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Is that the idea that was being put forward? I thought we were talking averages and percentiles.
This particular subthread starts with our learned friend in argument @anti_dan stating that to explain sexual dimorphism to an autistic 15 year old he would...
And @anon_ (apologies if I'm misstating your point) and I are pointing out that reality is actually a really noisy signal, and that taking your 15 year old autistic boy and making him play sports (which everyone should do anyway) may or may not lead directly into an understanding of sexual dimorphism. Depends on the kid, depends on the sport, depends on the social groupings the kid is involved in. It's not as simple as "every man is stronger than every woman" and human beings are notoriously bad at dealing with percentage chances that aren't 100/0 or 50/50.
Hypothetical: an only child homeschooled 15 year old boy, the rock climbing gym is his PE class. ((I know several kids/families like this irl, the parents are climbers and think it's a great way to get their homeschooled kid both exercise and socialization)) Which factor is going to cleave reality at the joints better to classify human beings by physical ability: whether they have tits, or whether they have their own climbing harness? In rock climbing, having tits will allow me to say with certainty that you aren't in the top 1% of climbers in the gym and you're less likely to be in the top 5%, but beyond that it has little predictive value: plenty of women climb 5.11 or 5.10, plenty of men can't. "Having your own climbing harness" allows you to make a pretty accurate hard cut: people who don't own gear pretty much never climb anything tougher than a juggy 5.10a. Athletic freaks who climbed 5.11 before buying a harness have been much rarer in my life than women who climbed 5.13.
So is our rock climber kid going to classify reality first by male/female, or by climber/civilian?
I do think that athletics is exposure to reality, hence why Plato tells us that Gymnastics is inimicable to Tyranny. Over time a kid will develop a nuanced understanding of the reality of sexual dimorphism. But, you know, it'll take time, and long exposure across multiple fields, and it will probably be quite nuanced.
Rock climbing (which my phone somewhat appropriately tried to autocorrect to rich climbing) is one of the worst possible examples, because the guy doesn't get to realize he could body the girl 5 feet to his left.
If they did 7 seconds of basic wrestling the confusion would disappear.
Yet, no one struggled with this in 1850. So clearly it is a socialized behavior, this learned blindness to sexual dimorphism.
I think your point is getting a bit lost in this discussion. Anyone who can understand basic statistics can look at the relative differences in population averages.
What exactly is the hypothetical autistic teenager supposed to learn by comparing his performance to other women playing the same sport? It’s unlikely for him to be good enough that he can’t find a single woman who’s better than him. How is it supposed to discourage him from transitioning?
If we are talking about a genuine Austistic kid who in 1850 would have been called slow and awkward and given some simple job like feeding chickens and brushing horses. Nothing changes. Vanishingly few of these people exist, and none are transitioning of their own accord. What the system is doing to them is another thing, they do mostly need to be relocated out of schools and into outdoor day laborer positions as soon as practicable.
If we are talking about colloquial autists, well contention #1 for me is they will be cured of this mental condition by being physically fit and having boot-camp like conditions imposed on them every morning from 8-10 AM. In addition, it will not matter if one girl can beat him at a footrace, he will beat most of them and some other male will beat that fast girl handily. Also if the physical fitness program is well done, even that strong girl at his school will get utterly demolished in anything even resembling physical combat, so say one accidentally runs into him in the hallway. She will fall, he will not. This will be obvious so long as she's not some absolute physical freak like Brittany Griner.
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