Early Sept 2015 JetBrains announced their initial subscription plan to SIGNIFICANT public pushback. Within two weeks they announced new terms (essentially their current hybrid subscription plan).

Discussions like this often end up at WW2 and that's not what I'm saying here, but Germany in the 1920s was essentially the Gay/Trans hub of the world until it wasn't: https://www.netflix.com/title/81331646.

But even that's not the beginning of 'trans'.

The reason trans isn't 'flying under the radar', isn't because trans people got too proud. Its because one political party decided to shine the magnifying glass to turn trans into a political issue.

Treating people as 'a politically losing issue' is weird to me. There are certainly some nuances to <18 transgender care, but that statement doesn't address any of them and just suggests we embrace political cowardice.

> When policies around it changed, that tipped the scales from the public ignoring trans women or seeing them as victims, towards many members of the public seeing them as monsters who are out to get their children.

This is worse. It wasn't because politics around it changed, it was because republicans (upset that they could no longer target gay people), reused the same crappy arguments against trans people, and then wrapped it in a pedophilic flag.

The change in policy is just effective propaganda making people concerned that random doctors are allowing their children to get sex change operations without consent, when that isn't how ANY of this works. Children <18 can socially transition, get puberty blockers, and MAYBE get hormone treatment. WITH parent consent.

The fact that the media and comments like yours continues to pretend its a reasonable 'discussion' perpetuates the nonsense.

1: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/jetson-generative-ai-supercomp...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41926942

Points: 109

# Comments: 113

It sounds like that's acceptable to you because you think current state of training corpus == current state of society. And you view any bias in prompt as bias.

The truth is most of this ML happens in corpus selection + prompt selection. There literally ISN'T a way to avoid bias. So the problem becomes what bias do you select.

And in that scenario choosing abuse decreasing measures seems like the most pragmatic (to me).

You're talking as if there is a way to get an 'unbiased' AI. There isn't. It is inherently biased by its training, it hallucinates, and it is further biased by its prompt.

The whole endeavor is to bias it.

I'd prefer that AI be labelled on the tin for what it's biases are attempting to do, and promote diversity and deter abuse seems like a perfectly reasonable metric to use.

If that's not good for you fine, but you can't pretend that you're utterly baffled why they would make that choice over any other.

There literally ISN'T a way to not have a biasing prompt.

That isn't just true of AI. Electrically, chemically, experiments must always consider their environment and account for confounding factors.

Her other 'woke' views didn't contribute as much to her firing. (Though her firing did set off a firestorm about those issues)

I think from your tone, I disagree with you about her other views.

But it seems her firing was more about making Google look anti-environmental than anti-woke.

MITs summary of the paper: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-a...

Only one section deals with already well known problem of bias.

No, it isn't a perfect AI image gen algo. Much like spam blocking making me click a box or select the motorcycle isn't an ideal anti-spam measure.

Sometimes you have to implement something non-ideal to prevent abuse. It's as simple as that.

* Prioritize diversity in image creation by adding guardrails so the AI doesn't become a tool of a minority hate spewing population

* Historical accuracy that can be prompted to provide prejudiced imagery

To be clear, we aren't talking about a camera that swaps people's race for 'diversity'. We're talking about an image generation algorithm that adds a layer of diversity on top to prevent misuse. Yeah, of course this results in weird behavior sometimes... That's kinda literally the point?

Who is honestly confused by this? Is it necessary for an AI image generation algo to spit out historically accurate images of Gettysburg when prejudiced misuse is the far more likely outcome of that accuracy?

And importantly, when a company makes that value judgement, to prefer prejudice defense over historical accuracy, that's seen as pretending history changed rather than what it actually is, which is a defense against a mechanism of abuse?

It just seems like an absurd and disingenuous over-reaction and lack of pragmatism. Yeah. This is a tragedy of the commons. Make prejudice less acceptable and you can have the AI gen you want.

Note: Obviously, it's kinda moot as anyone who seriously wants to generate hate speech/imagery will just move to something that allows that, but its still perfectly acceptable for a company to draw a line and say "not on our software".

That said, I think all of these give too much credit to the Twitter<>X transition. It wasn't because Elon thought about Twitter and conjured 'X'. It's a reuse of something old he had. Seems like there was 0 Twitter specific related thoughts.

That a person of a marginalized group _hid_ aspects of themselves and lied about about themselves to prevent harassment.

Or a person goes to college for 6 months and decides to get major surgery because it is socially popular?

Just because YOU didn’t see the signs doesn’t mean they didn’t and flippantly using your interpretation of their story as proof of a “social contagion” is unfair to them.

I had seen references to SB 5889, though not many places other than the article you linked really discussing it.

Importantly, I don't think this is worrying. You jumped to addressing my statement that all states require parental consent (which, based on SB 5889, was wrong), but didn't address that Drs aren't giving children Gender-Affirming Care based on the 'slightest suspicion'. Even if there are isolated instances, I DO NOT see that happening broadly or epidemically. In fact, the medical community (to the detriment of all parties involved) is still very much BEHIND on dealing with trans patients. (Though getting better with WPATH etc).

> The same is true in all states except for 4 red states.

I searched the article you linked and that didn't seem to be included. I can't find evidence of 46 states allowing GAC without parental consent. Further, 15+ states are looking at passing laws BANNING GAC WITH parental consent and that's just not acceptable and seems counter to this fact.

> talk about his gender in his 3rd-grade class

What do you mean talk about his gender? When I was in 3rd grade we talked about boys and girls a lot.

Or do you mean talk about trans / non-binary people? Because you want to shield your child from the existence of people?

> So why is it the case that "People who are aged 18 to 24 are more likely to identify as transgender"?

Acceptance? LGBTQ identification has also risen over time with acceptance. It turns out that if people discourage you and tell you that what you are is disgusting, people tend not to publicly identify with it?

These aren't trans people being created, they're trans people finally identifying themselves. And it is more noticeable in younger generations because they haven't built an entire life around themselves.

> For many of the girls in Shapiro's book, the gender craze is an unhealthy mental preoccupation, who encounter support sites on Tumblr which encourage young girls to question their gender identities and celebrates "transitioning". The concern is that the number of people transitioning due to social pressure _massively_ exceeds those who legitimately need to transition.

I assume you mean the book you linked previously? I'm not going to comment or speculate on anecdata. For those girls it might have been tough to navigate and I feel for them, that doesn't mean it is an epidemic, it just means the book alleges its an epidemic.

The assertion that the number of people now identifying as trans/non-binary "_massively_ exceeds those who legitimately need transition", isn't born out by current evidence, seems potentially explained by acceptance, and seems very akin to the shock people had at how many people were LGB when that started gaining acceptance (and the idea of being gay because you thought it was cool).

> What's odd is that it's unacceptable to encourage kids _not_ to transition.

I don't know what to say if you earnestly think that's the minority view. It isn't. Which is why being trans sucks...

As I said before (then flippantly, now more seriously), yes this is a complicated topic made more so by the discussion of children and transition. But sensationalizing, fear-mongering, and irrationally banning things because technically my kid COULD (with a shitty dr and a slight suggestion) get GAC is just going to make things worse.

It isn't irrelevant if people are using the word grooming to sensationalize the discussion and bias it towards being terrified of the 'trans epidemic/agenda'.

> if my child has the slightest suspicion that they, too, are one of the tiny percentage of intersex/trans people

That is not how any of this works. Someone doesn't go on puberty blockers or get Hormone Therapy because they have 'the slightest suspicion'. If you say to a Dr "I think I might be trans", they don't schedule you for any gender-affirming care. They'd refer you to a therapist so you can work through that (and no, the therapist isn't going to talk you INTO being trans, again, not how that works, far more likely to try to talk you OUT of being trans).

> And if that were the case, and I refused to recognize one of my child's weekly fantasies (he likes to pretend to be a cat, but we don't take _that_ seriously)

Pretending to be a cat and being trans are not comparable.

I would hope as a parent you can distinguish between these weekly fantasies and serious thoughts, feelings, and questions that your child is having about who they are.

> I would be considered a toxic and "transphobic" parent

Yeah... If your kid tells you something big (and potentially to them shameful/scary) about themselves (whatever it is) and you brush it off, that would be kind of toxic and shitty.

> That these medical procedures and gender "counseling" could provided to my child without my input or approval (in the name of "safe spaces") should be alarming to most parents.

In all states, minors who seek transgender treatment need parental consent.

> We need to understand what's going on in our schools and with our children before we smear people with this "transphobia" neologism, because it's not productive nor conducive to discussion.

I agree that this is a complex topic that requires us to have thoughtful in depth discussions, one way to do that is to stop spreading Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt you pulled from a book full of cherry-picked anecdotal stories designed to spread FUD.

It is not a mental disorder, APA updated guidance and removed it from the DSM in 2012[1]. Though gender dysphoria caused by being trans is. That's an important distinction; you aren't trans because something is wrong with you and being trans isn't something that's wrong with you.

> that we should not be appearing to encourage people in.

Is being trans something that can be encouraged in non-trans people? Not a single cis person that I know (when asked) has ever said they'd thought they might be a different gender. Didn't even cross their minds. And after being asked about it for 2 seconds they all instantly responded "no, definitely NOT trans", without hesitation.

> There is a difference between being accepting, kind, and equal in treatment towards trans people, and encouraging it with young people.

I appreciate that you emphasized accepting, kind, and equal in treatment here. But a few thoughts:

- When does a person go from encourage-able young person to fully fledged trans-person? Who draws that line?

- This sounds a bit like making young trans people go through a discouraging crucible and if they grow up to be trans it must be true. Which just sounds like a way to guarantee that trans people have terrible child hoods.

- Despite your phrasing, in the context of the rest of your post, it sounds more like you're willing to humor trans-people than truly considering them valid. (If I'm wrong, sorry and ignore) If that's the case, thank you for prioritizing treating people well, but trans people are valid. They don't need people to humor them, they need people to just believe what they say about their own bodies.

1. https://nicic.gov/being-transgender-no-longer-mental-disorde...