
Twitter is dropping coding terms like 'master' and 'slave' - mxschmitt
https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-dropping-coding-terms-master-slave-2020-7
======
einpoklum
Social media corporations make millions and billions by catering to manipulate
- and often darn right evil - advertiser needs, spying and tracking users for
them. And then they want to be all moral by playing identity politics and
excising inappropriate language.

This sounds like an attempt to divert the public attention during the Corona +
police violence crises the US is currently undergoing.

... and all of this is not to say what I think about the use of these terms.
I'm of two minds about that actually.

------
moritonal
Our team had someone who's an orphan. We try to avoid using the term because a
joke became a pretty sad lunchtime when they revealed the fact afterwards.

Words have different impact to different people. It doesn't cost us anything
to use "isolated" node rather than an "orphan" node, but it made the dev feel
less excluded.

~~~
Goesby
Well I'd argue this is part of life.

If I'm a muslim who doesn't drink alcohol, and people I'm working with keep
talking about having a beer and "what? you really don't drink". Does that mean
everyone should stop drinking alcohol?.

Yes different words have different meanings, but once you start tinkering with
this, where do you draw a line in the sand?

When I read the tiltle the first thing I thought about was "Man in the middle"
attacks which belongs to the security field. How do you rename this? "woman in
the middle"? doesn't this sound sexist? wouldn't some guys use this to have
sexist jokes with their female colleagues and make matters worse?

I'm genuinly thinking out loud here.

~~~
loopz
Exactly. Anything can trigger emotions. The difference is emotional
management, or not. Letting bad emotions stifle you may reduce your outcomes,
but we can't always expect others to save us.

Racism and discrimination is real, but we shouldn't conflate them with unfair
powerstructures. We need to level the playing field and speak up against
bullying.

------
3saryHg6LP2e
I can get onboard with master/slave when used in conjunction.

But the etymology of "blacklist" so far as I know and can Google is not to do
with race and it's use and understood meaning is not to do with race. How then
can it be racist?

I have heard others argue that it's the implication that black is bad - but
it's not as simple as that. "Whiteknighting" can be used negatively. "Bad" can
literally mean "good". Come on.

This especially goes for "grandfathered" \- what on earth is wrong with this?

~~~
pseudalopex
"Grandfathered" comes from from laws passed in the late 1800s and early 1900s
to disenfranchise black people. States created new restrictions on voting but
exempted descendants of people who had been allowed to vote before black
people were allowed to vote. You could vote if your grandfather could, in
other words. The exemptions came to be called grandfather clauses.

~~~
stepstop
Words change and I wish people would let bad definitions just fade away

------
quadrifoliate
I used to think stuff like this was ridiculous. It's just a database, who even
cares?

However, now I'm all for it.

What has changed? Over working in tech for a while, I noticed some patterns in
my coworkers' behavior. I noticed that the same people who didn't switch over
to saying "primary" and "replica" back in 2015-ish, and when it started
becoming more common, and in fact, _actively ridiculed it_ (just like I did)
were the same people who would casually say things like “Oh those Indians
screwed it up” while talking about problems with an overseas helpdesk. They
didn't even consider that I, as someone of Indian descent who was apparently
"all right" in their view would be offended by this (Note: when the screwup
was, say, due to people from our TX helpdesk, they would never say “Oh, those
Texans screwed it up”). Oh, and I never heard this kind of stuff from the few
women or PoC in our office.

Now I can easily see how at least one black coworker would be offended by
these people animatedly discussing how the "slave" is not correctly following
the "master", and how it might affect their work day, week, or month in a
really bad way.

In general I have seen that people who think more about the language they use
and how it might affect others seem to make better, _nicer_ coworkers. That's
really the primary reason I support these changes now.

~~~
frettchen
> Note: when the screwup was, say, due to people from our TX helpdesk, they
> would never say “Oh, those Texans screwed it up”

I can't speak for everyone everywhere, obviously - all teams are different and
have their own attitudes - but I did some work in India with a tech support
team and the phrase "the American's screwed it up" was used a reasonable
amount in the cases we looked at.

For whatever it's worth - which, again, isn't much other than to say that any
individual (you, me, etc.) experience isn't a set rule, at least one my U.S.
team the women (including PoC) complained about the India team's work
significantly more often than the men, though I think this was because some of
the men happened to interact more with the India team and so got to know them
a bit better (there were exceptions in all directions, but I'm just saying
majorities here).

I think it has much less to do on both ends with any kind of actual bias and
more with the ease to blame the team "over there" as opposed to people next to
you - people blamed teams in other parts of their own building (U.S. and India
alike) just as quickly/often as ones overseas.

~~~
quadrifoliate
I'm not at all opposing complaining about another team's work. If it's not up
to scratch, complain by all means! I have lots to complain about regarding our
accounting department, for instance.

> at least one my U.S. team the women (including PoC) complained about the
> India team's work significantly more often than the men,

Yep, I don't see a direct contradiction here? Complaining is fine, using
race/nationality-specific language is not.

Perhaps I should make it emphasize that the thing I disliked was using
generally reductive term “Indians” which is much wider than the subset they
are referring to, which is the specific set of people employed by their
company who are working out of India. It could have included you, for
instance! (even though my guess is that you're not Indian).

------
bb123
This feels like a pretty empty symbolic change.

~~~
adtac
not if some people consider it offensive. that alone is a sufficient reason to
support this change, even if you don't think it's necessary.

~~~
me_me_me
Why does that offend anyone? Its just a terminology to describe behaviour of
two components.

It doesn't endorse or propagate slavery. I have never heard of an argument
that HDDs have masters and slaves so people should too.

If I kill a child thread, does it mean I am 'pro choice' now?

Does creating white-list or black-list makes me become racist?

Those are just word, meaningless and powerless. What really matters is context
and intentions, a social nuance that it seems like was thrown out with bath
water long time ago.

~~~
acdha
> Its just a terminology to describe behaviour of two components.

It does? I mean, I’ve used a lot of hard drives and never had one whip another
or resell it to punish a friend for disobedience. I’ve also never heard of an
enslaved person being put in charge after the plantation master died.

Insisting on using inaccurate terms when better ones exist is a political
stance which raises questions about the motives behind putting so much effort
into opposing something which costs you nothing.

~~~
xellisx
Yeah, the amount of energy arguing about not changing the terminology; which
can be changed to better reflect what it is, is mind boggling.

I can understand arguing what terminology should be used instead. Those
arguments tend to be way more civil discussions and don't last long, and a way
better set of terminology is set.

~~~
acdha
Yeah, that’s a much better conversation because it often flushed out that the
same terms were being used for things which weren’t quite the same (hot
failover, read-replica, etc.) and someone who has more experience with one
tool won’t think a different one works the same way.

------
there_the_and
Names change all the time. Leader / follower and primary / secondary are
better for a lot of things, anyway. Even ignoring the social issue, master and
slave are not great terms for how they are used. Frankly, I find it disturbing
that so many developers are so attached to the master and slave terminology.
It’s like the tech industry’s version of the confederate flag.

~~~
marvion
> Frankly, I find it disturbing how attached so many developers are so
> attached to the master and slave terminology.

I was about to write that too. I'm not quite sure if I find the change
necessary - but who am I to raise my word against it. I'm a white guy, it is
obvious why master/slave has negative connotations and that's enough for me to
let them decide.

I just listened to a podcast about "whiteness studies" maybe that enforced my
opinion on this - but why would I - a white guy - would want to criticize this
discussion. Be open, be welcome, accept diversity is a main rule in many
projects. Why would I not want to change something that others consider
harmful(especially something as simple as wording)

~~~
aspaviento
> it is obvious why master/slave has negative connotations

how? it only represents a kind of relationship (a terrible one, yes) between
people. But it's only a historic terminology.

Killer is a word that, following that logic, has negative connotations and it
is used when people say "that's a killer feature". Stopping using those terms
won't make past events to disappear. At worst, they'll be forgotten, making it
possible for history to repeat itself.

~~~
quadrifoliate
Killer and master/slave are very different. "Killing" has rarely singled out
one specific ground of people and subjugated them for centuries. In cases
where it has, you _don 't use the word_. Imagine naming a program that kills a
bunch of processes on a box “holocaust”.

But let's run with "killing" for a bit. If, hypothetically, you had a coworker
whose family was murdered by a serial killer, wouldn't you be careful about
using “He _killed_ it out there” and similar terms around them? Or do you sit
around logically proving why the context is different?

~~~
aspaviento
Those are fair points but I still don't think we are helping anyone with this
over-protection. Would you hesitate to say that expression without knowing
that coworker's background? Should he/she be offended when there isn't
malicious intent behind those words? It looks to me more sensible and a better
long term solution to help this person to deal with his/her emotions instead
of trying to change everybody around them.

~~~
marvion
> Would you hesitate to say that expression without knowing that coworker's
> background?

Ok. But. The discussion is about specific expressions almost everybody knows,
not just random words. One of those words is `slave`.

> It looks to me more sensible and a better long term solution to help this
> person to deal with his/her emotions instead of trying to change everybody
> around them.

I think this only applies to situations in which one specific person has
specific triggers who are e.g. tight to an psychological trauma...

------
duckmysick
Full list in a text form:

    
    
      * Whitelist -> Allowlist
      * Blacklist -> Denylist
      * Master/slave -> Leader/follower, primary/replica, primary/standby
      * Grandfathered -> Legacy status
      * Gendered pronouns (e.g. guys) -> Folks, people, you all, y'all
      * Gendered pronouns (e.g. he/him/his) -> They, them, their
      * Man hours -> Person hours, engineer hours
      * Sanity check -> Quick check, confidence check, coherence check
      * Dummy value -> Placeholder value, sample value

------
ojhughes
Why are people failing to grasp that languages have context? Twitter, GitHub
and others are clearly lacking some "mastery" of language semantics, such as
homonyms.

Perhaps we should be lobbying for better English education? Nah screw that,
let's adopt a simplified version of the English language that removes any
emotion or chance of ambiguity... I'm sure an author came up with a candidate
language in the late 40s

------
nan0
This seems like public grandstanding and virtue signaling to me, but not too
surprising coming from tone deaf Silicon Valley elites.

------
tehbeard
How much of this sort of thing (including the hiding/removing of "problematic"
TV/films) is being done/encouraged to draw attention away from the defund the
police/better social services message?

Making BLM seem asinine looks like a fairly easy/standard psyop move.

------
pnako
More important than this change of terminology, I think it's good that Twitter
decided to donate ten million dollars to NGOs fighting slavery around the
world (it's still prevalent, especially in Africa and Asia)

[https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalenc...](https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalence)

------
AkshatM
When I read defenses of these moves online, usually it is acknowledged that
these terms, when used in the context of engineering, do not have a
relationship to human subjugation. However, the arguments offered at that
juncture are:

a) _Every little bit helps_ : If we can help eradicate injustice even in a
tiny way, such as by using more inclusive language, and it's not unreasonable
to implement, why not?

b) _We need to cut ties with a problematic past to improve_ : If we want a
world with equity for all, we must voluntarily let go of heritage that binds
us to a world without equity.

I have many problems with these arguments. (If I have not steelmanned them
sufficiently, please suggest improvements).

First, it is not true that the current strategy is reasonable to implement. A
solution is reasonable if the effort needed to implement it does not outweigh
the impact of the problem. A reasonable solution is to use "leader / follower"
yourself and gradually encourage people away over time at their own
discretion: a low-effort solution for a low-impact problem. An unreasonable
solution is to risk production impact and breaking changes (as in third-party
tooling that relies on the `master` convention in git), creating more work for
everyone - all so slightly different language can be used. Doc changes are a
great low-effort solution if you really want to do this.

Second, the claim that improvement cannot occur without cutting ties is a bit
of a switch-and-bait. People will defend "improvement is not possible without
change", and then morph that into "improvement is not possible without
disassociation". There is some merit to this latter claim in some contexts -
for example, in cases of domestic abuse - but that does not make it universal.
We can keep the past around, but eliminate its ability to impact the present,
which is "improvement with change". I think the "master / slave" convention
and its history have done this adequately, since everyone agrees that no
reasonable person would associate the term now with an endorsement of slavery
or oppression.

These two points put me firmly in the camp of "necessary changes are good, but
this particular change is unnecessary".

------
Jonnax
I don't understand why there's so much pushback against the moves to remove
terminology like master/slave from IT.

It makes people uncomfortable and it's such a small change.

And it's just software, go use sed or whatever to rename it.

Why be disingenuous and say stuff like "oh I guess racism is solved now!" Or
"GitHub changing the default branch name for new projects is going to break
everyone's CI-CD pipelines!"?

~~~
apta
> I don't understand why there's so much pushback

Many reasons, including a very (distorted) US centric view of the world, going
overboard with emotions instead of rationality (words are generally tied to
context), and now people have to walk on eggshells or they'll lose their jobs
if they speak the "wrong" word.

~~~
Jonnax
You can't talk about rationality whilst talking about a country centric view.

Rational actions are defined by the society that judges it.

Twitter is an American company.

If you feel like you have to "walk on eggshells" then maybe you're not a
cultural fit for the company.

If you're working at a company like Twitter, GitHub etc. Then you should have
some pretty good career mobility.

These companies aren't the only ones in the world.

If you want to work at a place that will push back against changing master /
slave terminology then there's a sizable amount of people that feel the same
way.

~~~
apta
I'm not sure what your first few points have anything to do with the
discussion, not to mention being incorrect (rationality is not objective as
you're implying). This irrational SJW movement is not limited to a few
companies, but is taking over the US in general. It's another form of
oppression.

~~~
Jonnax
I think you didn't understand what I was stating.

I stated that what is rational is subjective of the context of the culture.

You don't have a right to a job, it's not oppression if people do things you
don't like that don't impact your life.

Using "SJW" unironically? How is it taking over the US when the majority of
government is socially conservative?

You're effectively parroting the majority opinion and acting like the victim.

"I gotta walk on eggshells, if I say the wrong word they'll fire me"

~~~
slickrick216
You are effectively telling someone if they don’t like it leave. This is
actually quite offensive in itself.

------
mnm1
So "grandfathered" is considered offensive now by the idiotic pc crowd? What's
next? Where does this stupidity stop?

~~~
lr4444lr
When I was a teacher, there was a distinct group of kids who always pushed the
boundaries to see how far they could. They presented endless reasons for why
they wanted to do what they wanted to do, with no regard for how ridiculous
they sounded. They were smart and creative, and knew what they were doing was
unwelcomed. They just wanted to see how far they could push the teacher.
That's exactly what this feels like. It doesn't stop, until we put our foot
down. It doesn't have to be nasty, but it doesn't require we entertain weak
arguments about people's psychological comfort demanding we change behavior
either on the defensive about how we are not oppressive.

~~~
mnm1
Yup. This stupidity will backfire badly. In the latest list they are
essentially destroying the language itself by removing gendered pronouns. How
do I wish Spanish without them? Or phrases like "you guys" which is gender
neutral. Frankly, these people are hurting the cause as much as racists and
sexist people are, maybe even more. This will not be supported but anyone with
a brain and frankly neither will their original causes. This idea that people
need to feel "safe" and therefore others should modify their speech is mad.
The only response to such idiots is to tell them off, to say "fuck you idiots"
and ignore them. I think it does have to be nasty indeed because these morons
have shown time and again they do not listen to reason.

------
chadlavi
The terms are gross and by no means necessary, but changing them also does not
do anything to improve anyone's life. It's an empty, performative gesture
unless accompanied by a lot of bigger structural and organizational changes at
Twitter. You can't just "tada, we fixed racism."

~~~
sdoering
These terms are actually quite precise describing a relationship between two
technical systems.

I have yet to hear other words having the same precision.

Btw.: Imho no ethnic group has a sole claim to the victimhood role as
historical slavery. To name a few examples of that:

* My (white, European) ancestors were slaves of the Romans. * My (white, European) ancestors were slaves of the same (white, European) (here noble) ancestors. * My (white, European) ancestors were holders of (Jewish) slaves.

So should I ask for the removal of this word from regular, technical use? I do
not feel that way.

~~~
tekproxy
It's almost like it's not really about slavery or racism.

------
sandstrom
What about 'robot' and 'bot'? The word robot means 'slave worker'.

How about payment providers supporting Mastercard? Maybe we ought to stop
accepting Mastercard payment, unless they rebrand to Equalitycard.

~~~
omega3
> The word robot means 'slave worker'.

Do you have the source for this? I'd be very surprised if this was the meaning
of the word at the time Karel Capek used it. The world robot comes from slavic
word robota which means work or hard work.

~~~
raspyberr
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R).
That's the play that introduced it and it's looking like the word means
"forced labour" rather than just "work". Which you could say is slavery.

~~~
omega3
This might be the historical meaning of the word but it's certainly not the
meaning of the word today and I'm doubting it was the meaning of the world at
the time of the author.

Take this as an example:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotnik_(1894%E2%80%931939)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotnik_\(1894%E2%80%931939\))
This newspaper was first published around the time of the authors life. It has
no connection to the slavery just to the labour and labourers.

~~~
illvm
You cannot be serious about your argument while still being supportive of
these changes.

------
bredren
I just sold an internet product I built that contains both “Whitelist” and
“Blacklist” rules.

I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I added the names a few years ago.

However I also grew up in the 80s and Dukes of Hazard was still a popular
enough television show that I was specifically not allowed to watch it by my
mom for reasons I did not understand at the time. [1]

As far as changing language of the rules in the product I built, or would
build I have no problem using something neutral.

Software developers are used to deprecated language. Function and class names
are changed for any number of reasons, sometimes just because they are
inconvenient to spell.

If some people feel that Master Slave, or Blacklist Whitelist constitute micro
aggressions, then why put up a fight to switch to neutral language?

Just deprecate the syntax and return the narrative and focus to problems
developers can overwhelmingly agree are getting in the way of establishing a
more inclusive developer community. [1] [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-
dukes-of-hazzard-reall_b_7...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-dukes-of-
hazzard-reall_b_7725078)

~~~
jaekash
> I just sold an internet product I built that contains both “Whitelist” and
> “Blacklist” rules.

Fuckit, lets be done with language all together ...

------
trabant00
This master - slave debate is at least 10 years old. And I have the same
questions now:

\- ofc master slave relationship between human beings is wrong, but are we not
allowed to "abuse" and "subjugate" IT systems? I mean that's kind of their
purpose if you ask me. It's wrong to beat somebody but it's not wrong to beat
a carpet.

\- what is the purpose of removing those words? Is it like pretending these
relationships don't exist?

\- who benefits from the removal of the terms and in what way exactly? How is
the world getting better by doing this?

~~~
p49k
IMO if you take your own argument to its logical conclusion, you can see that
it falls apart easily. If someone launched a project in 2020 where you “lynch”
a process to remove it and engage in “gassing” a connection pool to close all
connections, then it’s blatantly obvious why such terms are problematic,
despite the terms only being slightly removed from master/slave.

~~~
ColanR
Eh. If I was managing a network with a ton of machines I needed to be able to
turn off and on together (not that farfetched from what I'm currently doing),
I'd probably label the scripts 'resurrection' and 'genocide'. Apt and
descriptive.

I think the difference is you chose words more emotionally charged, which
isn't the point here.

~~~
p49k
I’m curious what you would do if a new hire/junior programmer joined your team
and asked you to change the name of the script because their parents were
killed in a genocide and they would prefer not to be reminded every time they
had to run the script?

Would you be empathetic and spend three seconds renaming it or fight them
tooth and nail on principle?

Why would people so strongly resist practicing some pre-emptive effortless
empathy toward people who have gone through similar things related to a small
handful of specific words?

~~~
Nextgrid
I'm open to changing any problematic wording if it came from someone that was
genuinely offended by it.

However I am opposed to blanket changes like the one in this article not
because of the wording itself but because the change is coming from the PR
department as opposed to any actual minorities that might be offended by these
words.

~~~
p49k
1\. People who speak up are often putting their jobs at stake, especially in
the US where people can (and often are) fired for almost anything. We
shouldn’t have to ask anyone; it’s so not a big deal to search and replace
some text to a more neutral term.

2\. I’ve met plenty of people who felt uncomfortable about specific jokes
being made, words being used and did not feel comfortable for speaking out for
various reasons. In at least one case the person explained that it took years
before they were able to make the transition from feeling demeaned by a term
and being able to understand and articulate exactly why it was demeaning.

We can be proactive and emphatic. There’s no good reason people have to be so
insanely motivated to fight against something that barely has any effect on
their life but that might improve things for others.

------
morninglight
MASTERCARD - enslaves millions of people. When will its name change?

~~~
jaekash
Masters degree ... Master copy, master key, heck we can go all day. People who
support this are not thinking clearly.

~~~
fernandopj
You gave three examples where master means expertise on the field, not
ownership over someone.

~~~
jaekash
Ehh, was Twitter or anybody else using it to mean ownership over
someone?!!?!?!?! I mean in that case it is a crime we are talking about and
just renaming actual enslaving of humans to something else won't fix it. so
... I mean ... what even are we doing here/

------
haunter
GoDaddy will break records when they sell maincard.com

------
cwhiz
What a creative way to virtue signal. This way you don’t have to do anything
that has any positive impact for any single person. But you can tell all your
white friends about it.

People need to read a history book. ‘Master’ has nothing to do with ‘slavery.’
‘Slavery’ has a long history going back thousands of years. No race has any
particular right to be offended. Romans had slaves of every color.

And if you are a person who gets upset when you see the word “master” you need
to seriously consider becoming an adult.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
I think the problem here is that fighting these PC efforts just reinforces the
egos of those who champion it because 1) it gives them more "enemies" to
righteously battle against and 2) they're currently winning.

As an old school liberal with subversive tendencies, maybe the right way to
throw a monkey wrench into these language policing efforts is by _reductio ad
absurdum_ or killing them with kindness. Push every possible thing that's
offensive into these lists, particularly targeting terms common in business
parlance. "double-blind testing"? Offensive to people with low vision. TTYs in
Linux? Sounds like a NSFW word. "Pros and cons"? Offensive to inmates who have
served their sentence. It's not even "in bad faith" (the ultimate modern
thought-terminating cliché); do it fully and sincerely in line with their
desire to eliminate all possible offense. Just totally fill up their PC
dictionary with stuff until it becomes clear that it's impractical to
eliminate all possible avenues of offense without being reduced to grunts and
gestures.

------
drummer
Do these people realize we're all still slaves of the State via taxation
(among other things)?

~~~
sdoering
In what way is taxation slavery?

~~~
drummer
Taxation is slavery because it is forced ultimately at gunpoint. The
government basically claims ownership of a significant part of (the fruits of)
your labor. You cannot refuse, which makes you their slave, having to do what
they dictate. A 'citizen' is essentially another word for property of the
state, i.e. a slave. In the future they'll probably also object to the use of
that word like they do for master/slave, not realizing the names change but
the result stays the same.

------
reedf1
I'm not saying I agree with it - but metaphors matter. It's easy to imagine
certain design patterns being associated with offensive stereotypes. How much
do we have to extend 'master' and 'slave' before the metaphor crosses a line?
The introduction of a 'boat' class or a 'chain' class? Of course the
underlying technology isn't offensive but we're attaching our human social
context to it.

At least no one has a problem with the underlying patterns themselves! That
would be a doozy.

------
reddog
Those terms are a bit archaic. They should change them to
BillionaireITOligarch and MillinealGigWorker.

------
marakv2
Primary, secondary. Problem solved. Need more, well English has it.

Anyone arguing against this is just pissing against the wind -or worse.

Move on. Were supposeto be the people who adapt and change the fastest.

~~~
3saryHg6LP2e
What would your response be if someone came along and said "binary" is not an
appropriate word for compiled artefacts because some people do not identify as
a man or a woman?

What would your response be if someone came along and said we should rename
the HTML <div> element because "div" is a schoolyard insult implying low
intelligence?

What would your response be if someone came along and said we should stop
referring to mobile phones as "cells" because people are unjustly confined to
prison cells due to structural racism?

I do not believe I am, or others who agree with me are, arguing that we should
not change language _where it is problematic_ the issue is we do not agree
that the use of these words in context are an issue at all.

------
semi_good
To the cynics: how would you feel about this change if your great grand
parents were slaves, lived in shackles and got whipped regularly and called
the person whipping them “master”?

~~~
3saryHg6LP2e
Words have different meanings in different contexts, to "floss" could be a
dental hygiene procedure or it could be performing a particular dance. It is
simply not the same to refer to a "master branch" as it is to a "slave
master".

~~~
semi_good
That’s a good argument

