token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
No bio...
User ID: 1737
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
A trans person who wants to be 'left alone' need only choose the bathroom or facility that corresponds to their biological sex and I daresay they will be left alone.
Back a few years ago I saw multiple social media posts along the lines of this selfie of a trans man in a woman's restroom with a caption asserting the absurdity of that belief. Following the hashtags in that tweet finds some similar ones (although mostly a lot of screenshots of that one as far as I can tell).
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
Thanks for the reference. That answers my question by providing actual evidence that the political discussion of trans rights in the past ~decade was in fact not an out-of-the-blue move by the right.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
Just to be clear, you're asserting that the person in the photo I linked should indeed use the women's bathroom? And you expect that to be the popular (or at least red tribe) consensus?
Do you think there are valid reasons for the social norm of penis-havers and people of menstruation being assigned separate lavatory facilities?
Why should the extant status quo be altered?
I'm rejecting the claim that that was ever the actual status quo.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
There's a gradient here between more and less gender-non-conforming (to be clear, I mean identified gender, not sex-assigned-at-birth; I am intentionally not using "trans" here because gender-non-conforming cis people are also affected). I expect that more gender-non-conforming people have always had trouble in gender-segregated spaces while only moderately/lesser gender-non-conforming people may have been more likely to go unnoticed. The recent culture war over the issue means some people are a lot more aware of looking for gender-non-conforming people and therefore noticing ones that are only slightly gender-non-conforming that would have gone unremarked on before.
The question is who made the first attempt to move the Chesterton's fence of what level of gender-non-conformance is acceptable in gender segregated spaces. I had pointed to the North Carolina bathroom bill, but there was apparently a year or so of lead-up involving the left winning court cases and making rules at various legal levels that that was in response to. Of course, with court cases, it can be difficult to determine the aggressor (e.g. was it an intentionally set up test case), but it looks like the left started it, not the right.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
I'm rejecting the claim that the right is the side that brought this matter to the forefront of the culture war. I'm claiming that the left deliberately pivoted to and advanced the transgender rights cause immediately after achieving victory on the same-sex marriage matter in mid-2015.
Accepted. I conceded this point to you in a different reply to you in this thread where you provided evidence for it.
So what, then, do you believe the 'status quo' on this issue was prior to 2015?
I made some attempt at answering this in a reply to someone else in this thread.
I do not assert that. I dare you to show me where I asserted or implied that.
MY assertion is that the entity that owns the property in question can set up it's bathrooms however it likes and have whatever policy regarding gendered usage they care to, and it's up to them to enforce such policies. I think passing laws regarding bathroom usage on private property is actively stupid and detrimental in the vast majority of cases.
I apologize for the misunderstanding. I did not mean to put words into your mouth. The position you assert does not appear to be a popular one, so going further would be delving into your personal position, which is unlikely to shine much light on the greater culture war.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
That link is broken for me, it just says "Hmm...this page doesn’t exist. Try searching for something else.". Maybe try linking to the tweet instead of the image from the tweet? Or doing a Google Image search on the image to see if you can find it hosted elsewhere.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
nitter with twitter links
Ah, I should have thought to try nitter on your original link. That does work. As does the twimg link.
Anyway, as to your actual question... I'm not sure what your point is. I'm arguing for letting people use whichever bathroom they feel like is appropriate and not having other people police that choice. The point of the photo I linked was to point out that the issue is complicated enough that a simple rule is not going to result in a working binary division. I don't think pointing to another edge case is a counter-argument.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
Sorry, I misunderstood your question, then. My personal view is that gender-segregated bathrooms are silly and I've never encountered anyone taking the gender segregation particularly seriously. I'm well aware I'm in a bubble.
My understanding of the pre-~2015 status quo before this was a Culture War issue was that people who didn't look like they belonged in the gendered bathroom they were in had a chance of someone expressing their displeasure at that which increased with how non-gender-conforming they were, with the corollary that some people would find they had a high chance of running into trouble in either bathroom.
The point of trans activists push on bathrooms is to eliminate the de facto "you must be this gender conforming to use a public bathroom (and therefore exist in any public situation where you may possibly need access to a bathroom)" rule. The effect (and uncharitably presented as the goal in trans-activist social media) of the right's push on bathrooms seems to be raise the bar of how gender conforming someone has to be to use a public bathroom.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
If your animating principles are derived from lies and misinformation, they're not worthy of respect. If verifiable reality contradicts your beliefs, your beliefs are simply wrong. If you don't even know the underlying statistical reality beneath your own beliefs, I have trouble calling your beliefs sincere. If you felt that strongly about it, wouldn't you know the truth?
This line of reasoning can be found on any number of /r/politics posts about the conservative talking points you gave in your earlier post in this thread. "My ideological opponents are lying / tricked by misinformation" isn't exactly an uncommon belief in the Culture War. And we frequently have discussions in this thread arguing over the object level truths of most, if not all, of the claims you list.
But there's still a difference between claiming the moral high ground and being wrong and just straight-up claiming the moral low ground, which, uh, isn't a phrase because it's not something that people usually (ever?) do. I think @Chrisprattalpharaptr is observing the Elon Musk appears to be doing the latter and wants to know what is going on (or what he's missing?) and how this fits into the stories the right tells itself about free speech and their ideology in general.
You appear to have proposed the principle that the left's ideas are harmful and reducing their spread as much as possible is good to reduce the harm they can cause. Which seems like a coherent principle to me even if we disagree on the object level facts.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
I think the steelman is that selectively excerpting the truth can be misleading. /r/politics certainly likes to talk about the supposed materials Russia hacked from the GOP and never released. Mind, I've never seen any evidence that actually happened, so this sounds a lot like a "both sides" cope. And, uh, even if both sides have skeletons in the closest, it seems like a stretch to argue that means both sides should get to keep them secret.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
Your link doesn't say that. It says the emails were genuine, and dances around implying that means the laptop was. I though the claim was the that the emails were acquired by the Russians via hacking and laundered through "finding" the laptop. Your link provides no discussion or evidence of that claim, just asserts it's false without evidence and tries to claim legitimacy by linking to a New York Times article which also does not discuss the provenance of the laptop.
I have not looked into this issue to have any strong opinions on where the laptop actually came from; I am not making any claims either way. I'm merely pointing out that your link isn't either.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
This type of argument always confused me. Obama's actions were blatantly illegal and that seems like a pretty popular opinion in any left-leaning circle I've discussed politics in. You couldn't talk up Obama too much during his presidency too long without someone killing the conversation by dejectedly saying "drone strikes" (and I do mean literally the phrase "drone strikes" as a complete utterance; this happened to me multiple times). Sending every living former president to prison for life for war crimes would be overwhelmingly popular among the left.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
won out against greats in the genre like Charles Stross
Wait, what? I'm a big fan of Stross, but if you're trying to avoid woke, he actively does not want your business (and has said as much). His writing credentials include intentionally writing a book with no straight characters because he thought it would be funny to piss off anti-LGBT people.
Looking at the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Novel (when Ancillary Justice won)... I enjoyed Neptune's Brood and Parasite but neither were exactly Hugo-bait. And the best series award was added (probably in response to the Wheel of Time nomination?) soon after since awarding a series "best novel" seems weird.
good winners/runners up in recent years are Project Hail Mary
You're one of the people who thought Project Hail Mary was a good book? Nevermind, we'll never agree on literature.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
Blue Mars
Blue Mars won a Hugo? How? Did they have an off-by-one error and mean to award Red/Green Mars? (Looks like Red Mars was up against A Fire Upon the Deep, so I see how it lost) ... glancing at the nominations list, yeah, okay, I guess that was a pretty weak year. Only other book I've read there is Holy Fire and I thought it was actually a good book unlike Blue Mars but I can see how it lost to the third in a series with two good entries already.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
That was sorta the problem with it: there wasn't anything to it past cool things happening. I found it a frustrating read because I thought the premise and worldbuilding were interesting, but plot and characters were awful. The alien is just his immediate perfect ally fully aligned with his goals. Everything the main character tries more or less just works modulo some minor mishaps. Which is an easier sell in the realistic Martian but a harder sell when the author is also writing their own laws of physics that the main character has minimal difficulty with. The Goodreads reviews (filter to 1- or 2-stars) cover plenty of what I disliked about the book in more detail.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
Yeah, war crimes aren't scandals, they're just normal.
I think people complaining about Obama's stance on drone strikes started earlier. Probably because it was a new thing towards the end of Bush's presidency and Obama was a progressive darling who was pretty vague on his policies as a candidate, so I think the anti-war part of the left felt pretty betrayed that he didn't stop them immediately.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
it wasn't the Russians and that the linked emails were likely genuine
You're still trying to smuggle in this claim. "email were likely genuine" and "it wasn't the Russians" are two separate claims. You've provided evidence for the first but not for the second.
AcocadoPanic's link does go as far as claiming the data appears to have really come from an actual laptop that Hunter Biden used, at which point Occam hints pretty strongly at the laptop in question really having been Hunter Biden's (as opposed to some more complicated plot where Hunter Biden's laptop was hacked by Russians, its contents copied onto a sufficiently similar laptop and that laptop laundered through the repair shop). But you didn't provide that evidence, you just claimed you did and linked to something else.
To be clear, it was pretty clear early on that the laptop was genuine. Glenn Greenwald had a good post on that.
Now, other people in this thread have presented good evidence suggesting the laptop was indeed genuine, but after he helped launder the Russian hacked emails through Wikileaks and denied any Russian connection, I'm supposed to take Glenn Greenwald said it wasn't the Russians as evidence that it wasn't the Russians? Is this a troll? I'm reminded of the old joke about how if the CIA tells you the sky is blue, you should probably go outside and look, get then get an eye test and look again just to be sure.
EDIT: Yes, I know Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange are different people. One of the things he's known for is being one of the most mainstream vocal deniers of the Wikileaks-Russia connection.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
For GPT (and transformers in general), the "state" is the transcript of the conversation so far. A single response from GPT involves many queries to the (stateless, as you said) model asking for the next token until a special end-of-document token is reached or a maximum number of tokens limit is hit. Only so many tokens fit in the window, causing the described issues with it losing track of the conversation if the transcript gets too long: it's no longer seeing the entire history and the recent history isn't always enough to know what's going on.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
Both unfortunately and fortunately, this is almost certainly wrong. That may be the mainstream media narrative, but it's the result of a little bit of bad science and a whole lot of bad science reporting. The science is tricky because a lot of different things are happening at once: vaccine rollout, vaccines waning, variants changing, population getting infected, etc. But despite really promising initial apparent effectiveness against infection, we have every reason to believe herd immunity against coronaviruses is impossible because the human immune system's immune protection from infection (i.e. mostly antibody based) wanes too quickly (as opposed to protection from severe disease which appears to be more driven by long-lived T cells). The original studies were misleading because they didn't have the time to look at long enough after vaccination.
The fortunately part is that it doesn't appear the virus has changed enough to noticeably evade the vaccines (by which I mean 3 doses of one of the mRNA vaccines) at all. The reduced effectiveness against Omicron appears to be due to the virus being better at evading the immune system not due to a mismatch between the vaccine and the virus. Although that's difficult to tell because it's hard to find an entirely immune naive individual to expose to Omicron (either the actual virus or a vaccine). From that perspective, China would actually be an interesting place to do some reason and get some more solid data... but that doesn't seem likely to happen.
Source: listening to a lot of TWiV. Apologies, writing in a rush, so not tracking down good specific episodes.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
For my part, I remain puzzled over how some of their initiatives are termed anti-democratic. For instance, they want to allow businesses to reject certain customers/requests based on their faith.
I think from an American perspective, there's the idea that public spaces are for all* of the public because the alternative is segregation and we decided in the 1960s that that's bad. "Anti-democratic" doesn't quite fit, but I think the idea is that everyone is part of the same society is part of why it's important that everyone has a voice in how the society is run and there's some connection between being allowed to participate in society by being present in public spaces and being allowed to participate in society by voting.
*That is, businesses shouldn't exclude people by group/demographics; excluding individuals due to behavior (e.g. that specific person harassed the employees of that specific restaurant) is different.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
I assert that the linkage between the BLM movement and its activism and the increase in the murder rate, particularly for black men, is the clearest, most obvious linkage in social science in the last generation, and possibly since the invention of the discipline.
Surely the obvious counterpoint is that the BLM movement utterly failed at the ballot box, with multiple major cities having elections resulting in the side pushing for increased police funding winning (or not even having a serious candidate pushing for any kind of police reform).
But I'm guessing your claim is that the protests themselves discouraged the police from doing their jobs, leading to less effective policing (per officer/dollar spent). Which seems to just prove BLM's point that the current way we do public safety / law enforcement is bad for black people.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
If the system can just arbitrarily decide to not protect them, that seems like pretty good evidence it's not acting in their interests.
The BLM movement's main issue is that they believe police-as-we-know-it is a bad (and in particular systematically racist) way to handle public safety / law enforcement and that those issues should be handled by different organizations than what we currently call "police" (or at least that the current police should play a smaller role). The police murdering black people directly and the police deciding to do nothing about others murdering black people are both reasons for black people to not like the police.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
BLM wanted less police-as-we-know-it, not less money/effort put towards public safety and law enforcement. One of their commonly repeated complaints is that the militarization of police is expensive leading to less money to hire actual people who they believe would be more effective than expensive equipment at improving public safety.
See Campaign Zero, for instance, which lists:
- Public Safety Beyond Policing: "Campaign Zero builds and sustains efforts that support communities to redefine public safety and create solutions that do not involve police."
- Shrink the Reliance and Power of the Police: "Diminishing the power of police requires a targeted and multi-faceted approach. This involves reducing when law enforcement can be deployed, what actions they can take when interacting with individuals, and defining when and how they are permitted to take those actions."
as their first two policy goals.
(EDIT: That list formats correctly as "1." and "2." in the preview, but not in the post...)
I'm saying that I can't imagine "pulling out her ID" ever being a step in resolving that conflict.
I can totally believe a person with ambiguous gender presentation not being welcome in either bathroom.
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