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Lynn Conway has died

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Re: Lynn Conway has died

#211

Post by jauer »

verticalscaler wrote: post #204

[flagged]

She was one of the people who literally built the technical foundation of the world we know. That alone justifies all the upvotes.

The fact that she did that on top of basically starting life over at 30 due to the constraints around transition at that time? That's winning a marathon with a cinder block chained to your ankle.

As far as the concentration of trans people in computing, AFAIK there are two predominant theories: First, survivorship bias involving careers that are often non-customer-facing and well-paying. Second, that there's common cause or comorbidity with other developmental differences (like ASD or 2SD+ IQ) that are unusually common among people who end up in computing.

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#212

Post by kragen »

throwaway72638 wrote: post #205
kragen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

she had to go to significant pains to conceal her former name because it revealed her former sex, and trans women are at significant risk of getting lynched, even more so 50 years ago

Obviously homicides are bad, and life isn't yet a bed of roses for the trans community but ... as far as I know the trans homicide rate in the USA is lower than the cis one, unless you make strong underreporting assumptions [1]? [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5551594/

yes, in the usa right now things are not bad; they have improved dramatically, especially in the last ten years. still, even within the usa, i think the statistics you're looking at are skewed by a variety of demographic factors

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#213

Post by moate »

verticalscaler wrote: post #204

[flagged]

>> Is this volume of upvotes due to this person being accomplished in their field or because of the transgender thing

Yes.

>> What is it about computing that it has such a high concentration of trans people compared to other fields.

First, prove your thesis: what is this “high concentration” and what “other fields” are you talking about? There seem to be a great deal of trans people in a great many places, and now that they’re less likely to be hatecrimed, they’re more likely to be out.

If I had to guess why there are more (if there are)- computers allow people to exist as they want to be. Female avatar? Go for it. Anonymous shitposting of your most terrible racist/bigoted thoughts? Vent thine spleen.

Also, most nerds are weird, which leads to many of them developing a great deal of empathy and a great distaste for exclusion. As a demographic, “computers” tends to attract a great deal of nerds with very strong feelings of right/wrong. That’s why I’m here: the jocks didn’t want me and the theater kids were too dramatic so I stuck it out with the geeks and weirdos (who also didn’t give a fuck who I wanted to sleep with as long as I could hold my own in the D&D campaign).

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#215

Post by not_alexb »

cocking wrote: post #196

[flagged]

> Some saw the book as especially dangerous because it claimed to be based on rigorous science, was published by an imprint of the National Academy of Sciences, and argued that MTF sex changes are motivated primarily by erotic interests and not by the problem of having the gender identity common to one sex in the body of the other.

Yeah, because at the age of 6 when I wanted to be more like mom, it was motivated by erotic interest /s. When my family refers to me as she/her, and I feel an immense amount of joy (as many trans women feel in similar circumstances) it's because of erotic interest /s. When I lose every advantage I have from looking like a good looking cis passing, white passing, straight passing "man" to something society thinks is a freakish abomination, I'm doing so for erotic interests /s.

There are no uncomfortable truths here, just a transphobic agenda being pushed by someone who seems to have never really tried to understand a trans woman in their life. I love the lengths people will go to to listen to anyone except the people that are actually going through it.

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#216

Post by not_alexb »

docmars wrote: post #210
not_alexb wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The trans activists don't want that. Equal treatment and tolerance isn't enough for them, they demand dominance above all else. Equal treatment and tolerance.. Ever since I started transitioning, people have treated me much worse, and I live in a so called liberal city. My pharmacist looks at me like I'm a freak. I've had slurs thrown at me several times while I'm just out minding my business. Half my family wont e…

Outside of calling it hate, why do you think people even in the most "allied" places respond to you in that way? Do you think perhaps they're afraid they may be helping an activist who may deem their services unacceptable? The track record has it that in these situations, service providers are at a major disadvantage, if anything remotely goes wrong during their interactions. If activists belonging to protected class…

This writing has a lot of parallels with the writings of men who are scared of women after the metoo movement.

Anyway, you're conflating fear with disgust. I haven't seen much fear, if at all; what I have seen a lot of is, hate that looks the exact same as before trans activists had any platform.

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#217

Post by pas »

number6 wrote: post #130
nsomaru wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human rights are intimately woven into International Law and state sovereignty. The work of the TWAIL scholars is relevant, especially as regards how human rights are deployed to undermine the sovereignty of the global south following the rapid “decolonisation” of the mid 20th century. I’m afraid it’s almost impossible to divorce politics and human rights.

First time I heard about TWAIL. Ok, now human rights are controversial? The one ideal, that whoever you are, wherever you are, you hold universal rights because you are a human. This are Western ideas and are not true for the global south? This belief is weaponized? I cannot believe this. Simply outrageous. I never understood the religious people before - to me this is a sacrilege. Universal human rights are the hill…

human rights in spirit are not. but in practice (see the the argument below) they are used more as a rhetorical shield. they are toothless paper tigers, they are extremely easy to co-opt and corrupt the spirit. (eg. see how Putin loves harping on about self-determination of people in the annexed regions; how proudly democratic North Korea is.)

I hope my extreme summarization is not completely useless.

https://www.philosophizethis.org/transcript/episode-191-tran... // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiE5rBLrIgM

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#219

Post by PartiallyTyped »

chroma wrote: post #209
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read around reddit of experiences of people who wore VR headsets and played a character of the other gender. The NPCs treated them as such, but they themselves experienced gender incongruence. Their internal identity was at mismatch with how the NPCs treated them, and that helped them understand what gender dysphoria means.

Can you link to the post about that? Because I’m guessing there’s a selection effect where only those who had profound experiences commented. I’ve done similar things in VR and found it wasn’t any different than when I had a robot body or a cartoon carrot body. Yes the new body is strange and interesting in some ways, but on an emotional level it’s like driving a different car.

It's not about the body itself but about how the universe treated the player.

Unfortunately I don't think VR will ever have enough bandwidth to provide an experience equivalent to Sword Art Online, ie full body immersion.

I will see if I can find them again.

Re: Lynn Conway has died

#220

Post by pseudalopex »

chroma wrote: post #209
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read around reddit of experiences of people who wore VR headsets and played a character of the other gender. The NPCs treated them as such, but they themselves experienced gender incongruence. Their internal identity was at mismatch with how the NPCs treated them, and that helped them understand what gender dysphoria means.

Can you link to the post about that? Because I’m guessing there’s a selection effect where only those who had profound experiences commented. I’ve done similar things in VR and found it wasn’t any different than when I had a robot body or a cartoon carrot body. Yes the new body is strange and interesting in some ways, but on an emotional level it’s like driving a different car.

> Can you link to the post about that? Because I’m guessing there’s a selection effect where only those who had profound experiences commented.

They didn't say everyone experienced it.

> I’ve done similar things in VR and found it wasn’t any different than when I had a robot body or a cartoon carrot body.

Did characters treat you as not man and not woman? And not in the way most English is gender neutral? It seems not similar otherwise.

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