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Doesn't matter what happened in 1920, and what the intention of segregation was back then. The point is, it works now for the right reasons, simply because in many disciplines men have a clear advantage over women. If you want to ignore this fact then that's your choice. Segregation and classification in the modern era serves a useful purpose, where it allows for more people to compete and be recognised for their performances. That is where the most useful equal opportunity arises. It allows for women to be recognised and respected as equals to their male counter parts and this then should extend out to other sex identities, including the minorities, but not at the cost of the majority. Scrap segregation and classification and open it to everyone and you end up with the vast majority just taking part and a small minority (probably mostly cis males in many disciplines) dominating everyone else. You cant have equal opportunity with equal outcome. Transgender should be included and not discriminated against! We all agree on this, but we need to make sure inclusion and diversity should be fair for everyone, and is not discriminating against others. Ok, it might be that its no big deal for transgender women to compete with cis gender women, I'm not an authority to make judgement. I Have my opinions, but my opinions are idealist and not really practically possible, so not very useful. I'm just struggling to understand why the obvious differences in general between cis males and cis females get ignored or diluted in these types of discussions? Especially at the elite levels where those differences can be very significant.

The reason/s that only a relatively small number make it to the top, is because of the difficulty, complications, and sacrifices that need to be made. Some people do better then others in every profession, including that of sport. The vast majority play sports for the fun, interactions, and health benefits. The vast majority stay "amateur". You should visit Sydney/Melbourne/Australia post covid 19 on any Saturday arvo, and watch 5, 6, 7, year olds, and all age groups playing and having fun at many sports. The vast majority of sport is amateur, at least in my country. 5, 6, 7 and 8 year olds plus many into their teens and adult hood, are not getting payed. They play for the fun of it, the companionship, even against opponents, and as mentioned before, learning life's desired qualities. Of course as with any discipline, including science, there are exceptions and undesired traits. That's one of the possible pessimistic, undesired traits in some, as in any profession. Science is part and parcel of sport today, amateur or professional. You cannot escape it. You start off as an amateur...you show some talent...you enjoy the sport...you make friends...you learn discipline...you learn how to take defeat graciously, just as the great man in science, named Einstein did, when he admitted to his greatest blunder...You are not forced to play sport in most situations, although again, as in any discipline, there maybe exceptions.

Not to my satisfaction. Certainly, some people do some things better than other people, but there must be a thousand individuals, at any given moment, who have the same degree of proficiency in every imaginable skill-set. Also, in professions more complicated than a sport, the skills are applied in such a variety of ways, in such a variety of tasks, that they're impossible to compare. In sports, it's simpler, because sport is entirely artificial. Being top is about winning. Even so, there is always an element of chance and fallible human judgment in determining "the top" of any heap. What brings people together? Not the compulsion to climb over other people to get to some imaginary top. That one has been answered: because somebody saw a chance to profit from the spectacle. You don't need to be paid for that. Yes, and they probably did, long before the players were offered M$24 to go from one team to another. The team might consist of friends who grew up together and play for the town, whose residents would come out to cheer for them - yes, even the ones who can't fork out $400 to sit for 2 hours in a cold, noisy, crowded stadium. Well, if you can have the science as an amateur, why be professional?

Today I learned about Eleanor Roosevelt's part in the civil rights movement and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. She was really an admirable (? awesome) individual. https://www.tvo.org/video/documentaries/eleanor-roosevelt

I don't see much point in trying to keep some sort of Left vs. Right "score" when it comes to nutcase ideas. But I do think there is a phenomenon in modern politics whereby, not just science, but professional expertise in general, is considered suspect in significant parts of the political Right. In the UK we've had it over Brexit: Gove's famous comment that "We've had enough of experts", when various economists pointed out the snags. It is obvious in relation to climate change. And now anti-masks, anti-vaxxers etc. It is particularly depressing that simple medical measures have been turned into political totems. There has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in Anglo-Saxon culture and perhaps this is just the latest manifestation of it: "Let me have men about me that are fat. Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o'nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous."

Ha! Regarding abduction with medical exams, for yokels... the obsession in the USA is with the possibility of affordable healthcare. No matter who the provider is! Can't handle the co-pay on doctor visits? Just go stand on a lonely highway in Nevada....

Why does any profession need to have a top? And why did sport become a profession?

Yes, it does. The order matters. The claim was "Some sports though have been segregated specifically to ensure Women do have an equal platform." which is past-tense, so what happened in the past is relevant here. That's the historic reason for segregation was not equality of opportunity, and it's not like that system was torn down and then re-instituted. I'm not ignoring that. I'm trying to make sure that we're discussing fact and not fiction. One of the huge (social/political) issues here is that we are stuck in a binary classification for a not-binary reality (biology) and that has been with us for a long time. But that classification was not about equal opportunity, since that equal opportunity did not exist. How are they diluted? They are the reason we have the classifications in the first place. You have round pegs and square pegs, and round holes and square holes. But this ignores the triangular peg (and convincing some that triangular pegs exist), and deciding which hole it goes in. I don't think anyone has suggested we go from two classification to one.

As I said, Whether a fear or a hope, I can't tell; but an obsession it is.

I didn't make it. And I'm not using its as a dirty word, in the sense that capitalists have vilified socialism. But I do think it is a fatally flawed economic system, in that its survival depends on growth. Necessary growth on a finite medium means that when the nutrient runs out, the organism dies. An economic system that must necessarily keep growing on a single planet means that it will die when the planet is consumed. Unlike viruses or some plants, it cannot go dormant or store its seeds until more favourable conditions return. And when a planet's been trashed, they won't, anyway. It could, in theory, emulate bacteria and slow its own growth when nutrients become scarce, but it doesn't do this voluntarily; the control has to come from outside. From revolution, natural catastrophe or strong government. Can you supply information on that? The earliest I found is this one, which isn't exactly shining on either private service providers or government. She attempts to present a fair view, though her sympathies lie with the water companies. They and governments seem to have been acting at cross-purposes, each making some good and bad decisions, with the consumer paying the price of their muddles. Just the one thing: debt. Capitalism runs on the need to take out getting more than one put in. Unfortunately, it's on the same hand, 99% of the time. Regulated - very tightly regulated, by an un-coercable, incorruptible authority - both hands would be able to survive, alongside the citizenry, considerably longer. But not indefinitely: slow consumption is still all one way, toward depletion and eventual exhaustion of the resource. On second reading, I'm not quite sure how the two situation between present world economy and the late stages of the Roman Empire are related. I don't see capitalism could have arisen without money. All its siblings came out of theories about money. I don't see how they can be separated.... without a major shake-up. Which is what I'm asking: Is it time for? (in your opinions.) Capitalism doesn't run on ownership; it runs on investment. Profit without effort. I've heard a very similar idea articulated very well. The author proposed a split economy: essentials in the public sector, where money has no role; luxuries in the private sector, where voluntary participants can buy, sell, compete and make profit. however, for that to be sustainable, all the natural resources would have to stay in the public sector, which would also regulate land use and waste management. In the present political climate, anything like is obviously impossible. But a massive increase in nationalization, regulation and taxation might become possible, if things go sour enough. Too bad no change can take place without a whole lot of people and other living things suffering harm that was predictable and avoidable.

I found a picture of the mapping from (0,1] to (0,1). Instead of using the inverse powers of 2, it uses the sequence 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, ... See how this works? The 1 at the right end of (0,1] gets mapped to 1/2. Then 1/2 gets mapped to 1/3; 1/3 gets mapped to 1/4, and so forth. The mapping is reversible so this is a bijection.

They should be included. The question is "How should they be included?" Without a clear and acceptable answer to that you are setting them up for failure. Profound failure. Failure you will point your finger at. You point out the small numbers of transgenders excelling in female sports. Is your wish that that continue? Rely on continuance of stigma to keep their numbers low? Force them out unless they are willing to alter their bodies, through surgery or drugs? Or is your wish that they gain acceptance, and encourage them to compete in healthy sports?

Then it should be no problem for you to point to those rebuttals; please do so ( if you can ). As for competitive sports that are segregated along male/female genders, to ensure women are not unfairly having to compete against men, I offer the agenda of the currently on-going Olympic games. If you wish, I could go into specifics for things like times of world class sprinters, or weightlifters, or shot-putters, or swimmers, or ...

Sorry, but I see this as wishful thinking. In reality, sports in general seems to be just another way to pit rivals against each other in a non-lethal way, but only exacerbates the problems with modern humans competing for "fun". We've worked hard so most people don't have to compete for resources, yet the animal in "us" wants the pleasure of crushing "them". The mindset sports encourages in modern, money-oriented settings is similar to modern business practices, and "winning at all costs" takes precedence over "reaching the top together". I don't think sports unite us, just the opposite. Saying it's a good thing because people all over the world are into it is bad reasoning. Humans are into a LOT of things that are horribly harmful to us and the planet.

Exactly. One should always try to catch for patterns, not only in the facts, but also in human narratives, whatever the level of accuracy in reporting facts. I think some kind of crude facts generate this phenomenology, I have little doubt about that. But in the chain of narrative, something gets lost (or added), like in a complex, socially-driven, broken-telephone game. I think there's a lesson to be learnt in biblical (and other mythical) narratives that's very much related to what's happening here. Some Moses figure must have existed, but probably a very different guy from the one we imagine. It wasn't 2 or 3 million people leaving Egypt, but maybe a couple of hundred people, etc. Narrative distorts, and it doesn't do it in any old way; it does it according to your present fears, hopes, etc. Our emotions as a people are the gestaltic element that makes this Rorschach blot into a consistent picture of elder brother trying to help us.

Information cannot be created or destroyed; where did the rest of the universe's information come from ? So, not science either. Actually a thread hijack ... And nonsense unless you back it with evidence.

I think this clarifies things greatly. What you are doing is trying to find an answer to a question that science cannot answer, due to the lack of any relevant observations to test any hypothesis. So, by proposing God as a First Cause, what you are doing is jumping out of science into metaphysics. You can do that if you like. Many people, including many respected scientists, do so, on aesthetic or cultural grounds or out of personal conviction due to religious experience. But what you can't do is expect people with a science training to agree that it is a scientific idea. "Explaining" something by means of an untestable hypothesis is not an explanation at all, scientifically speaking.