LadyAutumn

@LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone

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⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨France seeks to ban social media for children under 15⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:
Wouldn’t this just wind up being a de facto ban on the platform we’re using right now? How could Lemmy implement an age verification system? If social media platforms that dont comply with age verification are banned, then by default there goes the fediverse for the most past lol.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨France seeks to ban social media for children under 15⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:
Why would you not just want social media to be better regulated by the law? You can’t seriously believe that your children are going to have no access to social media, even with an age ban, unless you intend to lock them in a room and home school them till they’re 18.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We wouldn't listen, anyway.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:
Lol
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We wouldn't listen, anyway.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:
Arguments are based on reason. This is an argument for instance. You have produced an example that you feel conflicts with my earlier statement.

Are you able to provide a rationale or argument to your dog that they should get into the crate? Are you capable of reasoning with her logically? How can you communicate those things with her? Could she for instance have this argument that we are having right now? Can she understand the argument I am presently making and provide a rational counter argument? If not, why cant she do that?

Youre essentially arguing for a broad semantic definition of argument. Both of the participants in the exchange you just provided are focused on one individual. The exchange from your dogs perspective never crosses outside of your dogs subjective sensory experience. Your dog dislikes going into the crate. She is incapable of understanding why it is necessary for her to go in the crate. To claim that she has a humanlike awareness of that situation is to anthropomorphize her. From her perspective I doubt there are any explanations that could be presented to her to convince her that going in the crate is a good idea. She could be motivated by fear or by reward or by her own subjective emotional experience (maybe sometimes she just doesnt mind it that much) or even out of a desire to follow your directions as her master. But you couldn’t sit her down and provide a rational argument to her about why she should get in the crate. That’s not something her brain is capable of doing. Humans alone have neurology conducive to that. There is variation in the animal kingdom, but nothing that even approaches abstract referrential language.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We wouldn't listen, anyway.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:
Cool. This isnt a response to anything I said, and you have offered nothing to prove your claim that dogs can speak English lmao.

You are the exact kind of person for whom the ape torture experiments were made to begin with. Someone entirely uninterested in what can be observed and proven. Someone with a delusional anthropomorphic view of what animals are. Blind to your own biases and convinced by the subjective emotional experiences you have projected onto your pets.

No, I’m sorry but “believe me its totally true, everyone knows dogs can speak english” is not a legitimate argument nor a response to what I’ve been saying.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We wouldn't listen, anyway.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:
Your first statement is entirely unrelated to the discussion at hand, so I dont even really know why you said it.

I’m saying I’ve never even heard of it. I would love to see a qualitative analysis of ‘arguments’ with dogs. I have never seen any evidence whatsoever that anything even approaching actual language comprehension is happening. Understanding some words and sentences is not the same thing as language comprehension. Do they understand the meaning of the terms? Can they infer new things if terms have been rearranged? Do they understand the structure of language? No. They definitely cannot. They are capable of pattern matching human vocalizations though, especially as they relate to themselves and things in their immediate environment. Thats not the same thing as language. I’m very sorry if you do not understand the nuance between those 2 things, or if you genuinely believe any of your pets could speak English. Theres nothing I or anyone else can say to convince you otherwise if youve already decided that your subjective emotional experience with your animals leads you to believe they have English language speaking skills.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We wouldn't listen, anyway.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:
Sorry you lost me with the archeology memes, ill take your word for it lol.

I said exhibited, that already implies that I dont know for certain. I am saying that there has never been any evidence provided to me that my pets, or anyone else’s pets, have ever communicated using structured abstract language to communicate. I think believing that animals have a secret ability to communicate in non-symbolic ways is basically a conspiracy theory. There is nuance to what we would define as symbolic and what we would define as structured abstract language, but overall I think this holds true even with very generous definitions for those terms.

Communication through posturing, facial expressions, basic vocalizations, pheromones, can all be used to communicate some ideas that are complex in some ways. You can communicate to someone who knows you very well just be showing them a subtle facial expression that they know you well enough to pick up on. We are especially good at communicating emotions this way. I dont think that anyone would argue those modes of communication are as robust as, say, English. How would we have this conversation through purely posturing, facial expressions, vocalizations and pheromones? Can we convey these abstract ideas through those things that are unstructured and based on what is essentially our ability to pattern much external stimuli? Can you present my arguments to your dog? Can you show that your dog can be made to understand the arguments I am making about language?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We wouldn't listen, anyway.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:
Ive had many pets. None of them have ever exhibited the ability of abstraction. Thats not an insult to their ability to understand my emotions or whats happening around them, their brains are just literally not designed to engage in the kinds of communication humans are capable of. They could not have the conversation you and I are having right now, they are neurologically not capable of it. Humans are uniquely capable of this.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We wouldn't listen, anyway.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:
The entire study of great apes and sign language has been based on flawed methodology and subjective and biased interpretation of very small data sets.

Its interesting that apes can recollect abstract symbols. It’s even kind of interesting that they can to some extent recollect hand gestures. But it is nothing more than symbolic association at its absolute best. Calling it language is a fundamental misrepresentation of what is taking place. Apes already possess several kind of language comparable to symbolic association, stuff like emotive language and body language and expressive language. There is no substantive evidence that they are capable of understanding and using an abstract language.

What has largely happened in so called ‘studies’ on ‘sign language’ in great apes, has been a lot of animal abuse and fundraising for animal abuse predicated on vague notions of how inspiring the idea of talking apes is. They can’t talk. They are nonetheless very interesting creatures and we should be fascinated by them even without them having the ability to speak human language.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lol, lmao even.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
I hate the way the media makes this problem so much worse by incorrectly describing LLMs. They can’t “have intelligence”. They are incapable of any kind of thought. The “intelligence” of GPT1 and GPT5 are the same, in that neither have any. They are complex computational algorithms designed to generate text from prompts. That is absolutely not the same thing as thinking or knowing things.

There are entire cults springing out of the ground believing LLMs to literally be thinking feeling beings 💀 we are so beyond fucked.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nat 20⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
I’d guess the Romans who came up with it selected the letters arbitrarily. It wasnt the alphabet they used in day to day life, so maybe they just omitted some of them to make it work.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dude read the rules of woman only community and decided to post anyway⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
That would be an understandable mistake if the poster hadnt literally quoted the rule they were breaking.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dude read the rules of woman only community and decided to post anyway⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
What community is that?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This Spiral-Obsessed AI 'Cult' Spreads Mystical Delusions Through Chatbots⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:
Providing the general public with convincing text generation has been an absolute unmitigated disaster for humanity.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Health Secretary Kennedy says there's 'not sufficient' proof to show Tylenol causes autism⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
It doesnt matter really. I won’t be surprised when studies show in a few years a large drop in Tylenol use during pregnancy (probably overall too), and the diagnosis rate of autism continues the overall increasing trend (as we become better at diagnosing it).
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨IT'S A TRAP⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
In the top case has it been arbitrarily decided to include space in between the would-be victims? Or is the top a like number line comparison to the bottom? Because if thats the case it becomes relevant if there is one body for every real number unit of distance. (One body at 0.1 meter, and at 0.01 meter, at 0.001, etc)

If so then there’s an infinite amount of victims on the first planck length of the bottom track. An infinite number of victims would contain every possible victim. Every single possible person on the first plank length. So on the next planck length would be every possible person again. Which would mean that the bottom track is actually choosing a universe of perpetual endless suffering and death for every single possible person. The top track would eventually cause infinite suffering but it would take forever to get there. The bottom track starts at infinite suffering and extends infinitely in this manner.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plants looking at people looking at people looking at fungi⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
We are. You keep ignoring the majority of what I say. You also haven’t really pushed back in any way on the majority of what I’ve said. Scientists work with different definitions, right, and so we are talking about sex as it relates to people and how we categorize people. I am asking how we can use a definition of sex based exclusively on gametes in specific situations, specifically to highlight to you that that definition itself is not all that useful when applied to people.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plants looking at people looking at people looking at fungi⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Let me return to your original comment, again.

No, we only have 2 sexes. Sperm producers and egg producers. We call those male and female. All of the other stuff is window dressing.

And the comment I was responding to.

Since I don’t think fungi have a social structure, those are sexes. Humans have two Sexes but also gender expression, conflating those is how transphobes come to their views.

We have been talking about sex in humans this entire time, a subject you are for some reason determined to avoid? Lol

You didnt answer if theyre still female after menopause though. They don’t produce gametes. So they no longer meet the stated definition. And would therefore now be sexless. As would any sterile person. This is an inherent limitation of equating sex 1 to 1 with gametes production. Animals and plants couldnt care less what we think about them. Other people however do tend to care how we talk about them. And I doubt anyone, literally anyone, would agree that anyone who is sterile is no longer male or female. This is an example of the way that the definitions of terms can be one thing in one context and another in a different one. When the word sex is used in common parlance it is usually not as a reference to gametes.

What we are discussing is how to discuss people who are neither male or female. Sex, yes even in the literal Wikipedia definition, defines 2 categories. Not all organisms fit within those 2 categories. Therefore there are more than 2 categories. That is the entirety of my held position.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plants looking at people looking at people looking at fungi⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Your reductive approach to understanding biology is unhelpful in the context of humans. A better statement is “humans only produce 2 gametes”, which is at least accurate. Sex as it exists for people and as it relates to people has really nothing to do with gametes. It is associated with gametes, but is for the most part unrelated to them. The window dressing you mentioned is actually what people generally mean by sex. All of the other things. Even biologists usually mean the window dressing. They dont ask to test subjects gametes before performing studies on them. They accept their stated sex (which is nearly always their assigned sex, and therefore based on external appearance) or what it says on some legal documentation (same as previous) and then accept that assignment.

The word sex used in the context of human traits just does not refer to gametes. You can define it that way, the same way I might define apples as vegetables, but if that definition is entirely divorced from what the word actually means in every day life then what is the purpose of the definition? It serves no purpose. Humans and mushrooms can hardly be equated, and approaching the concept of sex the same in each case is going to do very little except ostracize intersex people and make society generally inhospitable to them.

You essentially avoided answering my previous questions here. Are you saying that post menopausal women are no longer female? Just clarifying. I am pretty sure that if that is the case and you stand by that definition then you stand very much alone.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plants looking at people looking at people looking at fungi⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
So you would define them as each as sexless and therefore belonging to the same sex category? I would argue that youve assigned a “third sex” category to them in doing so. If the options are male/female/neither/both, then you’re proposing a system of 4 categories. One which is solely focused on reproductive cells, which is not and never has been the definition of sex in humans.

You said earlier that all secondary sex characteristics, being secondary characteristics, are “window dressing”. Downstream consequences of reproductive cells. How do we account for this in the example I mentioned in my previous comment? The 2 sterile humans, one assigned female at birth and one assigned male at birth. They have the same “sex category”, neither has any reproductive cells of any kind. They should both have no secondary sex characteristics if that is the case, using your own statements. Why then is that not the case? And more to a direct point, why doesnt their drivers license have a “N/A” next to the “Sex” marker?

What happens when someone loses their ability to produce reproductive cells? Are cis women going through menopause “formerly female” and therefore now “sterile, sexless”? Are cis men who have had to have their reproductive organs removed “formerly male” and therefore now “sterile, sexless”?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plants looking at people looking at people looking at fungi⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I’ll now return to your original comment.

No, we only have 2 sexes. Sperm producers and egg producers. We call those male and female. All of the other stuff is window dressing.

Some people do not produce a gamete. Some people can produce both. What sex are each of those people? One person is assigned female at birth and another person is assigned male at birth, but they are both sterile and incapable of producing any gametes. Are they the same sex? What sex are they?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plants looking at people looking at people looking at fungi⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

Since I don’t think fungi have a social structure, those are sexes. Humans have two Sexes but also gender expression, conflating those is how transphobes come to their views.

This is the comment I was responding to. Rejecting an organism as sterile offspring does literally nothing to answer what sex that organism is. What sex is the “sterile offspring”?
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plants looking at people looking at people looking at fungi⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Also to add to what I said in my other comment, sex as a working definition affects many areas of our lives. You may define sex as the production of gametes, but being male or female affects gigantic areas of our social lives and comes with a massive number of tacked on traits. Far from merely being a definition of biology it affects our experience of every single aspect of society. Sex is all of those things too. We can argue that it shouldn’t be, that it should be an entirely unrelated and inconsequential trait (which would also mean that we can easily recognize that people outside of the binary categories exist), but the reality is it doesn’t mean that.

Society requires you to have a sex. If you are an intersex person you are functionally incapable of interacting meaningfully with a society that does not recognize people who are neither male or female. For instance, when bathroom bans are passed, where should intersex people go? Where can you go if society has adopted a rigid binary view of sex and you are not male or female? What social services are you entitled to? What prisons should you be put in? Sex in terms of a rigid binary category dichotomy functionally erases the existence of intersex people and adds a huge amount of barriers to their lives.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plants looking at people looking at people looking at fungi⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I’m not conflating them, I am showing that a textbook definition and working definition are not the same thing. Human society functions on working definitions of sex, which are almost universally appearance based. It all comes down to what a doctor sees when you’re born. Thats the functional definition of sex in terms of human society. Thats what sex means to people in day to day life. What your physical body looks like upon visual examination.

You’ve still refused to answer for the shortcomings of your provided textbook definition. What sex is an organism that produces no gametes? What sex is an organism that produces both? Both of those things are things that can and do happen, to humans as well. Does someone’s sex change once they no longer produce any gametes? Your definition of binary sex must necessarily account for every single one of these cases and still find a way to sort them all into 2 categories without any exceptions.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plants looking at people looking at people looking at fungi⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Gametes are not useful for this definition, not everyone produces any gametes. More to the actual root of the problem, sex is almost never determined by gametes or by chromosomes. Genetics is very rarely the basis by which sex is determined. It is almost exclusively determined by external appearance. Legitimately, almost 100% of the time. In rare circumstances tests are performed to determine intersex status. But for the overwhelming majority of people the only basis by which their sex has ever been determined is by external appearance.

Gamete production is cool and what not. It is also almost entirely irrelevant to the discussion of intersex people and the precise number of sexes there are. Strictly speaking not all organisms are sortable into the categories of male and female. Thats the reality. To ignore them is to deny reality. To define them as malformed is to dehumanize them. To demand they exist in a binary world ignorant to their experience is to discriminate against them.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plants looking at people looking at people looking at fungi⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
How kind of you to brush all intersex people off as “window dressing”. Also, I guess you dont exist at all if you dont produce eggs or sperms then.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plants looking at people looking at people looking at fungi⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
Humans have more than 2 sexes. Sex is a convenient category based around a phenotype, not a golden rule that all organisms adhere to. People who exist outside those phenotypes are not defective or malformed and do not necessarily require surgeries to ‘correct’ their bodies and make them fall in line with binary sex categories.

By asserting sex as binary and immutable you are actually doing the legwork of transphobia for transphobes. They also assert that sex is binary and immutable. They deny that anything such thing as gender identity or expression exists in the first place, instead asserting that gendered behavior is a direct product of biology.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm doing my part!⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I think it’s more like a response to the way one of these things is given a disproportionate amount of time and attention. We’re all expected to micromanage every aspect of our lives to diminish our comparatively miniscule impact of personal choice while the state and the ruling class just do whatever the fuck they want actively slaughtering the environment for fun.

You know what would help me minimize my carbon footprint a lot? Public transportation. A renewable energy grid. Affordable food created along sustainable and environmentally conscious supply chains. Electronics and clothing that is manufactured with long term use, maintenance, and recyclability in mind.

Those things are all out of my reach to implement. Me properly sorting my recyclables (which i do) is such a minor impact compared with those other things. Any offsetting done by proper recycling is immediately undone the moment i step into a grocery store, having driven there in my car for lack of public transportation, and buy food that was wastefully produced and transported to my grocery store via fossil fuel based energy.

The majority of our time and energy should be going into fighting back against the state and the ruling class who refuse to structure society around environmental impact, not on almost the almost irrelevant impact of individual workers. We can and should promote recycling, but we can hammer home that point when our whole society isn’t top down engineered with total indifference to the environment.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Public transit in Chengdu, China versus Toronto, Canada⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
You can think whatever you like I suppose, but it helps if you provide a source.
⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Public transit in Chengdu, China versus Toronto, Canada⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
I dont think that it requires a single party system to do this. Just much more coordinated public industries and infrastructure projects where public development is prioritized.