Re:NIPS Name Change
by enjeyw on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @12:09AM
(#18289660)
Even for tongue-in-cheek suggestion to change the name to "27fb380bc013f01262acf6b2518d08bd" to avoid all possible offence, people might start referencing to the conference as "the hash code", which sounds like a cannabis convention.
Re:NIPS Name Change
by tptacek on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @12:08AM
(#18289654)
Does anyone here actually care about the substance of this story (academic conference considers name change due to racist homograph, opts against)? Nothing happened. Reasonable people might have changed the name. These reasonable people didn't.
Re:NIPS Name Change
by 5minbreak on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @10:14AM
(#18292564)
Yeah, I cared about this issue. I think it is an interesting direction that tech is going in, and to see some pushback against the identity politics/social justice movement.
Perhaps comparable to changing the name Black Hat so to not offend people of color. Reasonable or madness?
"Nips" is slang for nipples and was a racial slur for the Japanese once upon a time. I don't think the former is really gender specific, and I don't think most people have heard it used in the latter way.
Re:NIPS Name Change
by wink on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @03:22AM
(#18290338)
Interesting, hadn't heard this yet.
As an aside, a (German) acquaintance of mine was once harshly told to shut it and kicked from an open source project's IRC channel because he had (by accident) used the German form of "yep" instead of saying "yep" or "yes" - it's "jap".
Wondering to this day how someone can be offended by the mere existence of a word in a different language that happens to map to another one in your language - if it just happens to appear, without context. I'm stressing this as the discussion had nothing to do with people or getting out of hand.
Perhaps comparable to changing the name Black Hat so to not offend people of color. Reasonable or madness?
As an aside, a (German) acquaintance of mine was once harshly told to shut it and kicked from an open source project's IRC channel because he had (by accident) used the German form of "yep" instead of saying "yep" or "yes" - it's "jap". Wondering to this day how someone can be offended by the mere existence of a word in a different language that happens to map to another one in your language - if it just happens to appear, without context. I'm stressing this as the discussion had nothing to do with people or getting out of hand.