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Comment by pannSun | Hacker News Reader

> Instead of "blind review", consider using "anonymous review". Context: Unintentionally perpetuates that disability is somehow abnormal or negative, furthering an ableist culture.

But.. disability is abnormal and negative? How tortured of a definition of 'normal' must one use to make blindness normal? And I suspect if the author of that sentence were offered, say, $100,000 to undergo a painless but irreversible blinding surgery, they would very quickly admit blindness is a negative - a greater negative than missing out on $100,000. In fact I suspect most people wouldn't accept that offer even if it had many more zeros.

But still we must pretend?

> Instead of "committed suicide", consider using "died by suicide". Context: Ableist language that trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions.

And with this they tip their hand. The mental contortions required to conclude that "committed suicide" trivializes something, but "died by suicide" doesn't, are so extreme that I cannot believe anyone honestly holds that opinion. That leaves as the most likely conclusion that this document is not an honest effort to eliminate 'harm', but a mine-field, a list of sins and prohibitions, to be used as ammo against opponents.

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I’m disabled.

I have mixed feelings about the things in this list. E.g. part of my disability experience involves my mental health and, when you’re talking about me, anyway, I don’t mind the term “mentally ill”.

On the other hand, it sort of irritates me when people who are well describe others as “crazy”.

Regarding your comment on disability being “abnormal and negative”, though, I have to disagree. I would not have survived the last few years if I had characterized my impairments as being abnormal and negative.

There’s an approach out there called the “social model” of disability where impairment is regarded as a neutral (neither good nor bad) experience and the good or bad experience is how the impairment changes interaction with society. It’s worth reading at least the introduction on the Wikipedia page, so I’ll link it.

Happy to answer any questions if you have ‘em!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_model_of_disability

Edit: To be clear, I’m just thinking about the list of words, not any sort of policy about what one can and can’t say. That’s a whole other can of worms!

> impairments as being abnormal and negative

That’s why you call them impairments. (From Late Latin peiorare "make worse”.)

The point is that physical impairments, while real, shouldn't matter all that much. We'll all be physically impaired to a greater or lesser extent as we age. Social impairment however matters a great deal, because it's next to impossible to live a healthy and fulfilling life if you can't relate to others on a reasonably equal basis. Of course trying to enforce this on everyone else with "person-first" language is a total non-starter, but the basic insight found in the "social model" is quite valuable and in fact something that classical authors were already familiar with.

> I would not have survived the last few years if I had characterized my impairments as being abnormal and negative. [..] Happy to answer any questions if you have ‘em!

Why not? I have several traits I consider abnormal, and some I consider negative (i.e. unlike the merely abnormal ones, I wish to overcome them. And some cannot be overcome but are very normal - e.g. mortality.) - why should that characterization impair my effort or desire to survive and thrive? Or rather, why does it impair yours?

> There’s an approach out there called the “social model” of disability where impairment is regarded as a neutral (neither good nor bad) experience and the good or bad experience is how the impairment changes interaction with society.

If I may speculate, is this the answer? You want to be seen as good and desirable by society, so if any of the multiple meanings of a word used to describe you carry negative implications, that results in a reduction of your self-worth? Even when a word is merely objective description, used without moral baggage, its mere proximity to alternate meanings taints it?

As a disabled person myself. It is both abnormal and negative. I don't care about any specific wording used to describe me beyond the ability to allow clear and succinct communication.

A jerk is going to be a jerk regardless of the specific syllables used so why trip up well meaning people.

It’s interesting that so much focus is on getting people who are likely we’ll meaning but don’t keep up with the nuance. Heard someone called a bigot because they used the word Latina instead of the correct latinx. If you knew them you’d know they have family of diverse backgrounds so may not have even known the right word and likely didn’t mean “harm”

Latinx can never be the right word.

>instead of the correct latinx

It was my impression the word latinx was generally mocked by people it's supposed to represent.

I believe the new in vogue term is "Latine"

Thanks that is helpful. Is this clearly accepted enough to correct native speakers for example when proofing copy?

The correct name for a group of Latino people is Latinos, or Latinas if the whole group are known to be women.

How is that any different than just saying “Latin” … I’m genuinely trying to think of how this might be pronounced, particularly with an eye towards American regional accents and yeah… it’s not great.

Latine:

- Lah-teen … rhymes white latrine

- Lat-ein-e … normal “lat”, Germanic pronunciation of “ein”, like the number one or Einstein, “e” pronounced either “ee” or “eh”

- Latin-e … latin-ee, rhymes with matinee,

- lat-tine … lah-tine as in the tines of a fork.

Or my favourite

- Latin-e … just “latin” but spelled with a silent “e”.

This is less than ideal… outside of using mispronunciation as a shibboleth, you normally want a group identifying word to be clearly identified and picked up by any possible group members regardless of if they have heard someone speak it. You want such words to be easily used by the people who identify with it, also crucially it’s self-adoption by the group that is being identified that matters… If no one you would call latine likes you calling them latine, or latinx, or Latino or Latina or Latin… you probably should just ask them what they want and call them that instead, that’s just my opinion from over in Australia where this particular identity/word fight appears to have mostly gone unnoticed against our own local issues.

It's a Spanish word (a neologism, of course, used by a small minority of speakers at present), so pronounce it like any other Spanish word:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/latine#Pronunciation_3

Admittedly the question of how to pronounce a Spanish word in English is non-trivial and subsumes the question of how to pronounce Spanish and the question of how to pronounce English ... but apart from that no special case is required for the word "latine"!

I was born in Central America and while not a comprehensive sample, I don’t know a single person where I’m from who doesn’t think this an American imposed thing that’s trying to fix our “wrong” culture.

Negative feedback after correcting a native speaker is either evidence of the sexiest bigoted Latinx culture - or evidence of a type of cultural imperialism depending on where you stand on these issues. I just wish folks could draw clearer connections to the harm of using Latina vs latinx

What harm?

It offends upper middle class, privileged white women with questionably valid university degrees in the Humanities and a value system based around the extremely questionable critical theory, rather than the extremely successful for humanity method we know as reason (or the less successful but at least proven to mostly not implode and utterly destroy society method of religious conservatism)

It is an American imposed thing that's trying to fix your "wrong" culture. It doesn't even make grammatical sense.

>used the word Latina instead of the correct latinx.

It's not the "correct" term, and almost nobody I know of takes it seriously outside of really, really narrow little social media woke bubbles. If someone is a woman and of latin american origin, they will almost universally refer to themselves as latina and not care if others do. What idiotic nonsense to assume that something else is "correct" despite it going against the grain of a vast majority's word use.

I live in Latin America and have latin american family of all kinds. This aside from many friendships of both sexes and variable gender identifications too.

In America, barely any (2%) of the Latino population identify with it, yet it gets pushed anyway. In fact, 40% are actively bothered by it. Forcing use of it is such a bizarre hill to die on.

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000017d-81be-dee4-a5ff-efbe7...

It's a tool of social positioning, and helps an academic precariat oust incumbents in fields where there really aren't a lot of positions and whose degrees are good for little but academia or being political commissars at organizations that actually do something useful.

I am also disabled and it's a farce to pretend that it isn't abnormal and negative. We're in the era of pretending we don't know things we know and its asinine. I really hope modernity survives this era of enforced stupidity.

Western society is reverting to one which bases consensus on feelings rather than reason.

Just in case you don't realize it, those of us who are not disabled are quite fond of people like you who are that are able to hold this viewpoint instead of insisting on the nu-speak.

Carlin's bit on soft language has, sadly, never been more relevant than today.

I appreciate your response. Can you elaborate on the juxtaposition of being mentally ill. and considering yourself normal? This is not clear to me in your response.

I suffer from mental illness as well (a disability), and I certainly don’t consider myself normal. I’ve overcome my issues, and I’m perfectly happy talking about my experience at/in appropriate times/places. I just acknowledge that the average person within the realm of normal can’t relate to my experience.

Coincidentally, I get the most relatable feedback doing inspirational speaking at homeless shelters; there’s nothing about my life today that would indicate they consider me normal in their sphere. I’m all for learning to use the right language when talking to folks with disabilities, and your comment here seems insightful. I’m just not making the connection you’re trying to build.

I think I’ve chosen language that doesn’t communicate well. It makes sense to me in my head, but the HN crowd doesn’t seem to follow what I mean. :-)

Fundamentals: the social model essentially places the onus of accommodating disability on society as a whole rather than the disabled individual. A simple example is the difference between asking a person who cannot walk to climb stairs vs providing a ramp. The stairs represent the typical medical model (the disabled individual must adapt to how society works) and the ramp is the social model (society should adapt to how disabled people work).

It’s not so much about being normal as it is about _feeling_ normal. Viewing the world through the lens of the social model allows me to say, “this situation could be better” rather than “I could be better”. This is important became sometime the latter is impossible — there are features of my body that cannot be improved.

I’m pragmatic about this, BTW. I don’t think we should rebuild every aspect of society to accommodate the minutia of disability. I think it should be an aspirational value that we hold and act on when we can.

Does that help? I can talk about mental health in this context as well, it’s just a lot to put into a single post. :-)

Ah yes, much better, thank you. It's a ripe area for technological improvements. In the same way the video chat is better than the alternative of asynchronous written communication (not to say I don't love a handwritten letter) tech will mostly be a boon in this area.

I’m really excited about AI as a boon for accessibility.

Example: chronic pain messes with your ability to recall. These days I have more trouble recalling facts than I used to. This makes programming hard, as much as programming is about intuition and problem solving, it also depends on memorizing a lot of facts (what was that built-in function called again…?)

I started using Copilot a few months ago and, while I almost always reject Copilot’s suggestions, it’s been amazing for remembering names of things. For me it’s been much better than an IDE (for example) because it presents the things I have trouble remembering with some context code.

I've been asthmatic because of allergies practically all my life. It's normal for me, but since childhood it was always clear to me that having allergies and being asthmatic is an impairment, it's not normal for most people to be hindered by it.

The good news is that after middle age, my immune systems seems to have mellowed, so now I actually can do normal things my condition precluded me from, like eating avocados or shrimps, for example.

> Instead of "blind review", consider using "anonymous review". Context: Unintentionally perpetuates that disability is somehow abnormal or negative, furthering an ableist culture.

Such recommendations reflect the authors own prejudices.

Some forms of blinding like "Blind auditions" are literal and are largely indistinguishable from how blind people normally conduct auditions. "Blindness" is a symbol of justice and fairness and non-prejudice.

Blindness is also one of the easiest disabilities to achieve, temporarily or permanently. If blindness is at least neutral state of being, nothing stops one from wandering about with a blindfold. Somebody who fails to do so while talking about how blindness isn't a negative is insincere and all talk.

You can't just go and wander about in a blindfold - it requires practise and skill as well as some affordances from the environment: tactile pavements, audible traffic lights etc.

Blindness is perhaps somewhat negative in how it makes you vulnerable to some of the society's shortcomings, but then again aren't we all to some extent?

Consider people who are blind since birth vs people who are otherwise disadvantaged say because they will encounter more racism. Both can be shortcomings compared to the mode but does it make sense to talk of them as "negative"?

Ultimately in such matters I find that truth is the supreme value. If what you’re saying about a disability isn’t true, no matter what good intentions you may have, the things you’re saying are likely just going to confuse matters further.

The biggest problem with the guide on the point of blindness is it prescribes the correct attitude to have towards blindness, but people have all sorts of feelings about blindness, for all sorts of different and valid reasons. I think you’ve lost the plot to some extent when you start insisting that ANY disability shouldn’t be portrayed in a negative light, because the reality is people have many negative experiences with disability, there are positive experiences as well, but negative feelings are a big part of disability (even if you don’t feel them presently you’re probably felt them at some point), and not just for reasons of culture.

The blindfold example is a bit facetious, but if being blind is just as good as not being blind, why do people go to such lengths to stay sighted? Glasses are an entire industry. Why don’t people just live without sight? A theory about the world which cannot answer such questions is incomplete.

> The mental contortions required to conclude that "committed suicide" trivializes something, but "died by suicide" doesn't, are so extreme that I cannot believe anyone honestly holds that opinion.

I think the notion is that "committed suicide" is like "committed a crime" and harkens back to the Christian notion that suicide is a crime (against God). And so it's moralizing language that blames the person for killing themselves.

You can verify that this is a common notion among people who work in the field by Googling. For example, the first hit when I search for "why shouldn't we say committed suicide" is https://www.irmi.com/articles/expert-commentary/language-mat... which says:

> For example, the phrase "committed suicide" is frowned on because it harks back to an era when suicide was considered a sin or a crime. Think about the times when we use the word "commit": "commit adultery" or "commit murder."

> That leaves as the most likely conclusion that this document is not an honest effort to eliminate 'harm', but a mine-field, a list of sins and prohibitions, to be used as ammo against opponents.

It's interesting that you arrived at this conclusion before doing a minimal amount of research!

I always knew GitHub was a place full of sin I just couldn't figure out where these feelings were coming from.

I'm committed to my partner. She's evil, I knew it.

I say we should form a commission to investigate this further.

The commission might find that I’m mostly at fault so I might have to walk back my original claim.

My wife's commitment is concomitant to mine.

I hope.

Jokes on you, but they changed the default branch to be named "main" instead of "master" for reasons of appropriation.

I wonder if they take points away in an interview if you have a master's degree.

It's still one of the most stupendous pieces of harmful slacktivism that I've seen. So, so much pointless work fixing thing that didn't need to break, and all for the stupidest reasons possible.

“master” never made much sense to begin with. I’m still a bit disappointed that the default wasn’t set to “default”. I argued for either that or having no default at all.

Seriously, ignore political correctness for a bit. The “master” branch is generally not in charge of anything. It’s not like a master recording of which everything else is a copy. It has no special rights and isn’t even necessary more important.

It made a limited sort of sense in Linux where torvalds/linux.git’s master branch is the branch that everyone else’s development eventually follows, but my git clone of that is not any sort of master despite being called “master”.

That's fair. There still wasn't a problem, just a silly legacy name.

Stop trying to rationalize this insanity. It's a power grab, no more, no less.

Crazy, it's almost as if the same word can have different meanings and connotations depending on context!

> Committed to a cause, lives up to one's commitments, committed a patch, etc.

It's so easy. Almost every word has positive and negative connotations. Find such a word in your opponent's vocabulary, claim they intended the negative connotations, and thus declare him a sinner. Reference this Stanford document to support your accusation.

If you want to take a Christian perspective, the word "commit" is used to emphasize that the individual took specific action as opposed to "omit" meaning they failed to take proper action to prevent evil.

"Died by suicide" implies passivity. It just happened to them.

> "Died by suicide" implies passivity. It just happened to them.

Like "Officer involved shootings."

Exactly.

Well with officer involved shootings I can kind of understand the passive perspective, seeing as cops are not really acting on their own accord.

I genuinely don't understand this comment.

In the olden days, a news report would say "A suspect was fatally shot by a police officer."

Now, they'll only say "A suspect was fatally injured during an officer-involved shooting."

Which is like, yeah no kidding the officer was "involved" -- he pulled the trigger!

One has to be fully committed to the act of ending their life in order to commit suicide.

COMMIT should be banned from SQL.

The people pushing these language initiatives are the obnoxious and worthless hall-monitor types no one likes to work or speak with. The ones who never do anything productive in the organization they find themselves in because they’re too busy trying to mount moral crusades.

We’ll see less of this as shops and institutions find the need to focus on ROI, products, innovation, and shareholders once again now that the fairytale of free money and unlimited free labor is expiring. The people who do the actual work to build and teach and innovate at the periphery of their chosen industry will devour the hall monitors.

It's the same thing as replacing "homeless" with "experiencing homelessness". It's not saying anything different, but communication efficacy isn't the point.

The "involuntarily unhoused"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill

And for many, the "voluntarily unhoused".

Right, these guys are really going balls to the wall with this insanity.

Which ironically has nothing to do with human anatomy, but nobody bothered doing the research: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/balls_to_the_wall

And "balls-out" refers to locomotive centrifugal governor:

* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/balls-out

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_governor

I think that’s different. It’s nice to not have shitty circumstance be your identity.

I’ve got a friend who was recently homeless. Thinking of him as a “homeless person” isn’t really so helpful.

That said, I think developing a thick skin should be a curricular objective for all people.

Exactly this. I've been homeless twice (once as a kid and once as a young adult). I don't speak about it often, but when I do that is the language I use. There is no need to sugar coat it, and call it something else. People are too coddled and it is likely why so many now have trouble handling any adversity at all.

Am I depressed, or do I have depression?

I don't think either is any more an identity than the other.

And I'd rather people engage with the problem, rather than virtue signaling by using the 'correct' terminology, whatever that is this week.

Well, I can see why a person might prefer to look at their situation as temporary. In your case, would it be the same if you heard someone describe you as “a depressed person?”

Yes.

I'm sure weve all had an issue with a company, and in their communications, theyve been polite and used the 'right' words, but in the end you know they are basically fobbing you off, and refusing to sort the problem. the issue isn't the words, the issue is the attitude.

for me the issues would come in around how they perceive me. you could say that language used is indicative of that, but I disagree, polite words are often used to be very impolite. It takes very little time to assess someones perception, so I really don't see the utility in making people use 'correct' words.

I understand the intention but I don't see what about the word 'depressed' implies permanence. Is a depressed person any more permanently depressed than a depressed button or a depressed stock price?

Yeah, it’s definitely there. Maybe you don’t see it, but ask about. People are very sensitive to their own identity in mental health. Being depressed and being a depressed person is a very different implication!

In case it wasn't clear from my post above, this is me asking.

And also replace "sex" with "horizontal jogging" I guess. Ah the page is full of YPM references...

That still exhibits ableist bias. Off to PC detention for you.

When people use long winded euphemistic language directed at me I feel condescended to in direct proportion to the extra syllables used. The fact somebody is spending energy talking in awkward ways only to me reminds me of the fact that I'm in the class of people that are talked euphemistically about. So I've never understood what the point of such language actually was.

Great point. Would it be a stretch to suggest that this language is in reality just another medium for virtue signalling?

What people in the thread said is that they’re more comfortable saying or hearing things phrased a certain way, so that’s why they use that phrasing. Sure you can use language as a means of virtue signalling though.

For me though, I simply see being offbeat phrasing as being stigmatizing in practice, it ends up drawing more attention to whatever was being described.

To fit the style of the OP link I think you should be saying “person who is without housing”

It's just normal newspeak.

And some people still consider that Orwell wrote fiction.

Is it time for our two minutes of Musk hate?

One thing of note: there is likely no unified “they”, given that a document seems to be a mixed bag of elementary clarity-of-language items (“this is wild” vs. “this is insane”) and obsessive pedantic nonsense (about distinctions that do not exist to either the general population or most of the affected communities, eg. “committed suicide” [1]), and the forcibly mild language in the introduction.

If I could hazard a guess, this document was probably the result of an uncomfortable compromise between some folks of varying levels of assertiveness, obsessiveness, and linguistic myopia[2]. Likely not intended to be a minefield by some/most of its authors, but would be treated as one by small but frustratingly vocal segments of both its staunchest defenders and most enraged critics.

It would be really nice if both all of us could maybe just (figuratively) go out and touch some grass, instead of letting isolated personal frustrations turn into pet peeves and then into poorly-justified prescriptivism.

[1] This also reminds me of the alleged distinction between “transwoman” and “trans woman”. (German speakers and the like might find it particularly superfluous.)

[2] Speaking as a person with severe near-sightedness. (Edit: typo)

"blind review" is good - better than "non-blind review". So in some sense they are eliminating phrases where "blind" is used in a positive light.

“Blind review” has blind once but view twice. Ableist!

> But.. disability is abnormal and negative? How tortured of a definition of 'normal' must one use to make blindness normal? And I suspect if the author of that sentence were offered, say, $100,000 to undergo a painless but irreversible blinding surgery, they would very quickly admit blindness is a negative

As you can verify with some Googling, there are many Deaf people who choose not to undergo surgery to gain the ability to hear. (This isn't a universal preference by any means, but it's also not fringe.)

I'll point out that if you can't hear by ~11 years old, you won't be able to understand language - even if you can hear later in life. So it is possible that you are reading stories of people who decide not to get the surgery because they know they won't get full function.

But music though

Deaf people dance to music all the time.

I’m aware.

You are simply wrong about this, that is not the cultural attitude that generates this response in something like 95%+ of cases.

Capital-D Deaf culture does not as a rule view their lack of hearing as a horrible wrong that needs to be corrected for them to live a “normal” life. They believe that they are living a normal life, and screw you for suggesting otherwise, and many would tell you that they do not want to speak your inferior language anyways, because it is broadly technically inferior due to its inherent one-dimensionality: you describe things with a scalar pressure varying with time only, their language describes things with motions in three dimensions of space as well as in time.

This means that in the 95% case, the dominant attitude is not “I’m afraid,” it's “those folks are assholes half the time, why would I want to join them if I don't have to?”. It's a cultural objection rather than a physiological one.

>those folks are assholes half the time, why would I want to join them if I don't have to?

"The grapes are sour anyway." I'd bet the rate of assholes among the deaf is probably about equal to the non-deaf.

> I'll point out that if you can't hear by ~11 years old, you won't be able to understand language

I don't know the specifics of this claim, so I won't talk about the argument that I assume you're trying to make. However, the argument you're actually making here is completely untrue. Almost all deaf people understand and can communicate through language. In fact, if you put a group of deaf people together for long enough, they may well spontaneously generate a language. Sign languages are real languages with almost all of the features of spoken languages (and with additional features of their own). The idea that someone can only understand "language" if they are and to hear is completely wrong.

I assume what you're trying to say is that if you can't hear by this age, you will not be able to decipher sounds into language - I have no idea if this is the case. But this is an important semantic distinction (understanding language versus understanding language from sounds alone), and the fact that you seem to have inadvertently confused them seems relevant to the issue at hand: it is very easy for us to accept spoken language as a universal standard, when in practice, spoken language is just one (more common) variant of many different forms of language.

Being on HN, I think it's fair(er?) to assume that the GP was aware that "language" can mean a standard of expression and communication that is not a spoken human language (maybe a programming language?), but also that it's fair(er?) to assume that they meant "spoken human language" too.

I'd be more interested in the source for their claim, than being pedantic about them missing "spoken" in where they clearly meant that.

What's the ratio of deaf people who choose to get cochlear implants or similar vs hearing people who choose to intentionally deafen themselves?

The entire point of this linguistic exercise is that your opinion that you would not give up your ability to hear is no more or less valid than someone's opinion to the contrary.

I think his question is asking for objective evidence that would suggest either.

Right. And I am saying, Deaf people, and other people who don't think they have a disability, are asking for us not to say that they do when they don't think they do. And the answer from some quarters seems to be, I think "objectivity" is on my side, screw your conception of your identity.

It's not that different from refusing to use someone's pronouns. I think that both are a mean way to respond to a fellow human.

Fully embracing the reality of ones own personal life experience is important. This seems to be where you want the conversation to stop. I think I can see the positivity and benefit in stopping there, choosing not to see any possible ugliness beyond.

Maybe that's the bigger question here. Should language be precise, or nice? Or, to the extremes we're seeing here, should language be formed to make certain types of subjects difficult or impossible to present themselves? Maybe freedom of thought, and the ugliness beyond, is something that should only be allowed in ones own head?

> Should language be precise, or nice? [...] Maybe freedom of thought, and the ugliness beyond, is something that should only be allowed in ones own head?

I don't think that asking people to say "died by suicide" rather than "committed suicide" is a question of precision vs niceness. Both are plenty precise, we agree they describe exactly the same IRL event.

I also don't think that asking people to say "died by suicide" rather than "committed suicide" is an affront to freedom of thought, for the same reason.

That said, sure, yes, my parents always told me to "think before you speak" and sometimes "you can think it but don't say it". We all think things that we shouldn't say, usually because saying those things will hurt someone. If you insist on saying something after being informed that it hurts someone (e.g., not using their pronouns, or referring to a painful moment in their life [e.g. the suicide of a loved one] in a way that hurts them) then, yeah, that's kind of the thing my parents tried to teach me not to do.

It's also complicated by cultural factors. The culturally deaf (often written "Deaf") have their own culture -- sign language is a complete and distinct language, there are norms and practices unique to the culture. Acquiring the ability to hear is also the ability to, in effect, leave that culture and acquire the mainstream culture. Many Deaf people do not, in fact, view themselves as disabled or impaired. Particularly those who grew up mostly around Deaf people and who have an entirely Deaf experience in life. Everyone around them seems fine, they have their own distinct culture, etc.

As a consequence, getting an implant as an adult, or allowing your deaf newborn to be implanted, touches issues of social status and identity and politics within the Deaf community.

It doesn't take long for a culturally Deaf person to do a little thought experiment. What if the hearing can one day "solve" deafness in say 98% of children at birth? The cultural Deaf community may well face extinction under those circumstances. There would be no more children learning sign language as their native language, the chain of cultural transmission from deaf parent to deaf child would be broken. It is quite literally the end of their distinct culture and way of life, which they do not view as impaired or lesser.

You can even take this argument a step further. If mainstream society starts pushing and not simply offering cochlear implants to deaf children -- such as by creating a narrative that the Deaf are lesser or impaired in some way -- then that may well constitute a form of cultural genocide, taking the children of a particular culture judged as less or inferior, mutilating them, and forcing them to be raised in a different culture.

I'm not particularly convinced by the more extreme form of the argument, but it has been made, and the argument as a whole in all its various forms, I don't think can be fully dismissed easily. There is a point there.

>Pushing cochlear implants is like genocide on deaf people.

If this is serious, I've now read the dumbest thing I may ever read in my life. People who've been traumatized by rape affirm their lives as rape survivors. Yet, we don't consider preventing rape an attempt at cultural genocide of the rape survivor culture and community. Likewise, combat veterans have their own culture and community. We don't consider preventing war as cultural genocide of veterans.

Call it culture if you'd like, it arises from being injured in some way, or not having an ability. Restoring this ability and preventing the injury is an absolutely good thing. Reframing the community of the disenfranchised as a 'culture' so you can call this benefit 'cultural genocide' is nonsense semantics. Deaf 'culture' dying is as good as people being born with functional hearing.

Article from 2020: https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/why-deaf-people-oppo...

Article from 2017: https://bioedge.org/enhancement/will-curing-the-deaf-lead-to...

It is serious. I think it's an argument that has enough internal sense and structure that it can't just be called a stupid argument and tossed out.

I'm here to explore the ideas around this, not trash nor proselytize any particular idea for the sake of it. You won't get very far by starting with comparing deafness to having been raped or having your leg blown off. Rape survivors are not a distinct cultural group.

Take deafness and ability entirely out of the equation for now.

People who speak sign language as a native language are a distinct cultural group with a long and separate heritage from the hearing world. For example, American Sign Language is related to French Sign Language and the speakers of each can understand each other somewhat. While British Sign Language is totally different and American and British deaf people can't even easily speak to each other in sign, only in writing. There's a whole cultural world there, as vibrant and functional as hearing ones.

They get along fairly well. People born deaf and raised in a deaf community generally have better outcomes socially and economically compared to deaf people raised in isolation in hearing culture. Yes, they cannot hear, but they don't feel they're missing anything and, functionally speaking, they'd survive on their own just fine without hearing.

I was born quite hard of hearing, and I am going deaf as I get older. I was raised hearing. Bitterly ironically, I'm musically talented and it is one of my great pleasures. I am also linguistically talented, particularly with phonetics. (Taught myself in my teens to improve my speech and it became a fascination.) And yet I am losing the capacity to sense those things.

Trust me. I get it. I get it very well. The deaf have no idea what they're missing.

And yet Deaf culture is a precious thing that also deserves to exist.

It is an impasse and a seeming paradox and I don't have an answer. Raise every child hearing and allowing sign and the culture to die out is undesirable just as people who could hear music and speech being unable to hear them is.

Regarding the reasons for this, I'll repost:

Being deaf is an inherently negative aspect. You either have the ability to hear, or you do not. If you do not, it is a dis-ability. No one wants to lose an ability to do something.

Someone who lives an extensive period of time without an ability may have learned how to live without this ability. They learn to cope and affirm their life with its faults in their current state. Offering the ability they lost and have learned to live without may be declined because of the affirmation of their life as it is. It could be declined because the transition is uncomfortable as well. Either way, being deaf is still negative, they've just psychologically coped well.

If you had the choice, would you choose that your child be deaf or not? That you be deaf or not? If one isn't deaf, would they choose to become deaf or not? This entire argument results from academic nonsense that anyone outside that context can see through.

Regarding culture, culture is defined as "the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group.". A social group of veterans (injured or not) absolutely can be considered equivalent as your usage. Preventing war is a cultural genocide if you consider it that way. You're saying that a culture which arises from suffering, injury, evil and so on deserves preservation by refusing to prevent the evil that causes them. Alcoholics Anonymous has a culture, Gamblers Anonymous, etc.

Yes, it is academic nonsense based on semantics. It doesn't matter if they don't feel they're missing anything - what you've never had you cannot miss. What you've had, lost and coped with you've learned not to miss. No one buys into this pedantry but academics with too much time on their hands.

EDIT: I apologize for "proselytizing" and "trashing" that view. My sister is an ASL teacher and she's made the same points you have to me, so I'm aware of the debate, and so have strong views on the matter. I have heard and considered everything you've said beforehand. I believe this sentiment comes from empathy and affirmation of deaf people as taught by those who are close with that community. Yet, I also believe this view is nonsense that someone outside that context can clearly see.

> What if the hearing can one day "solve" deafness in say 98% of children at birth? The cultural Deaf community may well face extinction under those circumstances.

By this logic, would a cure for cancer be a bad thing too, since then cancer patients would be extinct?

Unlike deafness, cancer tends to be fatal. More appropriate comparisons (though not entirely comparable) would be gender dysphoria, autism, or, if the "gay gene" hypothesis is to be believed, homosexuality.

Quadriplegia also isn't fatal. Should we reject a miracle cure for it too?

I don't think we should reject the creation of a medical cure at all. I'm completely of the view that if an procedure exists to treat/cure a problem (however that's defined to exist) the procedure should be available to the extent the creator is interested in providing it.

However, GP expanded upon a sociological dimension to disabilities and chronic illnesses that isn't usually discussed and considered. When asking "How do they cure it", an important question to consider is "Do they/ Would they ever want a cure and under what corcumstances?"

It's quite the coincidence that deafness was the example used, because the scenario GP describes actually happened once before:

https://www.icphs2019.org/the-marthas-vineyard-deaf-communit...

Being deaf is an inherently negative aspect. You either have the ability to hear, or you do not. If you do not, it is a dis-ability. No one wants to lose an ability to do something.