cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
1yr ago
The actual observed evidence, unless anyone can show me otherwise, is that trans women have no competitive advantage.
The same is true of the person that has not died in a car accident from never wearing a seat belt.
[distributions]
1 [mtf trans are more girly and less athletic]
2 [mtf HRT makes bodies more girly, thus removing some advantages of male bodies]
No Seatbelt person argues 1 they drive more carefully cuz they don't wear a seatbelt and 2 they drive less because of a fear of car accidents.
These are magnitudinal changes. Its unclear if the magnitudes are great enough to outweigh the very obvious base effect. Your chances to observe how big the magnitudes are is going to be screwed, because the rate of deadly car accidents and superstar athletes is very low to begin with.
The basic problem is how do you know that a very very low probability event has increased in probability. In my case I'm talking about a rare car accident being more deadly as a result of not wearing a seatbelt. In your case we are talking about a rare superstar female athlete being better at their sport from their former time as a male.
It feels a bit like a pascal mugging.
In both cases it feels like its impossible to prove the argument wrong. If there was a specific mtf trans person that went on to dominate their sport you could rightly point out that its rare for anyone to dominate a sport, and that this is just a single anecdote. If there was a specific car accident that killed someone who wasn't wearing a seat belt wearer then the no seat belt wearer could come up with a litany of excuses as well, super rare circumstances, it might have killed them even if they had worn the seatbelt, etc etc.
At some point in the case of super rare events it feels useful to a fall back to logic and physical reality. We mostly know the physics of car accidents, and wearing a seatbelt makes you safer. I acknowledge that due to selection effects it may be the case that the average no-seatbelt wearer might not actually be in any more danger than the average seatbelt wearer. I still advise you to wear a seatbelt in the car. We mostly know the biology of male and female bodies, and having a male body gives you inherent physical advantages. I acknowledge that due to selection effects it may be the case that the average mtf trans person might not actually have any advantages over the average woman. I still advise we not allow them in sports.
Does my argument about seatbelts convince you that people who don't wear a seat belt are just as safe? Probably it doesn't. But I do feel that the structure of the argument can lead to believing a lot of absurd things. I actually know of some cases where this type of argument has convinced me. Related to cars, but Child Safety seats lead to fewer living kids. Car accidents with kids are super rare, so child safety seats don't save that many kids, but the inconvenience of such seats in most cars leads to a lot of people not having third kids. The result is unintuitive and a bit absurd, if you don't think so then did you oppose child safety seat laws before learning about it? I'm a pretty strict libertarian and even I wouldn't have bothered to oppose child safety seat laws.
Then whats my problem with your argument when I buy it in a different context? I do feel, quite strongly, that the burden of proof rests firmly on the side of those trying to get us to believe absurd and unintuitive things. On the child safety seat thing, I still put my own children in child safety seats, and would do so even if the law did not mandate it. Logic and physics win out over statistics and reality.
cjet79
1yr ago
This sounds like it's just a matter of time. The base rate of trans is low.
It feels like talking to someone that never wears a seatbelt in a car. They haven't died. They insist they are safe. They were even in some fender benders and came out fine. They also say they drive more carefully than people that wear seatbelts.
Is it safe for them to not wear a seatbelt? They are standing right in front of you, it's hard to deny that they are still alive and fine.
My dad was like this for a long time, I don't think we ever convinced him. At some point he got a ticket from a cop for not wearing a seatbelt and that seems to have worked. I guess that part of the analogy doesn't translate very well.
cjet79
1yr ago
If I don't have a red highlight on my name I'm not giving a warning or speaking about breaking the rules. Any mod warnings to not do something should be as clear as possible. I will often say something obvious like "don't do this" or "this is just a warning".
I was giving you information you might find useful.
We just recently added new moderators, so comments are far less likely to sit in the filter for a long time.
Will we ever remove the new user filter? Absolutely not. It's one of our only ways to enforce bans. And it's one of the best ways to prevent low effort trolling. Otherwise banned users can just create new accounts.
cjet79
1yr ago
This is the kind of design I'd argue against:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=beck+and+stone&atb=v390-1&ia=web
The throughlink to a search engine is intentional. Please don't direct link.
cjet79
1yr ago
I "mostly designed" it. I did operate on concessions to other parties, and things that "look good" that "most website do" are hard to argue against.
Part of my original question is looking for a design group that says "obscene amounts of white space is stupid" because I constantly have to have these arguments.
Gwern's website is closer to my preference.
cjet79
1yr ago
This is a website I built, and mostly designed:
https://www.mpsbrettonwoods.org/
My disdain for empty space has probably created the opposite problem of things being too cramped. But the audience is monetary economists. The kind of people that read books, and write books.
A book is nothing but a wall of text and it's a design that has endured for hundreds of years. I think as long as a design isn't more dense than a book then it's fine.
cjet79
1yr ago
I like this description, it's also one of myain complaints when being asked to implement that type of design. It's vacuous and looks best when there is very little content.
It's an anti-content type of design.
cjet79
1yr ago
How do people feel about white space in web design?
There has been this ongoing trend of massive amounts of white space, where it's basically a single sentence per screen. I find the experience awful on desktop. But only mildly annoying on mobile.
I'm also trying to find professional web design blogs or posts that point out how annoying this trend is. Instead all designers seem to have nothing but nice things to say about white space. Rather than making me think I'm wrong for going against all designers I instead just think the whole profession is wrong.
cjet79
1yr ago
I often find reasons to like my own culture and dislike the culture of others. Its definitely motivated reasoning some of the time.
cjet79
1yr ago
I've lived most of my life in the state of Virginia, and I feel like this kind of courtesy never went away. The public fights I heard about and sometimes experienced were often in other states. The North East was particularly bad during COVID. The puritan ethics that exist up there say that public shaming is not only ok, but necessary and good.
cjet79
1yr ago
I'm sure a case can be made that those regulations are badly written and far too onerous, but I'm very happy that we do actually regulate them.
I might be misinterpreting you because of the "but" in your sentence:
It is not contradictory to think "I'm glad a thing is regulated" and "the regulations on that thing are too onerous".
A regulation can be too onerous when the cost of the regulation is greater than the expected benefit in safety.
An example: imagine a 1 in 10 chance of a $1 million dollar disaster -$100k expected value. A safety regulation reduces that chance by 50%, meaning the value of that safety regulation is $50k. If it costs more than $50k to implement it is onerous.
Some laws pass this hurdle, others don't. Seatbelt laws pass. Child safety seat laws fail.
There are multiple reasons to believe that nuclear power regulations are going to tend to be more onerous:
- Fears of radiation are overblown. Most voters don't understand the actual dangers of radiation and nuclear power plants, politicians have an incentive to cater to these fears.
- The US military doesn't care about economics and costs and just wants to make sure certain capabilities remain outside of civilian control.
- Bootleggers and Baptists type story with oil producers and environmentalists.
cjet79
1yr ago
They also deal with a galaxy of government regulations.
I still dont know if they'd be profitable without both the regulations and the subsidies, but it at least makes me uncertain.
I'd also guess that the best application for nuclear engines is strictly forbidden by regulations: maritime usage. The US Navy has nuclear submarines and nuclear powered aircraft carriers. The US Navy isn't stupid. Nuclear power has a really good power density ratio, especially when you are surrounded by unlimited water.
Disclaimer: all guesses, just talking out of my ass.
cjet79
1yr ago
Holidays always seem to be terrible for moderation. I banned someone on thanksgiving. I banned someone on christmas. And you have made a good attempt for getting me to ban someone on new years eve.
I'd rather not go for the hat trick, so this is just a warning. You don't post here often, and you don't have any past warnings. This kind of post is bad, don't do this.
cjet79
1yr ago
Boo outgroup post, again. Permaban for now. Will discuss with other mods if they want to make this not permanent.
Past examples of us telling you not to do this:
https://www.themotte.org/post/253/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/47021?context=8#context https://www.themotte.org/post/304/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/53213?context=8#context https://www.themotte.org/post/427/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/82679?context=8#context https://www.themotte.org/post/521/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/105435?context=8#context https://www.themotte.org/post/601/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/124016?context=8#context https://www.themotte.org/post/610/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/125473?context=8#context https://www.themotte.org/post/632/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/130783?context=8#context
cjet79
1yr ago
Did he request a ban? if so then yeah he can be unbanned.
If his behavior got him banned, then no he is staying banned.
cjet79
1yr ago
cjet79
1yr ago
We do see the overall results of the user moderation, but not the specific votes. I'm not sure how zorba set up the calculations behind the scenes.
I think it's good that you are basically seeing what we have to do.
Leave alone vs warn vs temp ban vs permanent ban. The added complication for us is that we have to also write something to go along with a punishment decision. That does make me marginally less harsh as a mod. Especially if there are just lots of small things wrong. But it probably makes me more harsh when it's just one really bad thing in an otherwise ok post.
Oh, maybe I misunderstood your whole original argument. There is often a trans talking point that studies one elite athletes have never been done, and that is mostly true because elite athletes are rare. Which is why I was talking about a whole rareness based argument. But in that case of just studying regular athletes, yes those studies exist (and they aren't hard to find), and yes transwomen have an advantage.
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/11/577.full?ijkey=yjlCzZVZFRDZzHz&keytype=ref
Are you against transwomen participating in sports now? A ~10% advantage is nothing to scoff at. Though maybe I did this backwards and should have asked if you would pre-commit to changing your mind if you were shown a study with these results.
I don't blame you if the study doesn't change your mind. I think if the study had the opposite results I wouldn't change my mind either. I'd just be suspicious of the study and the industry of science. So don't interpret this as a "gotcha" post, I'm genuinely curious if this moves your needle at all.
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