Minori's recent activity

  1. Comment on Scientists uncovered the nutrients bees were missing -- colonies surged fifteen-fold in ~science

    Minori
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    I'm going to make the controversial argument that many Westerner care too much about animals. They're not people, yet dogs, cats, and cattle often arouse more intense sympathy. Some creatures like...

    I'm going to make the controversial argument that many Westerner care too much about animals. They're not people, yet dogs, cats, and cattle often arouse more intense sympathy.

    Some creatures like mollusks are hardly sentient. Why should they receive so much moral weight and attention?

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Olympic committee announces a broad ban on transgender athletes and athletes with differences in sex development in Women’s events (gifted link) in ~lgbt

    Minori
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    Pretty much this policy. If transgender women actually had a clear biological advantage in all cases (they don't), cis women would be unfairly judged when competing against them. However, this...

    Pretty much this policy. If transgender women actually had a clear biological advantage in all cases (they don't), cis women would be unfairly judged when competing against them. However, this policy doesn't seem to exempt sports where biological sex doesn't matter. Some sports have mens and womens leagues despite there being no advantages either way (usually for historical reasons).

    In reality, there's a lot more nuance that's being ignored. In reality, some transgender people start hormone blockers and never go through their biological puberty. For all intents and purposes, those trans people are the same as cis athletes.

    There's also gray zone on whether someone was a trained athlete before transitioning. That can make a pretty huge difference, depending on the sport.

    7 votes

  3. Comment on Olympic committee announces a broad ban on transgender athletes and athletes with differences in sex development in Women’s events (gifted link) in ~lgbt

    Minori
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    Same reason people take antidepressants and deal with the side effects. On the whole, their life is still better. There are some people that weigh the options and decide not to transition. They...

    I do struggle to understand why trans people expose themselves to so much pain instead of just going with their asigned gender, i trully wouldn't care myself, but understanding isn't required for love.

    Same reason people take antidepressants and deal with the side effects. On the whole, their life is still better. There are some people that weigh the options and decide not to transition. They live with their gender dysphoria, however much they have.

    For most trans people that transition, they do it to solve a legitimate medical issue. They have severe distress (gender dysphoria) which is only treated by transitioning.

    Controversially, I think people really overstate the pain of transitioning. While it varies by country, most people really aren't that hateful to transgender people. Medically, it's pretty straightforward too.

    14 votes

  4. Comment on Olympic committee announces a broad ban on transgender athletes and athletes with differences in sex development in Women’s events (gifted link) in ~lgbt

    Minori
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    I don't want weekly, "should queer people exist?" debates, but I'd hope we can discuss lgbt topics in good faith here.

    I don't want weekly, "should queer people exist?" debates, but I'd hope we can discuss lgbt topics in good faith here.

    10 votes

  5. Comment on Olympic committee announces a broad ban on transgender athletes and athletes with differences in sex development in Women’s events (gifted link) in ~lgbt

    Minori
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    We may not want the debate, but it exists. "Reasonable concerns" are sometimes real, and we can't win every argument by calling someone a bigot. How do we expect to change hearts and minds by...
    • Exemplary

    There's no debate, just bigotry.

    We may not want the debate, but it exists. "Reasonable concerns" are sometimes real, and we can't win every argument by calling someone a bigot. How do we expect to change hearts and minds by shutting everyone down? If we can't discuss ~lgbt topics in ~lgbt, where can we discuss them?

    Our existence is political. We can bury our heads in the sand and call people bigots or try our best to critically engage them in good faith, as exhausting as it can be.

    14 votes

  6. Comment on Olympic committee announces a broad ban on transgender athletes and athletes with differences in sex development in Women’s events (gifted link) in ~lgbt

    Minori
    Link Parent
    The general population doesn't prioritize it, but the issue is emotionally salient. It feels "unfair" to a majority of people per survey data.

    The general population doesn't prioritize it, but the issue is emotionally salient. It feels "unfair" to a majority of people per survey data.

    6 votes

  7. Comment on Olympic committee announces a broad ban on transgender athletes and athletes with differences in sex development in Women’s events (gifted link) in ~lgbt

  8. Comment on The spread of solar panels in rural areas has become a divisive issue among Danish voters in ~enviro

    Minori
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    They don't own the adjoining land, why should they get veto on renewable energy development?

    Not that they have the right to demand clear vistas as far as the eye can see, but a reasonable affordance of breathing room shouldn't be too much to ask.

    They don't own the adjoining land, why should they get veto on renewable energy development?

    15 votes

  9. Comment on In the world of tech, people constantly ask “Could chatbots ever be conscious?” but I feel like asking “Are you?” Take the test! in ~tech

    Minori
    (edited )
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    Aphorisms and heuristics and morals are useful to humans. They're shortcuts, sure, but they wouldn't be memetic if there weren't a kernel of something that feels true. A reductionist framework can...

    You seem to think “understanding” equates to coming up with a reductive frame, saying “I know how it works” as if that actually tells the whole story.

    Aphorisms and heuristics and morals are useful to humans. They're shortcuts, sure, but they wouldn't be memetic if there weren't a kernel of something that feels true. A reductionist framework can have value, and we always take some things as givens. "Understanding" is a fuzzy philosophical concept.

    Take musical patterns for example, heavy bass drums inspire primal emotions like fear. Although we've come up with evolutionary logic to explain the why, "big cats' roars have heavy bass," there is no hard proof nor evidence nor scientific absolute that proves our explanation. We rely on some simple heuristic to explain everything from war drums to death metal.

    Any physicist can tell you we don't know why magnetism exists or works. It's a universal constant we take as true and "understand" in a reductionist way because that's good enough for everyone. Physicists keep drilling deeper, yet magnetism is still some mysterious constant we have to take as a given.

    I'm not arguing for ignorance. Rather, I think you might be overstating the value of "understanding" as you've defined it.

    3 votes

  10. Comment on Executing programs inside transformers with exponentially faster inference in ~comp

    Minori
    Link Parent
    Compiler bugs that require you to retrain the model...

    Compiler bugs that require you to retrain the model...

  11. Comment on Executing programs inside transformers with exponentially faster inference in ~comp

    Minori
    Link Parent
    Unless you mean that the world is code, I think this is limited to things we can compile. Consistent symbolic interpretation is a huge advance, but it seems like it's still slower and less...

    world model

    Unless you mean that the world is code, I think this is limited to things we can compile. Consistent symbolic interpretation is a huge advance, but it seems like it's still slower and less scalable than the current external tool approach.

  12. Comment on Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was 'strategic mistake', EU chief Ursula von der Leyen says in ~society

    Minori
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    Nuclear used to be cheap until the regulations became extraordinarily burdensome. While the regulations are theoretically for "safety," they mostly act to stifle nuclear energy development and...

    Nuclear used to be cheap until the regulations became extraordinarily burdensome. While the regulations are theoretically for "safety," they mostly act to stifle nuclear energy development and keep us hooked on dirty, polluting sources like coal and gas.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on ‘I took two bites and had to spit it out’: US candy makers are phasing out real cocoa in chocolate in some products in ~food

    Minori
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    I still don't understand the current row over seed oils. Beef tallow is obviously unhealthy, but somehow it's the health food of the moment. It doesn't make sense.

    although people hate canola because it's a seed oil

    I still don't understand the current row over seed oils. Beef tallow is obviously unhealthy, but somehow it's the health food of the moment. It doesn't make sense.

    7 votes

  14. Comment on Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was 'strategic mistake', EU chief Ursula von der Leyen says in ~society

    Minori
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    ...why wouldn't they build both? More cheap energy is always a good thing.

    That said, at least in sweden the last government scrapped several huge windpower projects in favor of building out nuclear which is much farther from implementation.

    ...why wouldn't they build both? More cheap energy is always a good thing.

    5 votes

  15. Comment on What are people using instead of VS Code? in ~comp

    Minori
    Link Parent
    And a lot of Kotlin! All new JetBrains code is supposedly written in Kotlin, excluding some public-facing APIs.

    it is written in Java.

    And a lot of Kotlin! All new JetBrains code is supposedly written in Kotlin, excluding some public-facing APIs.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on Untangling the connection between dopamine and ADHD in ~science

    Minori
    Link Parent
    I found this example particularly funny because I've heard so many people describe my family as "squirrel brained." They always say it kindly and mean it as a simple, bemused observation. I don't...

    Popular media still depicts ADHD as "oh, squirrel!"

    I found this example particularly funny because I've heard so many people describe my family as "squirrel brained." They always say it kindly and mean it as a simple, bemused observation. I don't think any of them were even making a conscious ADHD connection because even oooold people use the squirrel comparison. Anthropomorphism is a funny quirk of human psychology.

    This isn't to detract from your point. Media representation is its own deep topic. I get why people have strong feelings about media portrayals.

    2 votes

  17. Comment on Survey reveals almost 50% of California teachers may quit teaching soon in ~life

    Minori
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    I'm curious what the higher retention rate districts are doing differently, if anything?

    I'm curious what the higher retention rate districts are doing differently, if anything?

    2 votes

  18. Comment on Survey reveals almost 50% of California teachers may quit teaching soon in ~life

    Minori
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    I wonder if this finding plays out in other industries as well? My grandfather used to say a paycheck was only half the job.

    I wonder if this finding plays out in other industries as well? My grandfather used to say a paycheck was only half the job.

    2 votes

  19. Comment on Survey reveals almost 50% of California teachers may quit teaching soon in ~life

    Minori
    Link Parent
    There's a lot more than pay if education wants to compete with industry. Districts could be more flexible to get working professionals to pick up a part time gig teaching. Universities do this,...

    There's a lot more than pay if education wants to compete with industry. Districts could be more flexible to get working professionals to pick up a part time gig teaching. Universities do this, but it seems rare for K-12 education.

    3 votes

  20. Comment on Survey reveals almost 50% of California teachers may quit teaching soon in ~life

    Minori
    Link Parent
    For STEM, I think it's more common to double major or get a minor in education (varies a ton). If someone has a bachelor's degree in an engineering related field, they'd be turning down big money...

    Most teachers have education degrees or dual majors in an area + education and aren't trained to go into those high paying stem jobs.

    For STEM, I think it's more common to double major or get a minor in education (varies a ton). If someone has a bachelor's degree in an engineering related field, they'd be turning down big money to stay in education. I have friends that have converted from education to industry because of this.

    2 votes