Is "master - slave" admissible as technical terms?

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Martin Y
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Re: Is "master - slave" admissible as technical terms?

Post by Martin Y » Wed Jul 01, 2020 1:53 pm

It's an analogy, and it's been adopted and used because it works. It may work better or worse in various applications and there may well be better analogies available for some or all of them, but while it can by all means be argued that it's a word we simply should not use, it's really not a poor analogy.

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Re: Is "master - slave" admissible as technical terms?

Post by dyqik » Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:40 pm

Martin Y wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 1:53 pm
It's an analogy, and it's been adopted and used because it works. It may work better or worse in various applications and there may well be better analogies available for some or all of them, but while it can by all means be argued that it's a word we simply should not use, it's really not a poor analogy.
No, it really is not that good an analogy. It only worked in the past because white people didn't want to think about how slavery actually worked, because the people using it are not actually very good at analyzing systems in abstract ways, and never really considered that people descended from slaves would have to make sense of the analogy because they were working in technology.

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Martin Y
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Re: Is "master - slave" admissible as technical terms?

Post by Martin Y » Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:59 pm

Slaves are not just about America.

It's a simple analogy and goes as far as it goes. It isn't a bad analogy because one clutch cylinder doesn't threaten to whip the other clutch cylinder, or because it didn't buy it, or keep it in chains or a hundred other irrelevant points.

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Re: Is "master - slave" admissible as technical terms?

Post by Herainestold » Wed Jul 01, 2020 10:00 pm

"Throughout human history, three caste systems have stood out."

India, Nazi Germany, United States
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/maga ... d=tw-share
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Re: Is "master - slave" admissible as technical terms?

Post by Martin_B » Thu Jul 02, 2020 12:27 am

Herainestold wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 10:00 pm
"Throughout human history, three caste systems have stood out."

India, Nazi Germany, United States
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/maga ... d=tw-share
Whoever wrote that has a perilously poor grasp of history. I'd counter with: South Africa, the United Kingdom, Rwanda, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, Australia, China, most of South America, the USSR, most of the Middle East (but Saudi Arabia & Kuwait especially), Japan, Korea, Nepal, Spain! (Basques were considered an inferior race for centuries). Need I go on?
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Re: Is "master - slave" admissible as technical terms?

Post by Millennie Al » Thu Jul 02, 2020 2:28 am

dyqik wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 12:50 pm
Millennie Al wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 1:32 am
Well, in that case, what terms would you use for a persistent relationship between two people, A and B, whereby B must do exactly what A demands with no way to escape?
That's never happened, and so there's no term for it. Certainly it isn't Master-Slave, because slaves could have considerable responsibility (e.g. when used as household servants), or could be pure manual labour.
The essence of slavery is its involuntary nature. Slavery has been a feature of humanity which has been widespread across the world and through history, and has had many variations. It is certainly true that many masters throughout history have granted slaves some level of autonomy, but it still counts as slavery when any such autonomy is at the whim of the master.
In either case, it was possible for them to rebel, and be punished, or to escape. Slavery works by threats and terror, which is not relevant to technology.
How incredibly patronising. Try telling that to actual slaves and see how many agree.
And so it doesn't reflect the relationship between a system A and system B where system B has no free will.
Since there's no such thing as free will, that is not a relevant difference.
The other question you should ask yourself is why are you so insistent on anthropomorphising both nodes in this relationship? Why use terms for people, instead of domesticated animals, or insects, or mechanical components?
That is not something I have started. I am merely trying to follow where others seem to object to the terminology. The terminology is already well established. Why change it?

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Re: Is "master - slave" admissible as technical terms?

Post by Millennie Al » Thu Jul 02, 2020 2:45 am

dyqik wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:40 pm
It only worked in the past because white people didn't want to think about how slavery actually worked,
Why this obsession with white people?
and never really considered that people descended from slaves would have to make sense of the analogy because they were working in technology.
That was not considered because it is irrelevant. People descended from slaves are quite obviously capable of highly complex analytical thought. And if someone claims to be able to work in technology but have any uncertainty over what is meant by "master" and "slave" in a technological context, I think they're ability is, at best, highly questionable.

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Re: Is "master - slave" admissible as technical terms?

Post by Bird on a Fire » Fri Jul 03, 2020 10:58 am

George Floyd: Twitter drops 'master', 'slave' and 'blacklist'
On Thursday, Twitter's engineering division tweeted out a set of words that it wants "to move away from using in favour of more inclusive language". The list includes replacing "whitelist" with "allowlist" and "master/slave" with "leader/follower".
JPMorgan and GitHub making similar changes.

The new terms seem equally unambiguous, and devoid of historical baggage.
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