Should we just give up and hand it all over to the bots?

Gemini is essentially Google’s version of the viral chatbot ChatGPT. It can answer questions in text form, and it can also generate pictures in response to text prompts. Initially, a viral post showed this recently launched AI image generator create an image of the US Founding Fathers which inaccurately included a black man. Gemini also generated German soldiers from World War Two, incorrectly featuring a black man and Asian woman.

Yebbut diversidee.

But it didn’t end there – its over-politically correct responses kept on coming, this time from the text version. Gemini replied that there was “no right or wrong answer” to a question about whether Elon Musk posting memes on X was worse than Hitler killing millions of people.

There’s no right or wrong answer to anything, maaaaaan.

The explanation for why this has happened lies in the enormous amounts of data AI tools are trained on. Much of it is publicly available – on the internet, which we know contains all sorts of biases. Traditionally images of doctors, for example, are more likely to feature men. Images of cleaners on the other hand are more likely to be women. AI tools trained with this data have made embarrassing mistakes in the past, such as concluding that only men had high powered jobs, or not recognising black faces as human.

In other words AI tools are trained the way we’re all trained. Donald Trump all by himself is the US’s trainer-in-chief. Bias in bias out, yadda yadda.

“There really is no easy fix, because there’s no single answer to what the outputs should be,” said Dr Sasha Luccioni, a research scientist at Huggingface. “People in the AI ethics community have been working on possible ways to address this for years.”

Same with the rest of the world. We’ve been working on it for years, and progress is hella slow, and easily reversed. See above about the teachings of D. Trump.

Two doctors write in The National Post [Canada]:

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s recently announced policies on restricting transgender medical interventions for minors have generated much outrage, notwithstanding a subsequent Leger poll that suggested more Canadians than not agree with her proscriptions.

Doctor groups like the Alberta Medical Association (AMA) and the Canadian Pediatric Society (CPS) came out swinging, each issuing strongly worded statements expressing grave concerns. Dr. Sam Wong, head of the AMA’s pediatrics section, argued that “this is poor legislation that is targeting a small percentage of population that has already been targeted by society … and the government is piling on.”

But maybe, just maybe, it’s not “targeting” people to protect them from damaging physical interventions.

The general public could be forgiven for concluding that doctors are collectively of one opinion on this issue. But that’s an illusion: the AMA and the CPS do not speak for all of us. There is no medical consensus on transgender medical interventions for minors.

It’s impossible to know what percentage of physicians agree with Alberta’s premier, given the high professional cost of speaking up. But as physicians who have spoken out publicly with our misgivings around youth gender transition, we can say that many doctors share our concerns.   They approach us privately, both in person and electronically, to voice as much. But they shy away from offering public support because of fear of condemnation and career harm.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s not such a great idea to make it taboo to share medical concerns about a medical intervention.

One reason for the taboo, they explain, is the threat of suicide…but how real is the threat?

Fact: There is no evidence for increased suicidality in kids with gender dysphoria once one corrects for psychiatric co-morbidities. A just-published Finnish study in BMJ Mental Health, for instance, which studied more than 2,000 gender-dysphoric youth and compared them to 16,000 matched controls, concluded that clinical gender dysphoria is not predictive of suicide.

Well, ok, but the kids will yell a lot and the parents don’t want to hear it. That’s a good enough reason, right?

As for puberty blockers themselves, Dr. Wong et al. simply sweep aside legitimate concerns over the use of these drugs in physiologically normal children. Hormonal suppression of puberty may permanently alter neurodevelopment, sexual function, and bone development.

Moreover, pubertal suppression may alter the course of gender identity development — essentially cementing into place a gender identity that might otherwise have reconciled with biological sex during the natural course of puberty. Over 95 per cent of youth treated with puberty-blocking GnRH analogs go on to receive cross-sex hormones, whereas up to 95 per cent of those managed with psychological support alone desist from their dysphoric state during puberty.

And maybe that’s the real reason for the intense pressure. People who have already transed want company. It’s not for the benefit of the potential trans kids, it’s for the benefit of the people marooned on the other shore.

That would be an understandable motivation, but also a horrible one.

Finnish physician Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, one of the architects of Finland’s youth gender transition program, has done a U-turn in light of growing evidence of the program’s harm. She now says that just as with the recovered memories of sexual abuse craze of 30 years ago, “Gender transition has gotten out of hand. When medical professionals start saying they have one answer that applies everywhere, or that they have a cure for all life’s pains, that should be a warning to all of us that something has gone very wrong.”

Remember the recovered memories fad? That relied on a wildly naive and credulous idea of how memories work? Now the trick is to be wildly naive and credulous about the meaning of “identity.”

And just two weeks ago the European Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement urging caution, stating that puberty blockers “may irrevocably lead to the use of trans-sex hormones and surgical transition, so it may arguably compromise rather than facilitate freedom of choice.”

I think that’s often the whole point. “Activists” long to compromise freedom of choice in this area, they long to lock people into the Trans Life for the duration.

All of this flies directly in the face of the professed certainty of Dr. Wong and the AMA that the benefits of youth gender transition outweigh the harms. It should raise grave questions as to why the “affirmation” model continues to be the standard of care in Canada.

I think I can safely say that part of the reason, maybe much of it, is the ferocious bullying meted out to dissenters.

I just signed this.

If you want to sign and spread the word, I will not stand in your way.

The Guardian explains its “Woman killed man” lie. The explain is: everybody else was doing it.

“It’s not our fault, we relied on an agency report, and we saw no reason to question the claim that a woman had murdered a man by hitting him on the head and strangling him shut up shut up shut UP.”

Breathtakingly feeble and incompetent.

As for the Metro piece itself, by two compliant female reporters, it’s as snide and sneery and dumb as you’d expect.

JK Rowling has sparked backlash over her Sky News criticism for referring to murderer Scarlet Blake as a woman.

Well, she’s “sparked backlash” among the dimwits who are so ready and eager to be sparked that they can’t be bothered to think about what they’re saying.

A clip of the broadcast was shared on the news channel’s X page, and re-posted by Harry Potter author Rowling, who criticised them for not stating that Blake was transgender in the 55-second clip of the show.

The issue is not that he’s “transgender”; the issue is that he is not a woman. News outlets calling him a woman are doing bad journalism and shitting on women.

Her comment has sparked intense backlash, including from the likes of the UK’s most recent Eurovision entrant Mae Muller, who accused Rowling of transphobia and asked her to have perspective.

Oh well. If a Eurovision entrant said so then that settles it.

‘This woman put a cat in a blender and your first reaction is to be transphobic joanne babes have a day off,’ she wrote.

No, this man did. That is the point.

Rowling has been vocal in the past on her thoughts about how sex should be defined and even stated that she’d rather go to jail than change her mind.

She’s been “vocal in the past on her thoughts about how sex should be defined” because mobs of people have been vocal in the past on their thoughts about how sex should be defined, which is the opposite of the way that maps onto reality. We obstinate old bitches who open our mouths to say things are being vocal about our thoughts that women should not be defined out of existence by delusional men.

This stupid childish piece concludes by quoting the three Harry Potter actors who stabbed Rowling in the back.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Bitch opened her mouth did she?

And Metro falls into her trap. Once again, Rowling uses her uncancelleable position to amplify the messages of other women in a way that can’t be ignored, bringing more attention to the issue that these media outlets are quietly, complicitly sweeping under the rug. By commenting now, she keeps the story in the public eye, and brings it to the attention of readers and viewers who had not realized that they had been lied to in the original reportage. While Metro (and other media outlets) think that somehow “Rowling’s transphobia” is the story they’re telling, they’re unwittingly shedding more light on media capture. Interestingly, at least some of them, in recounting the “Scarlet Blake” story as part of the background to Rowling’s criticism of Sky News’ coverage of it, continue to use “she/her” in the Blake portions, unintentionally highlighting her exact concerns by repeating the lies, and thereby showing how disgusting and pervasive the ongoing deception is:

The Independent

GB News

What, if anything will bring about some awareness in all of these editorial boards that this pandering to trans sensibilities is self-destructive folly that makes them look incredibly dishonest because it is incredibly dishonest? Their professional reputation is sinking beneath their feet, and Rowling is showing them the drill they’ve been using so diligently to put holes beneath the waterline. They can stop at any time. Yet, still they drill. Maybe it’s just too embarrassing to be schooled in the First Law of Holes by someone they’ve tried to bury.

Rowling has cleverly goaded trans “rights” advocates (once again) to defend the “identity” of a convicted criminal, placing the use of “preferred prouns” ahead of the truth, defending a murderer’s “identity” at the expense of all women. It’s become a reflex. There’s no longer any thought in the process. And not only activists, but the media particularly, which seem to be fully prepared to clutch their style guides even more tightly, even in the face of intense scrutiny and criticism. Rowling is showing just how mendacious and corrupt the media have become in reporting on trans issues, as they have become actors in their own right in deceiving the public. What is it that compels them to do this? Who can punish them or hold them accountable if they stop worrying about the “crime” of “misgendering” and start reporting the true sex of actual criminals? They’re so scrupulous about a suspect’s “alleged” crimes before a conviction (and rightly so), but quite free and easy to lie about their supposed “gender identities,” dishonestly stating that men are women, males are females, he is “she.” You’d think that would violate some kind of journalistic standards and guidelines, but apparently it doesn’t. It should. Rowling might not be building a case herself against the media, but she’s helping to amass plenty of evidence for anyone else who wants to. It’s continuous self-incrimination.

I know I’ve noted this before, but I still find it remarkable (even though, at this point, I shouldn’t); Rowling didn’t have to do this. She could have retired from the conflict; she’s already done so much; instead, once again, she uses her position of comparative strength and security to continue defending women. In some ways it’s become a bit easier, because now that her reputation has been trashed (in certain quarters), she has nothing to lose in that regard. If she had worried about this, she wouldn’t have stepped up in the first place. Those who have decided to believe the lies about her have written her off, but they just can’t resist writing about her when she speaks out. They have to put the boot in. Again. Whether or not they see her pattern and spot the trap, they’re just too dim and self-righteous to ignore the bait. Sometimes negative reinforcement simply doesn’t sink in. They just can’t pass up an opportunity to pile on JKR. Again. And when she has the spotlight turned on her, she redirects it to places her detractors might not expect. They still can’t see that she’s not going to respond to the continuing lies told about her. Instead, she focuses her attention (and everyone else’s) on the misogyny of her critics. Again.

Meaning…what?

Does she mean that men who claim to be women do not have male anatomy because it’s their anatomy so it’s not male? Or does she mean they simply magically don’t have male anatomy?

Or both? Or does she not mean anything except “do it to them, don’t do it to me?”

I wouldn’t ask, but this is a former Deputy PM of Canada so…

CNN reports:

An active-duty member of the US Air Force who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, on Sunday, has died, authorities said. Aaron Bushnell, 25, said in a video of the incident obtained by CNN that he would “no longer be complicit in genocide” and that his suffering was minimal compared to that of Palestinians as the humanitarian crisis persists in Gaza.

He then sets the recording device on the ground before pouring an unknown liquid over himself and igniting it while yelling “Free Palestine” repeatedly. He eventually collapses as police officers rush to douse the flames with fire extinguishers.

Then he died. Then…

Sanctimonious fool.

How dare a woman say things.

I wanted to show the tweet itself but they seem to have taken it down.

Telling us to shut up only makes us talk more.

Updating to add an incensed reaction or two.

.@deboraharthurs This is shameful and surely a breach of the Editors Code of Practice on grounds of harassment, let alone that it is defending @SkyNews for a breach on the grounds of accuracy.
Long may @jk_rowling open her mouth and make a stand for women’s rights. pic.twitter.com/3H7G06ZPzQ

— Dr Karen Ingala Smith (@K_IngalaSmith) February 27, 2024

Deborah Arthurs is the Editor-in-Chief of Metro.

Ron Filipkowski at Meidas Touch Network reported a few days ago:

Donald Trump’s attorneys were required to submit a proposed order for Judge Engoron to sign that conformed to his verdict and judgment in the case. They complied, but in the process it seems that Trump is trying to pull a fast one somewhere along the way. The proposed judgment that was submitted had the addresses changed for 6 of Trump’s businesses from New York to Florida. It is unclear whether this was something done by Trump before his trial in a feeble attempt to put them out of the jurisdiction of the NY courts, or if it was done after the trial to try to avoid the judgment. As with all things Trump, nothing is on the straight and narrow.

Either way, the Attorney General’s Office filed an immediately objection to the proposed judgment over these address changes. In their filing, the AG said “several of the addresses for the Defendants in the proposed judgment are incorrect … the Court should reject Defendants’ attempt to change the business address of six entity Defendants to Florida as the record establishes those entities are located in Trump Tower at 725 5th Avenue in New York, the office building in which the executives who carry out business activities of those entities work.”

Picky picky picky.

H/t Freemage

Good, I was hoping someone would grab the on-air BBC account of the Oxford murder (not available in the US) and someone did. It’s hair-raisingly bad.

Notice the way the anchor all but shouts the word “woman” at the beginning.

At no point in the entire clip does he mention that the murderer is not a woman, is a man, is a “trans woman.” It’s just “woman she her” throughout.

It is enraging.

Jean Hatchet draws up a list:

The news outlets just can’t figure it out, can they.

On Wednesday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told reporters in Kingston, Ontario, that female sports “should be for females — not for biological males.” Poilievre was responding in part to a new policy in Alberta that bans transgender females from competing in women’s sports. 

…

Polls consistently show that Canadians favour full legal equality for transgender individuals – as well as special protections from discrimination. But opinions change rapidly when it comes to edge issues such as sports.

No they don’t. Equality is not the same thing as impersonation.

Guess what: I too “favour full legal equality” for trans people. It does not follow that I think that includes allowing men to force their way into women’s sports and prizes and rape crisis centers. That’s not an “edge issue”; it’s all too fucking central.

They’re still doing it.

MAN. A MAN who filmed himself killing a cat has been jailed for murdering a man. He’s a MAN.

Ah so that’s why he stole them – he was hoping to sell them to the owners.

Hilarious. “India” Willoughby, who spends all his time shouting at people for not agreeing that he’s a hot sexy hot woman and sharing photos of himself pretending to be a hot sexy young woman sunbathing. How much time does Willz spend smiling at uplifting films about love? Any?

I mean even apart from his warped beliefs about which people are women, he’s not a joy-finding kind of guy. He’s a rage-finding kind of guy.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on It’s a holy confusion.

Their dream is to achieve “immortality” by storing their consciousnesses in digital form, existing eternally as ghosts in the machine.

And if someone was an asshole in life, then they’ll be an asshole forever. Or at least until the machine in which they’re a ghost gets unplugged by some janitor.

Whether this sort of extreme transhumanism motivates any significant portion of Genderism’s supporters notwithstanding, a fundamental mind-body disconnect is shared between them.

.

Godalmighty. What do they think would be the point without a body? I can’t imagine anything more horrendous.

Yeah, what’s the point? The elevation and privileging of mental and intellectual pleasures, whenever and wherever it is indulged, is almost always done in conjunction with the denegration and disparagement of “mere” bodily pleasures. There’s no evidence that any kind of pleasure is possible without a body; bodily pleasures are a part of the package, so why not enjoy them? You need a body to do that, or anything; why is that a bad thing? Metaphysical sour grapes if we have no choice, but if we do, what makes us think that having the choice is necessarily good? A longer life is no guarantee of a better one. It’s not necessarily any one person’s choice either, as we shall see.

The belief that one’s personality and conciousness has an existence independent of the body, and that it can be removed and transferred to some material substrate other than the body in which it arose, is a technological version of the belief in a soul that lives on after death. Transhumanists might fool themselves into thinking they’ve changed things by describing this entity as a “pattern of information,” or somesuch, but it’s still much more a religious conviction than anything one might call “scientific.” They don’t want to know that consciousness might simply be an emergent property of a particular arrangement of matter, and that that property cannot be abstracted from that arrangement and “installed” in another one, that consciousness, personality, whatever, is something that is a product of biology, and that it must be evolved and grown, rather than designed and built. I know it smacks of vitalism, but what if consciousness is actually dependent upon biology, and that the messiness of bodies, and blood & guts existence, is the only way you can get it?

The whole idea that you can download or upload your consciousness into a machine (or anything else) feels like a category error, like believing the journal into which you write your thoughts and feelings not only thinks your thoughts and feels your feelings, but that it will continue to think thoughts and have feelings just like you, in perpetuity. Sure, it’s a pattern of information, but it’s an inert one, a dead end; it can’t write out its (or should I say your) thoughts and feelings in turn. But if someone else picks it up and reads it, then some of those thoughts and feelings, in a way, are repeated, preserved and perpetuated. But the journal can’t read itself, it can’t pick up and continue the story beyond the point where you set down your pen and closed the book.

I’m a materialist; I don’t think there is any other existence than a material one, nor that there is an “afterlife” or “immortal soul” that continues after we die. The only afterlife in which we can partake is the recycling of our briefly borrowed atoms back into the grand dance of biophysical processes from which they and we sprang in the first place. I’ve come to think of “religion” or “spirituality” as the “narrativization” we devise that sets out the way in which (we believe) we are connected to the rest of the universe. That connection does not require any supernatural agents whatsoever; it doesn’t need any overarching “plan” or “direction,” no overarching principle, personification or embodiment of Good or Evil. Maybe I’m being naive or hypocritical in my “belief” that biology is necessary for consciousness. But there’s just something desperately sad and pathological about the desire to dispose of biological embodiment altogether. Now there might come some time, with the inevitable decline of health (assuming I avoid all other, earlier manners of death) that I might feel more interested in finding some way to escape my own personal “best before” date. But I hope not. I enjoy life, but once I’ve had my turn, it’s time to go, and if that’s what my physical, biological, animality decrees, then so be it. Death will be just another non-negotiable force to which I will have to yield, like gravitation and the need to metabolize. It’s just the way things are. There’s no fault or blame for its occurrence; there’s no shame in the inevitable. It just is. And then, we just aren’t. And that’s fine. I’m under no illusion that the world needs any more of me than it’s going to get: a little goes a long way. And just as I’ve come to think that the last people you should be handing power to are the ones actively seeking it, I’m not inclined to believe that the world would benefit from the immortality of those seeking immortality. Sure, everyone is unique, but nobody is indispensable. Anyone chasing immortality is labouring under the narcissistic delusion that they’re both needed and wanted, that their desire to continue should prevail over, and that they rest of the world should be obliged to accommodate that continuation, as if they are owed it.

A pin in the map of global climate disaster:

Mexico City, a sprawling metropolis of nearly 22 million people and one of the world’s biggest cities, is facing a severe water crisis as a tangle of problems — including geography, chaotic urban development and leaky infrastructure — are compounded by the impacts of climate change.

Years of abnormally low rainfall, longer dry periods and high temperatures have added stress to a water system already straining to cope with increased demand. Authorities have been forced to introduce significant restrictions on the water pumped from reservoirs.

“Several neighborhoods have suffered from a lack of water for weeks, and there are still four months left for the rains to start,” said Christian Domínguez Sarmiento, an atmospheric scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Politicians are downplaying any sense of crisis, but some experts say the situation has now reached such critical levels that Mexico City could be barreling towards “day zero” in a matter of months — where the taps run dry for huge swaths of the city.

The Aztecs who built Tenochtitlan in a lake bed worked with the water, but the Spanish who invaded it stamped the water out. Bad move.

Their decision paved the way for many of Mexico City’s modern problems. Wetlands and rivers have been replaced with concrete and asphalt. In the rainy season, it floods. In the dry season, it’s parched.

Around 60% of Mexico City’s water comes from its underground aquifer, but this has been so over-extracted that the city is sinking at a frightening rate — around 20 inches a year, according to recent research. And the aquifer is not being replenished anywhere near fast enough. The rainwater rolls off the city’s hard, impermeable surfaces, rather than sinking into the ground.

The rest of the city’s water is pumped vast distances uphill from sources outside the city, in an incredibly inefficient process, during which around 40% of the water is lost through leaks.

Tick tick tick.

American Taliban.

Yes it definitely shouldn’t be controversial to say that half of humanity = mere objects to be exchanged and used by the other half.

Fred spots an own goal.

Lesbians MAY NOT exclude men who claim to be trans.

People who claim to be trans or non-binary MAY exclude all non-trans and non-non-binary people.

Thass eeequaliteee.