people enjoy to invent silly reason, to create conflict for nothing, to literally destroy life of someone (and this someone should have some significanct, they dont want to destroy some noname guy, its not making them satisfied enough). These nonentities enjoy burning every bit of another person well-being, happiness and success, they are not stopping even when their victim wants to kill himself.
Because it makes them feel "successful", they want to feel something that they are not created for, and that they often blame - being "alpha", "a predator tearing apart a helpless prey".
Usually these are pricks in their miserable life tried their best to stand out from the crowd in cheap ways, but they did not really succeed, until they hit jackpot, making scandals and fabricating some lies about other people, "because significant person did <<some trendy thing>>", like used wrong word or phrase.

What really works and when they back off is 2 things:
1)When there is not enough fumes, person that is being attacked is able to put out the scandal (thats how how you do it ,explaining that you didn’t want to offend anyone and this was said in a different context). But sometimes it doesnt work, fire is too big.
2)When attacker taste their own medicine.
I remember some twitter user, professor at uni, was attacked by such person(let's call "warrior"), for some invented reason. "Warrior" didn't stopped on arguing in twitter, started calling and sending professor university emails, and tried to fabricate something so professor get fired.
Professor just highlighted it to his followers, "warror" got dox-ed, professor just told name and only facts in his tweet, what this person did. Then professor followers juste caller his/her job and told about this story to employer of warrior.
"Warrior" deleted story, tried to backoff and asked "professor" to delete tweets, but he said he have no mercy on such people. There is seems a lot of brilliant professors who lost their jobs in academia because of such "warriors".

I remember thunderf00t, Gad Saad and probably some other people has such stories, and probably this is only line of defense to survive attacks of this scum.
Interestingly, Gad Saad makes it clear to everyone that he will not hide and whine, but will immediately begin a counterattack. This scares off most idiots.

"Master and slave" doesn't really serve purpose to fix life of those poor folks who are suffering from slavery flashbacks, it is just new new page in modern <<Malleus Maleficarum>>.

[Zero999]

One thing I've noticed is most people, of any colour, hate false accusations of racism. They feel it undermines everyone fighting for equality and there should be consequencies for anyone making false, malicious allegations. I think falsely accusing someone of racism, is a form of racism in itself and deserves a similar punishment.

It's the same as accusing someone of being a witch, except that at least racism is a real thing and some people actually are racist. In both cases it's a serious accusation by which one is guilty until proven innocent and it is impossible to prove innocence. It's a convenient way to silence someone with which one disagrees.

I agree and the reason why I see it as racist is because it wouldn't happen if the accused was the same colour as the complainant. It's an imbalance of power. The odd thing is it works both ways. On the one hand a greater proportion of white people are in positions of power, but there again people of colour have the advantage of being able to play the race card and bring innocent people, as well as the guilty down. The problem is, it's only people with money to start with who are able to employ good lawyers and make mud stick. If that coach was really racist and called some poor kid in the street nigger, nothing bad would have happened to him.

To really deal with racism. We need to focus less on skin colour and bad words and more on inequalities in society, upward mobility and allowing people of different backgrounds to mix, especially children. Once people of different colours and creeds get to know one another, they'll realise we're all human and that superficial differences such as skin colour don't matter. Unfortunately this will take time and most western governments seem be making a mess of it, so far.

[SilverSolder]

[...]  allowing people of different backgrounds to mix, especially children. Once people of different colours and creeds get to know one another, they'll realise we're all human and that superficial differences such as skin colour don't matter.  [...]

I believe this has already been happening, to large segments of society.  But we have a large "rump" population of reactionaries that haven't made the transition - a kind of hidden group of "left behinds", if you like.   They are hard to reach in part because they insist on their right to see things their way (minds not open to anything new).

[magic]

I believe this has already been happening, to large segments of society.

TV made you believe it, among other well meant attempts to accelerate this process along the logic spelled out by Zero999.
Maybe it has happened to some people in your vicinity too.
But when you look outside large cities (or even at "ghetto" areas in large Western cities) you will see a rather different picture.
And that doesn't even begin to describe the world at large.

I don't have numbers, but I believe America is still heavily segregated geographically. And it certainly is racially segregated by class, something I surely noticed while interning in SV which set me on the whole path of doubting if the liberals actually know what they are doing.

They are hard to reach in part because they insist on their right to see things their way (minds not open to anything new).

Liberalism for you

[SilverSolder]

I believe this has already been happening, to large segments of society.

TV made you believe it, among other well meant attempts to accelerate this process along the logic spelled out by Zero999.
Maybe it has happened to some people in your vicinity too.
But when you look outside large cities (or even at "ghetto" areas in large Western cities) you will see a rather different picture.
And that doesn't even begin to describe the world at large.

I don't have numbers, but I believe America is still heavily segregated geographically. And it certainly is racially segregated by class, something I surely noticed while interning in SV which set me on the whole path of doubting if the liberals actually know what they are doing.

They are hard to reach in part because they insist on their right to see things their way (minds not open to anything new).

Liberalism for you

It seems to me the far right and the far left share the same trait of having their "eyes wide shut".  People somewhere in the middle, trying to make things work, are rarely the problem.

[Simon]

Yes that is the problem which is why I abandoned the green party.

[james_s]

Here there are only two viable parties, the way the system is set up the two big ones have critical mass and any other parties are doomed to succeed only enough to draw votes away from the one with the views most similar to their own which tends to hand the election to the person that neither wanted. I'm not really sure how to fix that either but I've wondered if it would help to have the ability to make a first and second choice on the ballot. Like I'll vote for this guy as my first choice but if he doesn't get enough votes to move forward then fall back on this other guy. As it stands it's all or nothing, you sometimes have to choose between the person you'd really like to support and the person who appears to be the safer choice to beat the one you really don't want.

[Simon]

Yea Australia uses such a system and they tried to get it in the UK but the right wing party lied hard enough about how it would not work and be too expensive and generally confused people enough that they won and there was no change.

[John B]

Yea Australia uses such a system and they tried to get it in the UK but the right wing party lied hard enough about how it would not work and be too expensive and generally confused people enough that they won and there was no change.

We're still stuck flip-flopping between Liberal and Labour parties, although there are major alternatives for representation in the house and senate.

Sadly, one of the major alternatives is the Greens, whom I used to like the idea of, thinking that they were focused on sustainable environmental practices. However, for years now they have devolved into the ultra woke far left party.

[Simon]

same here. Their one and only MP compiled a list of women that should run the country, why i don't know, but she subsequently apologized for not including any (token) black women, that kind of put the nail in the coffin for me and i left.

[james_s]

We're still stuck flip-flopping between Liberal and Labour parties, although there are major alternatives for representation in the house and senate.

Sadly, one of the major alternatives is the Greens, whom I used to like the idea of, thinking that they were focused on sustainable environmental practices. However, for years now they have devolved into the ultra woke far left party.

It seems they are all doing that, drifting outward toward the extreme fringe. In the US the republican party was the first to do that, they shifted further to the right and became much more homogenized at least as far back as the 80s when they pandered to the evangelical christians. The democratic party was a broad spectrum from center to left but now it seems it has followed and gone full leftist while the libertarian party has gone to the extreme of their idealism of essentially no government and zero taxes. Each of them pandered to their extremists and created monsters they could not control. The rest of us are left flopping between choices as each pisses us off as soon as they get into power. At some point they started viewing each other as enemies to be defeated rather than fellow citizens who need to compromise and work together.

[JPortici]

this whole debate is retarded to begin with.

Careful, you'll get people complaining about that term!

still on the verge of publishing a wall of text, but still hanging on it because i know that it would be pointless debate.
Words have different meaning.
Blacklist was a thing long before european knew that there were black people (well, not quite, but the point is the king didn't think of african americans when the term was coined)
African americans were not the only slaves in existence. I would like to remind EVERYBODY that serfdom was a thing up until about 1960s in northern italy and now we still have some sort of slavery in the south. It is a concept i am unable to graps because the way i was raised it is unthinkable to me that people can be this evil to still want to own another person or have a control on someone else that is basically of ownership.

Americans should have stopped imposing their views on the world decades ago, they have done too much harm already.

I'm sorry i could not keep myself but i am really pissed of by this whole situation

Another edit: I know, i know, how can i, a white middle class male, ever have a say in this topic? It's hypocritical both ways. I feel it's impossible to have a discussion, at least in forums

[G7PSK]

Whit listing and black listing are related to 1700's gentlemen's clubs where members would cast secret votes as whether to admit a person as a member or to remove a member by placing ivory balls into a box. White balls were a vote yes and black balls a no vote.
If we are going down this road are we changing the name of a certain colour or two, do I have to change my name which derives from the latin for black.

[SilverSolder]

We're still stuck flip-flopping between Liberal and Labour parties, although there are major alternatives for representation in the house and senate.

Sadly, one of the major alternatives is the Greens, whom I used to like the idea of, thinking that they were focused on sustainable environmental practices. However, for years now they have devolved into the ultra woke far left party.

It seems they are all doing that, drifting outward toward the extreme fringe. In the US the republican party was the first to do that, they shifted further to the right and became much more homogenized at least as far back as the 80s when they pandered to the evangelical christians. The democratic party was a broad spectrum from center to left but now it seems it has followed and gone full leftist while the libertarian party has gone to the extreme of their idealism of essentially no government and zero taxes. Each of them pandered to their extremists and created monsters they could not control. The rest of us are left flopping between choices as each pisses us off as soon as they get into power. At some point they started viewing each other as enemies to be defeated rather than fellow citizens who need to compromise and work together.

Proportional representation is the way around this polarisation - the different parties have to "horse trade", meaning some of the good ideas from smaller parties get a chance to be adopted in return for supporting a larger party or group -  but this would take a lot of work to implement,  a different political culture, and a battle with vested interests.  The largest Western country with something like this working, is probably Germany.

[Nominal Animal]

I have some good friends who are either for banning terms that are claimed to offend others, or at least consider it not a bad idea because it placates people.
I know their hearts and intentions are good.

Which is exactly what makes it so painful to try and show them what that attitude and those actions have always lead to, in human history.
They refuse to consider the problem in long term, and they refuse to consider that their own attitude could be wrong.

I've mentioned the tribalization and seeing humans not as individuals but as groups is a fundamental source of the problems, and I do believe some of the responses to that are a proof of how vehemently opposed even otherwise good-intentioned people are to consider the inevitable effects over their intentions.  Wishes are not actions.

I have now come to the conclusion that there is no way to engage these people in a beneficial manner: there is nothing to be gained by talking with them.  They will not reason, and they will not think; they will not provide any new insights, as they can only repeat their ideological programming.

This is painful, because these people have good intentions, and some of them are dear friends.  Yet, it is exactly their actions and demands that are driving wedges into the society.  You cannot treat individuals equally, if you insist on "positive" discrimination through a class-based system; you only perpetuate a class-based approach of people relating to other people.  At some point, the pendulum will swing again, and it'll just be a different group being discriminated.  Nothing changes, except new individuals are fed into the grinder.

What to do? 

On one hand, let them live life like they want to.  On the other hand, they're ignoring their own behaviour and the effects of their own behaviour, and simply telling others how to behave, because they feel morally superior.  They're being destructive assholes, but with good intentions.

They claim that "master" and "slave" are offensive to people who have never been slaves themselves, but have built themselves a self-image based on their assumed progenitors being subject to "slavery".  This is utterly ridiculous, because there are currently as much real slaves right now than the entire total population in Nordic countries, and these people are not willing to do anything about that – except to tell people to not talk about it.  (Possibly because slavery is prevalent in South Asia and Africa, and forced marriages and honor violence in Middle East; and because people connected to those regions are in particularly protected groups, mentioning this is a bigger crime than slavery itself.)

This is not theoretical in any way, by the way.  In Finland, the exact same happened with regards to prostitution in the last decade or so.  In order to reduce street prostitution, the laws were changed in a way that resulted in significant increase in human trafficking (especially for prostitution).  But, because the trafficking is underground, and out of sight, and does not involve the politicians' own daughters, this situation is widely considered more preferable.  Out of sight, out of mind.  Clicking "thumbs up" on a social media post is now more important than actually helping your neighbor carry a heavy load, because the former is visible, the latter invisible in the social world.

In all Nordic countries, honor violence and forced marriage is a huge problem, because the legal system lacks any tools to fight against this.  Any attempts to do so, are countered as "islamophobic" and thus utterly racist.  Women who have a fatwa but still talk about their own experiences and why something should be done about this are shunned and "disinvited", because they don't fit into the narrative.  They don't get silenced, just shadowbanned.

And herein lies the true core.

Just like "Codes of Conduct", redefinition and banning of terms will only enforce the divides between people.  This is particularly visible in technical mailing lists, where it can be difficult or even impossible to get any of the maintainers to react to a difficult situation, because any negative reaction has huge negative social impact, but ignoring people is utterly safe.

It is also increasingly visible in scientific research, where delving into a new topic is frowned upon, and doing the same research others are doing is easiest to get funds for.  "Do not rock the boat."

The true core of this, and I believe even Karl Marx was well aware of this, is to divide et impera: to categorize people in groups where inter-group interactions are frowned upon, because such groups – especially when ostensibly "anti-authoritarian" – are much easier to control completely, than individuals.

(As a trivial example, consider traffic patterns.  We can model traffic flow very precisely using very simple models, except they all fail at the individual motorist level.  Groups are modelable and controllable, individuals much less so.)

So, it is truly not about not offending people: it is about teaching them to limit themselves to intra-group interactions, and avoid all inter-group interaction as dangerous.
(You can see this already popping up in the various popular movements: if you aren't X, bend the knee and be silent.  This space is for Y only.)

I do not believe there is a fix to it that does not involve massive amounts of suffering and destruction.

I am seriously contemplating dropping all my academic endeavours – even though I made a very hard decision 15 years ago to drop business and switch to low-level physics research and simulator development –, and instead move to a small city or a large village, and limit my interactions to a group the size of humans have evolved to deal with (~ max. 2000), and to hell with the rest of the world: humanity is not sane.  But, on the level of individuals, a good example, a good pattern, has at least a chance to spread.

[coppice]

I have some good friends who are either for banning terms that are claimed to offend others, or at least consider it not a bad idea because it placates people.

Well, there is their first mistake. These moves don't placate anyone. They embolden people to search for more and more tenuous links between words and oppression. Remember that the basic principal of critical theory is to keep scratching at everything until it is torn to shreds. Soon we'll be using newspeak.

[EEVblog]

Adafruit are replacing Master/Slave and other terms in all their documentation:
https://www.adafruit.com/blacklivesmatter

[EEVblog]

Just occurred to me how widespread the term "white paper" is.
That's next, guaranteed.

Maybe the resistor colour code? If you think even the thought of that is ridiculous, just wait. Black and brown are on the bottom, and white is on the top.

[Brumby]

Maybe the resistor colour code? If you think even the thought of that is ridiculous, just wait. Black and brown are on the bottom, and white is on the top.

Alternate perspective: Black and brown are far more important than white.  Just think of how many values of components actually use these colours and how many use white.  You could even say white was thrown in only to make up the 10 needed.  The other 9 do form a logical progression around the ROYGBIV sequence of the rainbow.  Even grey is used more than white.

As well as for digits, black and brown are frequently used for multipliers.  I've never seen a component with a white band multiplier.

[EEVblog]

Maybe the resistor colour code? If you think even the thought of that is ridiculous, just wait. Black and brown are on the bottom, and white is on the top.

Alternate perspective: Black and brown are far more important than white.  Just think of how many values of components actually use these colours and how many use white.  You could even say white was thrown in only to make up the 10 needed.

As well as for digits, black and brown are frequently use for multipliers.  I've never seen a component with a white band multiplier.

Actually, come to think of it, on every depiction I've seen black and brown are on top, and white is on the bottom. So I guess that's 

[DimitriP]

Adafruit are replacing Master/Slave and other terms in all their documentation:
https://www.adafruit.com/blacklivesmatter

(Attachment Link)

Another jumpjack that can't break away

And why does Adafruit need a certificate valid until end of June 2025 that is "woman owned"? 
https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/06/17/adafruit-is-a-certified-minority-and-woman-owned-business-enterprise-m-wbe/
Is her mirror broken? What happens July 1st  2025?
Wasn't it "woman owned last year too ?
So many questions....

[PlainName]

Adafruit are replacing Master/Slave and other terms in all their documentation:

Got to say that in their case the alternative 'microcontroller out, sensor in' does make sense and is more descriptive. Of course, it's bollocks for the protocol proper, but since Adafruit generally make micro-controlled stuff this would no doubt save an entry in their FAQ.

[magic]

It seems to me the far right and the far left share the same trait of having their "eyes wide shut".  People somewhere in the middle, trying to make things work, are rarely the problem.

You can show a horse water but you cannot force him to drink.

This is what the commies didn't understand and the USSR is no more. It is also what the Western liberals don't understand and we can guess what's coming - same trivialization and intimidation tactics against half of the population, and a slowly but surely growing rot and decline. Everything that you are trying to make work will not work and should have never been attempted to make work. That's my message in one sentence if you wish.

One day you will realize that because of people like me you will never have good things and you will become a radical SJW yourself. Or you will give up like I did. Or you will be posting like one former member here "I'm glad that I'm old enough to die soon anyway, so what do I care, I have done my due for social progress". Or you will be like Chomsky - old wise sage watching the world burn because nobody listens to him nor ever will.

Liberalism as we know it is based on wishful thinking for things that failed to materialize. It's depleted and has no future. Americans could have realized 10 years ago that it's bunk when they were crying that the Internet will democratize communications and give voice to marginalized people, completely oblivious that they have spent their whole lives marginalizing racists

I still cannot believe how dumb people like Jack Dorsey were and they deserve every single vote that had been cast for You Know Who a few years later. Silicon Valley is in massive damage control ever since, trying to somehow restore the old system of liberal "gatekeeping" without violating their supposedly liberal (almost anarchist) principles.


I have spent years arguing with SV liberals that they should slow down, long before the whole trainwreck of mid-2010s happened. I'm done. I will watch their world burn.

My only concern at this point is to contain America and keep it from metastasizing.

[EEVblog]

Yea Australia uses such a system and they tried to get it in the UK but the right wing party lied hard enough about how it would not work and be too expensive and generally confused people enough that they won and there was no change.

We're still stuck flip-flopping between Liberal and Labour parties, although there are major alternatives for representation in the house and senate.

Yes, we have independents in the senate, although sadly only one at present, but it has been more. And some smaller parties too.
My electorate has no independent candidates, so I'm forced to pick a party, I hate that and have even thought about running as an independent myself so I can vote for myself 

[Nominal Animal]

have even thought about running as an independent myself so I can vote for myself 

I'd hate for someone like me getting real political power; they'd be a straight up dick-tator.