'Master' is not counterpart to 'slave', it is counterpart to 'inferior'. 'Master' is "greater" (ex 'magis'), vs "lesser". The most resounding example is fitting: «Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas».
It is an ___extreme___ problem if somebody now thought [I change the tense out of refusal] that the term 'master' should not be used, especially if the perverse excuse were that someone used it in a way that makes somebody uncomfortable.
Following an old proverb, reportedly from or nobilitated by Cervantes, you are invited "not to mention the rope in the house of the hanged". But never in history, to the best of my knowledge, someone ever advanced the idea that given that people had been hanged, the term 'rope' should stop being used at all.
The term 'master' is innocent. And it has close to fullest right to be part of the language.
And there is a further matter of care given these desperate times in history: suspicion that a war against the semantic of "master" could be involved, given the many raising voices making all individuals equivalent in intellect, preparation and judgement, in the area of Asimov's warning:
«The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge"»
However, languages live and the people of the USA are an important determinant of where the English language is headed. They have a particular history involving this word, and that history has not been fully reckoned with. It makes sense that the same word, although in other contexts with a slightly different meaning, would be redefined or removed this way, in order to deal with that history.
Natural languages violate the sort of origins and logical meanings all the time, so this does not have to be an exception.
I am not sure if I will be able to convey the point as well as I wish, but:
don't you think this way the enemy wins a battle?
Terrorists attempt bending politics through terrorizing: if one is terrorized, is that one not playing their game?
We greet in some sensible way, say, and somebody comes and promotes the greeting as now meaning "short people should stick to accounting": that somebody should not be nobilitated and their """cultural proposal""" accepted as norm: it should be discarded as noise. If the greeting were affected and linked to some unworthy agenda, that would mean empowering said agenda: it should have been impotent, but with your attention, and attributing it legitimacy in the creation of constraints, you made it powerful.
«Languages live», but uprooted they go astray. A rubberband, like that vetting attitude you (yes really you) have been trained to develop, should always there to check validity, vis-a-vis what terms mean, coremost to how they are used. One is supposed not to forget that core.
"Congratulations for having defaced our public square by defecating in the middle: you now get the privilege to do similarly with our sacred vocabulary".
So should not we speak language, as an attempt, instead of «USA [determined] English language» or «natural language»?
And more to the point, should not we avoid acting as resonance chambers amplifying deeds? Some culturally inferior party is not supposed to bend culture with the "strength of inferiority" - that is absurd. It is not a "de facto" bending, it is the "de facto" response to it that gives it power.
That is nonsensical. There is no such thing as a line language should not stray too far from. Languages are what they are, plain and simple. The fact that you speak English, is already a horrible affront to the French, the Celts, Angles, Saxons, both in their current day form and that of yesteryear, and any precursors to those languages in turn. English shouldn't even have the Latin-derived 'master' in the first place, if we're going that way.
I am absolutely sensitive to the argument that 'master' originally, or in some other context, is not opposed by 'slave', but 'inferior' or somesuch. And it is how I've used the word, and how it and its native equivalent is used in my native tongue. But that is no argument for fixing a particular meaning or context as more important or 'native' than any other.
Language is fundamentally, deeply promiscuous, and English may be the most promiscuous of them all. If this is a problem for you, your best bet is a dead language, or one you create yourself. You can fork anything you wish after all, that's how languages work :)
> that is no argument for fixing a particular meaning or context as more important or 'native' than any other
You missed from my argument that the above statement is part of my argument: it is normal for language to also represent controversial (contextually) cases, but «that is no argument for fixing [such] particular meaning or context as more important» or having priority over, especially, its core meaning.
You are missing that I oppose an appropriation, that reduces of that richness of applications to a "yes but, you see, we cannot forget what happened in Khartoum, there is no return from that episode and now if you mention it I can only think of the event". No, the richness is intact, you are covering it. And the subsequent argument I proposed, replying to you, contains: beware while covering it of not being supportive to some political effort you would otherwise oppose.
Example: one extremist a few years ago apparently instructed his followers, their music shall be that of Depeche Mode - their guts should resonate with that; the authors of «the grabbing hands grab all they can» and «we are going backwards, to a caveman mentality» showed being less than impressed. If people stopped listening to Depeche Mode because an extremist finds their sound instrumental to hook underdeveloped prefrontals, and now there is an association, they should be dehypnotized. The extremist or another could have invented that 'depeche' is now a world that means their attempt world domination: I am not saying that Gore Gahan and Fletcher have a full right to the word, I am saying that one would not be justified to call the word "now embarassing" because some fool came up with his low fumes.
If we measured our associations with the worse in society, we would be in deep trouble, repeat:
supporting and justifying associations following the worse in society is a recipe for collective damage.
Never empower the "wrong side". If already you allow them to bend your vocabulary...
Technically, for the rest: a term is a pattern, one can apply it metaphorically to a large number of cases. (Its transliteration is largely irrelevant - 'jñāna', 'gnoscere', 'know'...) The core meaning is found navigating to the "original" pattern behind all applications. Etymology helps you with that. Forgetting the core pattern is what I called uprooting.
I see, but if you take a term like 'bunny'* and then for some reason it becomes - I don't know - a sensational sexual innuendo in south Boston or the whole of the continent, it is not a fault of 'bunny', and one cannot expect that others in Anywheristan start having problems with 'bunny' out of somebody's folly.
* the first term I could think of, probably as I am writing from a field having plenty of them nearby.
> one cannot expect that others in Anywheristan start having problems with 'bunny' out of somebody's folly
well that's the funny thing about language - it's very democratized in some ways. After a while, if even 10% of people use it to actively mean something sexual, the majority of people will know that it's meant to indicate something sexual.
while this might be true, the fact that there are master-slave analogies elsewhere makes other uses of master in CS suspect.
if the analogy had been "master-apprentice" instead there probably wouldnt be as much pushback everywhere else. while this particular instance might be an over correction, i think the overall trend has been a move in the right direction
> if the analogy had been "master-apprentice" instead there probably wouldnt be as much pushback everywhere else
Except, you know, apprentices eventually become masters themselves. And the space isn't zero-sum; "Master Verrochio taught Master Leonardo" is semantically valid. It doesn't illustrate the semantics of, say, data replication where there is only one master at a time and the slaves are not supposed to be promoted. "Master-slave" captures the relationship succinctly.
True, it hearkens back to a dark time in US history but if that is the only criteria for censoring usage of this term, are we not also censoring discussions about this period? I agree with the sentiment to be ashamed of it but to the point where you can't even derive metaphors from it? Reeks of cowardly denial.
>only one master at a time and the slaves are not meant to be promoted.
So not like a historical master-slave relationship.
Master-slave may capture the relationship, but humans still have to read, write and interact with those systems.
Some of those humans still suffer from the legacy of slavery, jim crow and voter suppression.
We can come up with analogies and metaphors which arent so evocative and make working with systems more pleasant just on account of not flippantly referencing the darkest part of societies history.
This might be a difference in values but to describe the metaphor as "flippant" is rather puritan don't you think? It's not as if the metaphor is reducing the gravitas of the issue. It does not even make a value judgment on whether or not slavery is wrong. It is a neutral metaphor at best.
If we as a society move to a state where a metaphor like so is verboten just because it is less pleasant or already considered "evocative" then how can we have deep and nuanced discussions on this period itself? You know the ones where we explicitly acknowledge the horrors of slave dehumanization, the terrible working conditions in the plantations, the violence stemming from these racist beliefs, among others.
Those issues are too heavy to be evoked by the metaphor (and frankly irrelevant to its purpose) and yet our current trajectory would want people to do away with it when it only serves to illustrates the relationship between computing resources. It's not even a comment on social history.
It is an ___extreme___ problem if somebody now thought [I change the tense out of refusal] that the term 'master' should not be used, especially if the perverse excuse were that someone used it in a way that makes somebody uncomfortable.
Following an old proverb, reportedly from or nobilitated by Cervantes, you are invited "not to mention the rope in the house of the hanged". But never in history, to the best of my knowledge, someone ever advanced the idea that given that people had been hanged, the term 'rope' should stop being used at all.
The term 'master' is innocent. And it has close to fullest right to be part of the language.
And there is a further matter of care given these desperate times in history: suspicion that a war against the semantic of "master" could be involved, given the many raising voices making all individuals equivalent in intellect, preparation and judgement, in the area of Asimov's warning:
«The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge"»