Most people haven't had any genuine exposure to the cultures that exist on the extreme ends of the political spectrum. You would have to be familiar with them to understand what emotions that dredges up, otherwise you're going to be terribly confused by this. However understanding is not a requisite for diplomatic communication with other cultures. An international standards committee that wants to represent the interests of all groups needs to take this kind of thing seriously. When any group of people complains that's usually enough, although ideally it's better to know them all well enough to avoid this kind of thing in the first place.
>An international standards committee that wants to represent the interests of all groups needs to take this kind of thing seriously.
Perhaps, but perhaps there are times where the "extreme ends of the political spectrum" are actually muckrakers who use feigned offense as a tool for eliminating people they just don't like for petty reasons. People can be offended for any number of reasons but somehow certain arbitrary causes of offense are deemed worthy of action.
Political correctness is like a cheat code in the minds of certain people. I don't think the blogger who posted the complaint is actually offended. Although he may appear to be quite neurotic, he fits the profile of an agitator. Such people often claim things are offensive on behalf of demographics that they do not even belong to. This is speculation on my part of course, but I have seen this play out so many times that I'm sick of it.
She's very much an agitator. However the C++ leaders aren't trying to avoid offending anyone. They're trying to do something even more difficult which is not making anyone feel uncomfortable. That paper's title makes people think about things they'd rather not think about instead of C++. Normal people would just read it, feel distracted, and then say nothing, which is unfortunate, since I'm sure Andrew would have much preferred to hear it from them instead of being publicly criticized by an activist.
> Most people haven't had any genuine exposure to the cultures that exist on the extreme ends of the political spectrum. You would have to be familiar with them to understand what emotions that dredges up, otherwise you're going to be terribly confused by this.
Out towards the ends of the political spectrum, the prevailing "culture" uses such weird terminology that normal people can't let that affect their -- our (hopefully ) -- use of language. If we did, we couldn't say anything, because in some weird sect's nutjob language pretty much any word can mean something horrible. Which this kerfluffle illustrates perfectly. Giving in on this now sets a precedent that in the end will lead to language being wholly co-opted by rabid extremists on both ends of the spectrum.
> An international standards committee that wants to represent the interests of all groups needs to take this kind of thing seriously.
No. Or well, yes: It needs to seriously fight against bullshit like this, lest it soon will have to censor out every second word in the very standards it promulgates.
That's what they want. International institutions actually go out of their way to recruit people from different backgrounds, specifically so those people will warn them whenever they're about to embarrass themselves in front of other cultures. For example, the word "byte" might rub French people the wrong way, because it sounds like a slang word they use for male genitalia. The word "poke" is another one to avoid, since it resembles Indonesian and Malaysian slang for female genitalia. Never name your variables foo and bar if you plan to share your code with Nordic countries, because it can be confused with slang for excrement. There's a very long list of words and phrases like this. However most people needn't worry about this, since they're not actively engaging with other cultures.
> Never name your variables foo and bar if you plan to share your code with Nordic countries, because it can be confused with slang for excrement.
Eeh... Where did you get this from? Neither "foo" nor "bar" sound like slang for excrement in any Nordic language I know. And I'm native in one, near-native proficient in another, and the two largest remaining are very similar to the first. Are you talking about Icelandic, Saami, or Faroese?
The English word “byte” doesn’t really sound similar to the French word “bite”, and even if it did, it’s very unlikely a French person would be offended.
