• Krauerking@lemy.lol
    42·
    2 days ago

    So it’s pseudo-scientific racism using appearance to state desirability.

    Hmmm almost reminds me of a group using head size measurements to note undesirables, and thought of a specific appearance as hard workers and the future of the reich… But can’t recall how that went.

      • SpikesOtherDog@ani.socialEnglish
        14·
        2 days ago

        I saw that you corrected yourself, but to expand, Nazis pulled from whatever information to create the narrative they wanted. It was a hodgepodge of theories, also including mysticism and even the hollow Earth theory that we live on the inside of the Earth sphere.

        Phenology itself was already nearly 200 years old by the time the Nazi party was established. It was already becoming an unpopular idea the 1830s, but it hasn’t stopped it from bouncing around and having people pull from it to this day.

        https://ethos.lps.library.cmu.edu/article/id/482/

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
    6·
    2 days ago

    you know…my father was batshit crazy. he believed in jade helm. he believed in biblical numerology. he was an undiagnosed schizophrenic. my point is, he was unwell.

    I say this as a pillar of salt before what I’m about to say. He had a theory that the increased solar activity that the planet was going to go through was going to have negative impacts on humanity and ultimately damage our DNA. The result being our regression as a species. At the time I didn’t believe it. I thought “it’s just more crazy shit.”

    the more I see this kind of news though… the more I start to question if he wasn’t maybe onto something…

    • ZDL@lazysoci.al
      3·
      2 days ago

      Except you see this kind of crazy in very specific places. Places that have a very specific religion as the cultural foundation, a very specific history of believing themselves at the top (often because of that very same specific religion’s teachings!), and a very long-term growing cultural rot making said place ready to collapse at a moment’s notice.

      The increased solar activity that is supposedly causing our regression as a species is nothing particularly out of the ordinary. I was born in solar cycle 20. We are currently at or near the peak of solar cycle 25. So this is my sixth time around the solar activity ride. Of those six, the one I was born into was lower than this cycle’s peak activity, the next three exceeded it, and the penultimate one was approximately the same as now.

      So instead of looking outward and blaming the sun, how 'bout looking inward and blaming the culture? Introspection will do literally infinitely more good in figuring out your fucked-up society.

      • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 days ago

        I get it, my comment was more of a long form insult to the idiots of the world that even a batshit insane person can tell something is wrong with them.

        completely agree it’s a culture problem. honestly, Americans have always been like this but things like “reality TV” and online “content creators” have lowered the thresholds of what is socially acceptable. if anything, the privatization and capitalization of the internet only increased the pace in which the transformation of our society happened.

        I fear the only options available to rectify these issues with the culture will be damaging to not just society at large, but to individuals as well.

        • ZDL@lazysoci.al
          2·
          2 days ago

          You are rapidly approaching the point, if you haven’t already crossed it I mean, where the only solution to your nation’s culture rot will involve a lot of bloodshed. There is a very deep sickness in the USA that may not be fixable without extreme measures if it’s not handled quickly.

  • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOPEnglish
    14·
    2 days ago

    I think many people are at least able to see how stupid this is.

    But I guess if put a tad more subtle, the majority of recruiters and managers might fall for it. “Candidates which prefer yellow peppers over green ones have be found by our AI to be the more capable receptionists!” /s

    (Another thing I see is that I have seen a lot of non-trivial algorithm applications that are now touted as “ai” stuff, like basic pattern recognition, algebraic solvers, PCA, board game strategies, path planning in public transport networks, image enhancement, weather forecasts, SAT solvers, and so on… some of that might have resulted out of “ai” research, often as many as forty years ago, and some not. But most people were never aware of these things, much less how they work. And now it is all touted as “ai” as in GenAI. This will only add to the confusion. The better term would be “advanced information processing algorithms”.)

    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      3·
      2 days ago

      Another thing I see is that I have seen a lot of non-trivial algorithm applications that are now touted as “ai” stuff,

      The underlying problem is that “AI” doesn’t actually exist. It’s a term that has never been used honestly or scientifically. So it can be applied to literally any grift as we’re seeing now.

      The better term would be “advanced information processing algorithms”

      I agree this is a better term. But a problem is that more accurate/scientific terminology is less suitable for grifting and thus will never catch on.

  • ZDL@lazysoci.al
    4·
    2 days ago

    This is absolutely, positively not ever going to be used to auto-deny blacks, Arabs, “Asians”, etc. while giving it a “scientific” patina.

    There is not, for example, any code in China’s surveillance system that specifically looks for Uyghur features to trigger closer monitoring and control.

    Nope. Never gonna happen. This is science, after all, and not racist asshattery designed with Science words.

    • EightBitBlood@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      So has math. Engineering. Art. And literally everything else. Economics is not something exclusively used for fascism.

      Economics is basically just the study and measurement of graphs and how fast they are going up or down.

      That is not something inherently evil, nor is it psuedo science. I find it WILD that people now so poorly understand economics they thinks it’s the devil.

      This isn’t the dark ages. Reading a book isn’t going to summon fascism. Go read an econ book, and you’ll quickly learn that’s the case.

      Otherwise, point to the literature you don’t like rather than assuming it ALL needs to be thrown out. That kind of thinking is the path all censorship in the world is now coming down. Don’t be someone making that path easier to travel.

      • stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net
        4·
        2 days ago

        Economics, as a science, has generally been used to measure and describe capitalist economies, since economics as a science has only existed as long as capitalism.

        Which is fine.

        Economics has had a bad habit of universalizing its descriptions of capitalist economies as if they were fundamental facts about human nature.

        Which is not fine.

        So, for example, economists talk about the “tragedy of the commons”, as if it was a law of nature that publicly owned resources are necessarily used to destruction by selfish individuals, and only private ownership enforced by law can prevent this destruction. When, in fact, publicly owned resources have been maintained by societies ever since society was a thing, the commons in England existed for thousands of years before capitalism was a gleam in Adam Smith’s eye, and the term itself was popularized by Garrett Hardin in 1968 as a justification for abolishing welfare and letting poor people starve.

        But hey, our colonial ancestors took millions and millions of acres of “unowned” land from native peoples, auctioned it off to private landowners, and turned the native people into slave labor to farm it, and isn’t it nice to tell ourselves that we’re using that land more efficiently and protecting it from overuse and mismanagement by privatizing it?

        I mean, look, if I said to you “making profit is the highest good, and it is morally right for me to use every legal method at my disposal to make as much profit as I can from you”, you’d say I was evil or insane.

        But if I said to you “making profit is the most important goal of my business, and it is morally right for me to use every legal method to make as much money as I can from customers” you’d probably nod and smile and agree.

        And that’s the corrupting influence of economics, which has confused efficiency and morality so greatly that it’s convinced us that capitalism is the most moral form of social organization because a capitalist economy is the most efficient form of economic organization. Neither of which is true.

        And this ties into fascism, and dictatorships, and Belgians in the Congo, and all sorts of monstrous human rights violations in the name of profit, because monstrous human rights violations naturally occur when you reduce human beings to commodities and tell yourself the highest form of morality lies in using those commodities as efficiently and profitably as you can.

        Economics is not exclusively used for fascism, sure, but it’s done more to promote fascism than any other single science I can think of.

        • EightBitBlood@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Will

          Here’s a beautifully shot movie made by the female director Leni Riefenstahl.

          It’s all about Hitler and how the Nazis are great.

          There is no equivalent in economics.

          Now look at Tiktok. Twitter. Conservative news. All now readily full of actual fascist propaganda.

          There is no equivalent in economics.

          There are, unquestionably, many more threatening things in the world promoting Fascism that are not and have no ties to Economics.

          Economics is literally just the study of currency and trade, and how those two interact over time. There is nothing inherently evil about it. It can just be used to describe how evil fascists love currency and how they pursue controlling trade.

          Just because the Gospel of Judas was written in ancient Hebrew doesn’t mean ancient Hebrew is unchristian or evil. It’s just the language that documented unchristian ideas. The same is true about economics. It can absolutley describe how fascists control their people through the exploitation of currency and trade, but it literally has nothing to do with that. It’s just a scientific way to talk about it.

          If you want to tell me that Economics is primarily geared towards fascism, prove it. Show me the papers. Show me the authors. They don’t exist. Because it’s not fascist.

          Is measuring how many glass beads can be traded for water in Uganda fascist?

          Is measuring how much a carbon tax prevents corporations from polluting fascist?

          Is measuring unemployment fascist?

          Economics is just a tool. It is, in no way fascist. It’s like saying that Hindus are fascist for having right facing swastikas. Swastikas have meant good luck in their culture for millenia more than it’s meant anything in fascism. And likewise economics has been measuring things like the quality of copper decreasing under authoritarian rule for far longer than fascism has existed.

          It’s just a form of quantifying information related to trade and currency. That’s it.

          Trade and currency can and do exist across every human culture. Just because the exploitation of currency and trade is a big deal in fascism doesn’t mean the tools that measure that are fascist. They are just tools.

          So if you ignore how they can be used for good, fascists can and will use them against you. Just like they use movies and social media against you. Just like they use any tool against you. That does not make the tool fascist. Just the person wielding it.

          Also, you are likely unintentionally conflating neo-classical economics as the only form of economics. That’s one model out of thousands that prioritizes efficiency over things like public Ultility. And those are the only authors you quoted.

          Just because that model exists, doesn’t mean it’s the correct one that every society should live by. It’s just a single model developed to poorly measure and make decisions in a capitalist society. Like all other economic models before it, it will be replaced by something better. And very much already is.