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Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

itcommunity.stanford.edu

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Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#561
My two cents.

IDK what's going on in US and I barely speak English, so often people here can't understand me. Sorry about that that sentence, it implies I am the chief and you white people have to make and effort to vaguely making out an idea of what I'm saying. Despite my bad English.

>, that's the King's Indian Defense opening. I often using it when I'm black and my opponent are failing to install his London System. Sorry about that wording. It implies I am the King, or at least, someone is the King and someone is the Indian, the indigenous people who obey and defend the Empire. Well it's just a bishop, you know, that I left in a diagonal. Bishop, obispo, implies I am not an Anglican I guess, I don't mean it. And really really I am not black enough, but you know the rules: one time you are white, then you are black.

>. That's interesting. Did not Kant said time is a synthetic a priori knowledge? I'm disagree Mr. Time is a thing we teach each other. My parents struggle hard with my perceiving of time when I was a child, I guess. I wonder how time is like to people like Messi. In my corner of the world we often refers to > meaning it's expecting you late.

>. You all know how 'boring' they are. And no, they are no clients, clients are often smart and, I'm thinking of Betterbird, crisps.

> thanks for the phrase. I like that. Even is a kind of metaphor that for and instant suggests white people, or some people, are indians or indigenous and other are chiefs, you know leaders of people who are born in a certain place.

But, I'm a > and gonna make it.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#562
post #371

Probably what you should take away from this is not “wokism gone crazy” (err, sorry “wild”). The more important lesson here is that the bloat in academic institutions has gotten so outrageous that people start bullshit time-consuming initiatives to justify their positions and the positions of their reports. Absolutely no one will take this seriously including the person who wrote it but they will be able to put it on…

You say this, and yet much of the tech industry has taken to removing words like blacklist and whitelist already, even though they have no racial undertones whatsoever. Similarly, the master branch of many projects has been renamed to main, even though it had nothing to do with slavery, and master remains an extremely common term.

I've had luck pushing back against it. I'm not sure if it's because I'm in Japan which doesn't buy into woke culture or if the people around me had just had a gutsful too. It doesn't hurt to try.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#564
post #555

I reject the notion that anyone hearing or reading a word from this list could possibly experience anything properly categorized as "harm". This is what's known in the sports world as "flopping" - feigning an injury to elicit a penalty on the other team. Except academia has taken it even further. You don't even need to pretend that you're the one injured. You can make up an imaginary person and pretend they are injur…

You're basically positing that words have no possible effect and anyone actually hurt by words is just pretending.

Sure, we're not expecting every single word on these lists to have any random person go cry in the corner, but those are pretty long lists and I could totally see specific people getting hit at the right angle and be affected enough to warrant consideration.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#565
post #371

Probably what you should take away from this is not “wokism gone crazy” (err, sorry “wild”). The more important lesson here is that the bloat in academic institutions has gotten so outrageous that people start bullshit time-consuming initiatives to justify their positions and the positions of their reports. Absolutely no one will take this seriously including the person who wrote it but they will be able to put it on…

> Probably what you should take away from this is not “wokism gone crazy”

Perhaps not, but every year this rhetoric grows more and more aggressive - and thanks to social media - is now leaking into our everyday vernacular.

At what point do we say “this is enough” rather than hand-waving it away as yet another excess of academia?

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#566

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it." —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

Interestingly the theory of restricting language to control thought has been debunked. But personally, I do think that our range of acceptable speech can impact our thoughts in more subtle ways both positive and negative.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#567
post #555

I reject the notion that anyone hearing or reading a word from this list could possibly experience anything properly categorized as "harm". This is what's known in the sports world as "flopping" - feigning an injury to elicit a penalty on the other team. Except academia has taken it even further. You don't even need to pretend that you're the one injured. You can make up an imaginary person and pretend they are injur…

You're basically positing that words have no possible effect and anyone actually hurt by words is just pretending. Sure, we're not expecting every single word on these lists to have any random person go cry in the corner, but those are pretty long lists and I could totally see specific people getting hit at the right angle and be affected enough to warrant consideration.

Words have an effect, but you can choose how to react to them. You cannot be harmed by them unless you choose to allow yourself to feel that way. Your internal mental state is under your control.

If someone hits me with a bat with sufficient force, I have no control over whether my bones break or not. If someone says a mean thing, or something that could theoretically be interpreted as mean if you completely ignore their intent and context, I 100% have control over how I feel about that.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#568
post #555

I reject the notion that anyone hearing or reading a word from this list could possibly experience anything properly categorized as "harm". This is what's known in the sports world as "flopping" - feigning an injury to elicit a penalty on the other team. Except academia has taken it even further. You don't even need to pretend that you're the one injured. You can make up an imaginary person and pretend they are injur…

You're basically positing that words have no possible effect and anyone actually hurt by words is just pretending. Sure, we're not expecting every single word on these lists to have any random person go cry in the corner, but those are pretty long lists and I could totally see specific people getting hit at the right angle and be affected enough to warrant consideration.

I am in favor of inclusion, but if someone is being affected by the word 'user' in IT context, or 'white space' talking about text, the problem is not the language.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#569

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it." —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

I read the article, then immediately Ctrl-F'ed this forum for 1984. Here's a hug.

Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

#570
post #555

I reject the notion that anyone hearing or reading a word from this list could possibly experience anything properly categorized as "harm". This is what's known in the sports world as "flopping" - feigning an injury to elicit a penalty on the other team. Except academia has taken it even further. You don't even need to pretend that you're the one injured. You can make up an imaginary person and pretend they are injur…

Although a lot of this list seems silly, it also has slurs like "retard" and "jewed" on it, which i think are very reasonably considered offensive.

I think the tarball thing is rediculous, but the opposite extreme of no words can be hurtful is also rediculous.

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