For the people who don't use it as alphabet, i don't see a reason to learn the roman alphabet just to be able to use a computer. Imagine if you had to learn cyrillic alphabet or mandarin ideograms to use a computer?!
That's called Chinese characters in English. In its entirety, that writing system is based on logograms, hence, a programming language uses logograms, too, not only ideograms. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22216125
Pretty much any sequence of unicode centers one linguistic tradition over another. Even choosing more modern arabic numerals over Roman numerals exclude some civilizations. I don't see a solution except for people to be, perhaps, a bit more flexible.
We should question is more flexibility always a good thing? We have lot of established words and concepts? Should we be more flexible and invent new ones every time we try to communicate something? Or maybe cultural references too? Change those too why not? Maybe use Bob and Alice to refer story of two lovers ending in tragic end?
> We should question is more flexibility always a good thing?
In general, i would say so. A great deal of wars and suffering would be avoided if people were slightly more flexible and not so much into ethnocentric interpretations of the world.
> invent new ones every time we try to communicate something?
When explaining other concepts than cryptography, do you systematically borrow the same names? I guess not. Why would cryptography be any different?
In math variable names x, y, z are very common. Same goes for angles with greek alphabet. Maybe we should sometimes replace these with characters from other cultures? Maybe in programming we should start using things like umlauts as variables in short loops...
> Maybe we should sometimes replace these with characters from other cultures?
Isn't that precisely what you're advocating for with angles and the greek alphabet? I don't know about you, but i personally had to learn about greek letters in math classes, and that's something i could have done without, especially when there's other standard means of designating an angle.
That's not what i read in the article, and i think noone is making that point. You deformed the argument to make it appear ridiculous, whether consciously or not. It's as if you claimed anti-sexism in the cinema industry means never again having men on screen.
There is no thought police coming for you if you disagree with a rather-insignificant change. But of course feeling threatened by better representation of different cultures in education is weird.
That kind of argument is directly rehearsed from the neofascist international movement (Generation Identitaire & friends) and their "great replacement" / "clash of cultures" theory. I'm not saying you belong to that movement or that you're a despicable human being in any regard (i've never met you and barely interacted with you), but i would recommend to question that kind of racist narrative pushed by mainstream media in the last decade or so (especially since the start of the so-called "migrant crisis").
First, the rule is never to use them for cultural reasons and that just replaces the cultural hegemony of one group with another.
Second, there's an advantage to everyone using the same names again and again. When I see the names, I know it's going to be a protocol discussion. If someone inserts, say, a Chinese name in the proper unicode with a slavic name in cyrilic, I've got to think and try to figure out what is going on. Eventually I'll catch on, but it slows down comprehension.
Where was it suggested that Alice and Bob names be banned altogether? Having one class/university use different names is far from erasure.
> replaces the cultural hegemony of one group with another
What new group would that be dominating the narrative? Is "all other cultures than anglo-saxon" a unified cultural group? Is this hypothetical group exerting power over others in what can be called "cultural hegemony" (cultural domination)?
From my perspective as a white French person, who was taught in schools/media that colonization was a virtuous enterprise to civilize lesser cultures, power is still vastly in the hands of racist misogynist people who control the entirety of the State apparatus and 95% of european economy. Having a few pockets of resistance challenge that status quo is barely a threat to the establishment.
> If someone inserts, say, a Chinese name in the proper unicode with a slavic name in cyrilic, I've got to think and try to figure out what is going on.
Of course. Just like a person learning cryptography in Russian/Chinese language can have a harder time to decipher what "Alice" and "Bob" are. But in this case, lessons are given in English using the latin alphabet: the suggestion was to use more diverse names, which does not require using a different alphabet.
Your position is that it's the reporting that's inflammatory? Not the underlying accusation that someone is racist or colonialist for using "Alice" and "Bob"?
I downvoted because nowhere in the article did someone suggest that calling two personas Alice and Bob was racist or colonialist. That's an extrapolation you made on your own and makes no sense.
Suggesting other names than Alice and Bob is part of a drive to use more diverse examples. Security is not just for Alice and Bob, but also for Anita and Bilal, and many others.
The Telegraph of late is a deliberately inflammatory campaigning newspaper. This story is a great example of that - it uses precisely-picked language in an attempt to goad you into a “WOKERATI PC GONE MAD” reaction, which has unfortunately been successful.
In reality what has happened is a group of people has said “as academics we should be mindful of the legacy and effects of the language we use and the bias it can contain”. They want you to be mad about that, and it’s so silly to give them what they want.
To reply to a subcomment which has been deleted since then:
> in the latest decolonisation drive
This is a comment by the narrator and not a political argument presented by the activists. Arguments on the "pro" side have apparently been quoted from a university communique, while the "contras" have been individually interviewed for arguments.
It is common in journalism (i would say ethical, but i'm not familiar with that domain's standards) when interviewing people criticizing "something", to also interview people who agree with "something" (or are responsible for it) and ask them about those critiques.
> Removing X from does not make something less Yish unless X is inherently Yish.
Noone suggested calling two characters "Alice" and "Bob" was "inerhently" colonialist. It is suggested that always naming them that way, and not leaving room for other personas, hinders the capability of people from a different cultural background to identify with the characters (though it does not nullify it).
Being more flexible about names in scenarios is a drive for diversity, which is correlated with a drive for decolonization. Decolonization does entail making the global north more aware that other civilizations/cultures have existed and continue to exist on this planet, which can be helped by using more diverse characters.
That does not mean that naming your characters Alice and Bob is inherently colonialist, or that naming them Abdel and Barbara is inherently anti-colonialist. Human and political context matters.
The official position is not to use other names in addition. The official position is not to be more flexible. The official position is to "avoid using predominantly Western names such as Alice/Bob" (emphasis added).
I don't understand the difference between "avoid using X" and "being more flexible" / "using other names than X in addition".
It's just like if your cafeteria served apple pie every day for the past 50 years for desert. Would a policy to "avoid apple pie" mean the death of apple pie across society? Or even on that specific campus?
Possibly. But is the contents of article incorrect, misleading or outright made up? I don't see how it is different to the Economist's take on the subject: [0]
Maybe I just generally read the actual contents of article(s) rather than just the titles, but again this article from the Telegraph is proving the point of the one from the Economist.
A Western University, teaching mostly Western students a concept created by Western persons, is not allowed to use the well-known 'Alice' and 'Bob' actors in a security context because it's 'too Western'?
They aren't claiming it's racist, nor could it be interpreted as such in the least favourable interpretation. Their 'problem' is that it's 'too Western', i.e. too White. Decolonization appears to just be the removal of White people... I don't know how I can frame that as anything other than cultural genocide.
Is there seriously any ethnic minority people who see Western names used in a security example context and honestly believe they are being oppressed by it? I can't imagine anybody doing so in good faith.
There is also the wider issue of restricted and compelled speech on University campuses - the exact places we expect to have the most intellectual freedom to explore modern issues. In the UK lecturers are forced to do "systematic bias" tests where they are given a split second to make some association, and 100% of the time the test concludes you are discriminating against a group (even if you shut your eyes and complete it randomly).
How on earth can we expect academics to come to good conclusions if we restrict their words, thoughts and ideas?
Current understanding of math - that is, math taught in the tradition of Western colonial thought - is itself extremely horrific and problematic. Derrida proved that concepts such as “one”, “two”, and “addition” are inherently unstable and thus stating that 1 + 1 = 2 is not only fascist but ignores alternative schools of math developed outside of Western imperialism.
Funny you should take this example on a tech-friendly forum. Many people here would be glad to let you know that 1 + 1 = 10. Also, a lot of people on this forum still use anglo-saxon imperial measures which are not based on a decimal system.
Even in science, one truth can be looked/represented from many angles.
Every time I buy a ruler I immediately use a marker to blank out the imperial units. Similarly I block out the speedometer on my car that uses imperialist “miles” per hour. Making an anti-imperialist vow is difficult but the only noble path in life.
I sometimes wish all the energy spent on things that aren't actually offensive (e.g. naming hurricanes) would be spent on looking at actual problems that need fixing. For all this concern and "action", we still have no real changes on the reservations. I suspect other communities have the same damn problems. Words and writing are cheap and easy to soothe some guilt, action actually requires energy and time.
Why not both? Can we agree small steps to dismantle the cultural hegemony[0] (as seen in comments here where people feel the white race is under threat by fictional character names) is still a good step?
I entirely agree with your point though, that people in power to make that kind of decision could do a lot more to challenge the balance of power in the world. If every well-thinking liberal on this planet organized to start a revolution and entirely do away with oppression in all forms, we'd be living in a free and egalitarian society by now.
For this reason I am proposing everyone not speaking English, the cultural hegemony of English language combined with forced propaganda of Holywood english entertainment must be curbed.
Sigh...
Tell me who is it the position of power to enforce nomenclature of 'Alice and Bob'? An Alice and Bob alliance? Write your own paper with whatever names or none names you want and nobody will care. Did you even know that this came out of a -> b but to make it clearer a and b got names?
People from outside given field are coming over and start making demands, be it CS or any other field. Last year we went though the 'defeated' of oppressive master branch in git, also black/white lists and such. To what end? NOBODY is CS ever connected term 'master branch' in git as something to do with slavery and nobody used it as some propaganda tool.
There was a terminology of slave and master used for tasks or old HDDs, but it was organically phased out. Because it felt odd/unsavory using that terminology and people just moved on with different analogies.
I suggest "Shut the fuck up" and "Alpaca": first one speaks for itself and the second one speaks for the chinese majority of the earth's population -- see homophone: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse Totally not western!
The only source reporting this is the Telegraph, and I think people should take a deep breath and ask 'is somebody just trying to rile me up?' before getting mad.
The Russell Group is a group of 24 universities, and this is attributed to Russell Group School of Informatics 'internal documents' of which there's not even a hint extant on the wider internet that I can find (the other articles are straight up re-rolls of the telegraph one).
Do I find it plausible that a group of activists at the Russell Group bureaucracy level have written this bit of silliness into a set of guidelines? Sure.
Do I think that "Edinburgh’s computer scientists banned" is an accurate reflection of the current situation? It's certainly a possibility, but not one I'd give much weight to without rather more definitive information than this.
> this is attributed to Russell Group School of Informatics 'internal documents' of which there's not even a hint extant on the wider internet
I’m having trouble finding any indication of an entity called the “Russell Group School of Informatics”; individual universities in the Group seem to have such schools, but it sounds like there are major errors in the attribution reporting or, even worse, basic fact-checking of the documents.
> major errors in the attribution reporting or, even worse, basic fact-checking of the documents
No. There are major errors in your and GP's reading comprehension. The article is absolutely clear it is talking about Edinburgh's school of informatics.
Immediately after spelling out the university's full name in the preceding sentence, the article says "The top-flight Russell Group university’s school of informatics claims there are 'problematic issues related to computing terminology'"
That is the only mention of the Russell Group.
Reasonable people may disagree, I suppose, as to whether the University of Edinburgh deserves an epithet like "the top-flight Russell Group university," but no reasonable person can disagree that that is exactly what the authors did.
You clearly skipped over the word "university's" and now you're lying about using copy-paste to cover it up because you're too proud to admit the original minor mistake.
Fundamentally, until we get to see the full text of the document and find out definitively where it lies on the scale from 'some batshit activists wrote a manifesto' to 'this has now been adopted as mandatory departmental policy' I'm going to treat it as "rumour, plausible, all else unknown".
If you are using the English language and names chosen to have unique starting letters in the Latin alphabet, starting with the first letter of that alphabet and moving forward, you have not meaningfully avoided Western (and more specifically Anglosphere) cultural bias, and avoiding domain-specific conventional names for that reason is a particularly meaningless gesture.
55 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] threadSee also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qalb_(programming_language)
With the advent of unicode, cyrillic or mandarin programming languages can flourish.
That's called Chinese characters in English. In its entirety, that writing system is based on logograms, hence, a programming language uses logograms, too, not only ideograms. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22216125
In general, i would say so. A great deal of wars and suffering would be avoided if people were slightly more flexible and not so much into ethnocentric interpretations of the world.
> invent new ones every time we try to communicate something?
When explaining other concepts than cryptography, do you systematically borrow the same names? I guess not. Why would cryptography be any different?
Isn't that precisely what you're advocating for with angles and the greek alphabet? I don't know about you, but i personally had to learn about greek letters in math classes, and that's something i could have done without, especially when there's other standard means of designating an angle.
There is no thought police coming for you if you disagree with a rather-insignificant change. But of course feeling threatened by better representation of different cultures in education is weird.
That kind of argument is directly rehearsed from the neofascist international movement (Generation Identitaire & friends) and their "great replacement" / "clash of cultures" theory. I'm not saying you belong to that movement or that you're a despicable human being in any regard (i've never met you and barely interacted with you), but i would recommend to question that kind of racist narrative pushed by mainstream media in the last decade or so (especially since the start of the so-called "migrant crisis").
Second, there's an advantage to everyone using the same names again and again. When I see the names, I know it's going to be a protocol discussion. If someone inserts, say, a Chinese name in the proper unicode with a slavic name in cyrilic, I've got to think and try to figure out what is going on. Eventually I'll catch on, but it slows down comprehension.
Where was it suggested that Alice and Bob names be banned altogether? Having one class/university use different names is far from erasure.
> replaces the cultural hegemony of one group with another
What new group would that be dominating the narrative? Is "all other cultures than anglo-saxon" a unified cultural group? Is this hypothetical group exerting power over others in what can be called "cultural hegemony" (cultural domination)?
From my perspective as a white French person, who was taught in schools/media that colonization was a virtuous enterprise to civilize lesser cultures, power is still vastly in the hands of racist misogynist people who control the entirety of the State apparatus and 95% of european economy. Having a few pockets of resistance challenge that status quo is barely a threat to the establishment.
> If someone inserts, say, a Chinese name in the proper unicode with a slavic name in cyrilic, I've got to think and try to figure out what is going on.
Of course. Just like a person learning cryptography in Russian/Chinese language can have a harder time to decipher what "Alice" and "Bob" are. But in this case, lessons are given in English using the latin alphabet: the suggestion was to use more diverse names, which does not require using a different alphabet.
That's absurd.
Suggesting other names than Alice and Bob is part of a drive to use more diverse examples. Security is not just for Alice and Bob, but also for Anita and Bilal, and many others.
Far from a new question, see also: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/09/replacing_ali...
The Telegraph of late is a deliberately inflammatory campaigning newspaper. This story is a great example of that - it uses precisely-picked language in an attempt to goad you into a “WOKERATI PC GONE MAD” reaction, which has unfortunately been successful.
In reality what has happened is a group of people has said “as academics we should be mindful of the legacy and effects of the language we use and the bias it can contain”. They want you to be mad about that, and it’s so silly to give them what they want.
> in the latest decolonisation drive
This is a comment by the narrator and not a political argument presented by the activists. Arguments on the "pro" side have apparently been quoted from a university communique, while the "contras" have been individually interviewed for arguments.
It is common in journalism (i would say ethical, but i'm not familiar with that domain's standards) when interviewing people criticizing "something", to also interview people who agree with "something" (or are responsible for it) and ask them about those critiques.
> Removing X from does not make something less Yish unless X is inherently Yish.
Noone suggested calling two characters "Alice" and "Bob" was "inerhently" colonialist. It is suggested that always naming them that way, and not leaving room for other personas, hinders the capability of people from a different cultural background to identify with the characters (though it does not nullify it).
Being more flexible about names in scenarios is a drive for diversity, which is correlated with a drive for decolonization. Decolonization does entail making the global north more aware that other civilizations/cultures have existed and continue to exist on this planet, which can be helped by using more diverse characters.
That does not mean that naming your characters Alice and Bob is inherently colonialist, or that naming them Abdel and Barbara is inherently anti-colonialist. Human and political context matters.
It's just like if your cafeteria served apple pie every day for the past 50 years for desert. Would a policy to "avoid apple pie" mean the death of apple pie across society? Or even on that specific campus?
Maybe I just generally read the actual contents of article(s) rather than just the titles, but again this article from the Telegraph is proving the point of the one from the Economist.
[0] https://archive.ph/jVOl3
They aren't claiming it's racist, nor could it be interpreted as such in the least favourable interpretation. Their 'problem' is that it's 'too Western', i.e. too White. Decolonization appears to just be the removal of White people... I don't know how I can frame that as anything other than cultural genocide.
Is there seriously any ethnic minority people who see Western names used in a security example context and honestly believe they are being oppressed by it? I can't imagine anybody doing so in good faith.
There is also the wider issue of restricted and compelled speech on University campuses - the exact places we expect to have the most intellectual freedom to explore modern issues. In the UK lecturers are forced to do "systematic bias" tests where they are given a split second to make some association, and 100% of the time the test concludes you are discriminating against a group (even if you shut your eyes and complete it randomly).
How on earth can we expect academics to come to good conclusions if we restrict their words, thoughts and ideas?
Even in science, one truth can be looked/represented from many angles.
Or 1+1=0.
I entirely agree with your point though, that people in power to make that kind of decision could do a lot more to challenge the balance of power in the world. If every well-thinking liberal on this planet organized to start a revolution and entirely do away with oppression in all forms, we'd be living in a free and egalitarian society by now.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony
Sigh...
Tell me who is it the position of power to enforce nomenclature of 'Alice and Bob'? An Alice and Bob alliance? Write your own paper with whatever names or none names you want and nobody will care. Did you even know that this came out of a -> b but to make it clearer a and b got names?
People from outside given field are coming over and start making demands, be it CS or any other field. Last year we went though the 'defeated' of oppressive master branch in git, also black/white lists and such. To what end? NOBODY is CS ever connected term 'master branch' in git as something to do with slavery and nobody used it as some propaganda tool.
There was a terminology of slave and master used for tasks or old HDDs, but it was organically phased out. Because it felt odd/unsavory using that terminology and people just moved on with different analogies.
I am so, so bored of people falling for this obvious manipulation.
Do I find it plausible that a group of activists at the Russell Group bureaucracy level have written this bit of silliness into a set of guidelines? Sure.
Do I think that "Edinburgh’s computer scientists banned" is an accurate reflection of the current situation? It's certainly a possibility, but not one I'd give much weight to without rather more definitive information than this.
I’m having trouble finding any indication of an entity called the “Russell Group School of Informatics”; individual universities in the Group seem to have such schools, but it sounds like there are major errors in the attribution reporting or, even worse, basic fact-checking of the documents.
No. There are major errors in your and GP's reading comprehension. The article is absolutely clear it is talking about Edinburgh's school of informatics.
Immediately after spelling out the university's full name in the preceding sentence, the article says "The top-flight Russell Group university’s school of informatics claims there are 'problematic issues related to computing terminology'"
That is the only mention of the Russell Group.
Reasonable people may disagree, I suppose, as to whether the University of Edinburgh deserves an epithet like "the top-flight Russell Group university," but no reasonable person can disagree that that is exactly what the authors did.
My reading comprehension is just fine. So is my clipboard.
It is, in fact, possible to be anti-wokescold and also care about criticising one's opponents precisely.
I wish more people on the same side of the argument as me would remember that.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210904202955/https://www.teleg...
You clearly skipped over the word "university's" and now you're lying about using copy-paste to cover it up because you're too proud to admit the original minor mistake.
I would even go as far as to claim you are devaluing your work by making your examples more confusing to the reader.
Why not call A and B, 漢 and الْحُرُو
That would surely be better
From the Mount Royal University website:
>this is a beginning effort at describing the use of lower case on the website of the office of indigenization and decolonization.
[...]
>we resist acknowledging the power structures that oppress and join the movement that does not capitalize.
("Indigenous" is intentionally capitalized by the author.)