yesofcourse
If Google put a literal Neo-Nazi on an ethics board, I would tell everyone I knew to stop using Google products and applying for jobs there. I'd probably set up a script on my university Gmail to auto-reply to everything saying that I can't be reached through a Nazi-supporting platform, and explaining to the sender can run the same script in protest. Knowing my university, we'd be off Google in a few weeks.
I'd say that the Heritage Foundation is about 2 percent as bad as a Neo-nazi organization (supposing that they were the same size), so I'm about 1/50th as concerned as I would be in the hypothetical scenario. But that's still enough that I'll post on Hacker News about it, and I'd probably sign the petition if I worked at Google.
Trans activists. "Trans" is an adjective. Calling someone a "trans activist" would be like them calling you a "stupidbigot."
> Video
So, the first words of the video are:
"Sex typically refers to your biological traits such as your gonads, your genitalia, your internal sex characterstics, your hormone production, hormone response, and secondary sex characteristics"
To me claiming that humans are not sexually dimorphic would mean claiming that men and women don't generally differ in these characteristics. That's also what it would mean to "deny the existence of biological sex." That's obviously not what this video is doing, since they acknowledge all of these things from the beginning. This video is just about how intersex and trans people exist, and sometimes exhibit a mixed set of characteristics that we usually think of us mutually exclusive. This is obviously true and goes without saying for anyone older than the intended audience for the video, teenagers.
> This video contains at least one lawyer from the ACLU, Chase Strangio, claiming that there is no such thing as a "male body" or "female body".
So, I assume you're talking about the beginning:
"What are we talking about when we say sex and gender, is there something called biological sex and what does that mean."
Notice that this is a question. He's introducing a discussion about this topic.
"This idea that the body is either male or female is totally wrong"
They're saying that the body is not exclusively male or female. They're not saying that humans don't differ sexually / aren't sexually dimorphic.
> This video is accompanied by many other articles all arguing that transwomen are "female" because they say so, and therefore should be allowed in women's sex segregated spaces, sports etc.
Trans women are female and should be allowed in women's spaces. That doesn't imply that humans are not sexually dimorphic. In fact, in implies the opposite: if humans were like amoebas and were not sexually dimorphic, then no one could be called female. Clownfish sometimes change sex naturally, but no one would say they're not sexually dimorphic.
I suspect that you're only willing to say that because, at the moment, nazis are not anywhere close to being in a position to carry out any of their promises. Let's imagine that 30% of the general population agreed with this person's views, but that they were highly unpopular among educated people and had little influence in certain institutions, such as Google. Would you still be shrugging your shoulders and saying that it was worth it to have a diversity of opinion, or would you be scared, and willing to do anything you could to prevent this person and their views from having any more influence?
> From my point of view, the most dangerous failure mode for an AI ethics council is groupthink that leads them to not notice problems that should get noticed.
Hmm… I didn't think there was much of a chance of this council producing anything of value to begin with, so I basically just saw it as a minor endorsement of a small group of people. Maybe my opinion on this matter would be different if I were more concerned about AI and thought that there was meaningful progress to be made by such a group.
It advocates "critiquing gender identity," which I take to mean asserting that gender identity is either not real or not important. Gender identity is the defining characteristic of trans people, so when someone critiques it as a concept, that implies that they think trans identities are made up, possibly for some insidious purpose, ie. that trans people don't really exist. I've heard people say things like "there's no such thing as a transgender, you're either a man or a woman," and this tweet makes me think that James would agree with them.
> or that they should be harmed in any way
Advocating against legislation to protect marginalized groups harms them directly.
> That tweet expresses a perfectly reasonable sentiment that many others share:
Many people in the world share the sentiment that apostates should receive the death penalty. If you lived in a place or time where this was considered a reasonable sentiment, I hope that you would not let it stop you from doing everything you could to oppose murdering people. We currently live in a society where many people believe that trans people should not accepted. I'm willing to be an "extremist" in order to change that.
> that human beings are sexually dimorphic
This tweet says nothing of the sort, nor would I expect it to, as no one in the history of the world has ever suggested the contrary.
> and cannot change sex
This is a red herring. The public controversy is not over what features of human biology can and cannot be changed, but over how society should treat trans people.
> transactivists
trans activists
> This sort of hyperbole on the part of transactivists is very frustrating: anyone who doesn't agree with extremist gender ideology is painted as a "bigot".
If you call the idea that we ought to respect the identites of trans people "extremist gender ideology," I am very happy to call you a bigot.
Of course?
If someone tweeted "Unfortunately, the holocaust didn't happen, but we can change that" and their view on the issue of "the Jewish Question" was "the parasites must be exterminated," then I imagine that you would be up in arms if they were ever appointed to an ethics council.
You might not think that James' views are bad enough to warrant the outcry, but can't you at least imagine why someone might think that? If you were trans, for instance, might you be worried about this person getting a position of potential influence?