I fully agree that this specific change is insignificant, but the biggest deep learning conference has been renamed, after something like 20 years, because of this kind of pressure.
Word policing has a bit of a 1984 feel to it. Some desire to control you and how you think by controlling which words you use, with new arbitrary words being banned all the time. Instead of actual change, we're focusing on the superficial.
> ...the biggest deep learning conference has been renamed, after something like 20 years, because of this kind of pressure.
This was interesting:
> Of the survey respondents, 1,881 were men and 294 were women. Of the women, 44% agreed a name change should occur and 40% disagreed. Of the men, 28% agreed a name change should occur and 55% disagreed.[5] More than half of those surveyed were against the change, but 30% of those surveyed were in favor. In response, the Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation Board of Trustees decided to change the official abbreviation and acronym of the conference from NIPS to NeurIPS. [0]
The conference was called NIPS. It's slang for nipples and a racial slur. It isn't like everyone was mature about it. There was an unofficial event called TITS. People wore shirts proclaiming "my NIPS are NP hard". Funny but hardly professional.
Yes it is. This change is effectively reflecting a push, by bullies, to ban the word master, to eliminate it from spoken and written language, that's exactly what's happening.
No, it’s not. By changing the default, the majority of people will likely use “main” for new projects because there’s not much incentive to override it besides the attitude you’ve expressed here (and most people are probably not motivated by that attitude), but you’re still free to have that attitude, to use the word, and to override the default trivially.
Language evolves. One of the ways it evolves is that certain expressions become understood as hurtful or impolite... and people with empathy learn to use other expressions in their stead out of respect. That’s not “banning” those expressions, it’s choosing to adapt for the benefit of a broader subset of society.
A great deal of social expectations are the consequence of this kind of process of empathy and adaptation, and they make living on the planet with other people more joyful and safer. Sometimes in small ways, other times in big ways. But you don’t have to meet those expectations if you value the symbolic freedom of using language that’s gone out of vogue for these reasons... you just have to accept that people may view you as inconsiderate as a consequence.
I it was anything like the SQLite push to adopt a CoC for a private project then at least some organized harassment on social media and the very real threat to cut various forms funding.
Some people do discriminatory things and call it professionalism. Like arbitrarily banning traditional hair styles. I've never heard anyone say avoiding sexual innuendo is anti black. Have you?
I can assure you that I have seen 30+ year old graduate students giggle and try not to laugh in the Machine Learning Departments at CMU whenever that conference name was dropped in the office.
I mean, you would think people would grow up, right? I am glad our female colleagues don’t have to suppress their embarrassment while mentioning the conference anymore.
you're having it both ways in your comment here: if it's only superficial and doesn't actually change anything, then you can safely ignore it. it only matters if it is actually controlling how you think (in which case, it is not superficial and is an actual change)
you can argue that it is the wrong change, or that the end doesn't justify the means, etc, but it doesn't make sense to say that it is both thought control, and superficial
It's superficial as in it's addressing the wrong problem. You're not going to undo racism by eliminating the word master from spoken and written language. A word, which, once again, has multiple meanings. It's like you guys don't understand that context and intent matter 1000 times more than the choice of words.
It's wrong because trying to censor the way everyone expresses themselves because a hypothetical person might be offended is a form of bullying.
Word policing has a bit of a 1984 feel to it. Some desire to control you and how you think by controlling which words you use, with new arbitrary words being banned all the time. Instead of actual change, we're focusing on the superficial.