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Re: Morally equivalent


From: Emanuel Berg
Subject: Re: Morally equivalent
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2022 23:05:32 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13)

Will Mengarini wrote:

>> What is a 'moral equivalence' in Emacs Lisp?
>
> The phrase "morally equivalent" is intended to be a humorous
> reference to
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Equivalent_of_War_speech>.
>
> Back in a workplace in the 1970s, I asked whether some
> printer was a DECwriter or "the moral equivalent of
> a DECwriter" (meaning a functionally equivalent printer from
> different manufacturer), and got a laugh.
>
> The phrase was funny because the speech that popularized it
> was widely considered to be overly bombastic, and a failure
> in achieving its objectives; this was why "Moral Equivalent
> Of War" was popularly referred to by the acronym "MEOW".
> (Note that the general prediction made by that speech, that
> an energy crisis would worsen, came true, and many of the
> speech's recommendations have been followed. But that is
> irrelevant to the prevailing attitude at the time; it was
> that attitude that resulted in the comic implication.)
>
> Consequently, the word "equivalent" and cognates were often
> embellished as "morally equivalent" and cognates; but this
> was merely a comic flourish without semantic import.
>
> But that was half a century ago! Now, nobody remembers it,
> and I read this whole thread without seeing a link to the
> speech that would explain it. Even with that link, you had
> to live through those times to grok the contempt for U.S
> President Jimmy Carter that made him a one-term president
> and ushered in 12 years of Republican presidency. (Carter
> had tried to be what could be described as a hard-ass
> liberal, thereby alienating everybody across the
> political spectrum.)
>
> So, the documentation should be patched to remove the
> comic archaism.
>
> Comedy in documentation needs to consider its expected
> lifespan. Even short-lived documentation often has a target
> audience that is busy solving problems, and is uninterested
> in jokes. When the expected lifespan of the documentation is
> most conveniently measured in centuries (!), comedy leads to
> threads like this.

:O

Holy cow!

Any questions?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal




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