I agree this (and related religious-political thought policing) are a dark side of what amounts to UBI which it where much of society is at. Do and say the right things, give up freedom of choice, and you're taken care of for life. Think for yourself and you're left in the cold.

It reminds me of the movie 300, where all Xerxes demands is that you kneel.

Do and say the right things, give up freedom of choice, enter into a social contract where in exchange for refraining from exercising some of one's natural rights to others' detriment, they agree to refrain from...

... wait.

I don't follow the UBI thing at all. If anything, this illustrates that we should have UBI or try and reduce the amount of folks working in bullshit jobs somehow.

You said a forbidden word, so no UBI for you?

Straight out of 1984.

I guess I have a different definition of universal than you.

Do you really believe that it is going to be dolled out “universally” and not, like every other human endeavor, based on political vote wrangling?

I see a lot of people struggling to make ends meet around me and they have all sorts of politics.

I find your comment fairly tone deaf and reeking of unwarranted victimism.

Absolutely, but "all sorts of politics" is not "any sort of politics". Also, I'm pretty sure none of the teams who made these word lists are struggling to make ends meet. For example, what does the guy who's out there in the middle of a cold night making soup for homeless people think about these lists?

The people around you should try to get into political positions where all they'll need to do is to have the right political opinions and enforce that then. Which opinions those are depends on the organization.

The problem of course is that many people couldn't stand to work in such an organization, and there's definitely suffering involved unless you are a certain type that loves that kind of work.

I dunno, I think it's good that a racial slur is not thrown at me in my workplace. I know at least some people who would love to do it as a """"joke""""

Could be just me though

What about:

master

blacklist/whitelist

crazy/idiotic/stupid

"skin a cat"

"black market"

"black box testing" / "white box testing"

"three amigos"

"war games"

?

These are the kinds of words people are talking about, not historical slurs.

I work for a very large company. These words are in a list of words we're "not allowed" to use. There are even more ridiculous ones (e.g. can't use "normal" to describe things)

I just watched the Three Amigos the other day! It wasn't that funny anymore, but ... come on.

What's the problem with "war games"?

the document says it is "violent language".

the reasoning for "three amigos" is that it is "racially loaded language"

Violent language?! How do they suggest you write about actual wars?

[edit] I won't even dignify the stupidity of conflating the Spanish language with a race - then its use with racism - with a response, except to say that such a view could only arise among the privileged children of racists in a very small part of the United States.

I just briefly checked 'muskateer' on Wikipedia, of all the old pictures listed on the page, I couldn't find one that depicted a non male-presenting one, does that make 'muskateer' gender-charged as in the "three muskateers'

I'm lucky in that for most of my career I worked in an organization where if you alienated any of your colleagues you increased the odds of not having future work.

You're absolutely right, but your rightful demand is being abused and taken to unrealistic extremes by people who want to (a) build a career on top of that and (b) be seen as social messiahs. Abuse comes from all sides.

That's not what this is about. This is more things like 'you're never allowed to use words like "idiot" or "dumb" because any use of those words ever is ableist against people with learning difficulties' or "using the word 'disabled' is always insensitive, even if somebody uses that word to talk about their own disability and says it's fine for you to use"

> any use of those words

not that. Anything done above the lowest common denominator is ableist, according to one frame. And according to the other frame (expressed constantly here), everyone earns everything by their own merit alone, and it's always been so.

The flaw in both of these frames is their focus on language, as if language alone can make things what they are. It's a mistake that older people can always see in young people, that I couldn't see in myself but I can see in my younger self now; the idea that you will remake the world by changing the definitions.

Racial slurs have been banned for a long time in the average workplace and that’s a good thing. These lists are talking about banning words like “crazy” (offensive to the mentally ill) and “felon” (offensive to … felons, I guess)

You don’t see how using the word “crazy” to describe someone with a mental illness creates a negative connotation that harms them? If you label someone “crazy” do you think you’re more or less likely to recognize them for their work, regardless of their performance? Do you think you’re more or less likely to listen to them with an open mind?

The word “mental illness” already has a negative connotation that harms them. Calling someone mentally ill would be way more hurtful than someone saying “Wow, that’s crazy!” offhand in a conversation, which is what these lists are really targeting.

Reality is that life kind of sucks for people who take care of or interact with the mentally ill, and it definitely sucks more for the mentally ill themselves… No amount of progressive hand-wringing or administrative Band-aids is going to change that.

Banning the word crazy is silly, ineffective, patronizing nonsense that does nothing to help the mentally ill whatsoever, not even changing the perception around them nor making them feel better.

So you recognize that giving someone a negative label harms them, but you think people should do it anyway? The problem is that the label itself creates additional bias. It dehumanizes the person. Suddenly you’re not a person suffering from depression or bipolar disorder; you’re “crazy” or “mentally ill” and should be shunned or diminished.

Plenty of people who suffer from a mental illness do well in life, but you’re right that they often have a harder time. So then why should we actively make their life even harder by attaching a stigma and dehumanizing them? I don’t think that’s progressive as much as just humanitarian.

We’re conflating two abstract issues here and you’re accusing me of doing things that I’m not doing.

Imagine a hypothetical scenario: two of your coworkers are in an office and one tells the other something shocking. The second says, “Wow, that’s crazy!” Do you think that’s a micro aggression, or worse, a slur?

Second scenario: you’re talking to a coworker and they say “Bob has been off recently. Some of the stuff he says is so insane. Yesterday he completely embarrassed us in that meeting!” Do you think this is any less hurtful to Bob because your coworker said “insane” instead of “crazy”?

My answers are “no” and “no”, and it seems pretty obvious why. In the first scenario there’s no intention to harm someone and even if harm is done, it’s extremely small. In the second scenario, your coworker is going to say something bad about Bob and it doesn’t matter how tightly you control the corporate Newspeak, he is going to express his opinion.

Grow a spine and realize the world isn’t for or against you, it just is.

There are plenty of valid reasons to use the word "crazy" while not talking about a person.

So some banned word lists are fine, obviously you can't call your students racist slurs. But these ones are bad (presumably because I personally don't understand why some of the words on the list might be offensive.)

Banned word lists are always a bad idea. I feel like it probably only makes things worse - people wanting to offend will come up with new euphemisms and slurs but will be in the clear because those words aren't on the banned list yet.

At the end of the day, we really want to be holding people accountable on the meaning of what they write or say, not making lists of words that probably don't actually offend anybody but that someone thinks could possibly offend someone else somewhere at some point in time, maybe.

> Banned word lists are always a bad idea. I feel like it probably only makes things worse

To be clear, this neans you also think banned word lists consisting only of racial slurs are bad?

I am not who you asked but I can see an argument being made that, yes, a banned word list consisting of racial slurs is still bad, albeit significantly less so.

The argument would go something like this: you can ban use of racial slurs without specifically making a list of them that are banned, as such a list both opens the door to further banned words and also comes with a maintenance cost, where it has to be changed. As an example "person of colour" is currently an acceptable term but when I was a kid I think people would have associated that term with "coloured" and find it insulting, so if you have a specific list you have to manage cases like this.

Secondly banning racial slurs altogether ignores that there are legitimate contexts in which they should be used (directly quoting something someone has said, discussing old media in which that sort of language is used, etc.), and these contexts are very different from referring to an individual or a group using those slurs. A list of banned words means those words can't be used even in those contexts, as opposed to just not using them as a pejorative or insult.

Yes, it's unnecessary at best but potentially causes other problems. Really, if somebody uses a racial slur, does somebody above them really need a banned word list to caution or discipline them? Of course not!

No, it’s because I read the list and they don’t give convincing justification for their choices. Most of the banned words are banned because “someone somewhere maybe might interpret this as offensive in the worst possible case.” Everyone agrees that certain words are slurs. Stanford and their ilk have just started designating things slurs that aren’t used that way.

Did you read the lists in question?

Why do we need a end all list anyway? What happened to "be professional"?

That’s offensive to unemployed people?

Don’t forget a fucked up value system.

that implies there's a thought-out value system underpinning any of this signaling to begin with.