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Comment by foxes | Hacker News Reader

Most of these are perfectly reasonable, a lot to do with helping clarity of writing. Abbreviations definitely do not help clarity and should be avoided. Colloquialisms also do not help clarity if it is meant to be understood by a large audience (international even).

As for the ones that hacker news by and large seems to think are controversial, I agree with the style guide, there are only historical arguments for keeping gendered/race based language. Why not remove it. Language is dynamic, it can evolve.

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Apart from the slippery slope problem, which is absolutely a factor in the evolving lanscape of social justice, these changes usually require cognitive overhead and engineering effort to switch to.

Ultimately, the positive impact is totally unproven. I think it ought to be up to advocates of these changes to prove that they provide any benefits to minorities. I've heard as much talk from members of minority groups saying that they find it infantilizing and performative as I have from those who approve of the change.

> Ultimately, the positive impact is totally unproven.

It definitely succeeds at imitating real change.

Changes like these aren't something you make in an instant. You practice using the right language over time. I'm sure that other engineers have a few braincells left over to think before they speak/type.

The idea with this guide is to give a comprehensive look at clean language that people should be investing a bit of thought to

Yeah, but the thing is, microaggression like most of psychological research hasn't been proven.

Even things like the delayed gratification experiment fall under a more intense scrutiny.

Removing words will not change much. As you say languages are dynamic and they will evolve to fit the speakers requirements[1].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill

By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of The Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like Freedom is Slavery when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness. (Gorge Orwell - 1984)

Blacklist and similar are not race based.

The point is to remove the positive connotation for "white" and negative for "black." Nobody's implying your blacklist-turned-blocklist has anything to do with race.

It feels like it would be easier to stop calling people black and white rather than purge all light-based metaphors from the language.

How would Google make the rest of the English-speaking world change their use of these words?

Maybe it shouldn’t even try? I mean, since when is an internet ad company qualified to tell me what language to use?

That is my point. They can decide how they use language in their own documentation and communication, they can't decide how everyone else uses it. So they they can't change that people use black or white to refer to skin color, as the comment suggested.

Actually given their extreme reach and near monopoly over information they could probably try to change how people use black and white to refer to skin color which would certainly be a far more noble cause than bikeshedding these weird internal language standards to make themselves look good.

I don't find it particularly noble. When it comes to human communication I believe in Postels law: Be strict in what you send, be lenient in what you accept.

You suggest there is no point in changing your own communication if you cant force the whole to change in the same way. I disagree.

In such case why don’t they stop trying to retire the word “blacklist” too?

Presumably because they don't want people reading their developer documentation to get distracted from what the documentation is trying to communicate?

It is quite common to have company policy for communication. That does not mean you want to change how everybody else in the world communicates.

>Presumably because they don't want people reading their developer documentation to get distracted from what the documentation is trying to communicate?

If that's the goal, they should use estabilished terms of art.

>It is quite common to have company policy for communication. That does not mean you want to change how everybody else in the world communicates.

Yeah, so I don't get why what I proposed is any different from that.

Maybe I misunderstood you, but I thought you meant they should get other people to stop using black and white for humans in other contexts. I presumed Google themselves does not talk about black or white people in their developer documentation.

Right, so my solution wouldn’t even require them to change any documentation. Double win.

They could block references to dark skin color in Gmail and Google search? Just to name two products of theirs that have enough reach. Of course that would make (racist) people unhappy with Google, which isn't within its business interest. So they keep on posturing in ineffective ways that don't harm their business model.

I hope you are trolling.

> The point is to remove the positive connotation for "white" and negative for "black."

Man, USA is such a weird place to live. I’m happy color is just a color where I’m from.

You're just unaware of the issues, the USA is at the forefront of making people waste time sed-ing all their code^W^W^W^W^W^W aware of the issues.

This gets confusing fast. Having an account in the black is good.

That's black vs red, not really the same thing.

Red black trees got caught in the mess in some projects.

But what if your account in the black got blacklisted???

Ironically "grandfathering" unambiguously derived from Jim Crow, and unambiguously white supremacist in origin but you'll hear nothing of it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause#Origin

I've heard people question whether we should use "grandfather" as a verb in that context, specifically due to its racist origin. I think the fact that you have to explain how terrible people were every time someone learns the term would increase awareness of racial bias, and on the whole be a positive thing.

It's in the list: https://developers.google.com/style/word-list#grandfathered

Careful, you'll be blackballed.

(The logic is that uses where "black" has a negative connotation and "white" has a positive connotation are to be avoided, regardless of etymology. But I guess I'm telling you something you already know, there).

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