Erik Haugen @ech@qoto.org

@aardvark A lot about medical regulation is problematic.

@JonKramer @freemo @ariaflame @GeePawHill @agilealliance Consider this example: most of the book bans, as far as I can tell, are ostensibly about age-appropriateness of the material. Don't get me wrong: I'm sure there's *someone* out there using age-appropriateness in bad faith to further their nefarious crusade against <some group>, of course. But still: there are pretty reasonable cases being made – even if I disagree – most of the time about age-appropriateness.

If you use age-appropriateness bans as an example of how Florida and Texas are a literal risk to the life of a group of people, normal readers are going to dismiss you out of hand. (And rightfully so, of course; this is nonsense.)

This is an example of one of the most unfortunate outcomes of the rise of idpol: any discussion of a banal policy issue like how to decide age-appropriateness of school materials or medical regulations quickly descends into hysterics like "you are literally murdering people!". Other examples include things like single-family housing, minimum wage, and ice cream trucks.

I'm not saying these issues aren't important – they are! That's the problem! Look at these threads here and all the confusion about what anyone is even talking about.

@aardvark That's an interesting way to look at medical regulation. Medicine is very highly regulated; using this phrasing, which is weird, we could conclude that it is illegal just to be, at all, in every state.

But those aren't what those words mean, so your statement is untrue.

It's a bold rhetorical trick; I'll give you that. I suspect it backfires wildly when the normies read it, they generally aren't interested in that kind of obvious hyperbole.

@aardvark @freemo I have no reason to doubt the facts reported in this article. (I have not independently verified them.) Why do you ask?

@aral @Kadsenchaos@octodon.social heh. I was very careful to only comment on Amazon's political activities.

@Hyolobrika@berserker.town @freemo I've been accused of "mansplaining" for answering a direct question 😂

@freemo they don't care about that kind of community risk, though: they *want* an idpol grievance echo chamber, not a place to critically examine their positions to make them stronger. Comfortable patting each other on the back, not any kind of intellectual growth.

In this case, there's a race to describe Florida and Texas in the most hyperbolic nonsensical language possible. You get brownie points and encouragement from the crowd if you do that. Questioning it in any way is spoiling the fun.

@Kadsenchaos@octodon.social @aral They don't, of course.

Companies like this donate to all kinds of politicians: you could write an article like this from pretty much any political position, breathlessly claiming that Amazon etc support the other side of my favorite issue. It's misleading to the point of dishonesty; a garbage article that inspires outrage for clicks.

Why do they donate to all kinds of politicians? I guess to keep a "seat at the table", i.e. get their ear when some issue important to them (net neutrality or AI regulation or whatever) comes up. Hate the game not the player? I don't know.

@George In what way did they "fold"? (I'm trying to figure out what all the hubbub is about; the Daily Mail article you posted says something about Marxism but I can't find any Marxism. Granted, I am no expert on Marx.)

@pairko@mastodon.cloud @glynmoody With laws like this you have to wonder if we'd all be better off if big tech (or literally anyone besides the CA senate) were indeed writing our laws.

@HeathAllyn @eniko Yeah I think the idea was it would be even better than fediverse/mastodon in this respect – you pick your own algorithm or whatever; a la #ProtocolsNotPlatforms

@GreenFire @fade @rosemarymosco So then you have a bucket of rats? What do you do with it?

@HarveyEsq Which part of his argument demonstrates impairment?

1.) we can make something smarter than ourselves
2.) that thing might have unexpected goals, since we can't really understand how it works
3.) there are lots of reasons why a superintelligence would kill us with and/or without intending to

To me, I feel like (1) is a lot farther away than he seems to think it is, but I don't know of any great analysis of that question to link to.

@ShekinahCanCook@universeodon.com @davidho I think the theory is that it would be able to lay its own cables and so on. 😂

@davidho Eliezer Yudkowsky suggests AI might use climate change to kill us all: it needs more compute power to accomplish whatever its goals are, and that process inevitably creates waste heat which will eventually make the planet uninhabitable. (I think he wouldn't say this is the most likely thing that kills us first, though.)

Normally, climate change as we think of it wouldn't cause human extinction, of course. I mean, worst-case scenario is bad enough, just not that bad.

@olm_e @davidho That is one of the points of the article :)

@kentborg Interesting claim; in what ways do you see him as less reasonable?

@TruthSandwich @freemo That sounds like an opportunity to learn something interesting.

@bryanruby Yeah, there's been a lot of hubbub about "child labor" recently, but I'm not sure I disagree with most of these new rules.

In some states it is really hard for a 15-year-old to get a summer job or whatever: some employers just won't even bother jumping through the hoops. This is not good. Fixing that is a good thing. Nobody wants 10 year olds to drop out of school to work in the coal mines, but this doesn't mean small adjustments like this are necessarily a bad thing.

It looks like now in Iowa 17yos can get a job operating a power saw. I am ok with this; 17yos are capable of learning to safely operate power saws.

@tweetsjen "do you have any evidence that anyone was actually teaching ..." – Just a tangential note about this: like I said, I don't, and I suspect it is vanishingly rare. But I think I can see where the fear that it is happening is coming from.

Authors like DiAngelo write things like "I know that because I was socialized as white in a racism-based society, I have a racist worldview, deep racial bias, racist patterns, and investments in the racist system that has elevated me." Now, I don't think she means this in terms of normal-english "racism", but instead she means her and Kendi's definition: as a white person she by default perpetuates "whiteness": being white as the default/norm, supporting systems that (unintentionally, even) benefit white people, (usually because they benefit rich people, but that's another topic).

However, taken out of context, it sure looks like she's trying to promote that idea, doesn't it. (I think this redefinition of the term is a rhetorical strategy. I doubt it works, but even if it does, as we can see here it causes confusion.)