607 karma · joined February 16, 2023
also worth noting I don't agree with the comment you're replying to - but did want to add context to the situation of gpt-2
All while the smarter ones upstream knew it was all a lie and just a way to screw over groups they always wanted to screw over, not even getting in to the benefits their corporate masters gain from the free labor of prisoners who get 20y for dealing something that should be dealt over a regulated counter and the police force to capture those that get caught. All while systemically undermining and undeserving areas who have the most need of social programs. Hopefully logic eventually prevails. as shrooms and dmt become legal in some places i hope we can eventually do the logical thing and stop funding violence and start funding social progress.
which ALWAYS fails. it leads to fentanyl instead of regulated pure heroin which we tax. It leads to the money that could go to put these people in addict centers in to drug lords' pockets. people are going to use it anyway. prohibition does nothing but fill our jails with minorities. Tax it, limit daily use, use the billions flooding to violent cartels to fund social solutions to addiction. It's pretty simple. and undeniable the war on drugs is a failure.
>"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."[1]
Good to know it's always been like that. Legalize and tax all drugs. Spend the taxes on rehab and clinics instead of the money that will be spent no matter what going to drug lords. It is illogical to have any other drug policy than complete legalization and regulation/taxation.
[1] https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-...
Uh, only if you don't vote for politicians who believe in reducing inequality??? Kinda silly to act like inequality is an innate force and not something we control with governments...
Yeah, obviously the prison shit is fucked up. And as I've said since the start, democrats are servants of capital, same as the right. But they're not wholly the same.
I also recognize project 2025, red state policy goals (read my link to texas GOP platform in another comment in this thread to see their openly fascist aims) and that red states force victims to sexual crime give birth to the attackers child because of "dur, abortion kills babies". Like nah, some over reach on a small issue that affects 1% of the population is nowhere near worth getting worked up about. We have much much bigger fish to fry. Ergo "culture war distraction"
So while we agree in some aspects I disagree giving trans people basic protections legally a slippery slope like you portray. If anything the trail of progress has been one step forward .9 steps back at best.
I also stand behind pragmatism and voting for the least shitty option we have. Which is obvious to anyone serious.
I'll take over correction to protect a marginalized group over a group that pardoned a man who drove a truck through a crowd of protestors, got out and shot one, because he shot and plowed through the group capital wanted him to. And that's the least of their evils. Gerrymandering, anti education, anti birth control, anti lgbt, buying the supreme court, the list goes on.
I'll take those dumb ass latinx idiots any day of the week, and grind my teeth while i fill in my ballot, but don't mistake my words for "i loooove democrats they're perfect.
> I hope it's not your view that likes and dislikes are what distinguish women as a class from men as a class
This is another place we fundamentally disagree.
The thing I was trying to get across was unless I'm a doctor, or a sports association, or correctional facility, what 'class' you fall in to, by your definition or mine, is moot.
Someone claiming a different gender identify than they "present" as - the real stereotypes btw but i don't got it in me to get at all the disagreements - to be has no bearing on anything to me. So why would any normal human say "uhm akshully due to your penis/chromosomes it's clear you were born this or that gender. I truly could not care.
Therefore, yes, my principle is I respect whatever gender presentation they want to display. I'll call them whatever they want to be called as long as they treat me with respect.
So yes, whether someone likes or dislikes presenting as one or the other label, man or woman, is the sole factor that determines what abstract category I put you in for our conversation.
The only other time I can think of where there is any need for such arbitrary rigidity with categorization is when you're like dating.
Then whatever your views on trans people are wholly and justly on you to define.
BUT, in the public, professional world, I think it's ridiculous to act like it matters which gender you present as outside of very narrow ranges of tasks. The rest of the time I consider it all fluid, because it's immaterial to issues like climate change and pandemics and nukes and real shit. The fact we're even talking at length about this nonsense should demonstrate the artificial push it's gotten from regressive politicians who never even wanted gay marriage.
For serious matters where the biological categorization is necessary, I'll cede to a medical biologist or the sports governing body. that's their choice. But just out in normal every day life? Yeah I stick by my fluid definitions of the social categories "man" and "woman"
Because misogynist and patriarchal (agree with you there) dumbass dems over correct when they finally pick an issue to do something about? See also: latinx.
It's dumb and bad, but the other side is still way worse.
>If you remove the female body from the definition of woman, what else remains besides sexist stereotypes?
Oh idk, maybe who they are as an individual? What they stand for? What they like and dislike?? such a debate brained take
Your question put another way:
"If the female body isn't what defines a person as a woman, what is left but sexist stereotypes?"
That's you brother, not us. That's what YOU think remains when you take biological categorization out of the picture.
Which is why people caught by the "omg trans people exist and want to be protected too" panic like yourself end up at this weird need for rigid binary gender when intersex and trans people been existing for a long time before you lot were taught to hate/fear them by fox news
>selling socialism with hand waving
Lol, more like selling it with award winning, best selling, taught in colleges books? If you're convinced that's "hand waving" you're beyond lost
Yeah, but one is way worse.
>law about criminals
You said "everything". "Everything" is what I'm challenging. No serious effort is made to force women to make any concessions, except by the party that is restricting their medical autonomy. And I guess prisoners? You've certainly got me there, but I don't think I've ever stated a good word about the correctional system.
What you link is a specific law covering a pretty specific category of people, ones already in jail. Not exactly "demanding everything women have be man's"...
You're not going to hear anyone who holds progressive political beliefs tout our countries approach to criminal correction. We house like 20% of the world's prisoners with 4% of the population. Of course prisons are rife with horrible stuff.
>No, what you're describing is a sexist redefinition of woman and man. There's really no need for it. It just reifies sex-role stereotypes
By saying the definitions are flexible I'm somehow reinforcing rigorous gender role stereotypes? That's about as non sequitor as it gets.
At the dr, in prisons, sure, get all biological. But for the rest of us normal people, it does not matter which genitals the person shitting in the stall next to me has. And it never will.
You earnestly believe the party voting for children to work longer hours, more dangerous jobs, the party ensuring rape victims and children give birth to their rapists' child and in general remove women's medical autonomy, on religious grounds in a constitutionally secular democracy, are the ones 'defending women'? Shocking position.
They are encouraging ignorance and harassment. They are inspiring people like you to think there is any issue with trans people in the first place.
You have been tricked in to thinking trans people are anything more than a mostly invisible minority.
They lost the "gays and gay marriage is the devil" line and now have simply regressed to even weaker bigotry, the 1% or less I forget the exact % of people who are trans.
They do not, nor has anyone, "demanded everything that's been set up for women now has to include any male who says he's a woman".
These labels, man and woman, are flexible social labels, not the rigorous biological category they've convinced simpletons to believe in as some sort of personal axiom.
>I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean.
They oppose estate or "death" taxes in general. That is what they mean.
>The Republican party is half the country.
They're half of voters. They haven't won the popular vote in how many years? 40? They're an obnoxiously loud minority.
>All of them?
Probably not all, but nearly all. The maga tariffs and then subsequent bailouts of farmers harmed comes to mind. reagan's austerity is another easy example.
>>Is the Culture War so important/motivating to these people that they are willing to help implement their own economic destruction? This is the culture war.
>You're doing it right now.
No, they aren't. The republicans bemoaning the 1% of people who identify as trans to distract their uneducated voters while banning books and attacking public education funding, libraries, women's rights, etc, are.
Don't fall in to the bothersider ism trap. Look at republican policy in a red state like texas[0] to see why the comment you replied to is the truth.
[0] https://www.chron.com/politics/article/texas-gop-2024-priori...
I wonder if the level of investment was near comparable ever to what microsoft and google and fb etc are spending now on training foundation models.
I feel like the money guys really believe it this time, given the money we're seeing still being poured in, and it's not slowing down yet (please correct me if I'm wrong). but also I am biased as I love the idea of agi and desperately want this time to be different
Ignoring Alphafold, moderna partnering with openai, the new class of antibiotics, etc etc. There's a lot more to ai than chat bots. That's a disingenuous reduction.
I agree that it's a bold bet though, burning how many ever billions a year on the hope that ai can help us solve medicine and fusion and climate change.
>"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” - Nixon's aide John Ehrlichman
Spoiler alert: They don't give a fuck about drugs or those dying from drugs.
They use the specter of "drugs" just like child abuse and terrorism - as eternal battles that need to be fought. How? By ameliorating the conditions that lead to drug abuse and child abuse and terrorism, like poverty and war?
Of course not, they use them to erode our rights under the guise of protection.
Equally, the notion of "just stop doing it because it's banned" clearly, empirically does not work. It is and will forever be easy to score drugs.
Prohibition is a money burning pit, funneling money to organizations that are built to torment the lower classes that use substances while everyone here knows that the wealthy don't ever have to follow the same rules.
Even the proponents of prohibition agree with me. Maybe look in to the real reason prohibition even exists as a """solution""". Here's a quote for you:
"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” - Nixon's aide John Ehrlichman
>Mental health care / services are among the worst here, and there are insufficient treatment centers and methods of enforcement, on top of the general lack of quality execution plans the local gov't has demonstrated as of late. The complete lack of any enforcement has led to predictable droves of addicts wondering the streets.
Yeah, because as you note it was a half measure where a full one was needed.
Generally I agree with the notion that hard drug use is not tenable with being functional in society, we just disagree on the solution.
As you note, mental health care, rehab, treatment facilities all need to be revamped. This is not a problem solved by prohibition.
We need to tackle inequality and a large majority of the suffering that leads to serious drug use is fixed, way up stream of the users.
We have worse than gilded age inequality. 3 people own more wealth than half the US combined. Maybe if so many weren't forced to work or starve, there would be reduced demand for unhealthy coping mechanisms like we both probably agree harder drugs generally are.
My whole point is best demonstrated by one throwaway line in the wire, "you think i sleep under a fucking bridge sober?"
Poverty is the real issue here. Not drugs. It never was drugs.
How do people like you not realize the ONLY solution is to let adults have bodily autonomy and stop trying to police what they do in the privacy of their own home.
Word of caution, relative to most of you folks I am a mathematical toddler. The book may be overly simple but my calculus professor really enjoyed it.
I have yet to see a system or proposition that can maintain privacy AND kill anonymity.
Every corporation could implement zero knowledge proof schemes for everything I guess. That's what some schemes like crypto identification programs aim for.
>The problem people should be out here solving is how to provide privacy without requiring anonymity
>How we accomplish this in the real world and revisit
Maybe I'm simply ignorant. How do we achieve digitally the idea of privacy without the ability to mask your identity?
You mean privacy? Internet anonymity is a downstream byproduct of our right to privacy, not some new concept devised in the internet age. We've had the fourth amendment for quite some time.