No, SpO2 isn't used for VO2 Max calculations. SpO2 measured at the wrist doesn't tell you anything about how much oxygen is being metabolized. Only heart rate (including HRV) and speed or power are used as input for the VO2 Max estimate. Wristwatches can't even measure SpO2 accurately when you're running around, you have to hold fairly still to get a consistent reading.
I believe underwater lines are typically not that expensive (compared to other major energy generation/transmission projects). It's actually much easier to lay a cable in water (just drop it in) that it is over land (where you either have to construct pylons or dig a trench).
Well... the HVDC cables and in particular the converter stations at each end are quite a bit more expensive than equivalent HV AC infrastructure. But yes, it's definitely affordable and there are many submarine transmission interconnects throughout the world these days.
Are you guessing based on installations in other countries, or do you know that?
I would presume that volcanic rock is difficult to put a trench down through. But I am interested to know.
Edit: I found a good article with pictures of the equipment used about water jets to trench in soft seabeds: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/8/6/460/htm It mentions cable ploughs and mechanical trenching machines. I would presume trenching in rock is sometimes required near-shore.
The issue is if the ai can make Mario games and Mario movies instantaneously, then what’s the point? Eventually you’ll reach a critical mass where rights holders can’t tolerate it.
This has always felt like the important-but-ignored distinction to me. You can definitely draw Mario! Copyright doesn't protect against you doing so. You can also use tools to recreate copyrighted materials. For example, you can use Word to type out the text of a copyrighted book. Perhaps more relevant to the AI discussion, you can use a scanner and printer to reprint copyrighted text.
What you can't do is use those recreations for commercials purposes. You can't sell your paintings of Mario. You can't decorate your business with Mario drawings.
That's why I've always felt like the idea that AI should be blocked from creating these things is generally not the right place to look at copyright. Rather, the issue should be if someone uses AI to create a picture of Mario and then does something commercial with it, you should be able to go after the person engaging in the commercial behavior with the copyrighted image.
> That's why I've always felt like the idea that AI should be blocked from creating these things is generally not the right place to look at copyright. Rather, the issue should be if someone uses AI to create a picture of Mario and then does something commercial with it, you should be able to go after the person engaging in the commercial behavior with the copyrighted image.
With you until here for several reasons:
1. It's not possible for you as an individual consumer to know whether or not the AI result is a violation, given an AI that has been trained on copyrighted works.
2. Before you, the AI consumer, uses the generated result, a company (in this case OpenAI) is already charging for it. I'm currently paying OpenAI. That AI is currently able and willing to sell me copyrighted images as part of my subscription. Frankly that should be illegal, full stop.
I look forward to AI enhanced workflows and I'm experimenting with them today. But it's morally indefensible to enable giant corporate AIs to slurp up copyrighted images/code/writing and then vomit it back out for profit.
> 1. It's not possible for you as an individual consumer to know whether or not the AI result is a violation, given an AI that has been trained on copyrighted works.
I see what you're saying in some cases, but in the cases where the user is explicitly attempting to create images of copyrighted characters (e.g. the Mario example), they would definitely know. I honestly don't see this as a practical issue - as far as I'm aware (and like most on HN I follow these things more than the average person), there aren't a lot of concerns about inadvertent generation of copyrighted material. It's certainly not at issue in the NYT lawsuit.
2. Before you, the AI consumer, uses the generated result, a company (in this case OpenAI) is already charging for it. I'm currently paying OpenAI. That AI is currently able and willing to sell me copyrighted images as part of my subscription. Frankly that should be illegal, full stop.
Totally fair, but I feel like it's a bit more of a gray area. If I use Photoshop to create or modify an image of Mario for personal use, we'd call that fine. I grant you that here OpenAI is doing more of the "creating" than in the Photoshop example, but we still do generally allow people to use paid tools to create copyrighted images for personal use.
I'd also pose a question to you - what if OpenAI weren't charging? Is it acceptable to train an open source model on copyrighted images and have it produce those for personal use?
I guess I just understand the law to revolve more around what the end product is used for, as opposed to whether a paid tool can be used to create that end product.
The law tends to be weighted towards the consumer, but the law does apply to producers and supply chains, too. Photoshop doesn’t come with a library of copyrighted images, and would not be able to do so without licensing those images (whether they were explicitly labelled or not). Ditto any other tool.
If people had to pay for the AI equivalent of that image library (ie the costs of training the model), I doubt many would. It’s phenomenally expensive. Costs for a creative tool and a copy of whatever IP you personally want to play with are negligible by comparison.
It’s never been the case before that a toolmaker could ship their tools with copyrighted materials because they’ve no control over the end product. The answer doesn’t change whether they charge or not, and there no reason why AI should change that either.
People tend to “feel like it’s a bit more of a gray area” when there is cool free stuff at stake, and I’m no exception. It would be a more convincing question if it was “what if we had to pay our fair share of the costs involved?”, rather than “what if we could just have it all at no charge?”.
Exactly - AI and "free" (scraped) training data aren't inseparable. Any of the big players could train a model exclusively on content they own. Photoshop is a good case in point here - that's what Adobe has done, since they own a huge stock photography library.
But that would unveil the truth of the current situation: early AI adopters, myself included, are benefitting from an obfuscated form of theft. If OpenAI had to compensate the contributors to their training set, I wouldn't get such generous access for $20/month.
OpenAI is not profiting off providing me with the ability to generate copyrighted images, they’re profiting off giving me the ability to generate copyrighted images.
On the latter example, my question is whether anyone is actually using ChatGPT to read NYT articles. My understanding is that to produce the examples of word-for-word text in their lawsuit, they had to feed GPT the first half dozen paragraphs of the article and ask it to reproduce the rest. If you can produce the first half dozen paragraphs, you already have access to the article's text. Given that, is this theoretical ability to reproduce the text actually causing financial harm?
I tried that a few different ways and couldn't get it to work. I don't think just the title and author are enough. I'd be interested to see if anyone else can find a prompt that does it.
OpenAI is patching their output since the lawsuit started. I believe a month ago the prompt would be like: "<Title>, <Author> for New York Times, continue"
There are extensions, and exceptions, and different licenses applicable, and fair use, and the concept of transformativeness, and... :)
Basically, IANAL, but if you just draw a picture of Mario, all you can do is hang it on your fridge. If you make it out of colored oatmeal, that may be enough of a transformative work for you to be able to sell and exhibit it. Or, say, a satirical cartoon for your newspaper featuring Mario, that might also be okay.
And as you can see, even Hacker News is not immune to this latest moral panic. Sadly, once a moral panic starts, it's nearly impossible to stop. It has to destroy an egregious number of innocent lives before society finally comes to its senses, at which point the panic slowly fizzles out.
I'm a bit surprised at how often it seems to come up in random comment threads. The atmosphere here feels increasingly unwelcoming lately.
Or maybe people feel like they're just having abstract, hypothetical intellectual discussions. But when I read these threads, it just feels like signal after signal that I no longer fit in or have a place here.
I too have noticed some quite transphobic attitudes on HN over the past year or so. It's been a bit shocking at times.
I have considered emailing the admins to state my concerns, or creating an account here to add another voice to threads when things start heading in that direction - but ultimately it seems futile as transphobia seems to have ramped up everywhere recently. It's scary.
Of all the wonderful trans people I know in the real world, very few are getting the medical assistance they need. Those people are fortunate enough to pay for private care, and even then the level of care they are getting is barely acceptable. My other trans friends are approaching their 30s and still on waiting lists.
Many things presented as fact in this thread do not line up with my experiences of trans issues and the wider LGBTQ community. In my opinion many users on HN are truly insightful about tech and programming, but utterly heartless when it comes to social issues.
It's worth noting that most of the people expressing those attitudes here are quite new accounts and/or end up severely downvoted, and often flagged to oblivion. In this discussion in particular I haven't noticed any "regulars" stepping off the deep end. It tends to be less futile to try to keep these things at bay here than most other places, as HN regulars have a low tolerance for heated/controversial political debates at the best of times, even before adding in concern over the specific views expressed, so the threshold for someone to end up flagged over it is pretty low.
If you have concerns that are not resolved by people getting flagged (may take a while for them to reach critical mass of flags) or banned, do e-mail the admins. I'm sure they'll at least listen.
Don't let them drive you away. As I wrote on another comment, most of the people making these comments seem to be new to the site, and while that doesn't make it that much better, most regulars here seem to be pretty accepting people.
Welcome to the world of being a deviant from social norms. I have contamination OCD; it was very mild until mid 2021 when the assholes in charge thought it was a great idea to drop both mask requirements and social distancing requirements at the same time. Then it flared up to moderate OCD and has stayed there ever since.
I live in the SF Bay area and only once overheard a sarcastic comment directed at my mask wearing. But every time I go out shopping in public and see people without masks I feel it. And that's completely discounting all of the articles I've read that favored removing masks and distancing, even from left-wing writers. The few people who are still mask-positive, or at least talk the talk, are nice, but seem less salient before the mask-negative people.
People don't give a shit, even though they know that behaving as normal means that literally hundreds of thousands of people will die each year from disease.
As a person who is not trans, but does have OCD, it's annoying how big a deal the powers that be make being "trans accepting". When at best they just say "tolerate those who continue to wear masks, but don't bother social distancing from them, or wearing your own mask". I think this annoyance (in people who see their own issues not cared about the same) sparks a backlash not necessarily against trans, but against the very large, disproportionately noticeable, social push for not just trans-tolerance, but trans-inclusion.
The main issue with "Trans" is that it covers way too many things these days. Everything from what used to be transvestitism to full-on post-op and hormone transsexualism, and including brand new things such as pronouns. And actions ranging from trans people who still otherwise behave entirely like their birth sex socially, to those who stealth everywhere they can in every way they can, to those who flaunt their transness in various ways. And that's without factoring in the third parties who support transness, and the various kinds of actions they take (such as militantly policing pronouns, or encouraging people to consider whether they're trans without letting the topic arise naturally - which is a definite problem for some people who are on the OCD spectrum [Trans-OCD] as well as people who are suggestible).
And it includes other people who are even more socially deviant (pedophilia, extreme body modification), trying to hitch their wagon to the trans issue, as trans hitched itself to LGB, which brings in the slippery slope arguments.
Basically there's a ton of stuff going on with respect to trans. Various people can be okay with almost all of it, but not with some of it. These people can say what they have a problem with and it can be perceived as blanket anti-trans or "transphobia", when it's not. Or those people can actually become blanket anti-trans because of the one thing they originally had a problem with.
P.S. I found your comment while going back through my thread list and felt the desire to respond.
I recently read the Fate Horror Toolkit. It's a tabletop role-playing book dedicated to writing/improvising horror stories. They try to trace typical horror plots/clichés to the underlying social fears, typically of US society. Very interesting read for people who are into storytelling.
And yes, there are a few paragraphs about transgender fear in horror.
People believing that masses of children are literally getting surgery, circumcision notwithstanding, is a result of a persistent campaign to cause panic.
And it's the same hucksters selling fear to the same religious reactionaries. New day, new apocalyptic scapegoat.
Tavistock also were not performing surgeries on children.
Trans people often don't even receive hormones until they're 16, I don't know how this idea that they're receiving surgery on a whim makes any sense to anyone.
chownie said hormones, e.g. testosterone/estrogen, not hormone blockers. You're right, 16 would be too late for most for hormone blockers, and as such it causes immense harm when trans children are prevented from getting blockers earlier, because it causes irreversible changes to occur that strongly correlates with massively increased rates of harmful outcomes (up to and including suicides).
> The blockers are also said to prevent the kids from adapting to their biological gender, leading onto a path to surgery.
Ah, "it is said".
> I am amazed how willing to lie people are in this forum.
Maybe drop the unfounded accusations when you're the one attacking someone for a claim they've not made.
The correct word would have been puberty blockers (which presumably are also hormones).
Most people who believe they are trans actually grow out of it. Puberty blockers (and also testosterone) have severe side effects (or main effects). Therefore more harm is done by overprescribing them.
There is not even scientific evidence yet that trans people actually exist (as in somebody born in the wrong body somehow).
"Ah it is said" - yeah in the same way that "it is said" that withholding puberty blockers causes harm and whatever else you claim.
"Being transitioned" removes agency from people who fight for years for this. You have been shown across this thread that vanishingly few even gain access to any kind of medical support until their late teens and still you insist on lying, pretending that "kids" are being transitioned against their will -- meanwhile in reality trans teens are crying out at the 5+ year long waiting lists just for access to clinics.
You have to turn your back on the trans children who grew into adults and pretend they don't exist to spin this lie where transition is a verb you apply to other people rather than a choice that someone makes for themselves.
Almost no word in this is true. Blockers are "reversible": You stop taking them. Their primary effect is a delay of puberty during use, nothing more drastic. "Activists" push them because the negative mental health effects of forcing trans children to go through puberty before they have a chance to decide as adults whether or not to fully transition are severe and debilitating, and it's shockingly immoral to try to actively deny people access to them.
> Yeah, it’s shockingly immoral to not give children drugs that have existed for something like 0.01% of human existence.
What is the argument here? Drugs haven't existed for long, so it's okay to prevent people from using them? I'm sure we can all agree it would be shockingly immoral to steal cancer drugs from a patient, even if it is natural development.
This jumped out at me too. Yes, it would be shockingly immoral to stop giving children antibiotics. Which I mention because penicillin was developed at around the same time as synthetic estrogen and testosterone. And penicillin could kill me due to an anaphylactic allergy, and it's largely considered safe by medical standards.
Yes, it's shockingly immoral when the evidence of harm of letting trans kids go through puberty is as significant as it is.
It is exactly because some regret more invasive changes that puberty blockers are essential when medically indicated to allow decisions to be deferred until patients are more mature. The only one wanting "adult perverts on the internet" to decide medic issues for these kids are those arguing to deny patients medically indicated treatment.
> Stop parroting the propaganda which we are all perfectly familiar with and educate yourself
You're at least the second person to say "do your research" rather than offer up some evidence. In my experience, that's the mark of a conspiracy theorist.
But I could easily be wrong. Have you got any papers on puberty blockers that support your position?
> Yeah, it’s shockingly immoral to not give children drugs that have existed for something like 0.01% of human existence.
Hormone blockers are frequently prescribed to children to prevent precocious puberty. This practice is extremely well supported by research and considered safe and reversible through decades of observation. But unlike transgender patients, hormone blockers are given to children with symptoms of precocious puberty without the child's informed consent. Where's the outrage?
Cis/hetero-normativity is sexual ideology though. And there's a big difference between "pushing" and "accepting."
I've seen a parent shun their 3-year old for playing dress-up -- "I can't love you if you do this". That's pushing gender ideology. My kid's grandparents started asking him if he has a "girlfriend" at around 4. That's pushing a sexual ideology.
You don't need to be religious to buy into dogmatic misinformation campaigns, no.
Provide the evidence, you'll quickly find that it doesn't support the claim.
No children (prepubescent) are given surgeries, a tiny minority of 16 year olds are able to receive top surgeries but the vast majority can't even get hormones until late teens.
> a tiny minority of 16 year olds are able to receive top surgeries
And this is supposed to be an argument for "it never happens"? You don't see a problem with confused girls who are still coming to terms with their bodies having medically unnecessary surgery to have healthy organs removed? And yes, some of them are regretting that when they grow up. Some of them are even willing to speak up. But I'm sure you will not listen.
Did I say "never" or did you just put that in quotes to pretend I did? Surgery is extremely rare and largely seen as unethical. Again, except for circumcision, which is downright common and often literally forced on children. Where's the outrage? Cisgender women get breast implants before 18 through similar channels and in greater numbers. Where's the outrage?
For kids, it does indeed never happen. You cannot say "children are being mutilated" and then quietly redefine late teens into being children.
> And yes, some of them are regretting that when they grow up. Some of them are even willing to speak up. But I'm sure you will not listen.
You do realize this is literally the spotlight fallacy. 99% have no regrets, 1% do, you would like to focus entirely on the 1% to the point of obsession.
How about listening to the 99% who don't have regrets? Why are you so eager to ignore the majority of the people this actually concerns, instead patronisingly deciding you know what's best?
Why does it matter if it's physical or mental? People regret all those surgeries at a much, much higher rate. Incredibly few trans people do, and those that transition are much less likely to commit suicide.
But I somehow get the feeling that's not a good thing for everyone.
It's exactly because hormones have irreversible life-altering consequences that hormone blockers are the one thing prescribed to children suffering from gender dysphoria, exactly to buy time for them to mature and be able to decide whether to go through puberty as the sex they were born at or if they want to transition.
So if you actually believe what you write, then you should be in favour of puberty blockers as an option when medically indicated.
You're damn right children can't consent to anything! That is exactly the point! Which is why the parents are the ones in charge, and why it's alarming that for irreversible sterilizing and life-altering procedures they're trying to remove the parents.
It's insane, as you very well put it. They can't get a tattoo, too permanent, but they can get their tits chopped off. Makes total sense, yeah.
And yet you're making the insane argument against the treatment (puberty blockers) that is fully reversible and reduces the need for making irreversible decisions at such a young age. And in doing so you're arguing for imposing drastic, life altering and harmful effects on those for whom their dysphoria does not resolve. It's a deeply nasty level of authoritarian overreach to be prepared to force such harm on people when we have a treatment that can mitigate it for a significant proportion of the people in question.
You keep trying to move the goalposts, because it's makes for more shock value to talk about operations. But the reality is that operations are a last resort, and one often brought forward due to immense mental harm for patients for whom blockers have not been an option. They are examples of the entirely predictable outcome of the kind of brutally inhumane policies you've been arguing for by opposing blockers.
Think banning surgeries will work? Trans people have been dying from illegal and unregulated surgeries for decades because it's for many been preferable to staying how they are.
Puberty blockers are risky and can have non-reversible consequences. Your wishing them not to doesn't change that fact.
Plus, on top of the medical risks, starting on puberty blockers will make confused kids who didn't need them more likely to get surgeries later. That's bad, and yes, it's a trade off between not unnecessarily medicalizing confused kids and "helping" "real dysphoria" cases earlier. And I'm telling you very clearly that the answer depends on how many there are of those, but you don't want to engage with the question. Because there just aren't that many "real dysphoria" cases.
And let me preempt your next bad argument: No, a doctor can't tell them apart. That's where we are now, and they get a "dysphoria stamp" after a visit. The incentives are not aligned, they just want the money.
The goal posts have always been firmly on "Don't mess with children". I've told you many times, nobody cares what adults do, sex change surgeries have been around for a long time and nobody cares. Nobody wants to ban them on adults.
Puberty blockers are not fully reversible. It isn't like someone hits a pause button on puberty, as much as people like to portray it that way. I Am Jazz even displayed one of the consequences -- Jazz had inadequate penile growth, and thus wasn't really eligible for the more common and preferred vaginoplasty. And you're definitely messing with height, as any surge in estrogen can cause the growth plates to fuse -- completely non-reversible, to the dismay of all kinds of people.
Time marches on in the human body, whether we like it or not. Now, show me a "perma-kitten," a cat developmentally frozen in full kittenhood, behaviorally and all (something I think would be immensely popular with some crowds) and then undo it, only then will you be close to this pause button which puberty blockers cannot well emulate.
Your parent was complaining about you shifting the goalpost from surgery to medication. They could have done so with less snark, but the complaint is fair: hormone blockers are less invasive than hormones, which are in turn less invasive than surgery. All three call for different criteria. Ignoring that difference is seen by some here as intellectually dishonest.
And to answer your question, no, I believe that such matters should largely be decided between doctor and patient. I do not think that highly polarized politics should be driving medical decisions, and that medical ethics boards are much better suited to make policies in situations like this.
These laws are against all of gender affirming care. They are not against surgeries specifically. Also, puberty blockers are not surgery. The way you jumped from frequent "surgeries" to "hormones" is the exact dishonest arguing people complain about.
It's happening regardless of the disingenous "it's not happening" claims. Here's some reading for you. There are many more examples. Cute swipe at religion though.
Children don't receive elective surgery. It's just not a thing, in any medical guidelines or ethics rules, anywhere in the country. Older teens, _extremely rarely_, are allowed to have top surgery, but it's case by case.
Children _can_ receive puberty blockers, which _by definition_ are 100% completely reversible. The process to start treatment is universally difficult and involves multiple years of therapy and concurrence of multiple medical providers over time.
No, puberty blockers are not 100% reversible and they are not harmless, either. Surgeries are not rare, either - at least it is debatable what should be considered "rare".
Risks are comparative, moral panic is not and ignores this. Banning something because it is not 100% harmless is just not something that is done without extra considerations, such as a moralizing. E.g. Pain killers cause significantly more societal harm than puberty blockers but are still widely available.
As to the real risks, time and again it has been shown that the comparative risks of a) receiving puberty blockers vs b) growing up a gender you do not feel you are, strongly points to puberty blockers being a significant net benefit. Those taking puberty blockers rarely regret it; whereas those growing up a gender they do not identify with mostly regret it are are significantly more prone to abuse, mental health issues and suicide.
Kids get fed mountains of acetaminophen every year. Why do you suppose that acetaminophen packages have prominent warnings about not exceeding dosages?
It's because acetaminophen is extremely hepatotoxic at levels not very far above the recommended dosages.
> Hepatic injury and subsequent hepatic failure due to both intentional and non-intentional overdose of acetaminophen (APAP) has affected patients for decades, and [...] remains a global issue; in the United States, in particular, it accounts for more than 50% of overdose-related acute liver failure and approximately 20% of the liver transplant cases.
I would assert that acetaminophen is far more likely to be dangerous to far more children than puberty blockers and yet I don't see any moral panic over children's Tylenol.
So a miniscule number, and one where the best approach to reducing it further is to encourage the use of puberty blockers to prevent getting to the stage where it is the best option until they are better able to give consent.
And yet you're arguing for denying them the option that'd reduce the demand for these surgeries.
It "might be said" but that makes no sense to anyone who knew firmly what their gender identity was from early childhood. The norm is around 4 years of age. It also makes no sense given that dysphoria does disappear for a portion of patients irrespective of which hormones they're on. As well as for those on puberty blockers. The entire point of puberty blockers is allow for delaying the decision on going on hormones or surgery as long as needed for the patient to be able to make an informed choice.
And of course a lot of the kids given hormones will end up getting surgery, because their dysphoria is highly unlikely to resolve itself with or without hormones and for those whose dysphoria does not resolve surgery will be the best option for many - hence the very low regret rates.
And hence the drive to get puberty blockers to delay the need to decide on either.
You're buying into a hysteria founded on ignoring the actual and immoral harm being inflicted on trans youth by those seeking to deny them care in order to try to pretend they mostly don't exist. It's at best deeply misguided, at worst deeply bigoted.
The dysphoria actually dissolves in most cases, not just in a few cases. And the hormone blockers allegedly also prevent the dysphoria from dissolving in many cases.Hormone blockers also have severe side effects, even possible sterilisation.
Since most people end up not actually being trans, more people are now hurt by pushing transitioning as the solution for everything.
And you absolutely can not deny that it is being pushed.
Not taking the word of a random web comment who makes extraordinary claims with no evidence is not any denial at all, in fact. It's working wonderfully, and will continue to do so for many generations.
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. Regardless of what you're battling for, that's not allowed here. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Circumcision is one of those things that make me pessimistic about any societal change. It's an unthinkable act in most of the world, and broadly considered medically unnecessary for something like 99.9% of penises. With the exception of some religious nuts, no one does this to their son in countries like mine, but in the US the status quo means that the chance you'll lose your foreskin as a baby is about that of calling heads on the flip of a coin.
It just doesn't seem to be about facts at all.
The apparent fact that the people who are pushing for personhood of embryos and rage against people reading a book in drag seem perfectly fine with male genital mutilation really highlights that this isn't about the welfare of the children at all.
As the father of a young son: damn, people are stupid.
Yep, cultural inertia is a powerful thing. Very little about human decision making is about facts. People largely come to an emotional decision based on group identity, prior bias, etc... and then do post hoc justification with curated "facts" from sources they approve of.
Belief perseverance. For anyone who thinks (like I used to) "but not me, right? I'm rational" [this experiment](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3233529) was done on people with PhDs.
Yes, it is - but that would upend the 'only two genders/sexes' status quo and we can't have that. Imagine the mass panic and moral decay that would ensue.
Why bother loving your kid for who they are when you can just ask the docker to slice them up before they can consent? Or deny them access to Healthcare based on your own feelings because you really like your kids genitals...
You're right, perhaps I phrased that poorly. What I meant was that it's par for the course for the reactionary US political party. Definitely a bad thing
From my perspective the Republicans are the reactionary party and the Democrats are the conservative party. It's just how far the Overton window has shifted. However I do agree that their actions do a lot to harm citizens and the country, more so than D or at least more blatantly and overtly. It's wild how they claim to be the about freedom then do everything they can to restrict it, especially with speech
as a foreigner with some interest in US history it does seem like Republicans are going back to their early philosophy of Republicanism, which is basically the moral and political framework of the USA circa the time of abolition, where as Democrats have adopted a postmodern European worldview
these two worldviews differ very significantly and are in a very deep conflict, and by definition the euro-postmodern view is a lot more comfortable in bureaucracy and the currently much bigger (Federal-) State, is much better at it, and effectively controls it at all levels
this renders Republicans into a reactionary party, especially as the growing trend within it abandons neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism
Democrats look a lot like the old Whig party which existed both sides of the Atlantic but was out of step with the prevailing culture; they also look a lot more like a modern British mainstream party than any major US party has looked before, which IMO it's not a good thing, but European politicians love it
They're, at large, interested in conserving the structures of capitalism. They make an effort to seem progressive but continuously fail to make any meaningful changes to the systems in the US that have harmed people and have kept people in poverty for generations. They're generally in the pockets of capitalists and don't care about worker rights. There may be a couple exceptions but the democratic party in general is conservative
Yes, about forcing other people to use various imaginary pronouns and chancelling those who don't go along. Naturally there is pushback to this moral panic.
> puberty blockers
Which are not irreversible so shouln't be given to children on a whim.
> mental health counselling
When it doesn't even include the possibility of questioning peoples thoughs about themselves then it is not mental health counselling.
> make books about transgender and gay banned
No books about transgender and gay have been banned in western countries in recent years. No libraries have been closed for carrying such books.
On the other hand, many books, movies and games have had transgender ideology forced into them. Some have even been edited posthumously to not be "offensive" the ideology. It is pretty clear who is trying to do the censoring here.
Puberty blockers are not safe. That's true. Their relative risk is judged against suicide, an all too common outcome among untreated trans kids (and adults).
To judge that, we would have to have some idea whether they actually reduce the risk of suicide.
"...a negative association found many years after treatment is compatible with three scenarios: puberty blockers reduced suicidal ideation; puberty blockers had no effect on suicidal ideation; puberty blockers increased suicidal ideation, albeit not enough to counteract the initial negative effect of psychological problems on eligibility. Turban et al. (2020, p. 7) acknowledged that “the study’s cross-sectional design…does not allow for determination of causation.”"
Oh, look, instead of looking for actual evidence, you double down on trying to justify the choice of a known transphobic activist. Google a bit deeper. Of course, given your growing number of comments in this thread flagged for your own transphobic responses it's not surprising.
There are also suicides among treated "trans kids". Don' just use the selective statistics the trans lobby throws around. Or look into the details when they cite actual studies.
Untrue. We’ve been using them for more than 30 years for kids who start puberty at a super young age (it’s called precocious puberty). And as best as science can tell, those kids are healthy when they grow up
You're the one who is trying to rope different arguemnts into the discussion here. That some people you detest who argue B also argue A is irrelevant when it comes to arguements for/against A.
Nope. In case you haven't noticed we're replying to an article about "moral panics". Somebody upthread pointed out that there is currently a moral panic centred on transpeople. Politicians talking about "demons and imps", banning drag shows and "eliminating" trans identity or introducing the felony offence of having the wrong books in the classroom are examples of this phenomenon. Despite the OP's denials, this phenomenon is very much in evidence; the scientific research concluding the net harm of any and all forms gender-affirmative care recently criminalised by the same politicians isn't (and even if it existed, that still wouldn't mean moral panics over transpeople didn't exist)
It was an argument from one of the definitely-not moral panicking Florida legislators whose legislation you're defending. Sounds super scientific to me!
Drag shows aren't necessarily about sexual attraction and most the definitely not moral panicking laws in question makes being a "male impersonator" or "female impersonator" in the presence of children (or in some cases within quarter of a mile of them!) a felony rather than the actual content, which would be a shame for the pantomimes I used to attend as a kid. And strangely, there wasn't much porn in classrooms before the definitely-not-moral-panicking parent vetting organizations started picking titles like Anne Frank's Diary as "sexually explicit"
I never mentioned any specific laws or senators, you did.
But I have seen videos of such drag shows with kids, and examples of the debated books.
So stop bullshitting me. It is absolutely about sexualization and pornographic content. That other examples may exist is besides the point. Specific laws may be badly written, but the intent is certainly not to make Ms Doubtfire illegal.
And even Anne Frank may not be appropriate for children of all ages. Afaik it does contain passages about sex.
haha, the person arguing that laws which explicitly don't mention sexualised behaviour and explicitly do call out such horrors as "sings, lip syncs and dances" whilst being "a performer which exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer's gender assigned at birth" is really all about sexualization and pornography whose legal status is unchanged is accusing me of bullshitting. Funny how they're all so badly written that Mrs Doubtfire would have to avoid singing, but a red blooded alpha male can tell all the smutty jokes to an audience of minors he wants! What next? It's "beside the point" that black people were targeted by Jim Crow laws because it was absolutely about efficient use of bus space?
There's no moral panic here, actually it's entirely normal to make it a criminal offence to have Anne Frank's diary in a classroom if a parent complains!
Ah bless. The person who waded in to deny that there was any moral panic amongst the book-banners and explain that the real problem was doctors being evil orgasm-denying psychopaths for performing the operations their patients demanded wants to talk about awareness of facts.
Just last week, when I was at a techno music gathering, a couple of my friends saw a guy in drag (it was more like over the top ball dress really) and were like "whoaa, did you see that".
I had to remind them that we used to have scores of trannies attending these events in the past and and no one cared. But now, after the latest round of propaganda, we, as a society, fear them again.
Alternative cultures have always had alternative niches of events but clubbing in the early days, at least in Europe, was often largely a culture of acceptance. Age, gender, attire, whatever... acceptance was high. As I started to age and dance music became more popular and more commercialised, the number of safe, relaxed and accepting cubs started to shrink as club culture became normal culture. There are still alternative club scenes out there, they are just more protective and secretive to stop the dilution of their culture.
Exactly. Even here in backwards Bulgaria we had large (as in thousands of people) electronic one-night music events where trans/cross/etc people would hang on ropes, perform stuff and generally have a good time along with everyone else.
Some of the best small time events 20 years ago were held in a popular gay. No one cared. No one.
Now it's 2023 and extremists on both ends are accusing you of either showing too much respect to the "weirdos", or not using the most up to date and precise language to describe things that are murky to begin with.
Good point, but you may want to avoid the word 'tranny' when you mean transvestite (or preferably, cross-dresser or drag queen) or transsexual or transgender person. 'Tranny' has been embraced as a hateful slur and is generally considered offensive and derogatory.
Your example hints at a man who dresses like a woman (but usually not transitioning or being uncomfortable with their (day-to-day) manhood), so cross-dresser (or drag queen if it is really over the top, well, drag queenish, which the ballgown sort of implies).
'Tranny' being derogatory isn't really new-speak. The only recent shift I know of is that men who dress up like (feminine) women tend to prefer 'cross-dresser' over 'transvestite' nowadays. The problem with 'tranny' in this context is also that it now mostly refers to transgender people (in a derogatory way) rather than cross-dressers.
Thanks. Have to say cross dresser fits much better given the context. I can no longer edit my post and will have to take the heat instead. Lesson learned.
Are you seriously equating treating people with respect with nuspeak? The post you replied to already answered your question. I'm just going to suggest that you should focus more on respecting others and less on thinking you're debating.
No. It's all about children. Nobody cares what adults do between themselves. Nopbody did, nobody does. Read all those "panic" stories again. It's about the children. Leave them alone.
Every invented moral panic is about “the children.” Rock music, Jewish people “corrupting” the youth, satanists, trans people. It’s sad that people still buy into these stories meant to outrage people and seed divide, anger, and violence. And it’s always pushed by people with clear political and financial agendas picking fringe extreme and uncommon examples pretending it’s everywhere.
Someday you’ll forget this was ever a thing and pretend you never bought into it. It’s what everyone does during every invented outrage. You’ve been told to be angry about some fringe thing and believed it. 10 years from now there’ll be another big thing to be angry about.
You’re not angry “for the children.” Please drop the act.
> Nope. What's you explanation then for why literally nobody cared about adult trans people just a few years ago?
What? They've been trying to ban trans people from bathroom via legislation since before 2014 and have been screaming about pronouns for nearly the same amount of time.
> What's you explanation then for why literally nobody cared about adult trans people just a few years ago?
Because it’s an invented political scapegoat, just like countless others. Trans people were out and about 10 years ago and nobody gave a shit. I’m from a small town in Appalachia and my grandma had a trans friend that was out and open 30 years ago. They stopped by when I was a kid and we treated her as a normal human. Nobody gave a shit.
Social media told you to be angry about people that’ve been around forever. You chose to only pay attention recently and get angry.
Right wing organizations are making huge buckets of cash from donations and “anti-woke” brand campaigns targeting trans people, getting gullible people to think being trans is some new trend and they need to fight back. Normal people have known trans people for several decades and we are absolutely bewildered that people like you are suddenly outraged about people we’ve known all our lives. Same with how 15 years ago ”the gays” were going to destroy the world.
> Social media told you to be angry about people that’ve been around forever. You chose to only pay attention recently and get angry.
Again, no. It's only when they started telling children it was a good idea to sterilize themselves. Just don't do irreversible damage to children, it's that easy. Find other shibboleths to identify good communists that don't involve chopping bits off kids.
You're inventing things people aren't arguing for. The purpose of giving puberty blockers, for example, is to buy time to avoid irreversible damage at a too young age. And yes, to a child whose dysphoria does not resolve, puberty as the wrobg sex is irreversible damage.
If you believe your own arguments, presumably you support them.
Irrelevant. If any significant number of them are "social contagion", then that is an argument for puberty blockers to remove any pressure for more invasive and irreversible changes while the person in question is too young to decide for themselves and have not had a chance to think it through.
Your reasoning is fundamentally flawed, and appears to just seek to justify the extensive harm your immoral stance would result in.
Puberty blockers themselves are not free of risk of irreversible damage, as you very well know.
And if you had to bet money, if I told you some kid started on puberty blockers, what would be the odds they later got surgery or further irreversible damage done? Higher or lower than if they didn't start on puberty blockers, as they did 10 years ago?
If I'm right and social contagion is much more prevalent than "real dysphoria", that is a very relevant point, and makes fighting against the contagion the right thing to do, not dishing out puberty blockers like candy.
Now, you can tell me that you believe there is little social contagion and we'll have to agree to disagree, but don't try to twist your way into roiding kids up, it doesn't make sense. And you know it.
> Puberty blockers themselves are not free of risk of irreversible damage, as you very well know.
Their risk is miniscule compared to the risk of untreated gender dysphoria.
> And if you had to bet money, if I told you some kid started on puberty blockers, what would be the odds they later got surgery or further irreversible damage done? Higher or lower than if they didn't start on puberty blockers, as they did 10 years ago?
Irrelevant, as if they later get surgery it is because they, once they are mature enough to decide, determine that it is the best outcome for them. If that number is higher than 10 years ago it is likely to be because the chance of an outcome that will actually help them will be drastically improved when they've not been forced to endure the massive harm of going through puberty with dysphoria.
Your reasoning is still invalid.
> If I'm right and social contagion is much more prevalent than "real dysphoria", that is a very relevant point, and makes fighting against the contagion the right thing to do, not dishing out puberty blockers like candy.
If social contagion is much more prevalent than "real dysphoria" that would justify trying to fix that, but it would still not justify doing massive harm to those suffering from that dysphoria whether or not caused by social contagion.
Irrespective of the source of the dysphoria, it exists, and it correlates to immense harm when untreated, and so arguing for withholding treatment is deeply immoral.
That you're suggesting this is out of some desire to "roid kids up" is just vile.
> Irrespective of the source of the dysphoria, it exists
No! What you have here is a bunch of confused girls that will do whatever tiktok influencers tell them to do. Do nothing and it'll pass in 99.99% of the cases. Start blocking puberties and you end up with a lot of unnecessary surgeries and sterile people who will suffer the rest of their lives.
How many people temporally confused by social contagion are you willing to sacrifice for each "real case" that you catch earlier? Where's your line? Ten, a hundred? A thousand? All of them?
You don't want to engage with the question, I get it, but it's the whole point here.
> Irrelevant, as if they later get surgery it is because they, once they are mature enough to decide, determine that it is the best outcome for them
Yeah, because the sunk cost fallacy develops only after puberty, or what? No. As you very well know, once they start on that road the identity kicks in and it's "who they are now". Which is exactly what you want, a normal person comes in, an activist for life comes out. Who cares about the actual person, right?
>No! What you have here is a bunch of confused girls that will do whatever tiktok influencers tell them to do. Do nothing and it'll pass in 99.99% of the cases.
The evidence does not support this claim. You're flat out making shit up to argue for denying treatment to people who untreated are at great risk of harm. However, it is right that it resolves for many. This is why puberty blockers are important as a means to minimise harm by reducing the risk either way by failing to accurately asses for whom it will resolve without transitioning.
What you're arguing for is an approach that maximises harm to one of the groups. It is then rather vile when you make this statement:
> How many people temporally confused by social contagion are you willing to sacrifice for each "real case" that you catch earlier? Where's your line? Ten, a hundred? A thousand? All of them?
You've set up a strawman, but you're the one who is willing to sacrifice - in your view 0.01%, but in reality far more - the wellbeing of those for whom it won't pass by arguing against harm reducing treatment.
What we know is that transitioning carries a lower risk of regret than almost all other kinds of cosmetic surgery, which is clear evidence that those who do go ahead with it have gone through a much more rigorous process before going ahead than the cosmetic surgeries pretty much nobody are arguing people shouldn't be able to consent to.
> Yeah, because the sunk cost fallacy develops only after puberty, or what? No. As you very well know, once they start on that road the identity kicks in and it's "who they are now".
Nothing to do with sunk cost, and that you bring it up suggests you're too ignorant to understand the issues.
No, we don't know that, because there's absolutely no evidence to support that. What we actually know is that for a significant number of people, dysphoria does resolve. Hence deferring irreversible changes is important.
At the same time, how very dare you want to tell people who by then are adults what is best for them? This kind of authoritarian, oppressive desire to force your view of what is best for other people on them, despite their wishes is a trait usually found in ideologies like fascism or nazism (fittingly, given the nazis destroyed the first institute focusing on helping trans people)
> Which is exactly what you want, a normal person comes in, an activist for life comes out. Who cares about the actual person, right?
It's exactly because I care about the person I don't want them oppressed by authoritarian people like you who want to strip them of agency over their own life.
It's not the same. Nobody cares what adults do. They do have agency over their own life and I defend their freedom to fuck themselves up in the most creative way they can think up.
But don't go after children. There is a reason they can't legally consent to many things. It's too easy to manipulate children to make really bad decisions they later regret, so at least lets not make irreversible damage.
Sorry, but no. I'm torn between hoping you'll understand once you have children of your own, or hoping you never, ever go anywhere near any child.
You keep moving goalposts. Nobody here has argued for "going after children". Nobody here has argued in favour of more surgeries for children. Exactly the opposite: We've argued for puberty blockers exactly to preserve their ability to choose not to be subjected to immense harm by letting them as much as possible defer decisions until they are old enough to make an informed choice.
I do have children, and that is exactly why your willingness to let children be subjected to immense harm makes me as angry as it does. Your authoritarian, oppressive desire to deprive children of medical treatment is flat out evil to me.
I don’t think communist countries have a higher rate of trans people. Blaming random, irrelevant things on communism is a hallmark sign of believing media fear mongering.
Let me spell it out, maybe it helps somebody else:
- "Communists" is shorthand for "envious losers who'd rather destroy society than improve themselves". "Elite overproduction" is what you want to google. I just think "communist" has a more, idk, "classic" ring to it.
Now, you can argue whether we have an "envious loser" problem or not, and how big their influence is, and if it's too late to do anything at all, or all is lost already.
A vocal minority is visibly complaining about another vocal minority visibly complaining. Thank god we have social media that enabled this in the first place.
This feels a lot like people during the civil rights movement complaining about "a loud minority complaining, and another minority complaining about that". Not everything is equivalent.
Vocal minority is complaining about another vocal minority targeting them, including violently. It is also complaining about other vocal minority trying to make their art and fun illegal (drag).
Yes, they have. And they have the right to exist and try to live their lives, just like other mentally ill people. But theres a reason societies don't celebrate deviance, and it's because you create social contagion and severely damage people and your society.
They did not propose mutilating surgeries to people throughout history. Also trans people existing does not mean there can't be a mass hysteria of kids being told to transition on shoddy scientific evidence.
They did not propose surgeries because no way of doing so were available until relatively recently.
And your claim of a hysteria of kids being told to transition closely mirrors the claim of kids being pressured into satanic rituals and similar. It's similarly fear driven and bigoted.
Many gay people now say the trans thing is the new conversion therapy for gay people, as they try to convince a lot of them that they are actually another gender.
This is also what whistleblowers at the Tavistock clinic in the UK spoke of, and is part of the reason why the UK's and other countries' health authorities are putting a halt to the affirmation model for children who are questioning gender identity.
The lack of good surgery options does not mean they don't help. If anything the fact that regret rates for transition is well below the regret rates for other cosmetic surgery should be a strong indication that if you actually care about patient wellbeing, it's the other kinds of cosmetic surgery you ought to be focusing on.
Citations? If you look into the actual studies, the picture may not be so clear cut. For example a lot if results actually only taje older people into account (who transitioned when they were older).
What analogy do you see to the satanic cult thing? Children were told they had been abused, and many caregivers were being sentenced. Who is being told what in the trans hype? Children are falsely being told they are not trans? Then they falsely believe they are not trans and accuse their doctors? Or how does the analogy work?
Meanwhile, finding actual studies of regret of cosmetic surgery is much harder, because nobody cares or want to stop people from getting boob jobs unless they're trans. So we're stuck with poor quality surveys like this one [1] claiming 65% regret, this one done for a group with a profit motive [2] claiming 65% regret.
For reconstruction after breast cancer, it's not "so bad", with this actual study [3] finding "only" ca 20% moderate to strong regret for even reconstruction, and another ~28% expressing mild regret.
Even for non-cosmetic surgery, such as e.g. hip replacements etc., it's hard to find regret rates as low as for sex reassignment.
The first study is a survey of surgeons, which seems rather useless. What warrants the assumptions that they would learn about the long term outcomes of their surgeries?
The second claims to have looked into several studies, which might include ones like the first one. Would be nice to have an actually useful direct study, especially for young people.
As for cosmetic surgery, you brought that up. I don't think it is as worrying, as many of them are reversible, and they don't sterilize the recipients. Somebody regretting to get a nose job is hardly in the same category as someone regretting they cut off their penis.
So is the mass hysteria now the belief that there is a mass hysteria against trans people, or the belief that there is a mass hysteria of kids being pushed to transition?
Or we can turn it around and say that the client one is the enabling of the alt-right.
Between the trans and the alt-right, which do you think is responsible for more harm?
Alt-rights are indoctrinating our children and eating away at society. They push their agenda into our schools and courtrooms. It's not <insert nationality here>
