Leaderboard

It’s really not. You continue misusing that term. It is not an ad hom no matter how many times you repeat yourself claiming otherwise. How about this… Consider my mention of “comprehension challenges” as an observation based on the evidence available; a sincere attempt to better understand why this discussion with you feels so consistently full of friction. Please try not to consider it as an attack on you because it simply is not, nor is it an attempt to bolster my own position with fallacious logic. It’s simply the only way we can reasonably explain why so very many interactions with you here seem to go so unnecessarily and so consistently sideways (that and your needlessly combative nature), and I’m hardly the only one who’s noticed: EDIT: Continued below. My intent to merge posts failed when x-posting with our good man, joigus

One of my favorite aquarium fish! I've known for a long time they we special from their behaviors but this video suggests they actually talk. The details are too complex for me to do it justice but the video explains it very well and provides links to the papers the video author uses to make his video. The fish had the biggest brain to body ratio in the vertebrate kingdom and uses electrical impulses to communicate in a way that suggests language. The fishes cerebellum is extra large as well. These fish live in murky water and they school so they communicate to keep the school together but other impulses mimic actual conversations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormyridae https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00603-5 https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)31405-2 Sorry about the video but it is a complex subject.

Since February

If you had stated that there are things we may possibly never know ( as exchemist stated in the post above yours ), like the color of aunt Mabel's socks, on a world, in a universe that existed 100 billion years before ours, this discussion would have ended 9 pages ago, as everyone would have agreed with you. But let us be clear, these are 'scientific' obstacles to our knowing; the fact that you chose to term it 'supernatural' ( among many other terms ) is what got under people's skin. This is a science forum; you'll have to excuse us for thinking like scientists.

It's misleading speculation intended to disparage me, I fully support gay marriage, I fully support the fair and equal treatment of people irrespective of skin color.

Since there are at least 58 genders, insisting that these can all be meaningfully and fairly partitioned in sports into just two categories not based on chromosomes strikes me as unscientific. If this is to be partitioned into just two then surely, scientifically basing it on the chromosome paring of XX and XY solves this problem. Agender Androgyne Androgynous Bigender Cis Cisgender Cis Female Cis Male Cis Man Cis Woman Cisgender Female Cisgender Male Cisgender Man Cisgender Woman Female to Male FTM Gender Fluid Gender Nonconforming Gender Questioning Gender Variant Genderqueer Intersex Male to Female MTF Neither Neutrois Non-binary Other Pangender Trans Trans* Trans Female Trans* Female Trans Male Trans* Male Trans Man Trans* Man Trans Person Trans* Person Trans Woman Trans* Woman Transfeminine Transgender Transgender Female Transgender Male Transgender Man Transgender Person Transgender Woman Transmasculine Transsexual Transsexual Female Transsexual Male Transsexual Man Transsexual Person Transsexual Woman Two-Spirit

Fair enough. They are obviously at a disadvantage if they have to compete against men, for much the same reasons MtF competitors could have advantages against women. Wouldn't that change if they had their own category? Was this "artificial dichotomy" not being used in CY's suggested solution? What exactly is the comparison as to whether a transgender has a remaining biological advantage?

Why?

The answer to me is fairly straightforward, for the established measures there are already parameters in place, so in your mind it is clear. For the second measures are being discussed and since they are not clear (yet) you assume it is different quality. Yet, as OP ascertains that transgender athletes have, objectively, a different quality in performance, it would simply mean that one need to establish thresholds to distinguish those features. If they do not exist, then obviously the distinction was meaningless. If they exist, it becomes a measure of identifying usable thresholds. That is one standard approach you use in science, when you want to categorize based on continuous variables. There is likely some assumption in your mind that makes you hard to see that. For example, in sports where speed is the key parameter, athlete speed/acceleration/time can be measured. Then, if an athlete reaches a certain threshold (or several) and perhaps adding consistency to the mix, you can define when someone gets entry to the open league. In others, one might decide to measure muscle properties/densities and so on. By making these measures gender neutral, in categories where women are likely to underperform compared to men, they are also more likely not to pass the threshold without having an outright, and arbitrary ban. After all, the assertion was that somehow the distinction between women and transgender women is objective. If that is so, I want to see measures to support that and then we can use those measures to define new categories. Again, it does not seem as arbitrary by separating certain weight groups by, say 8 pounds, others by 15 (or keep the highest open ended). And likewise it encourages cutting and other measures to keep weight at weigh-ins and how folks bounce between the different weight classes. I mean, the obvious reason why this is so hard for some folks to get behind might be because they have a strong idea about gender or sex in mind, and consider that an objective measure and anything potentially breaking might be seen as less objective. But again, science (not politics) have moved away from that, using measures, not assumptions.

Clarification: I meant that as per Holmes' claims; I did not mean that you were actually to blame. Sorry for being ambiguous. My distinct impression is that you always, at the very least, make constant efforts to support what you say on documents or arguments. Also, I tried to remind Holmes how their comments on L. Krauss are nothing short of a slur: "Krauss of all people?" "his shenanigans", and I quoted. Holmes is a bit enigmatic to me. I don't know where they're going. They've played a wildcard, and then dropped it, and then taken it again with a different value... I would like to know why. I'm kinda curious how one who's tasted the elixir of science can part ways with it and embrace the word that stands for anything. mess-posted with @iNow

Enjoy the show when all 2 of them ultimately decide to compete? 😂

There are unanswered questions ( paradoxes even ) in Physics today. Physics if far from done, and we have barely scratched the surface of the Physics of the universe. Arrogant people ( even scientists ) thought Physics was 'complete' over 100 years ago, then, Quantum Mechanics forced a new paradigm on the scientific community, and we realized how little we actually knew. When, and only when, we know ALL of the Physics of the universe, and there may still be unanswered questions, will I consider explanations that are 'beyond' science. But that's just me.

What we going to do when disabled athletes have bionic limbs and they start thrashing the able-bodied.... reverse discrimination protests on the horizon? :D Rules of this nature can only ever be arbitrary.

I thought you wished to discuss the supernatural because you claim that ordinary natural analysis is inapplicable and/or inadequate. Is this not then your case ? "If we cannot discuss mathematics then we cannot discuss physics." Here is a typical example of you making a pronouncement, without any backup whatsoever. Whilst I agree the much if not most of Physics is mathematical in nature, there are important occasions when no Mathematics is involved. Indeed Mathematics cannot be used to express the reasoning involved. My favourite one involves Professor Swinnerton's description of what you see and can be deduced by looking down a microscope at the crystals in granite. I have already said that many of your pronouncements are sufficiently interesting propositions in their own right to deserve threads of their own. I actually consider many of them to be more important and more interesting than the OP here itself. An OP that we have agreed is flawed. I suggest that in future you consider rephrasing some of your 'pronouncements' so that they are not of the 'all or nothing' type as counterexamples can so often be found in the 'devil is in the detail' principle applied to totality statements made without caveats.

Simple, someone needed to come up with categories there, too. Do you think they pulled out those from a magic science drawer that provides objective answers to all questions? They had to think how a given category could be useful to make the sport interesting but also safe and those changed over time. Likewise they could simply e.g. look at pre-qualifier performance to decide thresholds. No idea where you see the difficulty. In fact, you seem to forget basic science here. Your premise was that there are categorical (rather than gradual) performance differences related to transgender athletes. If that is true, simple performance tests should reveal them. If not, then those issues were not that categorical after all. So yes, scientific thinking compels me to these arguments. What about you?

+1. This is the toughest part of the subject. As much as science should be clear on most of this, it obviously cannot be on some athletes. I admired Caster Semenya run, despite the questions she truly was an elite athlete. I didn't know where to place her other than being against the ruling that she had to artificially suppress her testosterone levels.

Remind me never to buy a cliffs notes summary that you’ve authored. That’s a bit like saying Huckleberry Finn is a book mostly about boats. 😂

This paper on Intersex and the Olympics, I think, illuminates the difficulties with this subject, and these people are naturally in the grey zone gender-wise.

You guys have spent pages aruing about each other's discussion styles, rather than addressing the question.

Not so. We are (or should be) discuscussing Religion. These are forum rules, not my opinion. Incomplete. I have already demonstrated models based on other factors (physical objects and observation) Of course reason comes into it but it is not necessarily the only starting point I have been reading through the entire thread and I see one common pattern in the discussion. Many here have prefaced their comments (right the way back to page 1) with something like Whereas @Holmes mostly states his thoughts as though they were the only gospel in town. The above two extracts demonstrate this quite well. In my opinion this debating style is the reason so many members are becomeing upset.

There are only 2 genders in science: Male and Female. Scientists to the layman with common sense knows born men who identify as women have an advantage and born women have a disadvantage against men in sport that test physical strength including contact sport and running. If you can't see that clear fact then no one can help you.

Yes. Accept them as women, because they are. Your proposal here is akin to refusing to accept gay marriage and forcing same sex couples to be called civilly unioned, or suggesting blacks be treated separate but equal.

The phrase “become transgender” is problematic. I’m not sure it’s something you “become” Is that how trans people describe it? Are you presenting a scenario where someone who is not trans pretends to be? i.e. they are trying to cheat? No, that’s not a true statement. Men, on average, are stronger. But that statement is assuming there are just the two gender categories. Anyway https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbt-rights/four-myths-about-trans-athletes-debunked/

Why not use an actual example instead of making something up?

Please provide a citation. Otherwise people may jump to the conclusion that you are simply making things up to support your world view. I'm sure you don't want people to get the impression that you are uninformed and full of shit.

I don't see how it is some kind of scare tactic but ok I guess. If we had to cite everything that everyone ever said in this thread or in life then we wouldn't go anywhere. Some stuff you just have an opinion about, like generalizations of the world and people in it. You can call your opinion more educated than mine but there is flaws in it somewhere and at the end of the day it's basically just an opinion. But maybe I am full of shit, it's my opinion though.

Please don't also share your opinions and generalizations about blacks, gays, Jews, women or anyone else who is different than you are.

I don't really have an opinion on those people and I am just explaining the obvious about gender. Seems like genders that aren't either female or male are just labels society choose to create with the evolving times. If we talk about biological constructs of humans which I am pretty sure in science has states of either male or female then that is stating the obvious. What we think of ourselves doesn't matter in science. It's like saying I don't like gravity existing so I am going to say I am not bound by gravity. Unscientific.

I want to try to clarify why I use the term "supernatural" and why phrases like "beyond science" arise in these discussions, I tried to establish this earlier in a few posts. Supernatural literally means events that cannot be due to what we regard as natural. We regard natural as that which can - in principle at least - be explained or understood scientifically, perhaps with laws and mathematics, experiments, testing and so on. So in this regard, are there things that even in principle cannot be understood scientifically? because if there are then very obviously the term supernatural is not an improper or invalid term to use. Very well lets use "premises" instead of "axioms"? I would not write it that way myself, I would say that if there is an explanation we have no right to insist that the only explanations we can entertain are scientific ones. I say this reasons akin (in an informal sense at least) to Godel's incompleteness theorem(s). In a nutshell I mean by this that there are truths about the universe that cannot be understood by recourse only to that universe. Examples are the origin of laws and material, another is why the universe appears to be ordered at all in the first place, why is it comprehensible why not incessant chaos? These questions came up very naturally as I was studying GR and read the Meaning of Relativity by Einstein. Why do these relationships exist? might there actually be a unified field theory one day? if so what could explain the existence of that theory? would we get to a point where we have no more question? These are entirely legitimate questions about reality and it is a mistake to insist, to demand that the only true answers are scientific ones. I'm done here with this thread now, there is no more to be learned from one another, perhaps a future thread may arise but until then I'm finished in this thread, I stated my case and others can do with that what they want. It's been stimulating!

I did not actually suggest that we exclude those who are neither XX nor XY, I just said that such individuals are neither male or female. Perhaps, but the division men and women is based on an objective scientific facts, the chromosome pairing. To tell women that they must now compete with men who claim to be females irrespective of this chromosome criteria is inherently prejudicing women, it makes their challenge more difficult while making the challenge for these men, more easy. This is not a real disadvantage, if they no longer want to compete in the men's category then that's their choice, I do not see why women should be expected to suffer just because men who claim to be female decide to no longer participate as men. They quite obviously aren't, they have XY chromosomes whereas women have XX. Yes, I have no problem with new categories being introduced. What is my position on gay marriage and same sex unions?

Thanks for sharing that lovely insight. That remains irrelevant to my point and it seems clear you’re refusing to argue in good faith.

In which case the claim that my position on gender and sports is "akin to refusing to accept gay marriage and forcing same sex couples to be called civilly unioned, or suggesting blacks be treated separate but equal" is pure speculation. In fact attempting to imply I am a racist is possibly a breach of forum rules.