Discussion about hot topics trending today

[Gatefan1976]

Let her go, let her go.......

[Annoyed]

Well, there are things they say about homophobes -- about being closeted gays.

So maybe there's a woman fighting for dominance inside his male body, and he won't let her out.

I have actually read about that. They say it's possible that the fear expressed is actually redirected fear that they themselves might be a gender bender.

[Falcon Horus]

I have actually read about that. They say it's possible that the fear expressed is actually redirected fear that they themselves might be a gender bender.

It's possible but I, for one, doubt it.

I understand the fear that comes with the realization of being gay or not quite female/male, and it can become irrational to the point of hating that which you are. And I guess, it could lead to a sort of need to fight it and/or destroy it. But I think it's only a small minority of homo/transphobes.

I don't know...

[jelgate]

I remember a co-worker who told us he was gay. I made myself look real judgemental and then said I always wanted to ask a gay man how attractive I was. I don't think the co-worker ever stopped laughing

[pookey]

I remember a co-worker who told us he was gay. I made myself look real judgemental and then said I always wanted to ask a gay man how attractive I was. I don't think the co-worker ever stopped laughing

Reminds me of Pete with Jinksy in WH13

[Womble]

As for your futurism, I have to take that with a grain of salt. In the 1950's every futurist and expert predicted houses populated by waterproof furniture and decorations that you simply had to hose down and use heat waves of some form to dry everything out and presto, your house is clean. And countless other predictions about how current advances of technology would change the world...not many of those predictions panned out.

It's not far-flung futurism, it's near future that is already emerging.

You might remember that at the turn of the 20th century, psychology was essentially behaviorism. You could analyze behavior, you could predict and condition reactions to stimuli (Pavlov's dog etc.) but the mind itself- thoughts, memories, emotions - was an unknowable black box. Then in the mid-50s information theory mated with psychology to produce a different view- the brain was an information-processing machine, a computer, and the mind was software. There had to be a logic to it, a formal syntax that could be discovered and manipulated. If cognition is logical, it is hackable. Hence we began talking about human psychology in tech-like terms - "hardwired" this and that, "hacking your code", "lifehacks" and so on.

On a side note, all of the utterly pointless gender identity squabbles boil down to that exact divide- whether or not human psychology is best seen in terms of behaviorism - i.e homosexual identity is a behavior, a response to external stimuli, and therefore can be trained away, or it is "hardwired' in the human mind like the BIOS of your computer and therefore cannot be altered by the end user.

Now that we've learned to think of everything in terms of code, though, along comes machine learning. How do you teach the AI behind Google Photos to identify human faces? You show it your friend's face. Look Google Photos, this is Mike. And this is Mike. This, too, is Mike. No, this isn't Mike, don't label this face as Mike in the future. You don't program it with information of how to identify your friend; you don't reprogramm the app and you don't even tell it to look for hair color, nose shape or identifying marks. You get the app to recognize him with yes/no. Confirmation /denial. Positive stimuli vs. negative stimuli. You're training an electronic Pavlov's dog. That's machine learning.

Machine learning is not futurism. It's your Facebook feed, Skype Translator, self-driving cars, Twitter bots, search engines and auto-correct in your phone keyboard. And the computer engineers working on that AI cannot fully explain or reliably predict its behavior, hence occasional incidents like Microsoft's Twitter chatbot turning into a Nazi. They don't rewrite the code when it happens; they retrain the AI. And they increasingly rely on the AI to improve itself with guidance from the outside. The AI is becoming a black box; you control and understand its responses but you do not control- and eventually we will cease to fully understand - its internal processes. That is the future of tech- teaching and training AIs rather than digging into their code.

[Falcon Horus]

I remember a co-worker who told us he was gay. I made myself look real judgemental and then said I always wanted to ask a gay man how attractive I was. I don't think the co-worker ever stopped laughing

Reminds me of Pete with Jinksy in WH13

Second that.

[garhkal]

I'm patted down at the airport by a woman.

I'm fairly certain you're now making an elephant out of a really small mouse

Not really. IN BOTH of my security company trainings, us GUYS were required to do pat downs in 2 manners... One manner to check fellow dudes, and a different for checking Gals.
However GALS only had one manner to go by, regardless of whether it was checking guys or gals.. So the question does have merit.

Pre-op, I imagine it will still be a male nurse. Post-op, female nurse.
Not that hard, I would think.

Nurses don't watch Wizz quizzing..

[Coco Pops]

And how would anyone know anyway I dated a girl that was tons of fun and found out a year or two into our friendship that she was ******. She was fantastic fun to be around.

[Falcon Horus]

And how would anyone know anyway I dated a girl that was tons of fun and found out a year or two into our friendship that she was ******. She was fantastic fun to be around.

Garhkal will know. I'm sure of it.

Or he doesn't date.

[Gatefan1976]

I remember a co-worker who told us he was gay. I made myself look real judgemental and then said I always wanted to ask a gay man how attractive I was. I don't think the co-worker ever stopped laughing

That wasn't from you asking, it was just his opinion.

[Ian-S]

And how would anyone know anyway I dated a girl that was tons of fun and found out a year or two into our friendship that she was ******. She was fantastic fun to be around.

How would anyone know? Well you just told us, that's how

[Coco Pops]

How would anyone know? Well you just told us, that's how

Yeah but the point was we were both up front with each other and I accepted everything for what it was. . No judgements and no hang ups.

[garhkal]

Garhkal will know. I'm sure of it.

Or he doesn't date.

The latter. Last time i even tried the dating scene was high school around prom time frame..

[jelgate]

What woman could live up to my standards?