Pronouns: They/Them

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • Risks of medical intervention always should be weighed against risks of nonintervention. If there is a significant probability a child is trans, delaying puberty may be the least intrusive option. There is a chance of negative effects, like with all medical interventions, but if they are most likely trans forcing them to undergo puberty is much more likely to have long term negative effects (including suicidality). Why is this specific medical decision equivalent to kids having sex? Do you view other procedures, like deciding to have braces, the same way? What about much riskier treatments with a muddled short/long term prognosis, like some heart surgeries?








  • I use Chatgpt 3.5 both personally and at work for tip of the tongue questions, especially when I can’t think of a word. Sometimes as a starting point when I have trouble finding the answer to a question in Google. It can sometimes find an old movie that I vaguely remember based on my very poor descriptions too.

    For example: “what is the word for a sample of a species which is used to define the species” - tip of the tongue, holotype. “What is the block size for LTO-9 tape” - wasn’t getting a clear answer from forums and IBM documentation is kind of behind a wall, needed Chatgpt to realize there was no single block size for tape.

    It’s excellent for difficult to search things that can be quickly verified once you have an answer (important step, as it will give you garbage rather than say it doesn’t know something).





  • Job elimination is a problem in capitalism because workers need jobs to survive. In a socialist society, job elimination can be a good thing, as it allows us to either increase access to resources or reduce how much time people need to work without dispossessing the people whose jobs were eliminated.

    The difference is that, in capitalism, workers only survive by proving their usefulness to capitalists making money. Automation is thus a threat to worker bargaining power. If the means of production were socially owned (through for example government run utilities or worker coops), worker bargaining power is then through a vote or through ownership. It is possible to by default distribute the spoils of automation rather than concentrate them in the hands of capitalists.




  • The system rewards ownership, and owners sometimes are forced to distribute some value back to the creators of value to get that reward. Sometimes owners are forced to or benefit from sharing some ownership (like in the case of IP on YouTube).

    It’s not unique to software, though the potential to infinitely copy software makes the relationship starker. For example owning a parcel of land is similar to owning a peice of IP, in that the creation/purchase potentially happens once, and rent can be extracted over time from everyone who utilizes it. The number of renters you can fit on a peice of software is theoretically infinite, but in practice limited by the number of potential customers, the availability of their attention, and your distribution Infrastructure, while the number of renters you can fit on a parcel of land is limited by its size and the structures on it.

    Note that most owners did not personally create and do not personally develop what they own. Most software is not owned by programmers (who often make good money, but nowhere near the rent that is extracted from that software), and most homes are not owned by builders (who sometimes can’t afford the homes they build). It’s ownership which is primarily rewarded, and which spawns most further ownership.


  • I mean, plenty of Gen Z end up on the streets too, just like any generation, because housing availability and income is just getting worse for poor people. Anxiety issues are fairly associated with poverty.

    Most the young people I know (California, USA, I’m a young millennial) are precarious, and most feel precarious. They are also watching baby boomers (sometimes their parents and grandparents) end up on the streets in high numbers, but also don’t have the extra income to put into retirement or get a healthy savings to secure a future for themselves, much less help their ailing family members. Their health issue incidence is high, and the availability of care for those health issues is low and very expensive. People living off of Gig apps and part time jobs (because jobs with benefits are unavailable without a college education, and sometimes even with). If they live separate from their family most of their income goes to rent.

    And climate change isn’t something that affects people 100 years from now, it affects us right now in certain zones. The number of homes destroyed/damaged in various disasters each year where I live has gone way up, and a lot of the people who are displaced end up on the streets or in ever growing slums/camps. There’s a general sense that the future will be worse than the present, which makes present struggles feel worse. People turn to drug use, sometimes to self medicate for physical and emotional issues. People don’t want to have kids, because they don’t see a future for those children, and don’t have the resources to provide for them.

    I agree there needs to be more solidarity, especially with the most impoverished. Part of the struggle is worsened by atomization and individualism, and propaganda deriding the impoverished.


  • Gravity (phenomenon) is neither a theory nor law, in a similar way that a cat is different from a picture of a cat or a dictionary entry describing the word cat or our collective understand of what a cat is. At the same time, gravity is also BOTH a theory and a set of laws in the same sense that you could point to a picture of a cat and say “that’s a cat right there”, and no one would correct you. The distinction seems silly, but it is important. Theory, law, etc are structures/lenses through which we understand and predict things. A sort of formalized collective metacognition is the basis of science, and this is why we have these terms and distinctions. And theories and laws are fundementally different things in a way that’s may be best expanded by critically reading the resources provided by the other commenter.