On top of that, I wonder if it wouldn't be for the better. 100 years ago many regions had distinct cultures. 200 years ago pretty much each village had a wee different culture. With slightly different fairy tales or songs and so on. Nowadays the culture gets standardised at a massive pace. If generative AI could put a stop on it... That'd definitely be an improvement.
Maybe you have a point there.
An optimistic outlook would be that AI allows people to create content that can compete with the polished, mass-produced, standardized stuff without the prohibitive budget requirements.
The pessimistic view is that it leads to more isolation, where everyone only "creates" for themselves.
I don't think it would be worse isolation than consuming standardized mass-produced content. Even a simple prompt, thinking what you want and so on is already the beginning of a creativity. Turning on TV/Netflix/whatever is not.
Unless the problem is people isolation in way, that people would not consume standardized content that also, to some extent, standardize their mind. But in that case it's an isolation problem even without AI when people check out from mass culture and entertain themselves. Wether entirely solo or in small fringe subcultures. Which is kinda isolation if you look from 19th/20th century point-of-view when name of the game was to normalise all the regional cultures into bigger bodies of people. But is such isolation the wrong or a good kind of isolation? I'd lean towards the later.
Welcome to the life of fringe subcultures. Of course subcultures, even most fringe ones, still have some community. But even in generated content world, some people would end up with similar taste and that generated content being similar. They may even share that content and watch some of each other's content! And oh boy the joy of meeting that rare human who has similar taste! E.g. knowing some fringe band that created a demo tape 2 decades ago that you found in some strange torrent tracker.
But yes, mass/pop culture as we know it would be dead. And IMO the world would be better off.
I agree with other comments that may lead to people staying inside their comfort zone. But I think it's question of time when good portion of people would start sharing that content with other people. Expanding each others' imagination. And few that don't... Well, existing pop culture is not exactly good at expanding mind as well. And such decentralized content creation may be less prone to propaganda and other social control efforts.
Hormones don’t raise kids in particular gender norms, don’t carve them a place in society, don’t feed them gender-based culture 24/7. They do have a physical impact, impact on sexual development, their sex, reproductive function, temperament, but gender is a human invention.
All those differences do impact roles in society. They let women breastfeed. They give men greater physical strength. Other biological differences make women become pregnant. These will affect roles in society.
I am a proponent of paternity leave. The counter argument is always based on biological differences. So are the arguments for not having women in many roles in the armed forces.
Where exactly is the physical strength of males necessary in modern society?
The only circumstance in which there are men strong enough to so something that women can't do is at the most elite level of athletics. Any role relevant to society that would require that level of strength, we have machines for, because the majority of men and women are not elite powerlifters, and because they probably need way more strength than is safe even for those elite athletes to require all the time.
And then yes women can give birth and breastfeed (though it doesn't seem like being raised on formula alone is much of a problem these days). I don't see why those biological features need to affect roles as much as (some) people seem to think they should.
People with different skin colours have different resiliences to sun exposure, but just because the sun is a big part of our life doesn't mean we NEED to shape society around those biological differences.
> Where exactly is the physical strength of males necessary in modern society?
Bricklayers? Much manual labour. Some women can do it, some men cannot, but far more men can do it than women.
> People with different skin colours have different resiliences to sun exposure, but just because the sun is a big part of our life doesn't mean we NEED to shape society around those biological differences.
We have very simple fixes for that - such as clothing and protective sun creams. The same does not apply to physical differences between men and women.
> I don't see why those biological features need to affect roles as much as (some) people seem to think they should.
Not as much as some people think they should. It really depends what specific views you are thinking of. There are important differences: for example, women do initially need more parental leave to recover from giving birth. I think its a good idea to give men as much, but with different timing. Pregnancy has huge physical effects for quite a long time.
It goes both ways too. There wold be real social advantages to having more men becoming nurses (which can benefit from physical strength) and teaching (so boys, especially disadvantaged boys, have male educated role models).
> We have very simple fixes for that - such as clothing and protective sun creams. The same does not apply to physical differences between men and women.
Brother do you hear yourself. Your key example, the thing holding your entire argument together was brick layers. Fucking... brick layers.
And you think we don't have anything to eskew gender differences? Brother, look around you. 99.9999% of jobs can be done by men and women thanks to modern technology. Including fucking war!
Because you know what's stronger than men? Guns. And you know who can hold guns? Women. So, there you go, that's why the US army accepts women.
While this is true, these are nothing burger examples. The world will not crumble if you don't help a nice lady put her luggage in the overhead compartment.
Yes, as a man, our "strength" is mostly for show and is redundant in modern society. Also most men are not even very strong because we live sedentary lives. Because - surprise! - 99.9999% of all economic activity has nothing to do with strength.
This isn't ancient Rome and you aren't a spartan. Most men are fatties sitting at an office job. They don't have, nor need, strength. They need statins and metformin.
There's lots and lots of jobs where physical strength makes a fuckton difference. I don't see construction workers, garbage people or figherfighters using exoskeletons yet.
Also, ask women how their mood and abilities swing during their cycles. Both menstrual and life cycle with menopause and stuff. Some have it easy, but many women I know have quite big swings in both cases. And yet modern society requires one to perform the same day in day out. Which works out pretty well for men, but for women... I'm not so sure.
There are women construction workers, garbage people, and firefighters. There are much better reasons why these fields have disproportionately fewer women than a biological barrier to the required level of strength.
I am interested to hear what career or societal role you think a women cannot or should not do because of menstrual related mood swings. Because it clearly isn't President of the United States or billionaire CEO.
There're always exceptions. But so far what I see it's 100-to-1 if not worse. And I'm not at all surprised that women ain't exactly keen of lugging around heavy weights. Especially due to damage it can do to women-specific health. Or reduced abilities abilities after childbirth for many women. Of course nowadays many women don't care about their reproductive health nor give births, so maybe we don't need societal norms around this anymore?
I don't think that women cannot or shouldn't do something. I see they don't exactly enjoy to suck it up and do the job regardless of their body needs.
We as a society used to tell boys to „man up“. Now that's frowned upon (and that's good). But now we started to tell girls and women to „man up“ and ignore their cycles. And both are just as bad. At least we should give teenage girls and young-to-middle-age women few extra days off school/work in a month. Scheduling might become a nightmare with irregular cycles though. Dealing with menopause for significant portion of women is awful too. But I've no idea how modern economy could deal. Besides giving them much more lax during that period in life. But on the other hand, if they get same pay, it's quite natural that their colleagues wouldn't be happy about it.
I somewhat agree with you, but I think there is an underlying cause. We are generally not accepting of individual differences, needs, and commitments outside work. We have improved in some ways (e.g. with regard to making adjustments for disability) but there is a long way go.
> Besides giving them much more lax during that period in life. But on the other hand, if they get same pay, it's quite natural that their colleagues wouldn't be happy about it.
I think individual specialty and massive group specialty is somewhat different.
For individual specialty (be it skills/abilities or lack of them), people can choose career or life paths accordingly. E.g. I’ve met a dead/mute constructions dude. He specialized in line of work where he works solo. If I accidentally wasn’t home while he was here, I wouldn’t have ever noticed.
On the other hand when you have massive groups with some specialty that match similar pattern… Over time it becomes a „norm“. It's not like some people decided what gender norms we should have a millennia ago and rolled with. It was rather a society trying to accommodate some groups of people with some skills and abilities and gender norms becoming a thing were a side effect.
As for more lax working conditions all round, it would be nice. But I’m not sure how modern economy would handle that in a fair way. And once you start institutionalizing more lax conditions for certain groups… I want to see that shitshow.
Our "gender based culture" wasn't imposed on us by space aliens; it's something we humans came up with ourselves. And given that basically every culture divides people by gender (as opposed to by height, hair color, or fingernail shape), it very much indicates that there is a biological component to gender.
> but gender is a human invention.
So you don't believe a person can be transgender, right?
What you call „gender norms“ is the result of society trying to contain said differences.
Physical possibilities are differences, drives are different, temperament and it's swings are different. Also many other differences. But hey, let's hide all the differences, strengths and weaknesses... And pretend everyone is equally good at everything.
We need equality, not sameness. Brute-forcing equality-through-sameness sucks on both sides. I'd say girls and women are more affected though. But men ain't taking it easy either. It's a hill I'm willing to take downvotes on.
Well prepubescent children have very similar hormone make up. That's why young boys have no muscles and have the same sort of body as girls. The only reason we can tell them apart at all really is because of long hair and the color pink.
And parents are acting out for myriad of reasons. There's a never-ending chain if you go that way. At the end of the day, bully victims end up holding the short end of the stick. And they frequently become bullies themselves. Maybe stopping bullying at the visible link is not the most right solution... But is there anything better that does not lead to eternal finger pointing?
I think the puck should stop with the first adult.
The front line adults at school have this policy now, which covers 30 hours of the student's week.
Parents need to be responsible for the remaining 183 hours they have with their kid.
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In Seattle, I hate seeing news articles about kids doing stupid stuff (murdering classmates [0], stealing cars, etc) and not an ounce of accountability for being a bad parent.
Perfect name. Who in their right mind would ever vote against the Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse? Imagine if your voters heard that
What's perfect is the marketing campaign to call it by what it actually wanted to do, ie Chat Control. Whoever did this was so successful that we didn't even know the bill's official name, instead knowing it by what it actually wanted to achieve.
Good thing the EU didn't take a page out of the US' book, because things like the PATRIOT act are already pithy and hard to outmarket.
If RPCCSA were actually called PROTECT, the nickname "Chat Control" would have been fighting a losing battle.
Ask a European who isn't in tech, and they won't know what you're talking about. Maybe they will today specifically, this vote is bound to get some press, but in general, mainstream media doesn't care much about this bill.
Even Europeans in tech who aren't in the "tech equivalent of gun nuts" culture that HN seems to exemplify are 50/50.
It’s not. People on Reddit, Mastodon, and other websites are also aware (of course not everyone, but not everyone on HN either).
> Ask a European who isn't in tech, and they won't know what you're talking about.
People who haven’t heard about Chat Control haven’t heard the bill’s real name either. That’s true of the overwhelming majority of EU regulation, Chat Control isn’t special in that regard.
Yep, and it will make it more difficult to pass legislation designed to actually help combat child exploitation when a large(ish) portion of the population immediately equate "for the children" with a power grab.
Unfortunately, that population immediately equates the two for good reason. Bills that are presented as "for the children" usually are a power grab.
Even more unfortunately, the issue is so emotional that we can't have a reasonable discussion on it. This limits the discussion to proposals that sound good to angry people. And the opposition to those who can get angry about something else. Which limits how much reason is applied on either side.
For example, look at the idea of a national sex offenders registry, like we have in the USA. The existence of such a registry is reasonable given that we're no more successful at stopping people from being pedophiles, than we are at stopping them from being homosexuals.
But the purpose of such a list is severely undermined when an estimated quarter of the list were themselves minors when they offended. The age at which people are most likely to land on the list is 14. But a man who liked 13 year olds when he was 14, is unlikely to reoffend at 30. What is the purpose of ruining the rest of his life for a juvenile mistake?
> The age at which people are most likely to land on the list is 14. But a man who liked 13 year olds when he was 14, is unlikely to reoffend at 30. What is the purpose of ruining the rest of his life for a juvenile mistake?
am I like misunderstanding or what does this mean exactly? I'm so confused. "reoffend" what kind of offense are we talking about here?
this is litterally what they do. point at opposition and try to imply they are pro child abuse. actually really sick to use such a method. I suppose that is what u get for decades long degradation of education and other things. A bunch of childish freaks in power who can only try to chuck eachother under the bus instead of doing something actually good.
they care less and less about it being obvious too.
our new prime minister (NL) was asked about some campaign promises recently (ones important to a lot of his voters actually) and he justs plainly said somethin like: yeah well sometimes u just gotta say shit to get votes.
i mean, its not news ofc... but now they dont even care to mask it. They know the public will just bend over and take it anyway.
Not really. Unless the restriction is to take a generic lane and dedicate it to buses. But if restriction is to take a generic lane and give it to bicycles, then both cars and buses sit in the same traffic jam.
So, first, it would be rare to bring in restrictions of this sort without doing something to buses. But even if you _don’t_, reduction in traffic helps buses (assuming you already have bus lanes, which any city doing this stuff generally would, the main problem for buses is intersections, which this helps with)
My city excels at this. We are at level where bus system is not enough at all. But the municipality is trying to avoid it since it’s seen as politically tricky. Nobody wants to start it, take the beating and then let opponents cut the tape a decade later. The bus system is struggling too. Old buses, incomplete bus lanes and so on. When one jackass got an idea to reduce car traffic and started with adding obstacles to cars without improving public transit… Traffic did not better. And buses get stuck with the rest. Thankfully remote/hybrid work is all the rage. In recent decade quite a few offices and other workplaces moved away from urban core. That helps the situation a bit.
As ex-iOS dev, usually it's because devs want the new shinny APIs. And after some point stakeholders are OK to stop supporting a tiny percentage of users stuck on old iOS versions. In my experience it was never because of Apple.
More like this is a small piece of the puzzle in Russian-Ukraine war. Iran plays quite a big role in supplying Russians. If Iran is taken out, power balance in that war may change too.
Then apply for citizenship, take language and, usually, constitution exam and get the citizenship.
If somebody doesn’t care enough to prove they know the basics of the language and legal system in the country… Maybe they shouldn’t have voting privilege either?
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