American solar farms • Hacker News Board

Re: American solar farms

#341

Post by zz3 » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 9:43 PM UTC

fringol__ wrote: post #338

zz3 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Edit: I missed one of your points. > Regarding your second point: that there are variations in phenotype, some of them disordered, doesn't mean that "sex is a spectrum". For DSDs, we can describe them in terms of specific developmental differences compared to normal sex development. These are a set of discrete conditions that can be understood without conjuring up ill-defined spectrums. In fact, DSDs in humans have…

I do not consider it disrespectful to state someone's sex, particularly when it's relevant to the topic. Consider my original comment on this thread: " Most of the actual work to stop males from competing in women's sports, through evidence-guided changes in policy, has been driven by female athletes who are directly affected by this, feminists and feminist allies, scientists that study sex differences, and experts i…

As a side note, it's pretty widely accepted that referring to humans as "male" or "female" instead of "men" and "women" in general is dehumanizing. Using it as an adjective "male athletes" isn't considered disrespectful. Your personal opinion that it is NOT disrespectful isn't super relevant, since there are obviously more respectful and relevant terms (transman, transwoman, cis, pre- and post-transition). You weren't actually referring to all "males" in general in the previous discussion, you were specifically talking about transwomen athletes post-transition competing against ciswomen. If this wasn't intentional, then that was part of the confusion.

Re: American solar farms

#342

Post by fringol__ » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 8:14 AM UTC

zz3 wrote: post #341

fringol__ wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not consider it disrespectful to state someone's sex, particularly when it's relevant to the topic. Consider my original comment on this thread: " Most of the actual work to stop males from competing in women's sports, through evidence-guided changes in policy, has been driven by female athletes who are directly affected by this, feminists and feminist allies, scientists that study sex differences, and experts i…

As a side note, it's pretty widely accepted that referring to humans as "male" or "female" instead of "men" and "women" in general is dehumanizing. Using it as an adjective "male athletes" isn't considered disrespectful. Your personal opinion that it is NOT disrespectful isn't super relevant, since there are obviously more respectful and relevant terms (transman, transwoman, cis, pre- and post-transition). You weren'…

You can take offence if you want to, but objecting to a mention of the sex of a group of people, on a topic where the fact of their sex is highly relevant, comes across more as an attempt to stymie discussion.

Note that I was very specifically talking about male athletes competing in the female category of sports. This includes both those in the category of "trans" (the Laurel Hubbard types) and those with male-specific disorders of sex development (the Caster Semenya types).

I've said everything I would like to say on all these subthreads so there's no point in repeating myself yet again, but I would urge you to pick up a couple of books on developmental biology and evolutionary biology, and read them with an open mind, so you can challenge your misconceptions around this topic that you seem to have internalised.

Re: American solar farms

#343

Post by zz3 » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 5:22 PM UTC

fringol__ wrote: post #342

zz3 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a side note, it's pretty widely accepted that referring to humans as "male" or "female" instead of "men" and "women" in general is dehumanizing. Using it as an adjective "male athletes" isn't considered disrespectful. Your personal opinion that it is NOT disrespectful isn't super relevant, since there are obviously more respectful and relevant terms (transman, transwoman, cis, pre- and post-transition). You weren'…

You can take offence if you want to, but objecting to a mention of the sex of a group of people, on a topic where the fact of their sex is highly relevant, comes across more as an attempt to stymie discussion. Note that I was very specifically talking about male athletes competing in the female category of sports. This includes both those in the category of "trans" (the Laurel Hubbard types) and those with male-speci…

I'm not personally offended by the inaccurate terms, more just stating what should be fairly obvious. Using accurate terms is very important in logic and reasoning, and being generally polite and respectful is also an important part of good-faith argument and debate when the goal is learning. You not being able to use correct and accurate terms is partly why your arguments are weak and inconsistent. I've explained your logic errors in multiple previous comments. If you're interested in learning more, I've linked several of my references as well. I do agree that there's little else to talk about and we're rehashing the same arguments. You saying that you don't personally consider it offensive and suggesting that therefore it's fine for you to use the inaccurate term suggests that this isn't a good-faith debate for the benefit of learning.

I will also say that it's a common pattern for people to try to justify bigotry with "science," not realizing that their arguments don't make sense. Karl Popper is actually considered the father of modern science for his work on falsification being one of the main ways to separate actual science from pseudoscience. This has come up several times lately and I'm very curious about it.

I have read several books in multiple areas of biology. I'm a little amused you're recommending them to me, when I literally linked and referenced one of the books in a previous comment. I hope you actually read more as well. Biology is an amazing field, which is why I studied it in university. I hope you learn more about science in general. I will also mention, however, that reading all the biology books in the world won't help if there's a fundamental misunderstanding in what science actually is and how to differentiate it from pseudoscience.

Statistical Rethinking (all editions) is a great book if you're interested in how models work and how science actually works, as a personal recommendation. The author also has multiple lectures recorded on github and other platforms, such as youtube. Carl Sagan also has an excellent book on distinguishing science from pseudoscience: "The Demon Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark."