There is a big difference with those first 3 terms - they all are descriptive, having nothing to do with good or bad. I think that is true for “black box” regardless which definition you have in mind. I immediately think of an impenetrable/totally opaque container (physical or logical) where it is impossible to know what is inside. But then there is the (now orange) flight recorder that was originally black when that meaning was imparted.
It will be a sad world if we cannot physically describe something without offending someone.
But other terms where negative/positive cultural meaning is attached that is not innately representative of the idea, I can see why we should try to use alternative terms.
great turn of phrase. I totally agree. I remember a situation at work where a female co-worker asked me to change something that was “sexists”. My initial reaction was (in my head) “no it isn’t, you idiot”, but even I realized that if a female co-worker says something is sexist it would be really dumb to argue.
I think we mostly agree on that. In fact, at this mythical place where I work I think we still hire “black box” testers but no longer “blacklist” things. I supposed if a few workers started objecting to “black box” that might be discouraged, but things haven’t really gone that way. We got rid of white=good, black=bad, and don’t call things masters or slaves any longer. People seem fine with that and I haven’t heard of people trying to push for more “banned words”.
I was overreacting in another thread about this, but I would like to add to this discussion as a german male. We had an “orthography reform” a few years back, which was really painful for a lot of people my age. We grew up with “Photographie”, that was changed to “Fotografie”, but a “Philosoph” stayed that way - and a lot of other changes. We got over with it and now it is normal to see both spellings.
Now we are in the middle of another reform, where we try to gender our language, which is male-centric until now. “Mitarbeiter” is the male form of “Co-Worker” and “Mitarbeiterin” is the female version. When you adress one person, it is easy to differentiate, but when you adressed a lot of “Co-Workers” as in “An alle Mitarbeiter” (as in “To all Co-Workers”) it was normal to use the male form. Which is bad, I agree. But now we have multiple ways to spell the new version. “An alle Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter” is the easiest one, but there are only two genders included, so we introduced the “gender star” which comes as a Star * or a colon : or an underline _. So you will find now “An alle Mitarbeiter*innen” or “Mitarbeiter:innen” or “Mitarbeiter_innen”. As you can imagine, there is a lot of discussion about this topic for a few years now in germany. I am totally ok with that, we will get over it and finally agree to a single form.
But in addition to that we germans are sometimes in a place called the internet. And that place has often rules which seem to be as if the world wide web was invented in the US. It’s ok, but just take a moment to think about this:
You enter a german forum, because you need some information about a product from a german brand. You are a nice person, so you want to introduce yourself. You go to google translate and check for a good intro.
After your post you are being reminded that you should have wrote “Liebe Mitglieder*innen” and that your post was an insult. And that you are most definitely someone who does not agree to the forum rules and that a permanent ban is coming…
How would you think about that?
That was the reaction to my question why there is a whitelist and not a blacklist.
Yes, I understand that. And as the culprit (or one of them) I would like to apologize. These things are very culture-centric and web communities (like this one) often have a very USA bias that doesn’t always make sense to others. If our intention is to be “inclusive”, I agree that not attacking people from other cultures would be part of that inclusiveness.
In this case we sort of have a (small) conflict. The USA wants to (or should want to) be less racist and we also want to be friendlier to people from other countries. I think here in our little VCV world we should be able to that.
Until relatively recently what mattered above all was the intent of the speaker. Now it is the perception of the listener that has primacy. Words themselves have also been reified to the extent that they have acquired their own moral potentiality independent of usage and context.
I don’t understand why thinking about such things is so painful to people.
Do you feel the same about people who joke about things about being “really gay” or calling someone “retarded”? Or do you accept language choice isn’t actually some immutable edifice?
(cit)