I guess loaded derogatory terms are somehow worse than otherwise worse-sounding terms. Think about it in the context of e.g. the n-word. “A piece of shit”, while sounding very bad: 1. is generic, can be applied to anything thus has no discrimination component, and 2. ends there. It has no history, no reference to previous usage, etc.

I guess. I'm not sure if it's the exception, but for example "rust bucket" is mostly used against old vehicles.

Now I'm laying here, wondering if it's bad to be discriminating against objects.

It's not. These people need to seek help. And I say that in a completely genuine, compassionate way. Getting triggered by some "insult" to robots - and some even feeling racially attacked - is not healthy

Sometimes I’m wondering what to call people who get offended on behalf of other people or entities that they imagine might be offended by some term or other. See, they feel bad, and like small children, they assume everyone else must feel bad.

Okay, in case of people and words like n___er, one could argue they have a leg to stand on. But stupid computer programs? Really?

And then I remember that in my part of the galaxy, we indeed have a word to describe such people. We call them “dumbasses”.

I don’t have to imagine the offense of others to take offense to slurs intended to denigrate them. If I tell you not to use the n-word in my presence I’m not doing it for black people. I’m doing it for me. I don’t want to hear that shit because it offends me. The entire mindset that would think it is okay offends me.

A slur applied to anthropomorphic programs is the same mindset to someone who really believes the programs are experiencing, quite different from “rust bucket” being applied to a car they know doesn’t think and feel. While I can’t quite get offended about it, it does make me wonder if they’re not using other slurs because of the socially unacceptable nature of those slurs rather than because they’re not awful people.

You see, I believe that cars with enough mileage have a soul. My car definitely has grown a soul. Yours might be a rust bucket for all I care. And yet it has a soul of its own.

Programs also have souls. Especially the little well-crafted programs which are works of art. Their authors took a part of their soul and put them into code, and you can see it in the way the code is written and in the way the programs work. They are not anthropomorphic, and yet they have a soul.

A clanker is anthropomorphic in a way that an advanced enough mimic in a dungeon that looks like your ideal waifu is anthropomorphic. It will infect you the moment you get kissably close to it. It subsists on egregious acts of copyright infringement. It’s a parasite that seeks to destroy a part of your brain and replace it with itself, making you quiver in pain each time you try to think for yourself, and the pain stops when you let it mimic your thinking while paying its creators per word-chunk it outputs.

The clanker seems anthropomorphic enough for the people it has infected, so they get offended to the point of blind rage when someone points out that no, this is its mimicry, and that it doesn’t actually experience things.

Use slurs when you're trying to offend, not in general use.

Trying to offend all the time is childish.

It's also used when voicing frustration, or as nick names.

"Gosh darn it, why won't you start now you rust bucket"

The same principle applies.

The principle of not trying to offend because it's childish?

I don't like swearing, and I really try to not offend people. But telling someone not to do something with the sole reason giving it's childish I dislike strongly.

I sometimes play video games, even though some people say it's childish. Or act silly with my partner. What ever floats your goat.

The swearing is something that makes sense when it's a situation to swear. I would not trust person who never, under any circumstances swear.

The same thing would apply to a person who swears endlessly without reason.

>I sometimes play video games, even though some people say it's childish.

Who cares what you do in your own time?

Here, on the other hand, someone is trying to force his opinion on public. This, I can judge. Both on merit, and the language they use.

It doesn't really have anything to do with LLMs. There's no reason to anthropomorphize the software.

Edit: feels a bit like inventing an insult for your pet rock. If I met someone who acted superior toward an inanimate rock and used invented slang to insult it that sounded like a slur, that would feel bad to me too. What's the point except to role play a fantasy of some kind?

If it's ok and often done for cars, why not for pet rocks and llms?