I find the recent (last four years especially) disdain and disapproval for pure capitalism, free-market, and smaller government here on HN somewhat baffling. I have been active on HN since early 2011 and there was much more active discussion and approval of capitalism, business, and libertarian ideology before. I suspect Trump has pushed people who were central or fiscally conservative to the far left, but frankly the consensus on HN seems to support the more radical socialist and anti-capitalist ideas now a days. Not even to mention the utter evaporation of free speech (in its pure form) and complete over politically correctness in technology (see master branch and master / slave changes).
The Fuhrer analogy is a typical stretching of reality and truth to suit your argument. Master / slave in computer science has deep roots. Parallel ATA, master clock, databases, distributed systems. There have been multiple african american technologist who have come out saying it's not offensive, I am willing to bet the people that are pushing for the change are in fact not african american but white. Thus virtue signaling, without actually taking the group who is affected into account and polling their opinions.
Assuming you genuinely made a sincere effort and could not come up with plausible reasons for the resistance, I'll mention a couple that immediately came to my mind:
- Breaking existing conventions
- Using "being offended" as a way to control someone else's language
I can see resistance, but I'm surprised by how much.
I see the inconvenience of the former, but I don't see how it ignites the passion I see in these disagreements. :%s/master/main/g should go a long way, right?
The latter is nothing new; it's the Overton window, which has existed for a long time. This issue seems like a small shift in the window.
The early hackers were in it for love of computers and what one could do with them. You had to be a real nerd, in the derogatory sense, to want to dig deep into computers and it took considerable skill to get the primitive hardware (by modern standards) to do what you wanted, which acted as a natural filter. They were explorers, free spirits, many of them deeply anti-authoritarian.
Once it became clear that literally everybody needed a website and consequently fat paychecks were easily had, the gold rush started and those motivated primarily by money started flooding in. The old hacker ethos was gone, replaced with a new one "Greed is good"[0]. The old appreciation for elegant design and clever hacks was replaced with a mentality of slapping things together for the customer with the least effort possible so that one could go on to the next.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 22.1 ms ] threadFor Blacks in America, the master/slave language is rooted in painful history.
I don't understand why it's so hard to believe that, or why a simple change in terminology sees so much resistance.
I won't be replying again, as it's hard to believe you're communicating in good faith.
- Breaking existing conventions
- Using "being offended" as a way to control someone else's language
I see the inconvenience of the former, but I don't see how it ignites the passion I see in these disagreements. :%s/master/main/g should go a long way, right?
The latter is nothing new; it's the Overton window, which has existed for a long time. This issue seems like a small shift in the window.
Once it became clear that literally everybody needed a website and consequently fat paychecks were easily had, the gold rush started and those motivated primarily by money started flooding in. The old hacker ethos was gone, replaced with a new one "Greed is good"[0]. The old appreciation for elegant design and clever hacks was replaced with a mentality of slapping things together for the customer with the least effort possible so that one could go on to the next.
That's what happened.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HraaYH-sJBI
Ethics in CS are becoming much more important as technology becomes more powerful. AI, mass surveillance, big tech...
Of course there's going to be more pushback & activism, we're not hacking phone lines with whistles anymore. People — lives — are at risk.