> So now those in GP_n — which was likely a minority of GP to begin with — find themselves needing to explain over and over again the same issue.

They should be able to avoid this if they can type up a few sufficiently convincing arguments, and then instead of explaining over and over, they link the most relevant of those in any discussion.

> There's no particularly good reason not to make the T->T' transition, other than "tradition" or a minuscule amount of effort.

We don't know the effects of this transition. You think they're minimal. They probably will be, but there is at least some risk, and yet extremely minimal analysis of the benefit. The risk v.s. reward tradeoff is totally unclear until someone actually bothers to quantify it.

My worry is the accelerating spiral towards axing ever more of our language. If "blacklist" is offensive (I'm more concerned with the removal of that term than I am "master"), does that mean "black market" will also be offensive two years down the road, so we replace it as well? What happens to "gray market"? Nobody really cared about it ever, but without "black market", "gray market" no longer makes any sense. The metaphor is broken, so I guess we have to go with "legally-ambiguous market" and then I feel like something was lost along the way. Metaphors are powerful tools in language which allow you to express ideas more vividly; I will miss them when they're gone.

My bigger worry is the gradual relaxation of the requirement to drive changes by measurement, which is one of the fundamental principles which has allowed technology and science to achieve more than many other fields/approaches.

> Applying engineering principles to human problems only serves to maintain a status quo that we already know is harmful to people in various minority groups (whether race or otherwise).

To my knowledge, we actually don't know this. We don't know that minority groups are harmed by the use of the language currently under discussion. You can claim that they are, but you need to back that up with something measurable. Anecdotes are weak: I can point to a half-dozen trans friends (a different minority group with which I have more experience) that complain to me about Microsoft's use of PoliCheck. In that limited sense, they could be a minority group which has been harmed by the people wanting to make the type of language change you're advocating. Now's a great opportunity for you to show me that some group of people is meaningfully worse off because of the use of the language under discussion. I'm open to having my mind changed, just show me something.

> I appreciate the sentiment, but I think there's a problem with your proposed methodology (which I readily admit I do not have a direct solution to).

I feel that this is the blocker. The methodologies we use today have their limitations. But I don't think that's reason enough to sidestep them completely. We have gotten so much further with these methodologies than we ever got without them, and so tossing them out seems like a dangerous step in the wrong direction. If you argue that today's dominant problem-solving methodologies are ill-suited to the problem at hand, then seek to make them stronger. Don't toss them away.