Peanutbjelly

also a pan individual : D

i agree with everything i've read here. very well put. i especially agree about the bad actors being antithetical to left wing and to being progressive as a concept. i hope to see them criticized as such more in the future.

like i said, i could easily frame a more aggressive criticism of people on the right. but i don't think it's misleading to state that this perspective is necessary. it is why i specified at the start that it may depend heavily on the specific community. there are billions of people forming their own groups floating around rather large and poorly defined concepts.

my personal experience has been one of violent and aggressive vitriol any time i've even suggested that attention go towards men. even the slightest nuance to a conversation being shut down with extreme of insulting claims. online and offline, i've been told directly that i shouldn't even be allowed to speak or have an opinion on anything related to gender or gender related issues, because of the body i was born into.

i don't think it's unreasonable to say that my overwhelming experience over the years has not shown contrary to the things i've stated here. if it isn't relevant in your life, perhaps i just had many unfortunate situations. i cannot ignore them, or the fact that they are generally excused almost every time they are brought up, usually with the reasoning that it's ok because of the direction of the action.

again, i know i'm not the only person with this experience, as i mentioned that one man killed himself because of the very thing i'm attempting to state. i don't think a critical view at the bad actors in our own spectrum of politics should be faux pas. i also don't think i should need ten miles of red tape around any mention of an issue that affects men or boys because i'm worried of being affiliated with people and opinions that i hate.

again, if that's not your experience, then that is fortunate for the area and people your experience revolves around.

i think my experience, even if it were the only one of its kind, should be enough to excuse saying "maybe just make sure you aren't doing the thing the people you criticize do, while using the same excuses they do."

because it is a thing that exists and has affected me personally, as well as people i've known and loved while growing up. a history of having my reality denied has made it difficult for me to not be adamant about it.

i don't think it's well defined, so it often depends on the whims of the people in charge of the specific instance, and whatever their personal intent is. i do hope many have much more inclusive and open environments than what my experiences lead me to believe. i just hope people figure out how to properly communicate on the subject before more escalations happen.

also think there should be more active research and work done about trends like media groups being created specifically to rile people up and polarize them, because rage material is good for the algorithm. it tends to flare up anger on both sides, and reduce constructive dialogue, as well as increasing extreme acts by the bad actors.

depends on what you're trying to address and where. i feel a large disconnect in experience is to blame for how it usually goes. have you ever seen a "conversation" about men's rights?

i'll first state that i consider myself fully and wholly "on the left." also that this is in the context of responding to the statement of "I feel like gender studies in particular doesn’t get much trouble from the left."

i could make a similar and probably much more aggressively fueled argument about the actions of the "right." as far as "creating trouble" goes.

i will also state that the larger dialogue around the issue is a shitshow that allows no nuance. why i made my earlier comment.

i will state that i don't align when "on the left" is supposed to mean "100% A-OK with inflammatory bigoted speech when it's directed at the 'bad ones' because it's only bad when they do it."

i have enough anecdotal experiences that would encourage me to emphasize this being an actual issue, even if you think it isn't. i know it affected me, and i'm sure many others have been affected in similar ways. given the diversity of people, some would react more aggressively experiencing the things that i have, and then being insulted, shut down, and insinuated as evil regardless of my actual actions or thoughts.

i think situations like op's article are brought on by that kind of experience, mixed with toxic media making up additional reasons to be angry or hate x/y group. assuming that even 10% of any populace has some dummies or assholes in it, we can expect some of them to find each-other and take it to another level of reactive hate and violence, which is where i assume people like op's example come from. these things are not helped when the topic can't even be approached without intensely aggressive feedback.

not everyone responds in violence. in my old province there was a guy who tried having a shelter for men in need. there were no others in the country at the time for men, despite the hundreds for women. he killed himself after years of public harassment and abuse, and feeling completely hopeless in just trying to help others in need. i myself have been sent graphic images about male mutilation purely for taking an egalitarian neutral stance when it comes to generally helping people, male specific problems included. doesn't matter how nuanced my opinions were.

if you never saw how toxic tumblr became before it died off, you are lucky not to see the worst of it. the bad actors on the left can definitely make themselves known. some just become terrible people. i've had a manager out of nowhere tell me she wouldn't have hired me if she was there from the start because she doesn't hire boys. i've had a coworker tell me about their plans to falsely accuse someone they knew of rape because she didn't like him.

terrible people are everywhere on every side. if you are convinced your side has no bad actors, no bigotry or evil, you are deluding yourself. again, i consider myself far left on the political spectrum, and i'm hated by both sides because i don't outright dismiss anything that isn't 100% alongside the popular narrative, even if the popular narrative directly denies my existence and experiences.

so i'm left quite hopeless and despondent.

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How did we get here? Who could possibly tell which trends resulted in the rich getting most of the pie while the rest get less?

Maybe we failed to give enough tax cuts or bailouts to the rich? Maybe we didn't allow mega corporations to bully and buy out enough competition?

It's all so baffling. At least the biggest companies are getting record profits. It's a small comfort.

i mean, what's a more realistic solution? a small group that finds a high-tech development which can help us, or getting the majority of humanity to cooperate on what should be an obvious and necessary goal?

my bet's on the tech, at least with A.I. assisted research.

something has eroded my optimism towards the reliable and cooperative nature of our species. if we're putting our money on that, i consider us all doomed.

Think "shopping habits" already includes subconscious thoughts. Advertisers know when you will quit a brand before you do.

Title made me think this was a "sentient a.i." argument, but I'm glad to see it's not. human neuro rights is exactly what I think we need to be thinking about.

We also need a fix for established classes in society. Why have the smallest fraction of the population hoarded almost all of the benefits from humanity's advancements in the past 50 years? It's unconscionable.

not actually reading the article though, because i can't easily read it past the cookie confirmation.

Did people stop painting because we invented cameras? Mediums will still have their purpose, and more artists may learn how to strive alongside new tools to do things they never could before.

Ultimately we will have people able to naturally dictate entire world's and games and experiences to share, which they never could have accomplished alone.

It's like empowering smaller artists with Disney money, as long as we make sure the technology isn't exclusively held by closed proprietary systems. People keep praising adobe for their training data, but it's it worth it to make sure only Adobe can have the tool, and you need to pay them absurd subscription fees to use it?

Creators will still create. They will just be empowered in doing so to the extent of their imagination.

when i think of "prompt engineering" i think more of stuff like this paper

i'm still in the melanie mitchell school of thought. if we created an A.I. advanced enough to be an actual threat, it would need the analogous style of information processing that would allow machines to easily interpret instruction. there is no reasonable incentive for it to act outside of our instruction. don't anthropomorphise it with "innate desire to keep living even at the cost of humanity or anything else." we only have that due to evolution. i do not believe in the myth of stupid super-intelligence capable of being an existential threat.

Need a legal framework that ensures a likeness can only be used with a subscription fee.

I mean, we aren't allowed to own most of the stuff we buy now, should they be allowed to own us?