Today, I am posting it again because I believe the HN readers will benefit from it. Why? The majority of HN readers work in IT or adjacent information fields; we communicate information with strings aka words.
Falsehoods programmers believe about strings: All strings are words.
More seriously: While I find the topic appropriate for HN, connecting the topicality to the use of strings in IT is weird. If the ban only applied to audio or sign language, the topic wouldn’t be any less appropriate.
Yes, it definitely is censorship, because scientists employed by the government may not report findings, existing government information is being erased, and the public cannot access it. So studies about racial concerns are cancelled, programs measuring the rate of climate change are being cancelled and the data and even the data collecting instrumentation is destroyed. This list of banned words is just one aspect of the censorship ... taken as a whole, this is an unconstitutional censorship of data that has public health and public safety implications. Does it qualify as Hacker News? Well, does Hacker News even exist when we no longer have access to critical data? Is that not topical? And does this kind of post suddenly become relevant when the government starts censoring the website directly? And how would we know when that starts to happen? Are you going to magically send us all letters in the mail? Or will you just silently acquiesce?
And that is flat ignorance of all the other context of destruction of data going on right now. Ignoring that research data is being maintained by private citizens to protect it doesn't support your point. Censorship of government websites is just a small piece of this, ignoring it doesn't help anyone but a rank partisan, which you clearly are.
Your refusal to look up "censor" in a dictionary doesn't make you right. Some people are actually trying to have a reasoned discussion about the downsides of what the administration is doing, in particular the censorship, which is the problem with articles like this being flagged, especially when it's justified with partisan hyperbole such as what can be found in your comments here.
> "Censorship of government websites" is an oxymoron.
> The government choosing not to engage in or endorse certain speech does not suppress others engaging in that speech.
The second sentence is not related to what I'm saying. I'm responding to the notion that government resources can't be censored.
> What is your argument here?
There is no argument, but an observation: government resources can be censored. I'm not going to insult you by copying a definition of "censor" and explaining how it is possible to apply that action to government documents. You're smart enough to figure that out on your own.
That string of words is nonsensical. Literally nothing in the OP is talking about "your grant."
If you want to start your own grant, either personally or through a foundation you start, nothing in the OP pertains to you.
The OP is only about whether the government will endorse speech contained in your application for a government grant, which—again—is categorically different from what you said and fundamentally not censorship.
Many of the rest are clearly editorial or phrasing preferences (e.g., "Latinx" in place of "Latino/a"), which are reasonable to have; I'm sure any mainstream publication like the NYT also has its own preferred language and style guidelines.
True. And a lot of examples from the previous administration, for example, where you weren't allowed to say "gay" or "equality" or "equal opportunity."
Even still, this list is passed around at my university where researchers are censoring their proposals to not include these words. That's called a chilling effect, and it's against the ideals of free speech.
No, these are public proposals for public money to do public research. There shouldn't be restrictions on want can be funded based on the President's own personal morality. This isn't the "government's" money or Republican money or the Trump administration's money; it's our money, allocated for research that American public decided that scientists and academic institutions, who by dedicating their life to these pursuits and demonstrating excellence in the process, earned the right to conduct. Although the executive branch has the power, they do not have the mandate to impose its own morality on the entire country, that's what Congress is for.
I'm not saying every proposal deserves to be funded, but I'm saying proposals should not be denied funding on the basis of capricious, political, partisan, myopic moral crusades.
> That said, it's plausible it could have a chilling effect on their independent research, which is of concern.
This is more than plausible, it's actually happening at my workplace at least. Very anti free-speech for a party that said they were pro free-speech.
What? The government has been quite openly going around pulling unrelated funding and launching investigations into educational institutions for similar reasons.
Sounds like the Republican party would really support the adoption Newspeak.
> It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.
"Black"? Being a black man I am more interested in the context in which this list is applied and hope just the list/words in the abstract are not being simply used as rage bait.
Edit: I no longer think me being a black male is relevant in this context because after looking further into the list it basically covers multiple terms that apply to everyone; thus I think context of application is even more important and the list in itself is fairly irrelevant.
Not an American but, if I had to guess, it would be 'Black' with a capital letter (as in the list of words) and not 'black' all in lowercase. It is likely to align the use of capital letters with other races in the US (white and black, for example, instead of white and Black).
Black is also a last name, so the uppercase is not a great distinction. It's more likely about calling black people African-$DEMONYM. Black people have no problem calling themselves negros in Mexico, but this is so horrible to Americans that Mexican media has been pressured to normalize mexico-africano instead.
Edit. Actually opened the list, and it is incredibly stupid to say the least. Words like "measles", "vaccine", "solar power", "sustainability/sustainable", "elderly", "electric vehicle", etc. It's not a serious writing guide, it's a blatant propaganda tool.
Does not matter; these people Trump/PG/dang/Gary Tan etc... have a goal - they simply want people of a certain color to not exist. All the rest is just semantics.
In the context of "anti-woke" ideology. Many people currently in power believe that if we do not talk about race, by literally not using the words, that longstanding societal issues will simply disappear. Same too with many scientific principals. In power or not, these people are idiots.
Agreed, but I and obviously you are not and we do not have to pretend to be by becoming enraged at their idiotic behavior if it has no material impact.
Secondly, I do not agree that they think issues will "disappear"; I believe that they simply think this gives them license to impose their will on the groups that identify with said banned terms.
It's an ostrich worldview, it occurs in other contexts well:
Trump on COVID: "If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any"
Or more recently, Trump March EO from March: "Rather than fostering unity and a deeper understanding of our shared past, the widespread effort to rewrite history deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame"
So they see efforts so shed light on America's dark history as deepinging social devide and fostering national shame. What's the proposed solution? Make everything right? Bring accountability? No, it's ostrich time! The order:
“ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties … do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living … and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”
A court-ordered inventory showed that the Park Service had removed at least 51 exhibits from 37 parks and monuments. The removed or targeted material involved slavery, civil rights, Indigenous history, womens rights, Japanese American incarceration, LGBTQ history, and climate change.
They do the opposite as well: saying things and insisting that alone makes them true.
e.g. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Claiming the 2020 election was rigged. Deciding they have the unilateral right to invade countries.
> Many people currently in power believe that if we do not talk about race, by literally not using the words, that longstanding societal issues will simply disappear.
Australia used to have a "White Australia Policy". It was introduced in 1901, but began to be progressively relaxed after WW2 before finally being completely abolished in 1973. The policy involved a general ban on non-European immigrants - and even at times Eastern and Southern Europeans too – although it was never exceptionless (e.g. Maori immigration was always allowed, to avoid upsetting New Zealand; originally only Ashkenazi Jews were allowed to immigrate, but in the 1950s they started allowing Middle Eastern Jews as well.)
So, in that respect, Australia does have certain parallels to US history on race; and the dismantling of the White Australia Policy roughly overlaps the US Civil Rights Era, and Australian developments were likely partially influenced by that concurrent struggle in the US.
However, the way post-1973 Australian officialdom responded to the abolition of the White Australian Policy was very different from subsequent developments in the US. The Australian official philosophy was to stop classifying people on the basis of race – the Australian census asks about ancestry, country of birth (for both self and parents), ethnic identity, indigenous status, language, nationality, religion–but never race; all these concepts partially overlap with notions of "race", but none of them can be straightforwardly identified with it. In fact, the Australian Standard Classification of Cultural and Ethnic Groups (ASCCEG), groups ethnicities together based on continent of origin, not "race" – so African-Americans and White Americans are grouped together as "peoples of the Americas", while Egyptians and Kenyans and Afrikaners are all "peoples of Africa".
Now, this decision didn't magically solve all issues with inequality and discrimination in Australia – but did it cause harm? My own honest impression is that, overall, its benefits have likely outweighed the downsides. And, due to the influence of US media, there has been a growing subset of Australians – primarily on the left – who have adopted more US-influenced ways of thinking about and speaking about race and ethnicity – and I'm not convinced that has been beneficial.
Of course, whatever Trump and the GOP are doing isn't necessarily the same thing as what Australian politicians and bureaucrats – on both sides of the political aisle – have done. There are significant differences in context and history. But they aren't completely different either. My own impression as an outside observer of the US, is a lot of narratives which Americans tell themselves (on both sides) make the most sense when you avoid looking at other countries as comparators.
Postscript: inevitably some will respond by bringing Indigneous matters into the discussion–but indigeneity and race are fundamentally different things. To quote Australian Indigenous activist Noel Pearson, "If we were in Lapland, we would be blond and blue-eyed and we’d still be Indigenous.” Consider someone like Dr Gordon Reid MP, the federal Member for Robertson – he publicly identifies as a "proud Wiradjuri man", but physically he appears indistinguishable from Anglo-Celtic Australians.
It has reached beyond government institutions. From the linked article:
"These policies’ tentacles already extend beyond government websites... Reports say scientists are self-censoring in hopes of improving their chances of getting government grants."
In regards to government institutions, limiting speech in this way will cause people to die.
For example, banning the phrase "air pollution" will curtail efforts to address air pollution, e.g. scientists not submitting research proposals addressing air pollution, causing people to die as a result[1].
Their CEO was in the Obama admin, and they didn't really press Biden/Obama to the same extent with high profile advocacy on whistleblowers, Assange, Espionage Act, etc.
Diesel, Ethanol, Pyrolysis? Haha, odd. I know this is supposed to be “not allowed in government documents” and so on but I think it would be useful to have a list of “words that are not permitted to be used in the US”.
It could be a convenience list that one could refer to to ensure that they’re not about to say a banned word. E.g. obviously the n word and r word are on it, but is homeless on it? Gay? A single source of truth to know what you’re not allowed to say would be good.
Today, I am posting it again because I believe the HN readers will benefit from it. Why? The majority of HN readers work in IT or adjacent information fields; we communicate information with strings aka words.