Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

itcommunity.stanford.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 1001 posts

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

#771

Post by wazoox »

cipheredStones wrote: post #332

It's pretty remarkable that this conflates: - Well-known slurs like "Jewed" - Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite" - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica" - Gendered terms that if you're being assiduous you probably want to avoid, like "manpower" - Words that have long since lost any stigmatizing meaning by virtue of the original use being so ancient ("lame", "dumb", "stupid") - Words that,…

> Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite"

As far as I know, it describes a real state of things; for instance snails are hermaphrodite, and I don't think anyone ought to feel insulted by this banal fact.

The dumbest series of the list are those words containing "white" or "black" (from "blackballed" and "black hat" to "white-space") which supposedly now carry racial undertones (hint: they don't, and never did).

It looks almost like a plot by rich, progressive people to build a culture war with rich, right-wing people to prevent any serious debate on environmental collapse, class exploitation, plutocracy, etc. You could nearly believe that all those supposedly warring high-ranking people play a clever game together to actually keep the power structure as is, and make minuscule problems obfuscate real ones. Almost.

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

#772

Post by bedhead »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #733
imgabe wrote: 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…

> I reject the notion that anyone hearing or reading a word from this list could possibly experience anything properly categorized as "harm". If you don't feel uncomfortable for any of these words or phrases, then consider yourself fortunate; it does not apply to you. But don't dismiss it because you're not offended for any of the words, just be fortunate it's not a problem you have.

Govern by lowest common denominator, what could possibly go wrong?

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

#773

Post by stelonix »

forgetfulness wrote: post #766

Oh wow there was "latinx" there. People from Latin America take a lot of umbrage at having this little exonym pushed on us, believe me. It feels like colonialism. The term "Hispanic" is already very broad to refer to people from a large collection of polities with several cultural spheres in it, but at least the concept of "hispanoamérica" exists in it, and the word isn't a novel take on the Spanish language coming f…

The best example of how all of this is just a huge virtue signaling effort. I don't want to be called latinx and it's not a bunch of yankees feeling guilty of their government who's going to choose what to call us. It's the most colonial term I've seen from these types and it's unpronounceable in either Spanish or Portuguese. A juice of wokism.

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

#774

Post by laserdancepony »

divan wrote: post #411

I'm actually glad someone puts it into one list. I grew up in a society that used words like "disabled" left and right, as an insult. As a child I never saw ramps for the wheelchairs, and seldom saw people on a wheelchair (only in hospitals). That was part of the culture of ostracising "different people" and making sure "normal" people don't see them. It's still the case for mental issues though, and I have friends w…

I feel violated by your embracement of thought policing.

This is not a "change in culture" or describing people voluntarily changing their views. This is fascism in new clothes - "Kauft nicht bei Juden!".

The reason for authoring documents like the discussed is not to better yourself, it's to ostracise those who do not abide. Get them fired from their jobs, burn down their homes and cars, slander them so they may never ever dare to call someone obviously male "Mister". This is getting completely out of hand, and it will end bloody I presume.

I rename every git main back to master in my projects, I use blacklists, I will not give one foot to the batshit insane.

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

#776

Post by dpratt »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #733
imgabe wrote: 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…

> I reject the notion that anyone hearing or reading a word from this list could possibly experience anything properly categorized as "harm". If you don't feel uncomfortable for any of these words or phrases, then consider yourself fortunate; it does not apply to you. But don't dismiss it because you're not offended for any of the words, just be fortunate it's not a problem you have.

You feeling uncomfortable, or even offended, isn't even remotely what most people consider "harm", and frankly it's a little bit offensive that the equivalence has been made.

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

#777

Post by unethical_ban »

yunwal wrote: 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…

We do have to take it seriously. We, collectively, all people who find this paper to be shocking and foolish, need to loudly declare it as such and ridicule the notion.

If this kind of thinking is tolerated without pushback, it will become the default. Advocates of this thinking are dedicated radicals who care more about implementing it than most people like you (not meaning offense) who would just chuckle and do nothing, thinking it is silly.

This is Stanford University. This is a prestigious engineering university, not UMass Amherst.

---

edit to add: The thing that absolutists don't appreciate, whether they are far-woke speech warriors like this submission, or far-right conservatives worried about any shift in the status-quo, is that *there is a line, somewhere in the middle, for all things*. We need to be thoughtful about some speech, but this list is the logical extreme of it. We need to understand systemic racism exists in the US, but we don't need to make every single aspect of society revolve around race. We need to support the poor and the uneducated and the unemployed more than we do today, but we don't need to give them blank checks or have completely open borders.

In American discussion today, there seems to be little room for nuance like this, for "practical lines" like this, because each side either wants or is afraid of an idea being taken to its logical extreme.

It is up to people who agree with this to understand that there is a line, and as such, one needs to *hold that line*. Radicals will try to push it too far, and we need to stop them vocally. "c"onservatives will try never to move the line, and we need to make them budge.

It is not feasible to "just ignore" any large organization looking to move the line too far. It has to be actively challenged.

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

#778

Post by pc86 »

Others have called out some the silliness on this list, but honestly my biggest problem with it is that it's just so lazy, and often times flat out incorrect in its assumptions.

- "Consider using 'devoted' instead of 'addicted.'" I'm sorry but you don't develop a physical devotion to heroin. It's an addiction.

- They say the phrase "committed suicide" is problematic because it "trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions" and I'm not sure how in the world you can come to that conclusion unless you're using a completely different (and wrong) definition of "committed" as in being committed to a mental hospital.

- Every word that contains "man" or "woman" as part of it just lazily replaces it with "person." I'm sorry, but "congressperson" is never going to be a word and nobody is ever going to use it in any serious context. "Member of Congress" has been around for a couple hundred years but mention of that completely acceptable alternative.

- Nobody has ever said "landlady"

- "Latinx" is used almost exclusively by the type of person who comes up with this list in the first place.

This list reads like ChatGPT trained exclusively on social justice parody.

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

#780

Post by wazoox »

veltas wrote: post #520
cipheredStones wrote: post #332

It's pretty remarkable that this conflates: - Well-known slurs like "Jewed" - Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite" - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica" - Gendered terms that if you're being assiduous you probably want to avoid, like "manpower" - Words that have long since lost any stigmatizing meaning by virtue of the original use being so ancient ("lame", "dumb", "stupid") - Words that,…

It's my opinion that the best policy is no policy. If you make rules people will break them. And when the rules are so strict it means nobody bothers. If the rules aren't strict some will push it as far as they can. Everything has context. But in general I think people are far too easily offended today, and considering offense a valid issue to fight on has turned out to be a real rabbit hole. Unfortunately, there's n…

> It's my opinion that the best policy is no policy. If you make rules people will break them.

That's precisely the point of such obscure, arbitrary ruleset. Keep everyone obediently in line. Keep everyone on the edge, afraid of "failing" and being subjected to a Maoist style trial that they can't win. That's a tool of power and oppression, under the smart disguise of forbidding relationships of power and oppression.

Post reply on HN