cityboundforest

cityboundforest, 5 months ago

There is, however, still the concept of the Chinese Room thought experiment, and I don’t think AI will topple that one for a while.

For those who don’t know and don’t wish to browse off the site, the thought experiment posits a situation in which a guy who does not understand Chinese is sat in a room and told to respond to sets of Chinese characters that come into the room. He has a little booklet of responses—all completely in Chinese—for him to use to send responses out of the room. The thought experiment questions whether or not the system of the Chinese Room itself can be thought to understand Chinese or even the man himself.

With the Turing Test getting all of the media spotlight in AI, machine learning, and cognitive science, I think the Chinese Room should enter into the conversation as the field of AI looks towards G.A.I.

cityboundforest, 9 months ago

Personally I feel that asking a marginalized community to “be nice” to those oppressing them is complete hogwash; I believe it was Martin Luther King Jr. who said “riots are the voice of a rebellion.”

That being said, I think that what Kolanki was trying to say is that a majority of the time, transphobes aren’t looking to have their mind changed when they log onto the internet to spread their bigotry; they’re looking for an outburst of violent reaction from the people they torment.

Oftentimes they may be looking for this as evidence to support whatever claim they’re making about trans people (they’re violent, they have an agenda, they want to take people’s kids, etc). Coming from a background of abuse, I agree that we shouldn’t feed the bigots much like one shouldn’t feed trolls; they never leave once you start unless removed by force (i.e. banned from a community, in this case).

I do agree that people don’t withdraw allyship because we’re not kind or nice or patient enough or what-have-you; that is something that I have not seen personally and anecdotally from other marginalized people (in fact, I’ve tended to see the opposite).

cityboundforest, 11 months ago

I won't make myself a broken record by repeating some in these comments, but I'll add to the disagreement here. Or at least partial disagreement. As an ADHD person, I stand to benefit from apps like Duolingo and Habitica, something that engages my monkey brain to be interested in topics I want to be interested in but I don't have the discipline to do or the focus to either. Now, of course, listing those two apps together is a bit misleading as one gamifies learning languages while another gamifies building good habits/discouraging bad ones (whatever those may be for you), but I don't think it detracts from my point.

Now does Duolingo actually succeed at teaching you a language? I will say no, or, at least, not by itself. I will tend to recommend Duolingo either as a beginning tool to get your feet off the ground or with the caveat of "you should also use X, Y, and/or Z tool/study method". (Side note, a: are there any language learning communities on Lemmy, and b: would it be worth creating one on Beehaw if not)

cityboundforest, 11 months ago

I do appreciate the transparency from the Lemmy devs and re their views (whether only alleged or actual) on controversial topics, I think the issue is not in the software itself and in how the devs themselves are using it. However given the nature of the fediverse and how Lemmy is programmed, you can use the software however you like, as we do here on Beehaw.

Similarly, we can look to the "death of the author" debate to settle this. I'm not going to discuss what that is and what it isn't here (as that isn't the purpose of this post or this comment), however, I will state that my definition of "death of the author" involves critically enjoying a piece of media despite its author's bad views if and only if those views aren't inherent to the work and they aren't profiting off of my consumption of the work itself. Beehaw is like that. Sure the creators of the software are involved in a controversy, but the way the devs use their own software is not an inherent feature of the software. Beehaw has a fantastic setup and ethos, so I find my home here. Sure, there's not that many specific communities, but that's what federation is for.

Another analogy, however accurate (no analogy is perfect): people lobby governments with money to get them to pass problematic legislation, but people still participate in the economy.

::: spoiler note on that analogy because I feel it needs saying Yes, I know that participating in the economy, especially in the United States where I live but really anywhere is a bit necessary to, well, exist most places if not everywhere, but people unknowingly support controversial people all the time. See Nestle and their controversies. Even bringing that up reminds me of the illusion of choice and how everything is owned by five companies (and even then mostly everything is owned by like two VC groups). I'm digressing, of course, but I hope you see my point in bringing this up. :::

TL;DR: The way the devs use the software should not impede our use of the software given that the devs' views are not inherent to any use case of the software.

cityboundforest, 11 months ago

If you scroll all the way to the bottom, there's a link that says Instances; it'll show you every instance Beehaw has blocked.

cityboundforest, 11 months ago

I do hope that Tumblr gets on ActivityPub soon because I do love the idea of interacting with Tumblr posts here on beehaw or on Mastodon, or whatever other thing uses the protocol.

cityboundforest, 11 months ago

Singleplayer games have no reason to require an internet connection to be able to play the game.

cityboundforest, 1 year ago

They're changing how Affiliates and Partners get paid and how they're allowed to stream on Twitch. And they still have a 50/50 payout split as opposed to the 70/30 split that several partners have been asking for.

cityboundforest, 1 year ago

The term "neurodivergent" implies that there's nothing wrong with you if you have ADHD--you're just special and different. But my ADHD is an illness that requires treatment.

I think the term is perfectly valid when applied to autism, as autism is not, to the best of my knowledge, a mental illness so much as a difference in processing.

As someone with both ADHD and autism, I want to touch on a perspective I think might be missing here (if others have commented similarly, excuse me for being a parrot). Both definitionally and experientially, autism and ADHD are both disabilities. Both come with strengths; autism makes me really good at learning patterns which helps with language learning, for example, and ADHD helps me have a large amount of focus however controlled on a specific topic. Yet, both are still disabling.

Autistic people constantly are confused by allistic (read: not autistic) people in their communication style as well as the overreliance on things like body language to convey meaning. Autistic people also deal with sensory overload issues.

ADHD people struggle to focus on tasks no matter how much they want to focus on them.

I could include more examples, but that's not the purpose of this comment. This could also be stemming from my autistic perspective where when I, specifically, use the word "neurodivergent," I use it to mean a collection of disabilities such as autism, ADHD, and OCD, and that's it. I simply view it as a label much like what the label of "queer" is today despite its troubled history.

cityboundforest, 1 year ago

I joined the Beehaw instance a bit ago with a small exodus from Tildes, another Reddit alternative. It's been nice to see the community grow and grow steadily as time progressed, and seeing the Reddit refugees makes me hopeful for the platform's strength going into the future regardless of what Reddit does with its API (or other features).

As for the toxic side of Reddit, I'm more concerned for the devs in having to deal with the reports, but as a Reddit mod myself, I don't think it'll be too bad. At least on Beehaw we have a supportive community and I'm reminded of a video talking about the userbase of the early UseNet and how they dealt with the first spammer (not necessarily their methods, but the fact that they rose up as a community to enforce a community rule). Hopefully we can see that here (i.e. "the report button exists").

Edit: a detail

cityboundforest, 1 year ago

Is Lemmy.ml not the flagship instance? Or is it just one of the larger ones?