Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 22, 2025 8:10 UTC (Sat) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404)
In reply to: Hellwig's position by mcon147
Parent article: Linus on Rust and the kernel's DMA layer

>Its a clinical description of a growth pattern

It's really not, especially in the context of the metaphor in question.

He already said it was growing everywhere, adding the metaphor about cancer only serves to add the additional connotation that the spread is disease-like, and a threatens the host.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 22, 2025 17:46 UTC (Sat) by hallyn (subscriber, #22558) [Link] (21 responses)

I've heard this several times, and wonder what kind of culural shift this is. The idea that I can't use any words bearing the slightest negative connotation is downright dystopian. Christoph's point in this case was respectfully made. As Linus made clear, he was out of line wrt what he had authority to nack. But "cancer" was an accurate methaphor for his concern. That (he thinks) it "threatens the host" (as you said) is precisely his point. So argue against that, not the choice of word.

James Bottomley has some good suggestions on how to address the problem of pure c patches breaking the rust build. That holds promise.

I'm waffling on whether to post this or whether it's off topic, but given that the next sentence usually involves CoC and that very much affects linux kernel dev, maybe it is on topic.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 22, 2025 19:02 UTC (Sat) by Paf (subscriber, #91811) [Link] (17 responses)

Cancer has *extremely* negative connotations and specifically refers to unbenign examples. It’s not just a word with a moderate connotation.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 22, 2025 21:56 UTC (Sat) by hallyn (subscriber, #22558) [Link] (5 responses)

And most of us have lost family, friends, and mentors to it. It's a horrible thing. Still neither you nor anyone else has the right to tell anybody that they cannot use the word, even if referring to and denigrating your favorite project.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 23, 2025 1:40 UTC (Sun) by Paf (subscriber, #91811) [Link] (2 responses)

I don’t think this is about rights - there is a point where language usage is intended to denigrate as much as inform. Ie, when a conversation becomes more about having a fight than discussing. The use of very emotive language is one sign of this and it’s not unreasonable for particular places to suggest it’s inappropriate sometimes.

In other words if a word is intended to express seeing red and make those who read it see red, maybe it shouldn’t be in a technical discussion regardless of meaning. Context and nuance matter here too.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 26, 2025 4:55 UTC (Wed) by DimeCadmium (subscriber, #157243) [Link] (1 responses)

Is the word "cancer" really "intended to make those who read it see red"? Seriously?

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 26, 2025 5:30 UTC (Wed) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link]

Uness you are discussing medical practice, yes.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 23, 2025 2:03 UTC (Sun) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

This is not about freedom of speech. This is about not being a complete jerk.

You have the right to say horrible things to everyone around you. But as a mature adult, you have the responsibility to think about the consequences of doing that. Everyone around you has the right to decide that they don't want to work with people who say horrible things on a regular basis (or even once, if they are so inclined). That's just the other side of the free speech coin - freedom of association. If group A does not want to put up with person B, then they are not obliged to do so.

Codes of Conduct, flawed as they may be, are ultimately just a way of writing down exactly how nasty someone has to get before we all agree to stop talking to them. There can be no infringement of anyone's rights in doing that.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 23, 2025 4:01 UTC (Sun) by motk (guest, #51120) [Link]

I absolutely do have that right, and that obligation. YCombinator is over there somewhere.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 23, 2025 12:14 UTC (Sun) by rbranco (subscriber, #129813) [Link] (10 responses)

Rust's mascot is a crab. Cancer is the Latin word for crab. It was a pun.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 23, 2025 14:13 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (9 responses)

That connotation didn't hit me. But is Christoph German?. It would be obvious to them because it's the same word - Krebs.

Cheers,
Wol

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 27, 2025 5:44 UTC (Thu) by PeeWee (guest, #175777) [Link] (8 responses)

I guess he is German but so am I and those are not synonyms. The German word for "crab" is "Krabbe" and the one for "cancer" is "Krebs"; but not all "Krebs" is cancer (the disease), it may also mean "crayfish", the animal of the the crustacean family.

And there really is no argument convincing anybody that Hellwig's use of the word "cancer" in this context did not have all the *intended* negative connotations as described above. It basically boils down to: "Rust is cancer, the disease that, if untreated, kills the host, so needs to be fought tooth and nail". BTW, the real life "cure" (chemo therapy) often kills the host as well.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 27, 2025 8:01 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (7 responses)

> BTW, the real life "cure" (chemo therapy) often kills the host as well.

Because, unfortunately, "host" is the wrong word ... a host implies a pathogen/predator, but here the disease is a malfunctioning host (okay, caused by a pathogen in some cases, such as herpes). But my research makes me think there's a very simple explanation for the massive rise in cancer today - cancer is basically gene malfunction. The natural mechanism for switching genes on and off is to attach or detach sugars at the appropriate site. And what's the other massive new scourge today? Type II diabetes - uncontrollably high sugar levels. So we end up with the biological equivalent of a bunch of kids running amuck turning light switches on and off, with random (and sometimes unfortunate) results.

Cheers,
Wol

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 27, 2025 8:59 UTC (Thu) by PeeWee (guest, #175777) [Link] (3 responses)

That may be an explanation but I am not well versed in these matters. But one thing came to light just recently which explains why the "cure" often kills the patient as well and it is kind of similar to the current scourge of "Ai" idiocy. It is rather stupidly simple: the criterion to make a chem cocktail a "good candidate" was, and still often is, "does it kill the cancer"? And statistically illiterate pharma people simply looked at those numbers, failing to see that this is only the *necessary* criterion, with the *sufficient* criterion being "patient lives". Or maybe it's the other way around; necessary: patient lives, sufficient: cancer dies.
This is one more example that people fail to understand the moral of the story about the "Genie in a bottle", which takes your wishes all too literal. And, to close the circle, that is the same with "Ai" (LLM): "fool a Turing test", was the wish, basically. More precisely, the criterion is to produce grammatically sound sentences; nobody said anything about the content of those, hence "hallucinations", which is just another lie people swallow to convince themselves of some kind of "ghost in the machine".

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 27, 2025 9:53 UTC (Thu) by rschroev (subscriber, #4164) [Link]

Quite off-topic but I'd say both "patient lives" and "cancer dies" each on itself are necessary but not sufficient conditions; the combination "patient lives" AND "cancer dies" is a necessary and sufficient condition.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 27, 2025 10:18 UTC (Thu) by stijn (subscriber, #570) [Link] (1 responses)

> But one thing came to light just recently

Citation needed because ...

> It is rather stupidly simple: the criterion to make a chem cocktail a "good candidate" was, and still often is, "does it kill the cancer"? And statistically illiterate pharma people simply looked at those numbers, failing to see that this is only the *necessary* criterion, with the *sufficient* criterion being "patient lives"

Really, people in the life sciences have a pretty good grasp of statistics, and tend not to have oversights like this. This view of the world puzzles me.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 27, 2025 11:23 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Really, people in the life sciences have a pretty good grasp of statistics, and tend not to have oversights like this. This view of the world puzzles me.

So why do doctors continue to make stupid blunders? The answer (in the light of my advanced years) is (a) lack of experience, and (b) being bombarded by ignorant advertising. Take for example Ibuprofen is regularly prescribed for period pain. Yet apparently women were excluded from the trials "because hormones interfered with the pain killing"!!!

If we're going on about Chemo, the chemical cocktail targets rapidly dividing cells. So giving someone Chemo at night when the body in general (but not cancer cells) generally shuts down, is likely to be far more effective. Likewise womens bodies change in line with their periods. I believe that there is plenty of evidence that giving chemo at night is far more effective, as is timing it in line with womens periods. But people get called in for Chemo because it's convenient for the hospital - during the day, no attention paid to what state the patient's body is in.

And - with a different illness - I live that tragic reality every day! There is plenty of evidence that taking medication "as required" is far more powerful and effective than taking it on a rigid schedule - so why is it so many patients come out of hospital with their chronic conditions made MUCH worse, because the doctors and nurses focus on the ACUTE condition? And won't allow patients to self-medicate, but rigidly give them their tablets on the regular drug-round? Sadly, that's reality :-(

Cheers,
Wol

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 27, 2025 10:34 UTC (Thu) by stijn (subscriber, #570) [Link] (2 responses)

> But my research makes me think there's a very simple explanation for the massive rise in cancer today

I know this is getting quite off-topic, but huge claims dismissing entire fields of research deserve calling out.
You're not the first and you will not be the last. The simple explanations tend to vary and wrongly focus on a single thing.
World health organisation:

"Around one-third of deaths from cancer are due to tobacco use, high body mass index, alcohol consumption, low fruit and vegetable intake, and lack of physical activity. In addition, air pollution is an important risk factor for lung cancer."

- there are likely many factors at work.

> The natural mechanism for switching genes on and off is to attach or detach sugars at the appropriate site

Ummmm, these are words and 'gene' and 'sugar' are among them, but I'm pretty sure not much can be drawn from this.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 27, 2025 12:25 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

And where I am dismissing large fields of research? You are conflating cause, effect, and mechanism.

> "Around one-third of deaths from cancer are due to tobacco use, high body mass index, alcohol consumption, low fruit and vegetable intake, and lack of physical activity. In addition, air pollution is an important risk factor for lung cancer."

Alcohol consumption (a cause, along with over-eating) leads to high BMI (an effect). There is a very strong correlation between these two and high blood sugar aka diabetes (presumably another effect).

And then high blood sugar gives us a blindingly obvious mechanism for causing cancer.

And while this is just circumstantial evidence, it's worthy of future research - we had a high-profile athlete with cancer a few years back. Every time she went into training for some charity thing - ie exercising hard and driving blood sugar down - her cancer went into remission. Sadly it finally won, but four or five remissions all correlated with a marathon or long-distance cycle or some other high-exercise situation?

To me it just seems blindly obvious that blood sugar is the MECHANISM behind cancer. There may be multiple causes, and multiple fixes, but eating and drinking (and imho snacking in particular) too much just seems the obvious *preventative* thing to target.

Cheers,
Wol

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 27, 2025 14:01 UTC (Thu) by daroc (editor, #160859) [Link]

In my experience, everything in biology is hopelessly circular spaghetti code. Everything partially causes everything else, and trying to tease individual factors apart requires specialist knowledge that I, at least, don't have.

This is definitely off-topic for LWN, though; the discussion of Hellwig's use of metaphor was barely on topic, this is clearly past that line. Let's leave this discussion here, and the systematic reform of the research sciences to the research scientists.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 22, 2025 21:07 UTC (Sat) by koverstreet (✭ supporter ✭, #4296) [Link] (2 responses)

It's not about connotation.

When you have the kind of stature that, say, I or Christoph have, you can't just be voicing your own personal opinions: the opinions and thoughts that we share carry real weight.

People act and react based on what we say. If we share our thoughts well, it can motivate a huge amount of useful and productive work on the part of others. If we share our thoughts poorly - without due consideration, or in an outburst - good and productive work may stop, people get frustrated, and they may even leave.

We're well past the point where "rust is cancer" is a point of view with any standing whatsoever. Rust is the future, more than enough people have bought into it, it's going to happen, and it's going to be worth it; it's going to make all our lives better 10 years out.

But it's still in the early stages and the people doing the actual work on the ground are younger, with a lot of energy, but without the standing to fight every battle on their own - if key maintainers are going to put of fights. This work needs support.

IOW - someone being petulant can cause a lot of problems. If you want to be one of the respected elders, don't act like a petulant dick.

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 26, 2025 9:50 UTC (Wed) by ljsloz (subscriber, #158382) [Link] (1 responses)

With respect Kent, might I suggest a little humility + self-reflection?

Hellwig's position

Posted Feb 26, 2025 14:26 UTC (Wed) by draco (subscriber, #1792) [Link]

As someone who has also had to learn this lesson, this *is* the result of a lot of self-reflection