questionasker
No bio...
User ID: 2119
Regardless of whether or not transwomen should coinhabit women's prisons, whether or not they do or do not seems like a problem of minuscule ultimate importance.
Then why do trans activists push for it so hard? Just concede it then.
I should clarify that what I mean is that it seems like a problem of minuscule ultimate importance to a person who claims to care about women's issues generally. It's clear why this would be a significant issue for trans activists, but not clear to me why it should be a problem of similar magnitude to women's rights activists in general, as Rowling claims to be.
To put it another way, trans activists care about issues that trans people face. They believe that one of the main issues that trans people face is the fact that elements of society do not recognize them as their chosen gender. They believe that this lack of recognition is expressed in many ways, for example in the prison system, via being compelled to inhabit the prison of their biological sex rather than their chosen gender. They might also believe that i.e. trans women who are made to inhabit men's prisons suffer greatly at an individual level, and care specifically about alleviating the suffering of members of their tribe. Thus it seems clear to me how this issue slots into the greater project of trans activists of having society recognize them as their chosen gender rather than assigned at birth gender.
However, JK Rowling claims to be interested first and foremost in women's rights in general. If she perceived the most important problem facing society to be the potential advancement of trans rights, and thus stated that her main mission was the frustration of the advancement of trans rights, in just the same way that trans activists have as their central mission being pro-advancement of trans rights, it would make sense for her to care about i.e. 'should they be assigned to the prison of their chosen gender or not' just as much as trans activists do but in an equal and opposite sense. But JK Rowling doesn't claim to be an anti-trans-rights-activist, or proclaim that the potential increase in trans acceptance is of significant importance in general. She even claims to be for trans-rights in some sense. What she most specifically claims to be is a feminist, and that her main mission is women's rights in general. Yet, she makes an almost disproportionate amount of her online presence and activism about combating these specific areas like trans people being admitted to womens prisons and etc.
A rational person who cared most about women's rights but did not specifically support some areas of trans-rights would still not spend as much time caring or thinking about these specific trans issues as Rowling does: there are bigger fish to fry facing women even in her home country, but especially around the world.
What if the AI is so good at being photoshop+ that, using a picture of what you look like clothed, it is able to create a nude comprised of the exact same pixels/information that would be present in an actual photograph you took of yourself while in the same pose except naked? In that case I actually am accessing the information that you call 'your' information, which is to say, that information which you agree is wrong for me to access.
To pre-empt any disputes you have about how possible this is, although I'm sure it is actually possible, lets retreat the capability of this AI just to a level of detail that could be at least good enough to trick even the depicted subject into thinking it was a real nude of themselves. (This is where the technology is actually at, right now. Boobs aren't exactly the most difficult thing to draw, especially at 512x512 resolution.) In this case, even if it's not the exact same information, then, it seems to me to be functionally the same information, for all intents and purposes. So is it okay for me to use an AI to access what is for all intents and purposes the same as information which is otherwise immoral for me to access?
questionasker
1yr ago
What do you mean, human brains "might" use analog computation? I wasn't aware human brains did any digital computation.
? The conventional view is that human brains are digital computers. Information is represented symbolically in the form of nerve impulses, which is what enables the otherwise uniform computational substrate of the cerebrum to otherwise be able to process such a variety of different things from simple sensation to the considerations involved in complex planning etc.
questionasker
1yr ago
Women's breasts, in particular, come in a variety of shapes, and they are frequently not symmetric. Older women's breasts tend to be flat--think more like those pictures in the old National Geographic depicting women in some far-away hunter-gatherer tribe. The nipples and areolae come in various shapes and sizes, and change with temperature. Some have inverted nipples. Practically all of this variability is hidden by the kinds of clothes women wear, especially if they are into padded bras.
I'm aware of this. The point is that not everyone with good-looking (pornstar-like, if you would) breasts, decides to become a pornstar. Thus, these types of people are vulnerable to having very realistic versions of their breasts recreated with pornstar data, despite never themselves putting images of their actual breasts out onto the internet. Additionally, there's plenty of data of non-pornstar-like breasts out there to train data on. The point is not that AI will always generate topless versions of people that are very much like what their breasts actually look like, its that it can with at least some relatively degree of frequency.
questionasker
1yr ago
With deepfakes I guess it depends on how much verisimilitude something can have before you think it violates your "actual" privacy. If I have a deepfake of Angelina Jolie that, for whatever reason, has serious flaws and inaccuracies have I violated her privacy in the same way?
This is the main thing I am trying to get at with the locker room/fantasizing examples. The current AI can inpaint nudity onto clothed pictures of people without necessarily having serious flaws or inaccuracies. (Not to say, it always succeeds at doing this. Just that it can reasonably often.) And training the AI on the actual person's breasts isn't required for the result to be highly similar to what they actually look like topless, at least for some women, considering at least some people's breasts are visually similar to other people's breasts. Thus a person who has not already consented to having topless photos of themselves present anywhere on the internet can have topless images of them created to what is indeed a very high degree of verisimilitude to their actual naked form, using i.e. pornstar's breasts as training data.
Technically, I suppose, it can't be known by the person operating the AI algorithm if the person has i.e. a mole on the chest, etc. So maybe, because technically uncertainty might remain, i.e. without actually being able to look at a real topless image of the subject, and thus verifying that the nudity-ai-inpainting is highly similar, there is still some sense of privacy maintained? Because even if the inpainted-nudity actually is extremely similar to their topless form, this isn't known to the person creating or viewing the deepfake?
Regardless, overall, the pertinent fact is that the current level of technology is at a level where it is indeed possible to get outputs, at least somewhat often, that the depicted person themselves could or would mistake for real nude photos of themselves. This seems to me to be functionally very similar if not the same as looking at someone changing/naked without their consent or knowledge. You're right in the sense that it doesn't imply other security concerns in the same way as an intruder present in a changing room would, but I'm not sure that's whats actually wrong/disliked about peeping toms; I feel like a significant amount of the dislike of the idea of someone seeing you changing is the actual fact that they know what you look like naked (and maybe also the knowledge or likelihood that they are fantasizing about you sexually). I.e. most people would be as mostly as opposed to a person using X-ray glasses, or more realistically a hole in the wall, to look inside their locker room while they changed, as they would be opposed to someone i.e. hanging from the rafters. I can't know for certain, though, at least personally I guess, because to my knowledge I've never been the victim of any such situations.
I don't think we have an easy rule. I also don't know that this can/should be grounded in privacy. Maybe defamation concerns would be more viable?
Well, as far as legality goes, it seems like copyright is the main way people take down unwanted deepfake porn of themselves. Regardless, though, I'm less so interested in the legality and moreso in what should or shouldn't be generally considered acceptable ethically or morally speaking, for which perhaps privacy or violations thereof, and perhaps other things, do seem like a relevant concern.
questionasker
1yr ago
So discussion of deepfakes should account for the fact that they aren't particularly novel.
Maybe. Couldn't it be true that these types of images were unethical to create/consume for as long as they've existed, and there just wasn't proper recognition of the problem?
Another commenter brought up the fact that perhaps a significant reason as to why at least distributing deepfake porn is immoral could be because, by nature of the fact that one makes them openly accessible on the internet in order to be distributed, one makes it likely that whomever the deepfakes depict will find out that such porn is being made of them, and it is specifically the psychological harm inflicted by knowing porn like this exists of oneself that accounts for (or accounts for the majority) of why such porn is unethical for people to make or consume. This would also explain why previous iterations of 'fake nudes' weren't as highly debated: because they weren't as commonly distributed until now (perhaps because they weren't as realistic, and thus not as popular).
questionasker
1yr ago
Not of anyone aware of the fact that a single neuron can have thousands of dendritic spines that undergo constant remodeling.
Neurons are capable of responding to both frequency and amplitude of nerve impulses they receive
This just means that neurons don't work in binary like most artificial electrical computers, it doesn't mean they aren't components of a digital computer. Digital doesn't mean binary.
underlying biology is 100% analog.
From your comment I'm afraid you might just have no idea what a digital computer actually is. Whether information is transferred electrically or not isn't what separates digital computers from analog ones, but rather the fact that information is represented symbolically in digital computers and not in analog ones. Information is represented symbolically in the form of action potentials in neurons in the brain meaning it is a digital computer.
"otherwise uniform computational substrate of the cerebrum to otherwise be able to process such a variety of different things from simple sensation to the considerations involved in complex planning etc." is gobbledygook that explains nothing as far as neuroscience is concerned.
When you want to be a dick, you should at least try and know something of what you're talking about so you don't come across as both needlessly overconfident and a dick. The fact that neurons can process both sense information as well as consider things like complex planning means that by definition they must be the components of a digital computer. What is uniform about the substrate is that it is all composed of neurons, not whether the architecture happens to be similar or not across various cortical layers (just as the architecture of different computer processors is not uniform despite all being made of transistors.)
questionasker
1yr ago
Appreciate the lesswrong link. I'm interested in conjecture and wild predictions and I don't particularly care about accuracy so its exactly what I'm looking for.
questionasker
1yr ago
I'd advise to forget all the stuff about "the brain is like a computer".
The brain is a computer and I'm not sure how you can meaningfully argue that it isn't
Thank you for your thorough explanation. I don't think the lengths of your posts were inappropriate (I at least read them all without becoming bored, if that means anything to you.) I'm also not sure there needs to be much back-and-forth here, either, as you consider there might need to be at the very beginning of your writing: it seems as though you have been sufficiently thorough in your explanation of your idealized conception of sex relations to the extent that I have no further questions to ask you, at least on that topic. However, I have some further questions about your other beliefs.
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You mention a belief in God. Although I appreciated the lengths of your earlier posts, can you explain somewhat briefly how you justify a belief in God in the first place, and how your spirituality plays into your beliefs? I suppose I can imagine how traditional Christian doctrines would actually quite firmly support what you are mostly already saying here but if you could be specific that would be very interesting. I'm not exactly interested in having a theological discussion and if you believe in God I doubt either of our points regarding its existence or lack-thereof will be particularly convincing to one another, so I wouldn't mind if you kept your response to this point relative short and more explanatory rather than persuasive. I enjoyed the persuasive nature of your other posts though just to be clear, so I would not be opposed to you continuing that persuasive approach when addressing my points/questions beyond this one.
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In your bio you mention an endorsement of anti-semitism and also being a (libert)Aryan. Can you explain how your conception of race relations relates to your beliefs? Similar to the previous point, I can assume how Aryan supremacism based on HBD might quite naturally play into your beliefs. But if having the most socially productive organ of society sit in the captain's chair is how you are orienting your idealized conception of society, how do you approach the fact that most IQ studies list east asian and jewish IQs as superior to those possessed by the traditionally 'Aryan' races? Should east asian and/or at least ethnically jewish men, assuming they are religiously Christian, be the ones we try and promote to the highest decision making positions in our society?
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Also in your bio you mention 'natural femininity replacement.' By this do you just mean 'replacing' the set of currently acceptable female gender roles with those that existed before the 1960s? Or is this some other thing that perhaps you think I might be interested in hearing about from you more in depth, considering I've been very interested in hearing about your elaborations on your other beliefs?
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You mention a lot of theory as to why it would be better if men and women reverted back to some more traditional conception of gender roles/sexual relations, but do you have any proposed praxis as to go about achieving (and preserving) this reversion? For example, if women came to wrongfully desire equality in our present world, and they hold some meaningful measure of political power now, is there really any feasible way they could be convinced they are wrong about this? Are women too far gone as a demographic, and it would be more-so a task of red-pilling all men and then having them seize back what is rightfully theirs? If, as you say in your posts, more and more people are beginning to have thoughts such as yours regarding the 'proper' conception of gender roles, is it just a matter of waiting until society self-corrects?
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Perhaps most importantly out of any of these five points/questions: Indeed, as you mention toward the end of your post, I would like to hear your best attempt at a defense/endorsement of pedophilia as you might be so inclined to write. I'm less interested in hearing your defense of fascism as I have heard steel-manned arguments for fascism by nominally intelligent people many times before, and in the typical way for most political ideologies, the argument was somewhat convincing and somewhat not. If you really think you'd have something new to bring to the table regarding an argument for fascism feel free to describe it, but if your beliefs are more or less the steel-manned position already held by most neofascists, then feel free to skip that particular elaboration.
Rarely, though, if ever, have I heard a defense of pedophilia from an intelligent and well-spoken person. At least, I haven't heard such a defense of the type of pedophilia that wasn't pederasty. So more than anything I'm fascinated by the prospect of hearing what you have to say about that in general, 'why it would be good,' how it would be justified, how it would be spiritually and morally uplifting -- and how it plays into any conception of a political program beyond the premise that i.e. it would be spiritually or morally uplifting, which even if true seems like insufficient basis for any sort of political program beyond the scope of 'social movement.' Thanks again in advance for taking the time to thoughtfully share your perspectives.
questionasker
1yr ago
But they can always just not look.
If it's there, though, they'll still know it's there, even when they're not looking at it. Thus they will suffer some psychological harm they otherwise wouldn't have suffered, if it just wasn't published in the first place.
Is it moral for me to publish something, if the very fact that it has been published will cause someone to suffer psychologically? I think unless the value gained by publishing that thing is high (high in a relative sense, as in, greater than zero) it is immoral to do this. And I think the value gained by something like porn is basically zero.
questionasker
1yr ago
Maybe true, but I guarantee you that the vast majority of people paying money to host websites that distribute deepfakes are doing so for commercial purposes. I.e. the streamer in question had accessed a website which required him to pay 15 dollars to use
questionasker
1yr ago
Maybe that should have the same moral or ethical implications.
questionasker
1yr ago
However much this might be the case, you're making a point more about how mis-percieved their actions are, more-so than about how poorly received (the common perception of) those actions are in absolute terms, compared to each other.
Maybe both of them are misunderstood generally. The truth is, though, that even some of the worst interpretations of Rowlings 'misdeeds' are not considered as heinous as some of the best interpretations of Louis CK's. If we're talking about 'Why is Rowling not as cancelled as Louis CK?' my point is only that the difference in this perception is indeed a factor.
questionasker
1yr ago
Are there really a lot of ways in which the trans movement harms cis women? Do you mean because of women's prison issues and things like transgender women's participation in sports? Or are you thinking of a different set of problems/potential problems trans movement might pose to women
questionasker
1yr ago
Looking forward to your further answers and elaborations.
questionasker
1yr ago
pedofascism, androsupremacy
I appreciate your in-depth elaboration on what your ideal society would look like, but can you explain to me why this would be good, other than because men would return to 'appreciating and affirming youth' ? Is that goal the only reason you advocate said conception of masculine-feminine relations? If so, what is particularly desirable about that goal to justify what seems to me like the significant cost to the well-being of women to achieving it? To clarify, I am honestly interested in learning more about your beliefs and am not here to annoy you, shame you, or attempt to defeat you in debate. If you care to do so, could you do your best to try and convince me that returning to this full affirmation of youth would be a significant good? To me, it seems like most women probably wouldn't want to be treated as children/pets/slaves. Is your contention that they would actually be happier in this arrangement, or that their wishes aren't morally relevant, or that their wishes are relevant but less relevant than the good that would be done by allowing men to return to this lost appreciation and affirmation of youth?
Thanks in advance.
questionasker
1yr ago
Along those lines, I'd say the only context in which the information that you've generated (hence your information) of a perfect prediction of the appearance of my naked body can become equivalent to the actual information of the actual appearance of my naked body is if you can see me naked and can confirm that it's a perfect prediction.
I suppose you're right about this.
questionasker
1yr ago
You seem dismissive of your own comment, but the last three paragraphs here seem incredibly profound to me. Thanks for your interesting reply.
questionasker
1yr ago
To clarify before anything else: I want to avoid making a value judgement about what is 'good' or 'just' or 'moral.' For example, I don't have any particular leaning as to whether a multipolar world where, as you've put it, China gets a say, or a unipolar one dominated by American colonial interests, is better or more just than the other. Instead, I'm merely trying to think about what's actually most likely to come to pass.
That's what I took away from your comments regarding 'return to the historical norm;' that you were implying that a world with a major pole centered around Beijing is the likely future, considering it has been such a frequent theme of history, at least before quite recently. This, e.g. that the future will contain a world where China is the suzerain of at least most of East Asia (if by historical example it is we are reasoning) is what in particular I'm not convinced is true. Again, perhaps it would be more fair... but I what I want to try and figure out right now is how likely it is, really.
Do you yourself really have any reason to think a continued Chinese rise is particularly likely, other than because of China's historical global centrality? Again, I'm not solely convinced of the likelihood of a Chinese-centric world (or at least one with a major pole emerging from Beijing) by way of the fact that historically this was often true, because again historically it was also true that the US didn't even exist, and yet, the US does exist. With this in mind, what's your main reason to believe that for example China will eventually continue to rise to such a strength that it can feasibly challenge the US over something like Taiwan, or (perhaps because that is too narrow of scope) anything beyond that, such as the Philipines, South Korea, South Asia, etc. ?
I think that many of the counter-arguments to China bullishness are relatively strong. For example it seems that a significant portion of China's growth has occurred in the exact way that leaves it vulnerable to the middle income trap -- do you think that they will navigate this problem, or that the middle income trap isn't real, or that I'm wrong with the premise, or what? What about the supposed demographic decline? Do you think the birth rate problem is overstated, or somehow fixable, etc.? What about the lack of allies -- i.e. it seems for the most part that given the choice between CCP suzerainty and US-American-UN-GloboHomo colonial apparatus, most Asian nations would actually choose American Globohomo status quo rather than Chinese authority, even including e.g. Vietnam and South Korea, two historical Chinese vassals.
These in general seem like strong arguments as to why, even without directly being decisively smashed/disassembled by the West, the Chinese rise might peter out at around the [Extremely major regional power]/[Second-degree global power] level, e.g. without constituting a major pole of a multipolar world order in their own right. But I very much want to hear what you have to say -- if you think that the GDP/capita of China really can reach even half that of the US, or greater, as I think would be required for them to 'erect' such a pole -- what do you see as the route there? Again, currently they're so reliant on their manufacturing economy that seems exactly like it would be middle-income-trapped -- are they going to shift numbers of people on the scale of hundreds of millions to employment in higher-paying services-economy jobs? For what, 'inward consumption' as Xi Jinping has put it? Is there even really theoretical economic demand within China, or worldwide for that matter, for even e.g. 300 million Chinese services-economy jobs in the first place?
questionasker
1yr ago
China in the Late Qing to Deng period is the only time when it was not the center of the world economy, when global trade did not center around obtaining Chinese goods and moving them West. The ascent of a unified, modern China as the center of the world economy is a return to historical norms, not a new aberration.
I appreciate the wisdom of your comment for the most part, but these assertions in particular seem like the largest flaw.
True, always in world history before late Qing was China in large part the economic center of the world. However, it is just as true that never before during that span of world history did something like the USA even exist. The conditions of the world are different than they were before, in a major relevant way: 330 million people live in a powerful, technologically advanced, industrial, resource rich nation across the ocean from China. I think this idea of 'returning to the historical norm' loses credibility as something so inevitable when you consider how irrevocably different the world is with the USA existing in its current form across the Pacific from China rather than e.g. geopolitically irrelevant Native American tribes (or really, just unexplored ocean).
And this is to mention nothing of India. I think you overstate just exactly how central China was to the historical world economy, not that it wasn't central in a major way. But my understanding is that India shared a significant portion of that economic centrality throughout history, as well. It seems to me that a 'return to the historical norm' would be an economically multipolar world split with China and India as focal points both in their own right, not China alone.
questionasker
1yr ago
You're right that many female streamers cultivate an audience in this way, but some female streamers do not and yet still have deepfake porn of them made. So to avoid getting caught up in this we can just restrict the discussion to solely what is right or wrong regarding the porn made of the latter group.
questionasker
1yr ago
I suppose you're right.
questionasker
1yr ago
In the version of the hypothetical where the AI actually can exactly recreate the way a person would look naked in a certain pose, using only a clothed photo of them in that pose as reference, we can agree that the information is 'actually' the same, though, right? One pixel at location x,y, with color #f0d190 is 'actually the same' as another pixel at the same location x,y, with color #f0d190, regardless of whether or not that pixel exists there because it was reverse-engineered by AI, or normally-engineered to be there as a result of being captured via digital photo.
Regardless of whether or not transwomen should coinhabit women's prisons, whether or not they do or do not seems like a problem of minuscule ultimate importance. Do you really think Rowling would dedicate as much effort and energy into her activism if she thought problems on this magnitude were the main issues of the trans movement?
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