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I do not understand what your analogy is referring to here.
The same is true of the person that has not died in a car accident from never wearing a seat belt.
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.
But I'm not talking about a super rare event?
Trans athletes exist. More than enough to do a statistical analysis on.
In sports that are competitions between two people, the average win rate must but 50%. Do trans athletes in those competitions win statistically more than 50% of the time?
In swim meets with 2 trans and 48 cis competitors, we would expect the trans athletes to place in the top 5 ~20% of the time. Do they place that often, or more, or less?
In women's baseball, what's the average RBI of cis vs trans hitters? What's the spread?
Etc. None of this is low probability stuff, it's normal sports records of the type you could see at any moment when you turn on ESPN.
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.
So first of all, as I say in another reply, that's a measure of some specific atomic abilities, not of athleticism in general, which is the thing I specifically said we don't have a good measure of. I realize that's a mushy distinction and there's no real solid operational definition of 'athletic ability' beyond 'do they win more often at athletic competitions,' but that's my point... 'Do they win more often at athletic competitions' is the thing we actually care about here, and the data already exists in the form of actual results from actual competitions, so let's look at that.
But more importantly, my next sentence after that is
My argument doesn't hinge on the population average because that's not where competitive athletes are drawn from. It hinges on the positive tail of the distribution, which is why a lower population having a lower range of outliers is central to the argument.
We have a study. It shows trans people have a physical advantage. Physical abilities, much like mental abilities, are almost always a package deal. Just like knowledge tests can have g-loading, physical tests have an equivalent. It's why training camps for both baseball and American football often have athletes doing the same exercises for very different sports.
And this study doesn't move your needle at all?
If that's the case I just don't get the sense that a study would convince you, or anyone else really. Which is fine, I don't think I'd be convinced either by a study showing the opposite result. I would just find it too strange.
The study wasn't about the population average? The participants were people in the Air Force. Which is going to be a subset of generally more athletic people. But I've seen your objection elsewhere it's not the exact subset you claim matters. But then we come back to my seatbelt denier analogy. You can make the exact subset so tiny and specific that no study will ever convince you.
It looks like you are pretty busy in this thread. I'd say prioritize responding to anyone else over me. I mostly care not at all about this topic, it just happened to be at the top of the culture war thread today.
It's Bayesian evidence towards your side, of course. I'm explaining why it's not enough evidence to tip my model entirely, because I think the correct model is more complex than that.
I place a high threshold on taking rights away from people and restricting what they're allowed to do. Stuff like this is suggestive but I'm explaining why the model is too complex for it to be definitive. I'm not confident that there's no advantage, I'm confident there's not enough evidence of one to justify bans at this stage.
And again, I'm saying that there's a simple and direct measure we could be looking at instead -win/loss records - and pointing out that I'm not very persuaded by any arguments that don't involve referring to or caring about that.
Its not strictly taking away anyone's rights. As far as I know these athletes are still allowed to compete on the male side of the sport. If you object that obviously they aren't competitive, then I could point to everything you've argued above and flip the argument on its head. Has the exact study you want been done on the male side of things? If not, you have an isolated demand for rigor.
Part of why I don't care very much about this issue, is I'd be fine with the ending of gender separated sports. Tough shit if women can't compete, the world ain't fair. I say that with daughters who will very likely compete in high school and possibly college sports competitions. Still don't care. I understand I have a minority view on that point, and if you want to have female sports it makes sense to actually try and preserve them.
I remember the people who said 'Gay men aren't missing any rights, we both have the same right to marry a woman' back when gay marriage was on the docket. It wasn't convincing then, either.
Of course, we're in early days on this question, too. I expect a lot less variance and a lot more knowledge in another 10 years, and a lot more in another 50. I'm just looking at history on these types of fights and saying 'lets hedge towards giving the people the rights they want so long as we don't see any clear harm in doing so'.
Anyway. My post was full of proposed mechanisms that are directional, towards trans athletes being worse than cis male athletes. The 'uncertainty' is about whether all those negative factors on trans women bring their performance down to match cis women, or not. Not uncertainty about whether their performance is moving away from teh cis male mean, or in which direction.
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