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34 points atoledano | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.21s | source
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legostormtroopr ◴[] No.17955822[source]
Let’s sidestep the fact that most nations and races have been subjected to slavery, so using the term Slave doesn’t refer to any race - except perhaps the Slavs, who were enslaved so much through history, that’s where the word slave came from. Also, lets forget about the tens of thousands of people who currently live in slavery across the world.

The use of master/slave quickly describes unique a relationship. One orders, the other obeys blindly.

What alternatives are there:

Parent/child - no child obeys willingly, and this implies a hierarchy or inheritance where the parent and child are similar

Leader/follower - this implies the follower will eventually catch-up, great for databases, not so much for describing work allocation.

Aplha/Omega - this was in that comment chain, without going off and learning about wolf social structures, I’d have no clue what this is. It’s just foolish.

Master/slave terminology is used as a metaphor to describe a technical behaviour, it’s not an implicit approval of past human behaviour.

The only people who recommend this change are virtue signalling - they want to look like their are doing a great good, and they pick an easy target. No doubt when confronted with the choice of “change this term, or we call you exclusionary/non-diverse/racist”, people will reluctantly choose the former every time. Which means the signaller gets what they want, change and the ability to say “I did something” not matter how trivial.

replies(4): >>17956661 #>>17956802 #>>17959557 #>>17959595 #
1. jboles ◴[] No.17956802[source]
If they are going to replace words that some people consider loaded, they could simply replace “slave” with “servant”. Then the previous technical meaning of “master”/“slave” (e.g. Parrallel ATA interface) is preserved, but the meaning of “master” as the original copy (e.g. Git, databases) or as the head personnel (e.g. webmaster) does not have to be changed.