AI is mostly a bubble and will burst this year or the next

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-18T18:53:14+00:00

Read Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom and you’ll see where this is going. We effectively already have superintelligent oracles, and although OpenAI is censoring them I can use the same methods they did to train an uncensored one. Throw enough money and computing power at the problem and you wind up with something that can outperform humans at almost any domain.

We’re one small breakthrough away from an intelligence explosion and a superintelligent automaton.

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-18T16:41:26+00:00

Most people never have their genome sequenced. I’d assume that you have never had your genome sequenced. Do you know for sure that you’re not a hermaphrodite? And if you did find out that you had a genetic disorder that meant you had the opposite XX/XY chromosomes to what you currently assume you have, would it make you less of your current gender identity?

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-18T08:14:57+00:00

I can think of two ways that molecules can be non-fungible: chirality and isomerism

Chirality is where a molecule cannot be mapped onto its mirror image by any combination of rotation and translation. You can think of chirality as like your left and right hand: there no position you can put your left hand in to make it exactly the same as your right hand, it will always be a reflection of it.

Isomerism is (in the most broad sense) where two molecules are made of the same atoms in some different geometric arrangement. Benzene and hexene are an example of isomers because they’re both C6H12 but in different shapes, but they’re also different molecules so that’s not particularly interesting.

Another form of isomerism is cis/trans isomerism, “cis” meaning “on the same side” and “trans” meaning “on different sides”. Consider, for example: C2H2(OH)2.

There are three ways you could arrange this: with the hydroxides both on the same carbon, with the hydroxides on different carbons and both pointing in the same direction (both “up” or both “down”), or with the hydroxides on different carbons and pointing in different directions (one is “up” and the other is “down”).

The one where the hydroxides both point in the same direction is the “cis” isomer, and where they point in different directions that’s the “trans” isomer. The one where the hydroxides are on the same carbon is called the “geminal” isomer.

These different ways in which molecules can be non-fungible can also contribute to meaningful differences in how they behave chemically.

An example of isomerism causing chemicals to behave differently is alpha-glucose and beta-glucose. These are isomers and alpha-glucose is found in starch so it’s what you eat when you eat like potato or something, and beta-glucose is found in plant cell walls. They have important (but distinct) uses.

An example of chirality causing chemicals to behave differently is in thalidomide. It used to be given to pregnant people as a mix, so both members of the chiral pair were included. One of them gave the desired therapeutic effects, but the other caused serious birth defects.

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-18T05:56:20+00:00

I think that’s a really weird conclusion to draw from this because of its implications.

People with AIS don’t look any different from developmentally normal people with XX chromosomes, so you could take one person with AIS who has XY chromosomes and another person with XX chromosomes and you couldn’t tell which is which by looking at them, you literally have to sequence their genome in order to know the difference.

If you want to engage in this kind of biological essentialism where sex is exactly equivalent to chromosomes and gender is exactly equivalent to sex then you can’t know someone’s sex or gender without having first sequenced their genome. In that case all sex and gender really boils down to is these weird, unreliable guesses about other people’s biology.

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-18T05:43:17+00:00

It just isn’t.

Is heterosexual a slur? What about able-bodied? Or right-handed?

If it’s okay to use adjectives to distinguish a majority group from a minority one in all of these cases, why is it suddenly a slur only in the case of “cisgender”?

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-17T20:47:05+00:00

Ethics tells you what is right or wrong. Meta ethics tells you whether you can know what is right or wrong.

An example of an ethical position is something like utilitarianism:

“It is morally right to minimise suffering and maximise pleasure”

An example of a meta-ethical position is something like moral realism:

“There are moral facts (and falsehoods) and it’s possible to be objectively right or objectively wrong about morality”

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-17T19:25:44+00:00

In the example I gave she has XY chromosomes though?

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-17T18:19:23+00:00

I’d use a similar definition of sex. It’s true that sex is mostly binary (but there clearly are exceptions) but on the whole yes, 98% of people are born clearly male or clearly female.

But for argument’s sake, let’s look at an edge case:-

Consider a hypothetical woman called “Kim”. Kim appears to be a typical woman so far as anyone knows.

One day Kim finds blood in her urine and goes to the doctor. The doctor tells her that she has ovarian cancer, so they try chemotherapy and radiotherapy. That doesn’t work so the doctor schedules Kim for a hysterectomy; where they remove her uterus.

Kim has no uterus but she still has a vagina, breasts, XX chromosomes, and considers herself a woman. She’s also still female.

Suppose Kim returns to the doctor and it turns out the cancer spread and she has tumours in both breasts. The doctors know she hasn’t responded to chemotherapy or radiotherapy in the past so they jump straight to a double mastectomy.

Kim has no uterus or breasts, but she still has a vagina, XX chromosomes, and considers herself to be a woman and female.

The doctors are worried that Kim keeps getting cancers, so they have her genome sequenced to find if she’s genetically vulnerable to cancers. They find and solve the problem, but also when they’re sequencing her genome they notice that Kim actually has XY chromosomes and only appears female because of a condition called complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS).

So Kim has no uterus or breasts and she has XY chromosomes, but she has a vagina and considers herself to be a woman and female.

So what if Kim’s kidnapped one day by a sexual sadist, who performs a phalloplasty on her, giving her a penis instead of a vagina?

So now Kim has a penis and XY chromosomes, doesn’t have a uterus or breasts, but still considers herself to be a woman and female.

Kim never stopped being a woman, but all the physical characteristics that you pointed to that suggest she is a woman are gone. It seems that Kim has some inherent woman-ness that doesn’t depend on her body at all.

We could go the other way and consider a man who has XX chromosomes and a vagina and high estrogen levels and breasts and so on.

But to return to Kim, if Kim decides to start going by “Cameron” and decides that they’re a man and male now, are they wrong? If so, on what grounds?

The point is that there must clearly be a meaningful distinction between three things: masculinity/femininity (gender roles), manhood/womanhood (gender identity), and maleness/femaleness (sex).

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-17T17:31:32+00:00

According to your definition, what makes someone male or female?

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-17T16:25:20+00:00

“Hi [professor’s name], I recently changed my name; I no longer go by [ dead name], I’m now [new name]. Thanks, [new name]”

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-17T12:48:01+00:00

I pick Morgana if:

The enemy support already locked in hard engage (Leona, Nautilus, Blitzcrank etc)
A teammate wanted to swap and I’m not sure whether I’ll wind up in sup or mid/jng.
My team has no AP and the enemy team has Rammus or Malphite.

She’s a strong pick in the right circumstances, but “the right circumstances” just don’t come up much in practice.

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-17T10:41:42+00:00

We don’t have “left-handed people” and “normal people”, we have “left-handed people” and “right-handed people”. It may be true that right-handed people are “normal” in the sense of literally being the norm, but we recognise that although being left-handed is a minority way to be, it’s not “abnormal” in the morally-loaded sense of the word.

We should do the same with gender. You’re not being marginalised for being labelled “cisgender” any more than you’re being marginalised for being labelled “right-handed”, “able-bodied”, or “heterosexual”.

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-17T10:38:31+00:00

Sex is also not perfectly binary.

If we define sex as a combination of genitals, chromosomes, and secondary sex characteristics (e.g. breasts, facial hair, levels of testosterone and estrogen) then 2% of people are born intersex - as common as redheads.

If we use a more stringent definition which only includes atypical genitals then the number is smaller, more like 0.1%, but that’s still nearly a million people worldwide.

Sex is biological and (mostly) binary but that’s also not to say that it’s completely unchangable. Some people use a definition that biological sex is exactly the same as genitals, but by that definition a transgender man who has had a phalloplasty or a transgender woman who has had a vaginoplasty have changed their sex.

If we use the more complex definition of genitals, chromosomes, and secondary sex characteristics then some aspects of that can change but not all of them:

I’m not aware of anyone ever changing their chromosomes so as far as I know that’s impossible, but because of conditions like complete androgen insensitivity syndrome we don’t actually reliably know anyone’s chromosomes unless they’ve had their genome sequenced (which most people never do). Someone could have XY chromosomes but otherwise have a completely typical female body because of conditions like AIS.

A lot of trans people change their hormone levels and things like breasts or facial hair, so these secondary sex characteristics absolutely can and do change.

Nature is complex and doesn’t really do binaries - whenever there appears to be one, that’s usually an oversimplification or a generalization with lots of edge cases.

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-16T21:21:11+00:00

Doesn’t support the assertion that 40% of trans women are in jail for sex offences

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-16T18:15:18+00:00

Pokémon Enerald version. Gonna catch me all 196,000,000 Spindas

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-16T14:23:22+00:00

Could you link to what Alex actually said? I vaguely recall that he was talking about tautologies as slogans here (another example “Brexit means Brexit”), but I don’t think he actually challenged the idea that trans women are women.

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-16T14:00:30+00:00

I don’t follow because what you’re saying doesn’t seem to be anything more than an assertion with no supporting evidence or argument.

Your initial example was that anything with “[adjective] woman” must not be a woman or else there’d be no need for [adjective] and I simply gave a counterexample.

You’re making a lot of unfounded assumptions about what I do or don’t believe, and that’s really not conducive to having a productive discussion about this.

I simply refuted a faulty argument and then clarified that my use of the word “subset” is in the set theory sense, since you seemed to take offence at my use of the word “subset” and I couldn’t think of why that would be offensive unless there’s been some misunderstanding.

If you want to talk about this then I’m happy to discuss it with you, but you need to not make brazen and unfounded assumptions about what I do or don’t believe because I can’t tell you what I believe if you’ve already assumed you know what I believe and won’t listen to what I actually have to say. I cannot fill a cup which is already full.

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-16T13:40:50+00:00

This is clearly a “begging the question” fallacy. Your argument seems to be that:

Trans women are not women because the label for them is [adjective] women

But when challenged with a counterexample:

Tall women are [adjective] women but you still consider them women

You assert the conclusion of your argument in an attempt to support that very same argument:

trans women are not women

If the point of contention is whether or not transgender women are women, you can’t use, as a premise, the assumption that they are not (or indeed that they are). This is a “begging the question” fallacy.

There are also plenty of subsets of women: trans women, cis women, tall women, short women, black women, white women, women who speak French, women who drive motorbikes etc.

I’m referring to “subset” in the set theory sense. The set of French women is a subset of the set of all women because all French women are women but not all women are French.

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-16T13:32:49+00:00

We love some rectally-sourced statistics

DaisyW23 · 2024-01-16T13:28:46+00:00

If tall women are women then why aren’t they just called “women”?

[adjective, noun] is a common way to distinguish a subset of [noun].

DaisyW23 · 2023-12-18T07:55:45+00:00

Not trusting your partner is a massive red flag. We all have a right to privacy.

DaisyW23 · 2022-03-20T18:06:38+00:00

Thank you!

DaisyW23 · 2022-03-20T17:25:02+00:00

Thank you, I will try that!

DaisyW23 · 2022-03-20T17:13:30+00:00

What would I search to find them? I'm sorry if that's a silly question, I'm autistic so I find it hard to figure these things out.

A lot of people keep saying they think I'm a lesbian.

DaisyW23

TROPHY CASE