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Comment by java_script | Hacker News Reader

Your soapbox speech against the entire idea of changing connotations is bewildering to me. We change and abandon words all of the time. What you're saying is in line with "Why should I let some jerk from history ruin the name 'Adolph' for me. I'm gonna name my son that anyway!"

Words are for other people and other people might have opinions about them. Why are you so invested in putting up blinders to ignore that?

also your examples are bad. You picked non-controversial ones that aren't currently cultural wedge issues or dog-whistles. Try ones like "pro-life" or "liberal" instead.

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> We change and abandon words all of the time. Why are you so invested in putting up blinders to ignore that?

The genesis story of meritocracy as told by its enemies is that it was used satirically (eg. Wikipedia: "It was used pejoratively by British politician and sociologist Michael Young in his 1958 satirical essay The Rise of the Meritocracy").

Why are they so invested in putting up blinders to ignore that "meritocracy" in the context of open source development doesn't carry that demeaning connotation, because people changed the word's meaning within their subculture sometimes in the 1980's? We change and abandon words all of the time.

> Why are they so invested in putting up blinders to ignore that "meritocracy" in the context of open source development doesn't carry that demeaning connotation

They aren't. They are arguing that it should be because, as arguably is part of the subtext of the original usage, what “meritocracy” used non-ironically denotes is very much something which humans fundamentally do not do, or even approximate, without deliberate and active correction for social and cultural biases of the exact type that the description of “meritocracy” is generally, and specifically in the case of those who apply the term non-ironically to the open source community, used to deny the need for.

> what “meritocracy” used non-ironically denotes is very much something which humans fundamentally do not do

... when applied to a situation where people are ranked.

The meritocracy of open source wasn't about "who gets promoted", but about the merit of the code being contributed.

It's the code that was ranked, not its authors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_... and all that.

...I can’t answer that because I’m not one those people saying that.

Also answering a question with a question is an evasion technique. Just say what you believe, and don’t drill me on stuff other people said.

I believe your "question" is loaded, misleading and missing the point:

It's not the OSS folks complaining about a change in meaning, but those who wish to retire meritocracy because they're too inflexible to accept that other people make a word mean something else.

> "Why should I let some jerk from history ruin the name 'Adolph' for me. I'm gonna name my son that anyway!"

My science teacher was called that and btw he was from Austria, no one in the classroom cared not even the slightest joke was made about his name or why his parents might named him that. If we would judge others based on their name or ethnicity -that's the definition of the discrimination and xenophobia.

> Words are for other people and other people might have opinions about them.

Stop spewing your ideological opinions as if they apply to everyone!

1. I named my cat “Nigger Man” after the cat in that HP Lovecraft story and people got really mad at me. I’m glad that things are going well for Adolph and hopefully one day my cat “N-man” (as I call him in public now) can be afforded the same respect.

2. Also I’m sorry for saying that words are a communication medium that carry different meaning to different humans. I now realize that they’re just bytes in a computer.

> What you're saying is in line with "Why should I let some jerk from history ruin the name 'Adolph' for me. I'm gonna name my son that anyway!"

“Adolph” hasn't really been ruined. “Hitler” on the other hand…

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