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Comment by omershapira | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the 'Master'/'Slave' terminology is necessary here? Aside from being problematic, does it really describe the setup more than 'Primary'/'Secondary'?

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Agreed. It's unfortunate but understandable we still use this terminology for existing technologies... but we absolutely should not be propagating it to new ones.

Embarrassing story time: I was working in Brazil on a database, and used the Portuguese translations for "master" and "slave" in a technical meeting (I speak Portuguese). The whole room looked at me in shock, and my manager politely corrected me: "um, we just use the English terms 'master' and 'slave'... if you translate them, it's pretty racist."

My wife is Brazilian and I showed her this comment. She says the Brazilians were just giving you a hard time and that they don't find those terms offensive.

it doesn't really even describe the relationship accurately- the "slave" symbols aren't doing anything for the "master" symbols, they aren't being delegated to or controlled by the "master" symbols.

"Beacon" and "frame" would describe them better, or even "lord" and "serf" if you really need there to be a power dynamic

The problem in this case, is that it's the terminology used by the standard:

https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EN/BSI/Publicat...

This is "retarded" all over again.

Slavery in humans is bad. Slavery in software applications it not.

At a family dinner I once jokingly described my gluten-free girlfriend as "glutarded," which was our inside joke way to refer to her dietary restrictions. I forgot that my aunt's husband, who has some congenital language issues that leave him with a speech impediment, had grown up being bullied and called 'retard,' until he gasped when he heard my words. I felt horrible, and have since been more conscious with my words. I share this story here because I think it points to a similar issue--the tech world is often a homogenous environment without much representation for African Americans. Can you imagine walking into a classroom full of African American students and casually throwing around the phrase "master and slave" without evoking discomfort in that audience? If we continue to use this language comfortably it implies to me that we aren't inviting to the table the community for whom slavery is still very much an open wound.

You seem to be under the impression that black people imported to America were history's only slaves.

Good luck finding a country with people of any color that hasn't experienced some level of slavery.

No part of taylorfinley's argument implies or requires that the American/African slave trade was the only ever instance of slavery.

The focus should be on building environments where those pasts can be discussed and the sounds healed. I can absolutely imagine correctly using the terms master and slave in an environment where some of the people have a darker skin tone than I have.

Correct use of words is important if those words have been misused in the past.

Is it problematic outside of the US? That said, possibly not the most immediately illustrative choice of terms; master/slave usually implies who's in charge, not a spatial relationship.

Slavery/human trafficking is not a US-only thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century

> master/slave usually implies who's in charge, not a spatial relationship.

Spatial relationship aside, there are plenty of less problematic ways to depict who is in charge.

Why is that problematic?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology)#Term...

Because people cannot separate the abstract concept of slavery to the actual historical happening.

Personally, I want to be a master to my mechanical slaves (tools, dishwashers, computers, robots) and can't wait for a future where machine-slavery is so pervasive that no humans need to work anymore.

Why on earth would you choose to use the term mechanical slave for your dishwasher except to be deliberatively provocative?

The term "machine" is perfectly fine. You're actually choosing to be offensive for the sake of being offensive. Please stop.

I'm not rooting for a future where human labor is obsolete.

Why would the machines continue to feed us if we're dead weight to the economy?

I am. Why do the washing machines keep washing pensioners' clothes, if they're dead weight to the economy? Because we (the intelligent / sentient / human civilisation) decided so.

Institutionalized care for the weaker members of society actually makes productive members more productive.

Likewise for social security and state-run unemployment insurances.

AI is coming in the form of industry automatization, in a very competitive, capitalist framework. Agriculture and resource extraction is also being automated.

Capital is literally growing a brain, and once it doesn't need us it will stop feeding us, and we'll be powerless against it because we are so dependent on it. Think of a spider shedding its dead skin after molting.

There's a number of flaws in your argument.

If automation will make agriculture more competitive, then food will get cheaper. Governments will be able to subsidise it.

Capital needs consumers to make a profit.

Politics will solve any kind of food crisis. Otherwise there will be a revolution.

> Capital needs consumers to make a profit.

Fundamentally, demand is survival instinct, which develops under Darwinian pressure. B2B is already growing faster than B2C. Wages are globally stagnating while capital keeps on growing. The industry as a self-maximizer can be its own consumer.

> Governments will be able to subsidise it. [...] Otherwise there will be a revolution.

This assumes that humans will still have some kind of power. Being somewhat competitive in the job market is the only power most people have today.

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