I couldn't disagree more. "predictions made about one's neighbour scale downwards in accuracy relative to increased cultural diversity"? I feel like this is just a fancy way of saying that you're uncomfortable with people being different from you. The social tension you're describing is in your own head. Even the article you're citing doesn't even agree with what you're saying.
your post is an ad hominem without substance to back the personal accusations within. i said there were arguments both in favor of and against diversity. the article i posted showed arguments both in favor of and against diversity. obviously some contradictions will present when looking at both sides.
diverse, millenia old, genetically encoded behavioural structures exist in our shared reality. id love to discuss this idea and the exact types of behaviours that can be encoded, down to the generational timespans required for encoding. that way we can talk about my idea in objective good faith.
'its all in your head' isnt objective good faith. applying the golden rule, you clearly accept bad faith ... man you couldnt tolerate a dissenting idea even momentarily before bringing out social ostracization and logical fallacies! sounds pretty similar to the behaviour of a racist, were you projecting?
that was said facetiously. im not trying to accuse you of anything, rather to show how it feels to be accused. to conclude i think its pretty easy to predict what my neighbours are eating for dinner at home and pretty hard in the city so youre gonna have to try a bit harder to convince me that the evidence of my eyes and ears is wrong.
Human populations dont share enough genes when they do share culture for this argument to make sense, people identifying as X culture but with Y genetics don't magically act like Y - saying "genetically encoded behavioral structures" is usually just code for "black people are dumber than white people" so you should understand why people are assuming bad faith.
thank you for clarifying why bad faith was assumed, that makes sense ... im pretty sure different levels of intelligence do present across racial/cultural borders, but assigning that to any one factor (ie. black=dumb) is unscientific
I feel like these examples are all where human categorical thinking doesn’t quite map to the real world. Like the “is a hotdog a sandwich” question. “hotdog” and “sandwich” are concepts, like “intelligence”.
Oftentimes we get so preoccupied with concepts that we forget that they’re all made-up structures that we put over the world, so they aren’t necessarily going to fit perfectly into place.
I think it’s a waste of time to try and categorize AI as “intelligent” or “not intelligent” personally. We’re arguing over a label, but I think it’s more important to understand what it can and can’t do.
It's very difficult to go through life being treated with disdain, which is the treatment a lot of nonbinary and transgender people get. Even if you think it's justified, you don't have to be the reason their lives are difficult.
Huh, that's an interesting analogy and not one I'd ever really thought about before. After all, there are people with terrible combovers and toupees that most people pretend they don't notice (no offense if that's you, OP). I'm trying to imagine how much "not playing along" you'd have to do before you ended up in HR over it, and I'd think it would have to be quite a bit - certainly just pretending you didn't notice and not agreeing or disagreeing when the guy in question says his hair is completely natural wouldn't be enough.
The hair analogy would be a person feeling distress at having hair, and so shaving it off. They shouldn’t be harassed for doing this, but they would cross a line if they then sought a place in an alopecia support group.
Perhaps it is legitimate to hold that view. I mean, the concept of non-binary requires holding the irrational, non-empirical belief that men and women are loosely defined as a set of sexist stereotypes, rather than sex.
They've taken a socially conservative ideal of what women and men should be like (per whatever culture they're in), assumed that this is what actually defines women and men, and decided to carve themselves an opt-out in the form of an extra category. When they probably should be taking a step back and wondering why they hold these rigid definitions of men and women in the first place, and applying some critical thinking.
> I mean, the concept of non-binary requires holding the irrational, non-empirical belief that men and women are loosely defined as a set of sexist stereotypes
I don’t think there is anything irrational about the view that gender expression is in part based on stereotypes and social construction. Cross cultural and intergenerational comparisons clearly show that there are cultural differences in how genders are expressed.
It is not irrational to believe that some people are drawn to gender expressions not traditionally associated with their biological sex, nor is it irrational to suppose that there is suffering associated with being prevented from doing so, or humiliated or ostracized if they do.
What is irrational is to claim that there is no such thing as biological sex, that sex rather than gender is a continuum, and that the only difference between a man and a woman is what someone claims themselves to be.
Except that's not what they claim, at least not in the way you're claiming, which seems deny that there are men and women out there with sex genes other XY and XX and that intersex people don't exist. Because when people claim that "sex is a continuum" it's pointing out that while men and women cluster around having XY and XX chromosomes, the reality is more complicated.
People can be intersex, people can have sex gene aneuploidies, people can have male sex genes buy end up developing as females, as can the reverse happen. Such people are a minority, but they do exist, and that's what the spectrum is. And in case you're thinking the numbers are vanishingly small, they're not: intersex people alone are more common than red heads.
> which seems deny that there are men and women out there with sex genes other XY and XX and that intersex people don't exist.
You are reading something in that I didn’t write. I didn’t deny the existence of intersex people or those with chromosomes other than XX and XY.
> Because when people claim that "sex is a continuum" it's pointing out that while men and women cluster around having XY and XX chromosomes, the reality is more complicated.
It’s true that reality is more complicated than XY and XX. But then I never said it wasn’t.
It’s not true that people are “just pointing this out”. They are deploying this read herring as as the Motte part of a motte and Bailey argument.
It’s true that there are certain discrete exceptions to a rigid sex binary. This is the easily defensible ‘motte’.
It’s plainly not true that there is no such thing as biological sex. You might like to learn about the processes surrounding your conception and birth if you are unsure.
It’s also false that declaring that you identify as a different gender does anything to change your biological sex, regardless of your chromosomes.
These are the absurd ‘Bailey’ arguments that the red herring is disingenuously used to defend.
Those are discrete, sex-related developmental conditions, e.g. males with Klinefelter syndrome, females with trisomy X, etc.
People with these conditions aren't middling points on some sort of male-female 'sex spectrum', as there's no continuous variable of sex from which one could obtain a value.
This idea that sex is a spectrum really is nonsensical.
Of sex characteristics, I mean if I was attempting to be accurate as possible to what sex is, it'd be some composite of morphology, chromosomes and gamete structures, which would place most humans in two main tranches, but some individuals would fall in between or outside of those two, which sounds a lot like a spectrum to me.
Not that we're debating, but your reply seems a little gish-gallopy. What type of information are you seeking by asking "A composite how exactly"?
Are you asking how what I described is a composite? How I'd create a composite? If I were trying to define sex, I'd try to find the most relevant attributes to human sexual dimorphism, and if and when I encountered exceptions, to me that would imply a spectrum exists and sex is non-binary.
What am I measuring? I'd be trying to find the biological measures relating to sexual dimorphism, and how they consistently they correlated to the other biological measures I listed. I'd also be looking for exceptions, which do certainly exist.
How are you translating it into a continuous variable? I wouldn't be, I imagine that upon seeing that there are exceptions to the attributes I included in my composite, where people in one or more ways fall outside of the two typical morphological/gamete/chromosomal norms, that would be what implies a continuum/spectrum. I'm not translating it, I'd just be seeing nonbinary data, I didn't translate the data to fall outside of a binary pattern or force it into a continuum, it just exists that way. Correct me if you think I'm wrong.
Why are you calling this variable sex? As I said, in my best attempt to create a composite of all traits that could be contained within a definition of sex, that's what it'd be.
It ain’t the activists fault society has been so vile to those populations that they had to turn to extreme public instigations to get any attention and subsequent respect
I sincerely hope you have a source of meaning in your life that you can tap into instead of making fun of people with different lifestyles on the Internet. Cheers.
There are at least three basic formats that the One Joke comes in:
1. "I identify as X." Okay, how should I address you?
2. "X (nonsentient) identifies as Y." Nonsentient objects don't have identities.
3. "X (sentient) identifies as Y." This may or may not be a statement of fact, but if you're using someone else's identity as a punchline, what's that say about you?
> It ain’t the activists fault society has been so vile to those populations
This is true.
> that they had to turn to extreme public instigations
This is false. Activists don’t have to turn to an obviously incoherent ideology, nor do they need to harm people who are not harming them.
> to get any attention and subsequent respect
They have attention, but they haven’t gained respect. In fact they have reduced it. Activists don’t represent anyone but themselves, and through their actions are harming the very communities that claim to support.
Based on those questionably real experiences relating to your coworker's pronouns and last name, it kinda seems like you decided in advance to now plant your flag on being standoffish and pretty foul towards people who chose not to act as sex they were assigned at birth, by calling their gender identity "imaginary" when the topic comes up. Which is just prejudice I think? Kind of a pick your battles moment really, are you really going to preemptively be irritated at any mention of nonbinary or trans people forever?
Well, this is all based on my perception and feeling, but in this case at least it appeared to be merely at the mention of how this story might relate to nonbinary gender identity. Just my perspective, but you appeared to really jumped at the opportunity to describe their their gender identity as imaginary and liken it to a sexual kink (are kinks imaginary either? IDK). Just seems as if this topic has fallen into the focus of your ire, which I just feel is a bit prejudiced.
For you it's at worst an extremely rare, uncomfortable but minor inconvenience to you. But now you jump at this kinda shitty reactivity towards the topic, which must sorta stink for other HN readers who just try to live their lives, but happen have a nonbinary or trans gender identity. IMO you're just piling on in a needlessly irritable way.
Just an outsiders perspective. Happy holidays and I hope you have a nice rest of your day, fwiw.
> wouldn't even be the least bit surprised if I heard they ate a bullet tomorrow
I know it's hard, but I think you have a responsibility to step in when you see things like this.
I've been severely depressed before, and if someone, even if I didn't know them very well, had done something to indicate that they knew what I was going through, it would have helped. Sometimes people who are suicidal are convinced that if they did eat a bullet tomorrow, no one would care.
I agree, I've been dealing with the same issues myself for the past 3 years and have just now started to emerge from it and actually have the energy to reach out to others.
I've started the conversation with the peers that I know well at this point and have encouraged them to start looking after their own mental+physical health, seeking treatment/help, because frankly, no one in my org's management chain cares about the consequences they have on others' wellbeing.
What sort of frightens me is that the more I look around me the more I realize that a lot of people seem to be having issues with mental health and stress - some are just better at hiding it than others.
After some quick google searching, I can't find any evidence supporting #1. (So in the mean time while we figure this out, you should probably still wear helmets while cycling, folks).
This article makes an important point: studies prove people in accidents have significantly reduced head damage. However, not many studies prove that it makes bicycling safer: instead, cyclers are perceived safer, and therefore it is unsafer.
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