LibertyLizard

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Because moral values don’t come from religious texts. They are transmitted socially and economically. The texts are then used to justify whatever belief system the believer subscribes to.

The real origin of these right-wing beliefs is an interesting question. They arise from a complex cultural and historical process that stems from the material conditions of both ancestral and present-day cultural groupings. My suspicion is that they arose because in these societies, the most successful reproductive and political strategies center around dominance hierarchies. Materially successful people are able to out-compete, out-reproduce, kill, or otherwise coerce people in their societies to adopt values and norms that justify and protect their social dominance and oppression. Even those on the bottom of these hierarchies, like women or the poor must adopt such values or be excluded or attacked.

There are also competing groups that either oppose such hierarchies or have adopted them to a lesser extent. It is from these groups that many Christian ideas originated. In general they tend to originate in urban areas—I suspect this is because there are more opportunities for people to escape from others who wish to dominate them as compared to agrarian societies where access to land or livestock can be monopolized by the powerful. Anonymity and cultural diversity in cities also allow the weak to more easily inflict violence on their dominators without suffering social consequences.

But over time, Christianity spread widely enough that people with different values adopted them. In other cases, the descendants of these anti-hierarchical Christians adopted hierarchical values for various reasons listed above. As the economic and political conditions of society change, people must adapt or die. Unfortunately, some of these adaptations can be harmful to society as a whole even as they benefit their adopters.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

There are a lot of potential explanations. In essence they built a model to categorize brain features into male and female, and then tested this against their label of male or female on each brain. So this could result from problems with the model predictions—or just as easily from their “correct” labeling of each brain as male or female.

So a big question is how did they define male and female? By genetics? By reproductive anatomy? By self reported identity? This information was not in the article. All of these things are very likely correlated with things happening in the brain, but probably not perfectly. It’s worth noting that many definitions of sex do not consider gender identity at all—if such a definition was used, then a trans-man might be labeled female in their data, whether they have reckoned with their identity or not.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

I have a suspicion that this is exactly what’s going on here and may be why past studies found no differences. AI is much better at quickly synthesizing complex patterns into coherent categories than humans are.

Also, 90% is not that good all things considered. The brain is almost certainly a complex mix of features that defy black and white categorization.

Hopefully we will be wise enough to not require trans people to prove their trans-ness scientifically. People have a right to do what they wish with their bodies and express their gender in a way that feels right to them, and should not be required to match some artificial physical diagnosis of what it means to be trans. Even if it turns out that most trans people do share certain brain structures or patterns. There will always be exceptions and that doesn’t mean we get to label someone’s identity as inauthentic.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I haven’t said anything I wouldn’t say out loud to someone but the tricky thing is that you are saying things to the entire planet essentially. Someone, somewhere is bound to be offended.

For that reason, anonymity is important online.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Agreed. Also while it’s impossible to say in any individual case I suspect people might be more likely to drive while inebriated if they believe the autopilot will be driving for them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

So I hear what you’re saying—what we really want to measure is deaths avoided versus those caused. But it’s a difficult thing to measure how many people the technology saved. So while I’m cognizant of this issue, I’m not sure how to get around that. That said, the article mentions that Tesla drivers are experiencing much higher rates of collisions than other manufacturers. There could be multiple factors at play here, but I suspect the autopilot (and especially Tesla’s misleading claims around it) is among them.

Also, while there may be an unmeasured benefit in reducing collisions, there may also be an unmeasured cost in inducing more driving. This has not been widely discussed in this debate but I think it is a big problem with self-driving technology that only gets worse as the technology improves.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Won’t someone please think of the shareholders?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

You’re right, I was conflating the two. However, I suspect there are more cases than just this one due to Tesla’s dishonesty and secrecy.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Tesla’s secrecy around its safety data makes it hard to do a robust analysis but here’s a decent overview: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Sure, that’s what I was referring to. But I’m realizing not everyone is as aware of the whole story here.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (14 children)

Teslas are already directly dangerous to his customers but our society is numb to traffic violence so people don’t care as much as they should. But “full self-driving” has already killed people.

Edit: removed “a lot” because while I suspect it is true, it remains unproven.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah I assumed as much. Thankfully my state doesn’t have a lower tipped minimum so this is not a concern for me. But I still tip because servers are still underpaid and I want them to be compensated fairly. Also the public is a pain in the ass so they deserve it for dealing with certain people.

view more: ‹ prev next ›