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A curated list of falsehoods programmers believe

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Re: A curated list of falsehoods programmers believe

#71

Post by CoastalCoder »

lostcolony wrote: post #45
BitwiseFool wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In regards to your last line, I feel like we do need to give people some leeway and not assume bigoted intent. Most of the things we can gig people for not implementing nowadays are only recently important in our cultural consciousness. English has traditionally shied away from using accents and one can reasonably assume that if a person signs up for my English language website, they won't be using Chinese characters…

Bias isn't the same as being bigoted. If when you find out you missed it you go "Oh, crap, you're right! We should fix that" you had a bias. If when you find out you missed it you start to defend why it's fine to not include it (not to admit you should, but maybe you don't have time/it isn't worth the cost), that's the point it's bigoted. It's the difference between making a mistake, and getting defensive that it was…

> If when you find out you missed it you start to defend why it's fine to not include it (not to admit you should, but maybe you don't have time/it isn't worth the cost), that's the point it's bigoted. > > It's the difference between making a mistake, and getting defensive that it wasn't a mistake.

I think that definition is pretty good, but it also reveals something about the popular usage of the term "bigot".

IIUC, an underlying assumption in the parent comment is a person is at fault for not accommodating the offended party's preferred taxonomy / categories / terminology. That a person is a "bigot" if they see their system's current taxonomy as better or more appropriate.

Merriam-Webster's definition is somewhat different [0]: "a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices".

Note that with MW's definition, either or both persons in that "you missed it" conversation could be labelled a bigot, depending on how obstinately they held onto their views.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bigot

Re: A curated list of falsehoods programmers believe

#72

Post by a_shovel »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #50
a_shovel wrote: post #19

I think the lesson to take from these lists is that covering every edge case for many real-world situations becomes asymptotically difficult. You can get 95% with no effort at all, 99% with a bit of thought, 99.9% with some effort, 99.99% with a smart design, some research, and a lot of effort, and anything further requires making it your full-time job indefinitely. It gets thornier when it comes to personal things l…

> That said, it is incredibly revealing of your personal biases...if you implement gender as a boolean that also determines the user's pronouns. It is probably revealing of your personal biases that you cannot imagine systems in languages other than English that need to do some of this since multiple parts of the language, including verbs, are necessarily gendered, with a neutral gender usually only reserved for inan…

Everyone has biases, that's just a fact. Something can only be unbiased in comparison to something else that has the same biases. Having biases doesn't make you evil.

Yeah, I only considered English language sites, not other languages that don't support gender-neutrality as easily. I think I should add something about them, though. I don't see how any language could possibly require gender to be implemented as a boolean. If you've got an English-language site you're translating to another language, and you've implemented a selector for "he", "she", and "they" pronouns without direct reference to gender in the English version, you could just re-use the same implementation in your language with different options.

(Also, I can guarantee that there's someone who speaks your language that prefers to be referred to in the neutral/inanimate form. Doesn't matter which language. It's fine not to support that on the site, just wanted to point it out.)

Re: A curated list of falsehoods programmers believe

#73

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

xdennis wrote: post #11

The original one about names was about exposing people to different culture's perspective (like how Icelanders have last names based on their father's first name), but this expands into nonsensical territory like "people can change genders multiple times a day"[1]. It just feels like being a rebel for rebellion's sake. [1]: https://medium.com/gender-2-0/falsehoods-programmers-believe...

It has a name. "Gender fluid."

And just because you don't understand it doesn't mean that it isn't some peoples' life experience.

Reference: I know a child who is not at all rebellious or attention-seeking but who expresses this as their inner experience.

Dismissing that experience is rude.

Re: A curated list of falsehoods programmers believe

#74

Post by CoastalCoder »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #38
RobertRoberts wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...it is incredibly revealing of your personal biases... I think that is an unfair accusation. I've been coding for over 20 years, and I have only had to enable UTF8 to cover all corners of use cases (web based data/content) to special characters. I work with companies in multiple foreign countries, and my biases are irrelevant to technically working systems.

The bias in this is whatever belief system one might have to say "ASCII is good enough". Or whatever level of ignorance to believe that ASCII is good enough without understanding that it cannot be. Etc.

> The bias in this is whatever belief system one might have to say "ASCII is good enough".

Could there also be bias in the statement "ASCII is not good enough."?

Re: A curated list of falsehoods programmers believe

#75

Post by throwaway675309 »

feoren wrote: post #63
xdennis wrote: post #11

The original one about names was about exposing people to different culture's perspective (like how Icelanders have last names based on their father's first name), but this expands into nonsensical territory like "people can change genders multiple times a day"[1]. It just feels like being a rebel for rebellion's sake. [1]: https://medium.com/gender-2-0/falsehoods-programmers-believe...

The reason I like "people can change genders multiple times per day" is not because it suggests your implementation of gender should support that, but rather that you should not try to implement gender at all . One of the main messages from these is to stop mindlessly asking for "Last Name" or "Gender" when your system has no need for that information to do its job. Get your system to do its main job, and if there is…

Some systems do require some form of gender identification, specifically any type of system dealing with naturally generated text in languages where conjugation and other semantic elements can change based on the speaker.

Re: A curated list of falsehoods programmers believe

#76

Post by throwaway675309 »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #73
xdennis wrote: post #11

The original one about names was about exposing people to different culture's perspective (like how Icelanders have last names based on their father's first name), but this expands into nonsensical territory like "people can change genders multiple times a day"[1]. It just feels like being a rebel for rebellion's sake. [1]: https://medium.com/gender-2-0/falsehoods-programmers-believe...

It has a name. "Gender fluid." And just because you don't understand it doesn't mean that it isn't some peoples' life experience. Reference: I know a child who is not at all rebellious or attention-seeking but who expresses this as their inner experience. Dismissing that experience is rude.

I've always said you can identify as whatever you want, just don't expect me to try to constantly keep up with it.

Re: A curated list of falsehoods programmers believe

#77

Post by kdeldycke »

allendoerfer wrote: post #8
biasedestimate wrote: post #4

falsehood n+1: it is a good idea to compile a long lists of falsehoods, based on information from random websites.

I think the falsehood is: Bookmarking poorly organized lists will make you avoid all their pitfalls. Also: Lists from the Internet are correct.

Got this covered at: https://kevin.deldycke.com/2016/12/falsehoods-programmers-be...

Re: A curated list of falsehoods programmers believe

#78

Post by eyelidlessness »

a_shovel wrote: post #19

I think the lesson to take from these lists is that covering every edge case for many real-world situations becomes asymptotically difficult. You can get 95% with no effort at all, 99% with a bit of thought, 99.9% with some effort, 99.99% with a smart design, some research, and a lot of effort, and anything further requires making it your full-time job indefinitely. It gets thornier when it comes to personal things l…

> It gets thornier when it comes to personal things like names and gender. If you tell a group of people that their identity isn't supported by your system, some people will accept that and work around it, some people will be mad at you, and you'll just have to accept that the latter have a good point. You have to stop developing it at some point, so all you can do is try to cover as many people as possible.

That’s a pretty big if, which itself reveals a bias. While it’s certainly not going to cover every single identity, the following will likely cover vastly more than added effort:

1. Do you need to ask for the data at all?

2. If 1, do you need to require the data?

3. If 1, unless you have to comply with arbitrary external requirements (eg law), use a free form text field.

4. Test that the text field and accompanying information is accessible to assistive tools. This usually comes for free if you use built in tools.

5. If not 2, affirmatively indicate that entering anything is optional.

6. Ask for feedback on how you can do it better, again making this obviously optional. If the feedback is meaningful (i.e. “I cannot use this”, rather than “I would prefer this be less inclusive”), accommodate it.

Re: A curated list of falsehoods programmers believe

#79

Post by kmod »

This kind of thing scares me about the current state of AI. Language models are trained to produce text that looks like the training data, but if the training data has falsehoods they will happily repeat those falsehoods.

I just put the example into GPT3: Prompt: Can an email address contain more than one @ sign? Answer: No, an email address can only contain one @ sign.

I'm on my phone so it's a bit laborious to test more

Re: A curated list of falsehoods programmers believe

#80

Post by bko »

stormbrew wrote: post #60
bko wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Frankly, even inside of medicine it's usually not terribly relevant, and is often a poor proxy for the information they really want out of it. Sex is incredibly important inside medicine. It's probably the most important distinguishing characteristic when determining how to diagnose and treat someone (maybe weight is more). Here are a few examples: - 99% of breast cancer occurs in women - any diseases affecting the…

Yep, called the kneejerk. These are statistical differences. If you want to know if they apply to an individual you need to know more. A checkbox on a form is not sufficient. If you're usefully aggregating data for some purpose, say for a study, then go off ask all the relevant indicators you want. If it's an intake form for an eye doctor appointment, it won't tell you dick all. If a patient came in for a breast exam…

> If it's an intake form for an eye doctor appointment, it won't tell you dick all.

Where are you getting your information?

Results: Sex and sex hormones influence the lacrimal system, eyelids and blinking, corneal anatomy and disease, aqueous humor dynamics and glaucoma, crystalline lens and cataract, uveitis and retinal disease, ocular circulation, and optic nerve anatomy and disease. Systemic conditions, particularly autoimmune disease, and conditions that are unique to women, such as pregnancy and menopause, further illustrate the effects of sex hormones on the eye. Gender-based differences in ocular conditions and disease should be considered within the context of the underlying physical and social environment.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19811761/

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