Edwin Land once said: "/Politeness is the slow poison of collaboration."
/I've generally found that to be quite true. (Then again, I'm a New
York Jew - brusqueness and argumentativeness are my bywords.)
Re. whitelist/blacklist: IMO, on the one hand the really direct tie
between good/bad and white/black is kind of stark. On the other hand,
where does this end? Stop using "whiteout" to describe blizzard
conditions (and perhaps only use it to refer to correcting fluid)? Stop
using "blackout" power outages? Stop using "white" to denote the sum of
all colors, and "black" to denote the absence (or vice versa, if we're
talking paint)?
Seems like just another case where we can let arguments over politically
correct word usage, get in the way of actual communication & getting
work done.
Solve the problem of establishing a good set of gender-neutral pronouns,
for English, (and maybe declarations in other languages) - then let's
come back and debate colors. Meanwhile, life's too short for this.
Miles Fidelman
On 6/20/20 3:25 AM, Weaver wrote:
On 20-06-2020 12:57, Dan Ritter wrote:
Weaver wrote:
I think it's possible to get too politically correct.
Try this phrase:
"I think it's possible to get too polite."
No, there's no value in twisting words.
The wrong connotation gets promoted.
I suppose that's true -- if your object is to insult someone.
No insult was intended or implied.
You prefer to see it way.
Why are we attaching a concept like skin colour to list names as a
serious proposition?
Exactly. Since it doesn't matter to you, why not be polite?
See how you've created a straw man to tear down by adjusting the
terminology?
Obviously it does or I wouldn't have posted.
I always ask questions and never impose my standards on others.
See the difference?
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why. ... unknown
