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@novaramedia "combatting this legislation"? The legislation is the 2010 Equality Act. Is that what you want people to combat?

The equalities watchdog's new code of practice on 'single-sex spaces' is Labour's Section 28 moment. This "absurdly undemocratic guidance" will segregate trans people, excluding them from public spaces that reflect their gender identity. What can we do? To start with, writes Juliet Jacques, we can let our Labour MPs "know exactly how unforgivable this is". Read the full article: novara.media/4dTt6Mo

@akuareindorf @EHRC Don't some people work in services? They can be affected by the code, because it can affect the service they provide.

3 There’s a widespread misunderstanding that the @EHRC Code of Practice applies to workplaces It doesn’t. It only applies to services, public functions & associations This isn’t because the government says so. It’s because the law is different for workplaces in important ways

🧵 Why is @unisontheunion campaigning against the @EHRC's Code of Practice on Services, Public Functions and Associations?

US Impressionist Daniel Garber plays with light and shadows in ‘The Old Mill’ (1921)

George Clausen's 'Lady in Pink in Moonlight,' (1881) gives a sense of a surrounding narrative which can only be guessed at. In an art world dominated by the grand manner of classicism, this was a daring composition, a radical departure for its day.

@Unearthtothrive @dearaunty @MrTCHarris The way 'gender reassignment' is defined in the Equality Act, no surgery, hormone treatment, or indeed any change at all is required. You only have to propose doing something.

@dearaunty @MrTCHarris Gender identity isn't a protected characteristic. Gender reassignment is, but when the legislation was drafted, that meant people who had already undergone the full surgery. It didn't mean any bloke who fancied saying he was a woman.

"Hang on a minute! You're saying . . . Let me make sure I'm getting this right . . . You're saying that the Equality Act is also about women's rights? So, not just trans rights but women's rights too? Are you sure you've got that right?"

Dreams, by Italian painter Vittorio Matteo Corcos (1896). Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea.

@pcstru @ValerioCapraro Seeing ""statistically indistinguishable" as key is behaviourist sophistry

@ValerioCapraro Statistically "approximates". The other side of that coin is "statistically indistinguishable from".

The Pope is making exactly our point. LLMs “may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand.” This is the core epistemic fault line. Most AI evaluation is still based on one assumption: if a system statistically approximates human behaviour, then it is close to human intelligence. But approximation is not intelligence. Simulation is not understanding. LLMs can produce the right answer without knowing why it is right. They can simulate empathy without feeling. They can imitate judgment without responsibility. They can generate coherent explanations without having a world to which those explanations are accountable. Stop confusing behavioural similarity with cognitive equivalence. Human understanding is embodied, affective, relational, motivational, and normative. It is not just the production of plausible text. * Full paper in the first reply

@residentadviser Why is it more logical to support the Tories than to want Labour to change direction?

He agrees with her case against the Govt. Agrees with her case against Starmer (even tho he’s not entirely consistent). And if he genuinely thinks his essay is what is *right for the country* (and Labour is wrong) it logically follows he ought to support the Tories. Just a fact.

She’s right though. She’s the only one who is fundamentally an economic and political liberal (a conservative liberal whereas he’s no conservative), she’s an Atlanticist and he’s now a Eurosceptic. He’s obviously closer to her on policy. That’s just a fact. He is.

@SamWhiteTky Unfortunately, it looks like we'll first have to revisit every bit of 'AIs can be conscious' sophistry that appeared in response to John Searle's 'Chinese Room'.

Future people will look back on current discussions about LLMs being conscious in the same way that we look back on Victorians discussing whether the telephone could be used to contact the spirit world.

@v_j_freeman Also interesting that one of the most common criticisms after Blair's essay appeared is that his views are "old politics" or "stuck in the past", as if what the left is proposing now is new and innovative.

Ironic at a time when all those jostling to lead the Labour Party are desperate to disavow the last Labour govt

@wimachtendink @DonaldClark @SamWhiteTky As if any relevant difference be between flesh-and-blood humans and LLM AIs must be metaphysical.

@DonaldClark @SamWhiteTky only if you don't believe that humans have a metaphysical component. Many believe consciousness requires special metaphysical elements and for AI to achieve true consciousness it would have to access that metaphysical stuff. OP's claim only relies on a shift back to religiosity

@DonaldClark @SamWhiteTky And that means they can be conscious because ...?

@SamWhiteTky Bad analogy. Telephones are communication devices between humans. Telephones did not generate meaningful text, images, video and and speech, AI does.

@alexrubner VC?

JOE is the Canary but with VC backing

@youthpasta @Artemisfornow @RestoreBritain_ That would be extremely foolish. We're one of the only 5 permanent members of the UN security council and have veto power there. That's not something we should give up.

@Artemisfornow Something I would like to see in @RestoreBritain_'s manifesto is at the very least considering whether to remain in the UN, if not actually leaving it completely!

Ladies and gentlemen… the United Nations. What a joke. Lectures Israel about sexual violence against women when … ▪️Saudi Arabia sat on the UN women’s rights commission and then chaired it. ▪️Iran was appointed to chair a UN Human Rights Council Social Forum while its regime was busy beating women in the streets for refusing to wear a hijab. ▪️actively engaged with the Taliban while Afghan girls are banned from schools and can now be married off as babies! ▪️Serial abusers dominate the United Nations Human Rights Council incl. China, Cuba, Qatar, Pakistan, Eritrea, Sudan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Taliban controlled Afghanistan. ▪️Libya once chaired the UN Human Rights Commission. (LOL) ▪️China lectures the world on equality while Uyghurs disappear into camps. And the UN now positions itself as the global moral authority on sexual violence? while serial abusers, misogynistic regimes and dictatorships dominate its councils, committees and voting blocs. All for money and power. Wow.

@Peter94847717 @v_j_freeman Even the alcohol rules vary from state to state. And unless "in public" is defined in a strange way, I don't there are many places where it's completely forbidden.

@v_j_freeman Apart from drinking alcohol in public, which is strictly controlled, the rest are very doable.

Social & civic life in the USA is highly regulated. Europe is comparatively free. We can cross roads wherever we like, drink alcohol in public, gamble, roam across vast tracts of private land, choose where we give birth or to not give birth at all.

@zeevisinsfard @v_j_freeman What do you think the answer is, then? If Blair is stuck in old politics, what would the new politics be?

Blair is stuck in old politics and Burnham is backward-looking. One thinks the answer is modernisation, the other thinks the answer is correcting neoliberalism. Both miss the deeper issue: capacity. Britain is underbuilt, underpowered, underconnected and institutionally slow. And in the age we are entering, that cannot be solved alone. It is impossible at the scale of AI, energy, compute, grids, chips, defence and industry. The UK remains doomed with thinking like this.

This is mayor falling back on mayor things, in some instances taking credit for improvements which preceded the existence of the mayoralty. It isn’t a pitch to be PM thetimes.com/uk/politics/ar…

@missilemendoza @LukeTryl Blair's speech to parliament didn't mention either dossier (there were two, btw), and even the 'dodgy dossier' was not "evil deceit of the very worst kind." That you see it in such extreme terms is part of what has to be explained.

@TVAddictStill @LukeTryl What? The war was based on a concocted dossier, produced to order. Without it? Bliar would not have got the war through the HoC. It was evil deceit of the very worst kind.

🧵On Blair intervention there is some stuff that so perfectly captures the public mood. Like this - people are willing to take a risk on the untried, untested even the extreme because politics as usual isn't delivering the change they desperately want.

@missilemendoza @LukeTryl That you see it as "mass murder" rather than a war, and mention only the "dossier", is part of what has to be explained. Why do people (even ones who don't see all war as mass murder) perceive this particular war in that way and care so much about it?

@TVAddictStill @LukeTryl You are joking. A totally concocted “intelligence dossier,” to justify our participation in mass murder?

@dthroat @JohnRentoul Have you read the essay? He didn't say align with Trump, or even to abandon net zero as a long-term goal. Nor is his view of deregulation the same as Truss's.

@TVAddictStill @JohnRentoul Abandon net zero, align with Trump, deregulation etc. Enjoy life in cloud cuckoo land.

Points 5 and 10 are just buzz phrases, but the rest is all right

@wijayagopala @johnennis What is the next level for a novelist, say? What would they still be doing that we should consider "writing a novel"? Or even in programming/coding. What is the next level above what's available within programming, so that AI won't be doing that too?

@johnennis AI will probably disappoint both pessimists & optimists. More likely it just shifts humans one abstraction layer higher.

I think mathematics is about to enter a golden age as AI automates everything that might be called “mental manual labor,” making the real insights much more accessible