Newspeak removes terms from language so that certain ideas cannot be expressed.
This pull request does concern language, yes. But it retains the use of the term "slave" in existing APIs, while updating a script that is named "slaves" to use the term "deps," a term that is already used elsewhere in the API. At the end of the pull request, both terms remain meaningful. Furthermore, no attempt is made to hide previous use of the term - or to prevent using the term "slave" to refer to human slavery.
The comparison is apt IMO, as per Wikipedia pages linked to:
"To meet the ideological requirements of English Socialism (Ingsoc) in Oceania, the ruling Party created Newspeak,[1] a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary, meant to limit the freedom of thought—personal identity, self-expression, free will—that threatens the ideology of the régime of Big Brother and the Party, who have criminalised such concepts into thoughtcrime as contradictions of Ingsoc orthodoxy."
The title right now: 'ZFS Removes References to Slavery'. Probably 95% of the commenters have not read TFA in sufficient detail to argue minutiae details. They see 'language changed in support of the dominant political current' and link it to Newspeak because that's the only frame of reference most people are aware of. It's not like it's an isolated incident, there is plenty of language redefinition, history rewriting and statues toppling as we speak.
> Probably 95% of the commenters have not read TFA in sufficient detail to argue minutiae details. They see 'language changed in support of the dominant political current' and link it to Newspeak
That might be the first Orwellian thing in this thread - people see a thing they've been told is bad and done by bad people and they need to get their Two Minutes Hate out, and they don't have the intellectual curiosity to spend those two minutes figuring out what's actually happening. (Actually, maybe there's a bit of Brave New World in there too.)
> there is plenty of language redefinition, history rewriting and statues toppling as we speak.
Give me specific examples, and we can talk about whether this is 1984 or not.
(I'm aware of some statues being toppled over the last couple of weeks that were originally put in place by people who wanted to rewrite history - and the act of toppling those statues has caused much more public discussion about the subjects of their statues and their true history than the statues themselves ever did. That hardly seems like 1984 to me. I'm not sure what you mean by language redefinition and history rewriting, otherwise.)
It's not the "dominant political current'. This is a ripple cause by loudmouths. The dominant current is moving in the direction of actually getting work done.
This is a legal hypothetical advocated by Jordan Peterson and not actually ever demonstrated in reality / tested in court / etc., right? (That is, neither Peterson nor anyone else has said that they were compelled to speak in a certain way and there are no legal proceedings against anyone who has refused to speak in a certain way, right?)
I'm not sure if the compelled speech was actually adopted into law. I'm referring to Jordan Peterson's interview and senate hearing in relation to the law.
This pull request does concern language, yes. But it retains the use of the term "slave" in existing APIs, while updating a script that is named "slaves" to use the term "deps," a term that is already used elsewhere in the API. At the end of the pull request, both terms remain meaningful. Furthermore, no attempt is made to hide previous use of the term - or to prevent using the term "slave" to refer to human slavery.
So I'm not sure I see the comparison.