from Hacker News

Edinburgh’s computer scientists banned from using Alice and Bob as too Western

by grkvlt on 9/5/21, 3:33 PM with 45 comments

  • by protomyth on 9/5/21, 4:21 PM

    I sometimes wish all the energy spent on things that aren't actually offensive (e.g. naming hurricanes) would be spent on looking at actual problems that need fixing. For all this concern and "action", we still have no real changes on the reservations. I suspect other communities have the same damn problems. Words and writing are cheap and easy to soothe some guilt, action actually requires energy and time.

  • by mst on 9/5/21, 4:36 PM

    The Russell Group is a group of 24 universities, and this is attributed to Russell Group School of Informatics 'internal documents' of which there's not even a hint extant on the wider internet that I can find (the other articles are straight up re-rolls of the telegraph one).

    Do I find it plausible that a group of activists at the Russell Group bureaucracy level have written this bit of silliness into a set of guidelines? Sure.

    Do I think that "Edinburgh’s computer scientists banned" is an accurate reflection of the current situation? It's certainly a possibility, but not one I'd give much weight to without rather more definitive information than this.

  • by norvig on 9/5/21, 5:37 PM

    I use "Ali" and "Bo", because they are (a) gender-neutral, (b) less Western, and (c) prefixes of "Alice" and "Bob".

  • by TMWNN on 9/5/21, 8:53 PM

    Highly relevant: "lower case as Indigenous 'eventing' support resistance" (<https://www.mtroyal.ca/AboutMountRoyal/MediaRoom/Perspective...>)

    From the Mount Royal University website:

    >this is a beginning effort at describing the use of lower case on the website of the office of indigenization and decolonization.

    [...]

    >we resist acknowledging the power structures that oppress and join the movement that does not capitalize.

    ("Indigenous" is intentionally capitalized by the author.)

  • by bigbillheck on 9/5/21, 4:30 PM

    The only source reporting this is the Telegraph, and I think people should take a deep breath and ask 'is somebody just trying to rile me up?' before getting mad.

  • by benjamir on 9/5/21, 4:26 PM

    I suggest "Shut the fuck up" and "Alpaca": first one speaks for itself and the second one speaks for the chinese majority of the earth's population -- see homophone: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse Totally not western!

  • by xhkkffbf on 9/5/21, 4:03 PM

    Pretty much any sequence of unicode centers one linguistic tradition over another. Even choosing more modern arabic numerals over Roman numerals exclude some civilizations. I don't see a solution except for people to be, perhaps, a bit more flexible.

  • by smitty1e on 9/5/21, 4:01 PM

    Clearly the Roman alphabet itself must be jettisoned.

  • by agumonkey on 9/5/21, 3:56 PM

    I propose Aleph and Babeth

  • by TazeTSchnitzel on 9/5/21, 4:04 PM

    If an article is titled “Woke wars:” it's probably deliberately inflammatory.

  • by bArray on 9/5/21, 4:16 PM

    A Western University, teaching mostly Western students a concept created by Western persons, is not allowed to use the well-known 'Alice' and 'Bob' actors in a security context because it's 'too Western'?

    They aren't claiming it's racist, nor could it be interpreted as such in the least favourable interpretation. Their 'problem' is that it's 'too Western', i.e. too White. Decolonization appears to just be the removal of White people... I don't know how I can frame that as anything other than cultural genocide.

    Is there seriously any ethnic minority people who see Western names used in a security example context and honestly believe they are being oppressed by it? I can't imagine anybody doing so in good faith.

    There is also the wider issue of restricted and compelled speech on University campuses - the exact places we expect to have the most intellectual freedom to explore modern issues. In the UK lecturers are forced to do "systematic bias" tests where they are given a split second to make some association, and 100% of the time the test concludes you are discriminating against a group (even if you shut your eyes and complete it randomly).

    How on earth can we expect academics to come to good conclusions if we restrict their words, thoughts and ideas?

  • by gunfighthacksaw on 9/5/21, 3:58 PM

    But the perfidious Eve and Oscar remain untouched… curious.

  • by haunter on 9/5/21, 4:22 PM

    HN mods will remove this pretty soon or flagged to death