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George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

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Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#421

Post by apricot »

JasserInicide wrote: post #376
0xbadc0de5 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ultimate culmination being certain subreddits where the banned "retarded" has been replaced by the homonym "regarded", such that referring to someone as "highly regarded" is understood to mean the former, not the latter.

Apparently you can't say "suicide" anymore in YouTube videos because it's automatic demonetization so people are now saying "unalive"

In China, similar tricks are used to work around automatic censorship. For instance, in the early days of the covid pandemic:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/03/china-social-...

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#422

Post by tsimionescu »

Angostura wrote: post #419
tsimionescu wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't important for them not to include it, it wasn't important for them to include it. There is a world of difference. And being aggressively ganged up on for something you don't believe is an important detail is an excellent reason to leave a group. It makes it abundantly clear that you have a fundamental difference of values with much of that group.

So when some people suggested that it might be important to include it - they decided not to, despite not including not being important to them. Sounds like it was pretty important to not include it.

No. If I don't think including alt text is important, regardless of what others tell me, I will sometimes add alt text but I may forget to do it, I may decide not to when I'm in a rush, I may be in a mood where I can't be bothered to.

Someone who believes strongly in this may see every instance of me not adding alt text as a slight or as me being obstinate. They may start demanding I go back and add alt text to all my posts retroactively. I may very well refuse to do so, since, in this thought experiment, I don't think it's important enough to spend my time on it. They may get aggressive at this time, since their values are so different from mine.

For a more contrived example, if I told you it's important to me not to see people's shoes in pictures, would you entirely stop posting pictures like that? If you sometimes forgot, and I later asked you to crop all the pictures where you did, would you start doing it just because it's important to me?

I should note I have no idea if this is how things happened for GP. For all I know, they could be making up the whole thing. I'm just trying to point out how someone who is indifferent to X may end up in conflict with someone who is strongly for X.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#423

Post by Angostura »

tsimionescu wrote: post #422
Angostura wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when some people suggested that it might be important to include it - they decided not to, despite not including not being important to them. Sounds like it was pretty important to not include it.

No. If I don't think including alt text is important, regardless of what others tell me, I will sometimes add alt text but I may forget to do it, I may decide not to when I'm in a rush, I may be in a mood where I can't be bothered to. Someone who believes strongly in this may see every instance of me not adding alt text as a slight or as me being obstinate. They may start demanding I go back and add alt text to all m…

Fair enough. Mastodon has, historically taken accessibility for visually impaired folk quite seriously.

Letting them be first class citizens is a laudable aim. I’m probably overly aware of it because I used to work at a school for VI students and I saw their frustration as they used their screen readers to find unlabelled images.

I don’t condone people being arseholes about it. But a bit of nagging to remind people is perfectly acceptable, think. You want to keep it the norm on the system.

It doesn’t need to be an essay. Just ‘a cute cat’ is better than nothing.

In my view it’s common courtesy to a group of people who already have it tough, not a ‘I don’t like shoes’ personal whim.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#424

Post by themadturk »

JoshGG wrote: post #134
tptacek wrote: post #128

Just for fun, from the first example: * Toilet paper -> bathroom tissue --- sure, a softening of the language. * Sneakers -> running shoes --- not a softening; sneakers aren't the same as running shoes, and "sneaker" was a regionalism (it's "gym shoe" where I grew up). * False teeth -> dental appliance --- a softening, though a welcome one in this case. * Medicine -> medication --- a softening (a nominalization of a…

Thanks this is pretty interesting! Re: “car crash”, crash is the correct “real language”. The use of “accident” implies a lack of responsibility and that car crashes cannot be prevented or reduced. That isn’t true. Many studies show that crashes can be reduced via better engineering, road design, etc. Calling it an accident definitely seems like softening the language. https://dmv.vermont.gov/enforcement-and-safety/l…

Early in my long-past journalism career I reported on a collision between two cars. One of the drivers complained because she seemed to think I implied she was at fault. My editor told me to ignore the complaint, since the word "collision" merely says that two objects tried to occupy the same space at the same time, and no fault is implied by the language.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#425

Post by dragonwriter »

JoshGG wrote: post #134
tptacek wrote: post #128

Just for fun, from the first example: * Toilet paper -> bathroom tissue --- sure, a softening of the language. * Sneakers -> running shoes --- not a softening; sneakers aren't the same as running shoes, and "sneaker" was a regionalism (it's "gym shoe" where I grew up). * False teeth -> dental appliance --- a softening, though a welcome one in this case. * Medicine -> medication --- a softening (a nominalization of a…

Thanks this is pretty interesting! Re: “car crash”, crash is the correct “real language”. The use of “accident” implies a lack of responsibility and that car crashes cannot be prevented or reduced. That isn’t true. Many studies show that crashes can be reduced via better engineering, road design, etc. Calling it an accident definitely seems like softening the language. https://dmv.vermont.gov/enforcement-and-safety/l…

An acquaintance who is a California Highway Patrol officer said they are trained not to use the word "accident" and instead use "collision" as the generic term for the class of incidents for that reason: "accident" is a conclusion about the mental state of the people involved, "collision" is the observed fact.

It may turn out to be an accident, it may turn out to be an intentional act. It may turn out to be unclear or irrelevant which it is. But what is known initially (and often all that is ever resolved) is that it is a collision.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#426

Post by DangitBobby »

eesmith wrote: post #414
DangitBobby wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused what conversation you think we're having. Someone said that car crashes are "not accidents." That's fucking crazy, so I'm pushing back on it. They are clearly mostly accidents. Not liking cars, people who make cars, people who sell cars, and people who drive cars doesn't make them not accidents.

This conversation has been going on since the 1990s. There are innumerable articles on the topic. I pointed you to some. Here's a couple more: BMJ bans “accidents” - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1120417/ > For many years safety officials and public health authorities have discouraged use of the word “accident” when it refers to injuries or the events that produce them. An accident is often understood…

Okay man, things you don't like can't be involved in accidents, any harm they cause is intentional, it all makes sense because someone conducted research that has nothing to do with the actual meaning of words.

> A majority of fatal crashes are caused by intoxicated, speeding, distracted, or careless drivers and, therefore, are not accidents. Most importantly, characterizing crashes as accidents, when a driver was intoxicated or negligent, may impede the recovery of crash victims by preventing them from assigning blame and working through the emotions related to their trauma.

These people not understanding what the word accident means is not my problem. If it was not on purpose I don't care if it was "riding on the hood" levels of negligence, the thing that makes it an accident is the intent so all crashes where the driver did not mean to do it would also qualify by the rules of the English language. Crucially, negligence can be, and in fact practically always is, a proximal cause to any accident. Consider, when was the last accident (not car accident, just spilling tea or something) you had that couldn't have been avoided with sufficient protections in place?

Pretty ironic to spout politically motivated redefinitions of the word accident while complaining about astroturfing the terminology surrounding car crashes/accidents.

Before you respond, if you intend to at all, I really need to know, do you understand and agree with what I'm saying? That by the definition of the word accident which I shared up-thread that almost all car crashes are accidents according to that meaning? Because if we can't agree on what words mean when we both have access to the definition, we have no hope of achieving communication.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#427

Post by rhuru »

klyrs wrote: post #319
rhuru wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Term "snowflake" is also something that is will stick around forever now which can be used to describe people who downvote my comment. So is "Cancel Culture". Bottoms up worlds will live on.

If the words have any meaning, Budweiser offended snowflakes, and met Cancel Culture head-on.

It is a storm in a teacup. Budweiser's execs will soon course correct, fire the gender studies majors they hired for their creative team and move on.

Budweiser is not the first nor the last for overdoing the Woke Inc. drama. (Note that Woke itself is a fleeting bottoms up term). Large businesses course correct pretty well.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#428

Post by bigDinosaur »

jyounker wrote: post #214
bigDinosaur wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is 'collateral damage' newspeak? It's a useful concept even if you want to avoid it at all costs, but beyond that euphemisms have existed forever and are not the same as newspeak (which wanted to make something literally unthinkable, not merely euphemistic).

Because it's a euphemism for "killing innocent people".

Again, euphemisms have always and will always exist, they are not the same as newspeak which again had the goal of making certain concepts literally unthinkable. Also you're missing an important part of 'collateral' which is that the deaths were unintentional (whether or not someone cares is another matter - but by definition it means the collateral damage was not the goal).

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#429

Post by theodric »

Angostura wrote: post #418
theodric wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spending 27 years on the Internet

... right, and how many visually impaired people did you talk to about this actual issue? Next week: "Of course I can understand black folk's problems - there are quite a few living in my city.

I'm not running a study, I'm making an anecdotal statement.

That said, my actual position is that inconveniencing every single person who posts an image on a microblogging service by forcing them to write a description of it on the off-chance that a tiny percentage of the population who are visually impaired will want to read it is a net evil. It will, in the short term, antagonize people who just want to post something quickly and get on with life, and in the long term drive lower engagement on the platform as it raises the amount of effort required. It's a waste of potentially a massive amount of tiny slices of a nonrenewable resource: human life time.

What should happen, instead, is that the tech wizards developing the microblogging software use computer vision and language models to provide on-demand transcription of any arbitrary image. If anyone should understand that, it's the audience here.

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