Of course. Tbh, US imperialism made it more difficult to get rid of their surveillance than China’s one (at least in western countries). And Europe have a lot of trouble acting politically, and I think it is mostly because they are so liberal. Even more so than the US, that limit liberalism to the thing where it is an advantage to them, but are very protective and prostate control when it benefits their political objectives.
I have to admit that Europe is not 100% passive, and some regulations do try to limit US dominance on Europe, but it is very far from being enough, or even close to what could be done with a real political will.
I think I agree with you. I would go as far as saying this is true for everything, not only for science. I think we need to have categories to be able to grasp complex problem. And almost all of the time, those categories are arbitrary and only useful at specific scales and in specific context. It is the only way to think about large scale problems, just because we cannot handle every individual information in too large quantities.
Those categories are always “wrong” in some sense, but can be “useful” to understand our world. And I agree with you, at individual level, in our society, for sure sex at an individual level is not only useless but harmful.
Sorry, I recognize my position was unclear and could be taken for quite essentialist. Hope this clarify my position.
In everyday life, not much to be honest. Gender is the useful information in society. Male and female are useful in biology, and therefore in medicine. They are useful broad category that should be use as such. Broad tendencies that have many exception and complex interactions. But are nonetheless pertinent to understand how our body works and how to treat some diseases.
But of course 99% of every uses fall outside of what is pertinent, and it should become a technical scientific term only.
Of course not. It is a very very useful concept here and today. Even when applied to humans. But the problem is how those words are used way even in fields and discussion where they are not only not useful, but even harmful.
These concepts, like any scientific concept, is taught to us with heavy heavy simplification when we are young. It seems simple, most people think it is simply two groups, and with a very easy criteria to discriminate them. But it is complicated, and only mostly useful in biology.
I would make a (not so good) analogy with hot and cold. Is it outdated ? No. Is it useful ? Yes. Does it define completely what it is talking about ? No, pressure, colors are other characteristic. There are adjacent concept that get confused like heat and hotness, but are scientifically very different. There are things where talking about hot or cold is irrelevant (is a distance “hot” ?).
Of course, the main limit of this analogy is that the battle around the usage of “biological sex” is very political. Transphobes put many humans in grave danger (and not only explicitly trans persons). They are very close to the essentialism used by racists and fascists. And they try to manipulated science to make it says what it doesn’t, also just like them.
If I had to guess I would say it is bas ant power abusing structures in history. Words are powerful, especially if they have a strong importance in cultures where they are used. “Voting” or “referendum” are very powerful words in the modern liberal capitalist “democratic” countries.
No matter if this words describe accurately the reality or not, their simple existence in public debate are enough to be used as a base for propaganda. For example, if you accuse Russia of acting as the imperialist nation it is, people will say “referendum”, and you will be locked in an endless discussion about whereas this vote is legitimate or not, and the critic is killed in the egg. If you refuse this debate, it will be pointed out as a proof that you " have no source/proof" of what you are saying.
As someone pointed out in another comment this question depends heavily on the definition you give to “own”. In fact it is more a question about that than about anything else.
I love the question you ask around in Lemmy, they are often a potential base to really interesting discussions. I think it is a shame you don’t spend more time discussing the answers with us. Especially since those case where the definitions of the words you use are important, which is often the case when you try to build a short, punchy, but still interesting question.
To begin an answer, if owning is taken in a very liberal definition of “you are free to do everything you want with it”, then clearly no. For example, being violent towards others. Or having Nazi/fascist symbols tattooed. These things you are not free to do. But if we add a clause resembling “as long as it only imply yourself or consenting of any person involved”, then we get clauser to something I would agree with. But even then, it is not satisfactory. Example : being openly in an homosexual relationship and displaying it in public is perfectly OK to me. But I recognize it has an impact an homophobes. They are technically impacted. But to me the solution is of course not to criminalize homosexuals, but to fight against homophobia until it is not a question anymore.
So yeah, a specific and perfect definition is quite hard…
Thank you !
I think I understand what you mean. But then I slightly disagree : if we want to use such a useful program to randomize tests and a free software doing that does not exist, it is not a reason for a “policy maker” to buy a proprietary software, but a reason to pay a developer to write free code.
But if all you mean is “if you HAVE to buy proprietary software, at least do it for something more useful (like randomizing tests)”, yes of course I agree with that !
To me, philosophy is like the trunk of the tree that sciences form. So to me is kind of part of science. So your question is will this trunk eventually stop and the “tree” only grows outward. I don’t know, but if I had to guess, I think the trunk will go on forever.
(Yes, this is simplified and science is more a network than a tree, but its structure is not perfectly homogeneous and philosophy kind of act as a trunk to me.)
As stated in the other thread, individual commercial choices are useless.
If we had democracy over our work, I would defend having as little night shifts as possible. Part of the medical services, some industries that technically cannot stop and restart every 24h without very heavy costs, ect. And the workers in those fields should be paid more, work less, get their retirement earlier, and not keep this job for a long period in their life (maybe a third of their career or something).
Many many things, but the main one are probably :
Bonus story : I dislike religions a lot, so I don’t talk about it often. But one day, I and a heated and interesting debate with a christian. First time in month where I talked so much about Jesus. The next hour or so, the first ad I get on YouTube (before I knew how to block them efficiently) was evangelist bullshit. First time I ever saw something even close to this. I didn’t even imagine such ads existed.