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Comment by coffeeblack | Hacker News Reader

And of course the “Master’s” degree.

Now called a Main’s degree

I almost spit my tea out. You made me laugh.

That's too close to the spelling of the word Man, which would be exclusionary of the woman gender. Let's call it a Human's degree.

Or better yet, a Being's degree. Let's not be speciesists.

Scentient, please. But let's not use the New Order's classification of species as scentient or not.

Or elementist (Silicon vs. carbon)

Human has the word man in it, so let’s use huperson

"Terran" is an established term.

That's exclusionary of beings not native to Terra.

That's not going to be an issue. There are zero such beings known so far, no hard evidence they even exist, and we're not going to find or create ones any time soon - the same people who engage in language policing also currently dislike space exploration for various ideological reasons.

Well the colonizers didn't know that Native Americans existed before landing in America, and look what happened. We must prevent any and all such occurrences in our interplanetary future by only using a non-specieist vocabulary.

It’s so obvious that if colonizers had used inclusive language, everybody would have lived in peace. Though maybe labelling them ‘colonizers’ and not ‘welcome guests’ was only the first of a set of micro aggressions that precipitated the situation.

> That's not going to be an issue. There are zero such beings known so far

Maybe the reason there are zero openly non-terran (or, preferrably, differently planeted) folks is attutides like yours. Think about it.

> for various ideological reasons

They are opposed to colonies wherever they might be, even lunar colonies.

This is gaslighting the lived experience of those who have reported abduction by aliens.

You have no argument there. The same people who care about butchering language and destroying society are the same people who don't care about facts or what's real.

What do you identify as, though?

I just love this thread.

I think you missed the joke, friend.

But "person" has the word "son" in it, and that's gendered.

Better go with huperchild.

Huperchild has the words “per child” in it, which is exclusionary to people who choose not to worsen overpopulation by not procreating.

How about huperperson?

Uh wait, that’s recursi- political correctness overflow error.

Human ends in “man” and has already been regarded as offensive to “people” or “persons”. Being when referenced to an organism is only used in context of “human” (offensive) or an “alien” (offensive). Anything that is referential to an offensive word must be struck as well.

No word should ever create a mental reference to a banned word nor should a substitute word create a mental suspicion or guess of what the original offensive word was. A new vocabulary must be formed -newspeak if you will.

> Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever.

You're discriminating against non-beings.

Being brought up in multicultural Australia, I was colourblind [1] to race. I find it hard to even remember what ethnicity my peers were.

As such, I have no hate of other races but I'm filled with hate every time my "git push origin master" fails because the branch is now called "main".

[1] How was this word not on the list?

Add aliases to your gitconfig. Not gonna solve the frustration but at least it doesn’t have to be a trigger (oops). Also, I much prefer trunk over main/master anyway so I just went back to that.

I hope you've got a big trunk, because I'm going to put my bike in it

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Thank you! I had no idea one could alias branch names. Why be woke, when you can be aliased awake.

"Being brought up in multicultural Australia, I was colourblind [1] to race."

Tell that to Ibram Kendi.

He can't believe that kids in racially integrated environments are efficient thinkers largely concerned with simple priorities. Is Billy a bully? Should I pick Alice first in the game on the sandlot? Can Jose help me with this math problem?

I'm not very smart and would prefer it just being called a university degree, to describe where you get it from.

I mean what the fuck is a sophomore?

You're not wrong; it would probably make sense to have first/second/third level degrees instead of BSc/MSc/PhD (and their equivalents). We might even get there eventually. But the reason this would be desirable has nothing to do with etymology of "master's degree" (or "bachelor's degree"), nor with the hypocrisy of a university declaring the word "master" as offensive, while not renaming the corresponding degree.

Sophomore is an oxymoron:

> From earlier sophumer, from the obsolete sophom (“sophism or dialectical exercise”), likely influenced by Ancient Greek σοφός (sophós, “wise”) + μωρός (mōrós, “fool”). Compare oxymoron (literally “sharp-dull”), a similar contradiction.

Only in the UK. In the US, it's better known as a Line Degree.

it would be even easier to say that "Bachelors" degree is worse on multiple woke levels except perhaps race.

PhD isn't any better - the Ph stands for "philosophy", which ostensibly is about "love for wisdom", but it's clear etymologically that phílos + sophía isn't exactly ungendered.

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