I'd wager this methodology is going to become very prevalent in enterprises going forward. Encoding all of the context necessary to recreate your entire application in "plans" or "rules" allows for much more rapid refactoring to address new business needs.
It also makes for much more fungible developers. Instead of having a few key engineers that know the system inside and out, that knowledge is encoded in markdown throughout the project, allowing new devs to ramp up by asking questions against the codebase and tracing the history of reasonings that led to the shape/implementation that exists today. It's like having near exhaustive design docs & documentation with change tracking included.
While it seems likely that developers will become more fungible (replaceable) going forward, I think being able to operate at this layer of abstraction & still having the capacity to drop down to the nitty gritty implementation details will make strong devs more valuable, rather than less.
Is there a summary for what exactly he means with the "myth" in the context of software? The whole detour into the history of western science and philosophy is interesting but also quite expansive.
Core argument seems to be that psychology/behavioral-science are not hard sciences (duh). Kind of insane how they're able to spin that into a 10 page hit piece about Microsoft. I think literally every argument they make could be applied to any arbitrary aspirational cultural values for any other large corporation. Author sounds like they have quite the chip on their shoulder.
I havent worked at MSFT (atleast not directly). But reading this article actually brought back a lot of cultural memories of Google (especially around perf season). The rubrics, the passive aggressiveness, the mindset mentality. Not very surprising given leadership and management keep circulating among these set of companies.
> it's still a lot harder to succeed as a non white male than it is as a white male.
Part of the issue is that you're presupposing a uniform definition of success. Different cultures have different priorities, and not everyone wants to spend 80 hrs a week in the office to climb the ladder and become a millionaire. Some cultures prioritize family/social relationships, sports, or a connection with nature. Unsurprisingly, these different cultures can often be racially affinitized. Sure, most people wouldn't mind being rich, but many do mind the hustle often accompanying that form of success.
I think part of what you describe around momentum holds merit, but I don't think affirmative action goes about the remedy in a constructive manner. It's fighting racism with more (albeit different) racism. You turn it into a zero sum game where your political posturing can be more valuable than your work contributions. That incentive structure is degenerative for all parties.
> If you grow up in a wealthy family, you've got easy access to great education, mentors, role models, capital, etc. If you grow up in a poor family you have way less of all of this.
Genuinely curious, would you support an initiative to shuffle all babies between families at birth? Your argument seems to be "who you're raised by gives an unfair advantage in life, and we should correct for this societally". It seems to me that a random shuffle would equally distribute any inherent bias relative to generational momentum.
I think the bit about "social fabric at risk of collapse" is, to some degree, always true/possible. A community is only as strong as its constituents, and if everyone thinks the end is near that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I agree with your general sentiment that quality of life has arguably never been better (for everyone, no just techies from developed nations), but it sounds like OP is coming to terms with the inherent tension of pluralism rather than despairing their day to day comfort. I suspect they may have grown up in a relatively homogeneous cultural environment and are now realizing that different folks have vastly different priorities in life; often irreconcilably different.
The best advice I can muster is "be the change you wish to see in the world". Giving up hope is just passing the buck. You'll never have the whole world on your side, but you also don't need it to be.
At the end of a day, if you ask for a nurse, should the model output a male or female by default? If the input text lacks context/nuance, then the model must have some bias to infer the user's intent. This holds true for any image it generates; not just the politically sensitive ones. For example, if I ask for a picture of a person, and don't get one with pink hair, is that a shortcoming of the model?
I'd say that bias is only an issue if it's unable to respond to additional nuance in the input text. For example, if I ask for a "male nurse" it should be able to generate the less likely combination. Same with other races, hair colors, etc... Trying to generate a model that's "free of correlative relationships" is impossible because the model would never have the infinitely pedantic input text to describe the exact output image.
This type of bias sounds a lot easier to explain away as a non-issue when we are using "nurse" as the hypothetical prompt. What if the prompt is "criminal", "rapist", or some other negative? Would that change your thought process or would you be okay with the system always returning a person of the same race and gender that statistics indicate is the most likely? Do you see how that could be a problem?
Not the person you responded to, but I do see how someone could be hurt by that, and I want to avoid hurting people. But is this the level at which we should do it? Could skewing search results, i.e. hiding the bias of the real world, give us the impression that everything is fine and we don't need to do anything to actually help people?
I have a feeling that we need to be real with ourselves and solve problems and not paper over them. I feel like people generally expect search engines to tell them what's really there instead of what people wish were there. And if the engines do that, people can get agitated!
I'd almost say that hurt feelings are prerequisite for real change, hard though that may be.
These are all really interesting questions brought up by this technology, thanks for your thoughts. Disclaimer, I'm a fucking idiot with no idea what I'm talking about.
>Could skewing search results, i.e. hiding the bias of the real world
Your logic seems to rest on this assumption which I don't think is justified. "Skewing search results" is not the same as "hiding the biases of the real world". Showing the most statistically likely result is not the same as showing the world how it truly is.
A generic nurse is statistically going to be female most of the time. However, a model that returns every nurse as female is not showing the real world as it is. It is exaggerating and reinforcing the bias of the real world. It inherently requires a more advanced model to actually represent the real world. I think it is reasonable for the creators to avoid sharing models known to not be smart enough to avoid exaggerating real world biases.
> I think it is reasonable for the creators to avoid sharing models known to not be smart enough to avoid exaggerating real world biases.
Every model will have some random biases. Some of those random biases will undesirably exaggerate the real world. Every model will undesirably exaggerate something. Therefore no model should be shared.
Fittingly, your comment fails into the same criticism I had of the model. It shows a refusal/inability to engage with the full complexities of the situation.
I said "It is reasonable... to avoid sharing models". That is an acknowledged that the creators are acting reasonably. It does not imply anything as extreme as "no model should be shared". The only way to get from A to B there is for you to assume that I think there is only one reasonable response and every other possible reaction is unreasonable. Doesn't that seem like a silly assumption?
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
> Could skewing search results, i.e. hiding the bias of the real world
Which real world? The population you sample from is going to make a big difference. Do you expect it to reflect your day to day life in your own city? Own country? The entire world? Results will vary significantly.
I'd say it doesn't actually matter, as long as the population sampled is made clear to the user.
If I ask for pictures of Japanese people, I'm not shocked when all the results are of Japanese people. If I asked for "criminals in the United States" and all the results are black people, that should concern me, not because the data set is biased but because the real world is biased and we should do something about that. The difference is that I know what set I'm asking for a sample from, and I can react accordingly.
In a way, if the model brings back an image for "criminals in the United States" that isn't based on the statistical reality, isn't it essentially complicit in sweeping a major social issue under the rug?
We may not like what it shows us, but blindfolding ourselves is not the solution to that problem.
At the very least we should expect that the results not be more biased than reality. Not all criminals are Black. Not all are men. Not all are poor. If the model (which is stochastic) only outputs poor Black men, rather than a distribution that is closer to reality, it is exhibiting bias and it is fair to ask why the data it picked that bias up from is not reflective of reality.
> If I asked for "criminals in the United States" and all the results are black people, that should concern me, not because the data set is biased
Well the results would unquestionably be biased. All results being black people wouldn't reflect reality at all, and hurting feelings to enact change seems like a poor justification for incorrect results.
> I'd say it doesn't actually matter, as long as the population sampled is made clear to the user.
Ok, and let's say I ask for "criminals in Cheyenne Wyoming" and it doesn't know the answer to that, should it just do its best to answer? Seem risky if people are going to get fired up about it and act on this to get "real change".
That seems like a good parallel to what we're talking about here, since it's very unlikely that crime statistics were fed into this image generating model.
What makes you think those are the only options? Why can't we have an option that the model returns a range of different outputs based off a prompt?
A model that returns 100% of nurses as female might be statistically more accurate than a model that returns 50% of nurses as female, but it is still not an accurate reflection of the real world. I agree that the model shouldn't return a male nurse 50% of the time. Yet an accurate model needs to be able to occasionally return a male nurse without being directly prompted for a "male nurse". Anything else would also be inaccurate.
I never said anything about political correctness. You implied that you want a model that "provides a reflection of reality". All nurses being female is not "a reflection of reality". It is a distortion of reality because the model doesn't actually understand gender or nurses.
A majority of nurses are women, therefore a woman would be a reasonable representation of a nurse. Obviously that's not a helpful stereotype, because male nurses exist and face challenges due to not fitting the stereotypes. The model is dumb, and outputs what it's seen. Is that wrong?
It isn't wrong, but we aren't talking about the model somehow magically transcending the data it's seen. We're talking about making sure the data it sees is representative, so the results it outputs are as well.
Given that male nurses exist (and though less common, certainly aren't rare), why has the model apparently seen so few?
There actually is a fairly simple explanation: because the images it has seen labelled "nurse" are more likely from stock photography sites rather than photos of actual nurses, and stock photography is often stereotypical rather than typical.
Cultural biases aren’t uniform across nations. If a prompt returns caucasians for nurses, and other races for criminals then most people in my country would not note that as racism simply because there are not, and there have never in history, been enough caucasians resident for anyone to create significant race theories about them.
This is a far cry from say the USA where that would instantly trigger a response since until the 1960s there was a widespread race based segregation.
> At the end of a day, if you ask for a nurse, should the model output a male or female by default?
Randomly pick one.
> Trying to generate a model that's "free of correlative relationships" is impossible because the model would never have the infinitely pedantic input text to describe the exact output image.
Sure, and you can never make a medical procedure 100% safe. Doesn't mean that you don't try to make them safer. You can trim the obvious low hanging fruit though.
But why is it a problem? The AI is just a mirror showing us ourselves. That’s a good thing. How does it help anyone to make an AI that presents a fake world so that we can pretend that we live in a world that we actually don’t? Disassociation from reality is more dangerous than bias.
In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe."
"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play"
Minsky shut his eyes,
"Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher.
"So that the room will be empty."
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
—
The AI doesn’t know what’s common or not. You don’t know if it’s going to be correct unless you’ve tested it. Just assuming whatever it comes out with is right is going to work as well as asking a psychic for your future.
The model makes inferences about the world from training data. When it sees more female nurses than male nurses in its training set, if infers that most nurses are female. This is a correct inference.
If they were to weight the training data so that there were an equal number of male and female nurses, then it may well produce male and female nurses with equal probability, but it would also learn an incorrect understanding of the world.
That is quite distinct from weighting the data so that it has a greater correspondence to reality. For example, if Africa is not represented well then weighting training data from Africa more strongly is justifiable.
The point is, it’s not a good thing for us to intentionally teach AIs a world that is idealized and false.
As these AIs work their way into our lives it is essential that they reproduce the world in all of its grit and imperfections, lest we start to disassociate from reality.
Chinese media (or insert your favorite unfree regime) also presents China as a utopia.
> The model makes inferences about the world from training data. When it sees more female nurses than male nurses in its training set, if infers that most nurses are female. This is a correct inference.
No it is not, because you don’t know if it’s been shown each one of its samples the same number of times, or if it overweighted some of its samples more than others. There’s normal reasons both of these would happen.
The pictures I got from a similar model when asking for a "sunday school photograph of baptists in the National Baptist Convention": https://ibb.co/sHGZwh7
> If the input text lacks context/nuance, then the model must have some bias to infer the user's intent. This holds true for any image it generates; not just the politically sensitive ones. For example, if I ask for a picture of a person, and don't get one with pink hair, is that a shortcoming of the model?
You're ignoring that these models are stochastic. If I ask for a nurse and always get an image of a woman in scrubs, then yes, the model exhibits bias. If I get a male nurse half the time, we can say the model is unbiased WRT gender, at least. The same logic applies to CEOs always being old white men, criminals always being Black men, and so on. Stochastic models can output results that when aggregated exhibit a distribution from which we can infer bias or the lack thereof.
> At the end of a day, if you ask for a nurse, should the model output a male or female by default?
This depends on the application. As an example, it would be a problem if it's used as a CV-screening app that's implicitly down-ranking male-applicants to nurse positions, resulting in fewer interviews for them.
The problem with male birth control pills is that it's the women who bear the bulk of the risk/responsibility when it comes to pregnancy. If a woman says "trust me, i'm on the pill" and lies -- they're the ones that get pregnant and likely get stuck raising the kid. Sure the father might be on the hook financially, but if the woman lied about their birth control and went forward with the pregnancy anyway it's not absurd to imagine the father bailing on the situation.
Flipped around the other way, if a man says "trust me, i'm on the pill", now a woman has to trust this man even though they're the one's at risk of getting pregnant. What's worse is that the woman can't easily verify if they did in fact take a pill. At least with a condom you can be check that it's being used properly..
This asymmetric risk profile makes me think think that male birth control pills won't work outside of trusting long-term relationships, and then there's better options than a chemical pill for those situations already.
So your point would be... what? Women already have birth control and still can take it. A male birth control pill helps prevent the opposite situation where she "forgot" to take the pill, or the small chance that a fertilized egg stays attached, henceforth putting the man on a financial hook. What you wrote here comes off as a case of "women most affected" since you're implying there's an asymmetric risk profile that doesn't already exist for men. Somehow having a more leveled playing field only works in long-term relationships? If anything, it's a greater benefit in short-term relationships since you can be assured that even if a condom fails the chance of pregnancy would be scant.
Other than condoms, birth control (used mostly as birth control, not as menstrual regulation) is mostly relegated to trusting long term relationships already: STDs exist. So whether this is better or worse than the pill for women engaging in casual sex is probably not all that big of a deal: If you are trusting someone's recent STD panel results, you are still putting quite a bit of trust in them.
Now, saying there are better options in those long relationships is quite the claim. There's a non insignificant percentage of women that have serious side effects with hormonal birth control: Mood changes and reduced sex drive are crippling, if you are unlucky enough to find yourself in that category. Surgical approaches aren't great if you see a possibility of wanting to change your mind later.
So there's definitely a market for male birth control, if it has few side effects. Will it sell as much as once a trimester hormonal treatments for women? probably not, but you are assuming there's no market there.
> here's a non insignificant percentage of women that have serious side effects with hormonal birth control: Mood changes and reduced sex drive are crippling, if you are unlucky enough to find yourself in that category. Surgical approaches aren't great if you see a possibility of wanting to change your mind later.
absolutely agreed, If there are pills and procedures for both sides, whoever has bad side effects (or risks for a surgery) can opt-out, and the other partner will do it. Or both can combine, decreasing the risk of pregnancy even more
Men can only "bail on the situation" when they don't have much to lose. Any man with a reliable job and good salary is very vulnerable to having wages garnished.
Yes, I'm a strong believer in personal responsibility, and as a corollary, I believe that men should take responsibility for their effluvia. It takes two to make a child, and the kid cannot be responsible before adulthood. Don't want a baby? Wrap it up, don't have unprotected sex, or coming soon, take a pill.
There are numerous other cases like this, not common but it does happen. Lying about birth control is similar, but harder to prove, but even in these blatant examples men are still forced to pay child support. You can't argue this is even just?
Edit: also looking there are some cases just as blatant as those two that have happened in the US. Not common, but it does happen. This is why I think child support should take into account the circumstances. Edges cases are always a thing in real life. A hard rule of a man must always pay child support is not good public policy and unjust to those who are victims of such things.
While lying about birth control is more murky it still should not be something we condone, and if there is proof of it and not some she said he said battle I think family courts should to take that into account.
There also cases of sperm donors ending up on the hook, for child support, not common if the clinic is doing things correctly, but it does happen.
Two anecdotes pales in comparison to the frequency of deadbeats: less than half of custodial parents* receive the full amount, and almost a third never receive a payment.
But ultimately, the child is the most vulnerable party in question. Yes, our legal system is geared to protect them first. It's not the best outcome for either parent. But the kid comes first, because the kid is the most vulnerable and has the greatest potential for societal harm/benefit.
Those cases are bad, yes. Are they statistically significant? Citation please. Men lie about having had vasectomies, too, to have unprotected sex, resulting in unwanted pregnancies. Frequently? I don't know. Guys sneaking their condom off is pretty frequent in my experience, though.
* note the gender neutral term. There are quite a few deadbeat moms too. Single dads need child support too.
I saying this happens and courts need to have legal discretion to handle the circumstances of the case. In cases like this it's insane a man should have to have shoulder responsibility. Discretion is important for edge cases. Further putting a the child above all else and causing unjust harm to people is wrong, and should not something we want courts doing. They should ensure things are just. Statistically significance should not matter this is matter of injustice in these cases.
I am not arguing against going after child support from dead beats. Although, the punishments some times go to far. Taking a driver license away for example and then they can't get a job/lose it ect... and even at times putting them in jail and forcing them to pay while in jail while unable to work makes it even worse. These are different issue than what we were talking about though. Let's not move the discussion to much.
As for lying about birth control I said it's more murky, but such blatant edge cases as pointed out above certainly should not be handled as they currently are.
> Discretion is important for edge cases. Further putting a the child above all else and causing unjust harm to people is wrong, and should not something we want courts doing.
I'm taking a Utilitarian position on a Trolley Problem here. Of course you can change the equation by putting Hitler or Mother Theresa on the tracks. I've agreed that some edge cases have been handled badly; what is your desired outcome of this?
The victim should not be paying any child support in this case.
Similar, when sperm is taking with zero consent.
Maybe more murky things like lying about birth control if there is solid evidence of that the courts should be able to take that into account ect...In such murky situations I am not saying responsibility should be completly absolved. The child always first is just black and white thinking, and lacks nuance and common sense. That leads to injustice.
This is problem with how current statues are written for child support. This would take legislative action at least it looks that way in the USA for most states with a cursory google.
Most statues allow courts to have some discretion to handle edge cases. This is not the case with child support. That's why I said it's bad public policy, and there will be more people victimized by these poorly written laws.
Sure. Needs work. When you say you "hate this mentality" it sounds like you want to toss out the entire legal concept. In further discussion, you're hyperfocused on some edge cases. I agree, those edge cases need work... but you haven't convinced me that the entire concept is unworkable.
I don't know, maybe the military could spare 0.1% of its hundreds of billions. Why do taxes become a problem when someone proposes using them for something practical that benefits society, rather than making Boeing richer?
> If a woman says "trust me, i'm on the pill" and lies -- they're the ones that get pregnant and likely get stuck raising the kid. Sure the father might be on the hook financially, but if the woman lied about their birth control and went forward with the pregnancy anyway it's not absurd to imagine the father bailing on the situation.
And yet there are whole discussion boards dedicated to the subject how to best catch a man by getting yourself pregnant by him against his will.
I couldn't find a single one for men on how to catch a women by getting her pregnant against her will.
Sorry, diving deep into the manosphere is not exactly lining up with my self care goals, but I'm sure you're not as bad at using Google as you'd let me to believe.
If in needs a deep dive into some weird niche of the internet then my point has been proven. Catching man with the use of a pregnancy gives whole pages of google results with simplest of searches.
Not exactly. Women have the power to choose abortion but men don't. Men however are liable for financially supporting the child. The greater risk is with the man.
There are a lot of men who would love to have the confidence of not having to trust every woman he sleeps with. "Stealing" babies from men and the fear of that is real.
> Women have the power to choose abortion but men don't.
Not exactly. Abortion is criminalized in multiple states now. In other states, the father needs to be identified and consent to the abortion. It's also stigmatized and many women don't have a free choice in the matter -- in some religious communities, a woman who seeks an abortion does so at the risk of excommunication, disowning or even beatings/murder.
Exactly. Of course, depending on country/state, the regulations vary. But at least here in Canada, if birth control fails, the woman can get an abortion. What happens is that often they don't, but you can't say the option is not there. (again: depending on local regulations, but assuming you are somewhere with this option)
> Not exactly. Women have the power to choose abortion but men don't. Men however are liable for financially supporting the child. The greater risk is with the man.
I find brushing off abortion like this a tad ridiculous. Sure one could say the 'risk' is greater. But abortion carries with it emotional, and physical trauma, not to mention a lot of women are still met with shameful looks in today's society for doing so. It isn't an easy process, and I think comparing it with financial liability like this is a bit.. "Insensitive", I think the word is.
Even still, some women are not comfortable with abortion. And in that case they will be taking a greater risk.
Like I see what you're saying, but I don't think the comparison between abortion and financial liability is something we should be doing.
That financial liability is 18 years of paying some double-digit percentage of your income to somebody that could be a almost a stranger for nothing in return. All those hours of work wasted is huge, so is the emotional toll of being cheated in such a large scale.
Abortion as soon as you discover you're pregnant is just a pill and quite easy.
Mifepristone (the abortion pill) only works up to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. All scientific evidence suggests the nervous system is not developed enough to experience anything resembling consciousness or to feel pain until 20 weeks at the earliest. Before that point, the fetus is just a cluster of cells. Brains are what make us human.
> All scientific evidence suggests the nervous system is not developed enough to experience anything resembling consciousness or to feel pain until 20 weeks at the earliest.
Bold claim with no data to back it up and yet a cursory search on Google shows how false your claim is:
Is feeling pain or being conscience the standard upon which we determine the worth of someones life? If yes then please head over to your nearest hospital and pull the plug on all the comatose patients.
>We've been killing each other for thousands of years for far more trivial reasons than getting 18 years of financial obligations.
Yes we have, and the repercussions of those acts are still being felt to this day with calls for justice, reducing human worth to purely a "financial obligation" to be avoided at all costs makes us lower than beasts roaming the Serengeti
More options are always better. It's common that hormonal birth control won't work for someone, so it's great that we are creating more configurations. You're also correct that the person who is going to get pregnant is the more invested party and the one who is going to suffer the consequences from improper preparations.
> You're also correct that the person who is going to get pregnant is the more invested party and the one who is going to suffer the consequences from improper preparations.
Depending on the country/state you are in. If abortion is legalized, you can do that. And then, if you know you won't get an abortion either because local regulations forbid, or it goes against your beliefs, then you have to weight in your risks and make your decisions, like combining birth control methods for example.
Now, in places where abortion is legalized, women are the only ones with the power to stop the pregnancy, and the guy needs to face their decision. They can't bail (at least, financially)
I've been party to at least two abortions. They're shitty and they come with major side effects. I would have taken the male pill as religiously as I take my allergy pills, to avoid that.
That doesn't follow. You have to trust people to have taken the pill.
If the pill worked when you took it 5 minutes in advance of the act, you could both watch each other take it and find something else to do for five minutes. That's not the case.
Everyone should be responsible for their own bodies. The fact that men now have access to the pill does not mean that women will have to stop taking theirs and suddenly leave the risks of pregnancy to others.
Now both will be able to take it. Each individual will be able to choose the level of risk that is right for them.
If you are a woman who is comfortable with the risk, you can stop the pill and trust your partner. If you are not, you can take the pill yourself.
If you are a man who is comfortable with the risk, you can stop the pill and trust your partner. If you are not, you can take the pill yourself.
This is also a great option for stable relationships where the woman cannot take hormone-based pills. The man can simply take this non-hormonal pill and the couple will be protected from unplanned pregnancy.
I don't understand this take. If a woman doesn't want a kid she can get an abortion. If a man doesn't want a kid he better hope the woman feels the same or he is screwed. Women have almost all the power in this situation.
I once came across this statement, which has stuck with me: “All unwanted pregnancies are the result of irresponsible ejaculations.” And I haven’t been able to figure a situation that refutes that. The idea that a woman somehow has power in this situation misrepresents power dynamics and the reality of gender inequality in our society. If men don’t want a kid, or don’t want to risk a pregnancy, it is not difficult to avoid.
No birth control (aside from sterilization) is 100% effective. If you consider all premarital sex, even "protected" sex, to be irresponsible, then that is a fair statement. But most people do not.
When it comes to elective abortion, I am personally most sympathetic to the case where the couple tried their best to prevent pregnancy and yet it happened anyway. (Of course, there is also the case of rape, where the woman should definitely have the option of abortion.)
I can think of four quite trivially. The condom fails. The IUD fails. Your wife forgets to take the pill. Your girlfriend lies about being on the pill.
Not only is it an incredibly callous take devoid of empathy, it is wrong. It is like telling a woman if you didn't want to get pregnant you shouldn't have had sex.
Not in Texas or the other states following suit. Not sure if you're American or not but women are having the right to choose stripped a lot lately. None of us will have any power soon.
This underplays the risks men face. As a woman, you can take bc and protect yourself against crazy guys who would ditch in the case of a pregnancy. Male bc would similarly protect men against women who would lie about being on bc
Ah yes. We can protect ourselves from the least likely scenario. Good... good...
Do people really think this is so common that we need to consider it a possibility in almost any case? It keeps being brought up but it's highly unlikely, outside of daytime talk shows.
> and then there's better options than a chemical pill for those situations already
What are the better options? Male condoms have a "typical use failure rate" of 13%, and a "perfect use failure rate" of 2%. Which isn't really good compared to chemical contraceptives like the pill.
I would assume that the male pill is targeted more toward people in relationships. Condoms prevent more than just the one side effect of intercourse, where a pill does nothing for STDs. After our first kid, my wife told me to go get clipped. I didn't hesitate for a second and now I'm happily unable to procreate again. On the other hand, my wife has regretted that decision for years. Selfishly, I love the fact that I don't have to argue about it but had she not been so quick to react to the unpleasantness of pregnancy, I probably would have caved and we'd have two kids. Had a pill been available, she almost certainly would have opted for that. (Birth control pills and devices have caused her serious medical problems in the past, so it's not a viable option.)
for long-term birth control a copper (non-hormonal) IUD might be a better option. You don't have to remember to take pills, and it's less chemically disruptive to the body. Or better yet a vasectomy if you never want kids.
total anecdotal: a couple years ago, I went to a gender reveal party. The wife had IUD, but it was not properly put, iirc. Then talking to another couple there, they were expecting a baby. Guess what was the birth control of choice?
In the end, all methods can fail. Combining male + female controls is the best, since both would have to fail for a pregnancy to happen.
That seems way too low. If you rob a bank and give the money back later with 4% interest, you still go to jail. This should just not be legal. Or make it 100%/mo interest or something stupendous to discourage it in all but the most extreme cases.
