The horrifying importance of domain knowledge

NancyLebovitz

There are some long lists of false beliefs that programmers hold. isn't because programmers are especially likely to be more wrong than anyone else, it's just that programming offers a better opportunity than most people get to find out how incomplete their model of the world is.

I'm posting about this here, not just because this information has a decent chance of being both entertaining and useful, but because LWers try to figure things out from relatively simple principles-- who knows what simplifying assumptions might be tripping us up?

The classic (and I think the first) was about names. There have been a few more lists created since then.

Time. And time zones. Crowd-sourced time errors.

Addresses. Possibly more about addresses. I haven't compared the lists.

Gender. This is so short I assume it's seriously incomplete.

Networks. Weirdly, there is no list of falsehoods programmers believe about html (or at least a fast search didn't turn anything up). Don't trust the words in the url.

Distributed computing Build systems.

Poem about character conversion.

I got started on the subject because of this about testing your code, which was posted by Andrew Ducker.

The classic (and I think the first) was about names. There have been a few more lists created since then.

Time. And time zones. Crowd-sourced time errors.

Addresses. Possibly more about addresses. I haven't compared the lists.

Gender. This is so short I assume it's seriously incomplete.

Networks. Weirdly, there is no list of falsehoods programmers believe about html (or at least a fast search didn't turn anything up). Don't trust the words in the url.

Distributed computing Build systems.

Poem about character conversion.

I got started on the subject because of this about testing your code, which was posted by Andrew Ducker.

You seem to be equivocating on gender and sex

That's because the distinction doesn't actually exist. In particular, to the extent gender refers to a real concept and not an pure XML tag, it refers to what is commonly called sex.

So it may happen that (to take the programmer list as an example), on Facebook there are 5 (or 50) socially appropriate genders.

Most of them are nothing more than ways for narcissists to signal their special-snowflakeness.

You can see why taking the PS list as equal to the FB list would be suboptimal :-)

Yes, the optimal solution would be for the FB list to match the PS list.

Moreover, it is silly to argue that people seeking to change the social order by claiming a third gender are as insane as people that we would commonly define as delusional and hallucinating

Since you appear to be new here, let me explain the local social norms. Around here people are expected to provide arguments for their positions. In case you're not aware repeating the opponents possession prefaced with "it is silly to argue" is not an argument.

That's because the distinction doesn't actually exist. In particular, to the extent gender refers to a real concept and not an pure XML tag, it refers to what is commonly called sex.

This is an interesting claim. Things that are often lumped into 'gender' includes things like dress, pronouns, and bathrooms, and these things are very important to people. Maybe they shouldn't be, but they are.

You are very unclear as to what you are suggesting. One obvious interpretation is that caring if you wear a dress or a tie is the same as hallucinating, and we should... (read more)

2IffThen11y

Okay... People who are seeking to change social norms in general are not usually considered insane in the same way as someone who is making claims that their sensory input is showing them something different from everyone else. For example, social norms would not allow women to walk topless outside except in exceptional situations, even where it is legal. This is often a problem... for example, even the edge case breastfeeding mothers are marginalized; more generally, bare-chested women as a class are marginalized. Changing this social norm would require changing gender norms. Generally, advocating for this change is acceptable, although not always respectable. However, I do not think that you really care about gender norms. I think that you are specifically worried that adding further gender categories is a form of pandering to people who want to increase static without increasing signal; that is, the information that someone does not identify as traditionally female does not appear to be useful information to you, and therefore you view this as needless static. Let me know if I am wrong. However, if we are looking at domain knowledge as something worth exploring to allow you to interact with other people, as in the examples given for coders, you can see how awareness of this could be very important. After all, many people of non-standard genders feel more strongly about those identities than they do about religion, so you might reasonably view a basic knowledge of these views as equally important as knowing the basics of major religions. If you are uncomfortable with this, you might simply avoid people who identify with non-standard genders. However, I would suggest that you can more profitably communicate with people of non-standard genders than with people who are hallucinating.... However, my personal sample size of interactions with people who are hallucinating/delusional in a psychological sense is fairly small, so I could be wrong.

1Lumifer11y

Surely it does. One is a classification system based on biology, the other is a cultural template determined by the local culture. You can argue that they match most of the time, or even that they should match all the time, but in contemporary usage the words "sex" and "gender" clearly have distinct meaning.

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