Why don’t we spend energy on getting to the issues we actually care about instead of standing on shaky arguments and calling it a day. It’s lazy thinking.

_late Old English mægester "a man having control or authority over a place; a teacher or tutor of children," from Latin magister (n.) "chief, head, director, teacher"_

So if we dislike the user of master, do we ban whip? Or any other term negatively associated with slavery that actually predates it? I think the actual answer is contextual, and in the context of git, there is no relation to slavery whatsoever for most of the worlds populace

The reason: because it was easier, it allowed corporations (especially Microsoft) to give the appearance of making social change, and because it distracted us from dealing with the real issues. In other words, laziness.

And you know what, if you're firmly on the progressive left, as I am, that's no big deal. It's annoying, maybe it alienates me from taking part in social action. But it won't, for example, change who I vote for.

However, we (the West) live in a period of history balanced on a narrow edge between social progression and social regression, with all manner of bad actors waiting on the wings to take advantage of our slipups. And this was a slipup, no matter how well meaning the people who pushed it through were. This, and many, many other small annoyances, were in all likelihood what it took to push a significant number of people to change their vote in the recent election. It's not the only reason, perhaps not even the main one. But any change is significant when you're balanced on an edge.

There is nothing progressive about any of that.

I also recognize that in all of these things, balance and nuance are required and conflicts are common and won't always be resolved in a way that makes me, personally, satisfied.

> forcing language

This entire thread is a majority of people, on a generally quite progressive forum, arguing strongly against forced language change. I do not believe that the majority of genuinely progressive people want or believe in forced language changes, with the exception of a few specific ethnic and gender based slurs.

Thanks for making my point.

But also, small things do have to change. If nothing changes, the status quo remains, and the status quo is stacked against many people. (Because of gender, race, culture, wealth, location, etc). It's easy to say "focus on the big things" but the small things can change along the way too.

I'm strongly in favor of progressive social change. But when even the smallest of change takes this much effort and leaves people frustrated and alienated, we should not be focusing this much effort on insignificant changes. It's like trickle down economics - hundreds of minor changes like this will not trickle down into large changes. Most likely the opposite - they'll alienate and infuriate enough people over time to cause a societal swing in the other direction.

If we're gonna put effort like this into bringing about change, let's make it meaningful, something that effects our daily lives now.

That is, in fact, a reason to ignore them. Even if you agree it's a problem (I don't), triage is important. Use your social capital on solving problems of importance, not on annoying people with solutions to minor problems.

[Citation needed], as they'd say on Wikipedia.

I don't think that's the origin at all. Why do you?

Some decent examples here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26504086

Googling "Master Slave audio manual" has a bunch of examples. E.g. this manual from 1959 - https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Catalogs/Ampex/Amp...

Though that Ampex manual isn't all that convincing in this context, IMO. It's about the hardware level, all capacitors and oscillators and stuff, in "master" and "slave" amplifying circuits. That has pretty much nothing at all to do with "master tape" per se; it's more like "master" and "slave" hydraulic cylinders in the clutch or brake system of your car.

Your HN link feels like a much better argument here. (Though I admit I haven't followed any of the links in it yet; going just by the quoted bits in the comment.)

- Someone who has mastered some art;

- A teacher;

- The lead artisan in a team, the one who has mastered the art, teaches and leads.

The slave master is a very narrow interpretation on these meanings, and the woke push against the word is myopic. The word has a long history, none of it connected to slavery.

As for American English, wake me up when they rename Master's degree.

I don't think this concept is unique to Portuguese. Whenever anyone talks about, say, the dutch masters, they are not talking about slavery.

And yet, weirdly to me, there's a lot of people acting like it costs them personally to switch words.

I never gave this topic much thought when it first came up, because it never mattered to me in the fist place if the default branch was called "master" or "A1" or "πρώτα".

Someone wants it called different because of aesthetics? Sure, have fun with the new name! It's no more significant to me than "jif" (the cleaning fluid) being renamed "cif", or Marathon, Snickers.

Of course, if anyone were to have suggested to me that the name alone would be enough to solve racism forever, I might have pointed that the Berlin Wall's official name translated as "anti-fascist protection barrier", as an example of the way people use words to divert from a complete lack of real action or worse to act in direct opposition to the normal meaning of the words.

FWIW some of us in the USA will also continue using the original words as they were intended rather than injecting social issues into language and trying to control people with compelled speech. I for one put all the words back when people swap them out by using FoxReplace for Firefox, Word Replacer II for Chrome and nobody even notices unless I happen to quote them. The people trying to control language are quite selective. For example they have chosen not to tamper with "Masters Degree" but they will change master everywhere else.

This is the silliest, pettiest, snowflakiest thing I've seen in a while.

"Words can't hurt you" say people who are so upset that languages change through various means (yes even intentional! Ask the French) that they go out of their way to edit other people's content to say what they would rather it say.

It's really funny to decry 1984 Ingsoc as you actively rewrite your individual view of reality to conform to your sensibilities, as if that isn't exactly the same ideology.

Partially agreed. I am silly and petty in response to other people trying to force BDSM on me. They try to force everyone into Domination, Submission and Humiliation so I neuter their pseudo mind-rape and teach others how to do the same.