Re: [Terminology] WG Review: Effective Terminology in IETF Documents (term)

[Bron Gondwana <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Apr 7, 2021, at 00:12, Eliot Lear wrote:
> [not on behalf of Cisco]
>> On 6 Apr 2021, at 14:52, Mallory Knodel <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> This is really useful, even if it might eventually prove to be duplicative effort. In the beginning, it was the right step because as an exercise it demonstrated scale to the IETF audience. Other groups are doing the same thing, but it's not always clear what will emerge in perpetuity (independently updated). Something like the Inclusive Naming Initiative cites our draft, so is that objectionably self-referential?

> 
> Is it *objectionably* self-referential?  I don’t know.  If the basis for their decision is the basis for our decision is the basis for their decision, I suppose it would be.  Mostly that hasn’t been my concern, tho.  What I have seen is a lot of the industry pointing to your draft, something that we are ill equipped to review.

It's definitely self-referential, and my personal opinion is that the whole language debate across the tech industry is objectionably self referential and most of the evidence just references other efforts rather than underlying data  - BUT, that may not be disqualifying in this case.

When I did my science degree I learned "the plural of anecdote is not data", but anecdote has re-branded as "lived experience" which is a much more evocative name than the archaic "anecdote", and you don't even need to pluralise it to reach capital-T Truth which is much more powerful than the old fashioned "data".

This is a problem in sciences that interact with the observable world, because it both expands from one's experience to a general experience for all, and also takes the observed symptoms and elevates a presumed cause for those symptoms as if said cause had also been observed and measured rather than merely guessed or pattern matched.  The failure mode here when the presumptions of cause don't match actual cause is that the model drifts away from reality - the map no longer matches the terrain, if you will - and science becomes less effective when that happens.

Having said that - terminology lives in a landscape which is not objective and measurable.  The response to language is an entirely human phenomenon which exists in the realm of perception - and perception is based on pre-conceptions, which are built on previous experience.  So if enough people believe something to be offensive and damaging, then it is prima-facie offensive, purely because people believe it to be so.

You can measure in a point in time, but you can also morph the system in a somewhat unbounded way when it comes to offensive words, because new words become offensive all the time, purely through their use as offensive words.

So a self-referential process can live in the language landscape, because it's a closed system.  If we says so, then it is so, and if it is so, so it is.

Regards,

Bron.

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  Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd
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