So swallow the personal attack accusations and actually give a coherent argument that addresses the OP instead of basic trolling and passive aggressive sniping. — Philosophim

I went back and looked through all my comments on this thread. They were all civil. The only comment I found that was not philosophically appropriate was what I said about your obsession with transgender issues.

This is a controversial and provocative issue. If you’re going to mess around with it, you need to come up with better arguments. Something with substance. That’s what infuriates me about this, not your opinions, but the low quality of your arguments.

Thank you for agreeing with me then. Glad you accept the premise of the OP. — Philosophim

That’s not what I said, and you know it. More importantly, you didn’t respond to my primary point which was:

taking gender into account is not the same thing as “placing gender over sex.” — T Clark

Your bias against me has nothing to do with philosophy or anything intellectual in the slightest. — Philosophim

I think your ideas on transgenderism are poorly argued and supported and I think it’s important that the weakness of your argument be demonstrated. Whether or not I’m doing a good job, that’s what I’m trying to do.

Then you clearly did not read the OP. Oh wait, you already said you didn't. — Philosophim

I did read the OP.

I just replied to his post. — Philosophim

It’s true, I wrote my post before I read your response to @Questioner’s post. Now I’ve read your post and the article Questioner linked to. The results presented in that article were fairly clear, if certainly not without qualifications. Sexual identity, or gender identity, or whatever you want to call it—and even brain structure—can be affected by genetic and hormonal effects both before and after birth. You ignored that.

Suffice to say that you making this claim doesn't make it so. — AmadeusD

He didn’t just make a claim. Unlike you and @Philosophim, he provided references to evidence. If you want to question his evidence, that would make sense, but all you do is wave your arms.

This is one of a few topis that seems to have people A. telling you not to talk about it (or shaming you for it - which is utterly ridiculous) and B. straight-up not engaging in good faith discourse. Some of our best posters such as yourself and Banno do this. Its bizarre. Just absolute non engagement with what's presented. — AmadeusD

Well, I certainly have never told you not to talk about this. I think it’s fine. And I don’t understand why you would say I’m not arguing in good faith.

But I then don't know what it would have to do with. Gender appears to be stereotypes. — AmadeusD

Have you read @Questioner’s post above? Here’s one of the things he had to say:

Perhaps it is simplistic to say a male transgender person has a male brain, or a female transgender brain has a female brain – but the evidence that transgender brain structure and function are different from their biological (physical) sex is there if you care to investigate it. — Questioner

The information included in his post puts the lie to just about everything you and @Philosophim have to say on this subject. Maybe you guys will just lay off on your transgender obsession. Probably not.

Or maybe I’ll just plagiarize what you’ve written in future discussions.

Boy, this is a great post. Really interesting. I’m going to follow up on some of the reading you linked.

To be clear, gender is purely a social expectation that has nothing to do with natural biology. — Philosophim

This is clearly not true. For 99.7% of people, biological sex and gender match each other.

I’ll quote the great Flight of the Conchords:

All the money that we're making is going to the man
(What man?
Which man?
Who's the man?
When's a man a man?
What makes a man a man?
Am I a man?
Yes, technically I am)

I would probably agree that there is a degree of sexism in such a statement, were someone to make it, but it isn't a realistic depiction of gender dysphoria. — Mijin

Nicely put.

Because gender is subjective and subject to the whims of an individual or group, and placing gender over sex in matters of importance matches the definition of sexism, — Philosophim

I’ll bypass most of your OP and just say taking gender into account is not the same thing as “placing gender over sex.”

There’s more to say about your obsession with transgender issues, but I guess that wouldn’t be philosophy.

I think the gospel of Jesus was embraced because it was the first egalitarian philosophy to reach the ears of the oppressed. Jesus was the first egalitarian, elevating the poor to an equal status with the upper levels. The promises were great, as can be seen by the 5th century poem, St. Patrick's Breastplate: — Questioner

I think of Saint Francis, who also preached the value and dignity of the poor, although about 1000 years after Saint Patrick. I always got the impression that his beliefs were considered very close to heresy.

You express your opinions as solid facts. Is that true? Do you have extensive knowledge that backs it up or is it just your surmise?

William Goldman — Tom Storm

He wrote “the Princess Bride,” both the movie and the book. I like both very much. He also wrote a lot of other famous screenplays. the movie is wonderful, but it’s so is the book.

You’re not paying any attention to what I said. We’ve taken this far enough. I am all done.

I see your point, but haven't heard a reason why a range around the mean is superior to the mode. Especially in cases of a bimodal distribution. — LuckyR

In a normal distribution, the mode, mean, and the median are all the same. For characteristics with a non-normal distribution, it probably doesn’t make sense to talk about normality at all. That certainly is true of a bimodal distribution.

I’ll say it again, my definition is a reasonable one, but it’s not the only reasonable one.

Actually, as I think about it, my definition would work for your situation also. The arithmetic mean of the number of fingers on a human hand would be very close to 10, so that my identification of normal as within one standard deviation of the mean would still be reasonable.

I disagree. If the question is: having how many fingers is normal? The average or mean (less than 10) isn't "normal", neither is the median, nor your range. The correct answer is the mode, that is: 10. — LuckyR

In the post I just submitted, I was talking about human body temperature, not number of fingers. Number of fingers is not normally distributed, although most characteristics, including body temperature, are.

So, what’s the normal human body temperature. 98.6°F. What does that mean? I assume that’s the arithmetic mean of values measured in many humans. If you plot a graph of specific temperature ranges versus frequency of occurrence in the sample population, it’s likely the graph will show a bell shaped curve, i.e. a normal distribution. As I understand it, for body temperature the amount of variability around that mean will be small.

Temperatures significantly above or below that value are dangerous to health. It’s reasonable for me to say a temperature of 104° or 93° is abnormal.

:point: :point:
It’s within one standard deviation of the mean
— T Clark — NotAristotle

Keeping in mind this is a definition, not the definition.

that's natural. — Copernicus

It’s called a normal distribution.

Can you define normal? — Copernicus

Sure. It’s within one standard deviation of the mean.

They are the largest surplus resource we have. They are not special. — AmadeusD

I’m shocked to find we disagree on this.

Did you want to design bridges? — NotAristotle

No.

Yeah, it was Chatgpt, the machine that is built to say smart things, that's probably who messed up in this situation. — NotAristotle

There is no doubt in my mind that it’s not ChatGPT’s fault. I’m sure I set the problem up wrong. That’s why they wouldn’t let me design bridges.

I have to agree that he seems a bit pessimistic about the whole alien contact situation.↪ — NotAristotle

I don’t know what you’re complaining about, I was only off by six orders of magnitude. That being said, if there were 100 million star systems with intelligent life evenly distributed throughout the observable universe, the average distance between them would be roughly 125 million light-years.

Keeping in mind that that might be six orders of magnitude off also.

Wait, what happens after 1 million years? — NotAristotle

It’s just an assumption for the purposes of discussion. Strikes me as wildly optimistic. I doubt we’ll be around that long. Make it 10 million years and it doesn’t really change the situation much.

I had ChatGPT do the calculations for me. If one in 1 billion star systems has life and if one in 1 billion planets with life have intelligent life then there would be 40 civilizations in the observable universe. My intuition is that life is much more likely than that. As for the evolution of intelligent life, I have little to offer. Since it took 2 1/2 billion years for multicellular life to evolve from single cell organisms, it’s hard to know if my number is reasonable.

Assuming every intelligent civilization lasts for 1 million years, what is the likelihood that there would be any time overlap in the civilizations? Even if there were 40 civilizations all at the same time, with the distances between them, it seems unlikely there would be any possible contact.

It is possible for objectivity and subjectivity to be both complementary and mutually contradictory. — Pantagruel

If you mean it’s possible for me to experience something as true when it isn’t really, of course you’re right. It’s also possible for me to choose which point of view I take. But then again that choice is based on my subjective understanding.

Objectivity eliminates every contradiction as soon as it incorporates it inside the bigger frame of objectivity. When you say that there is no contradiction, to me it means that, to write that sentence, you have adopted the point of view of objectivity, — Angelo Cannata

As I noted in my previous post, I think it’s just the other way around. All my concepts, thoughts, feelings, understandings, perceptions, and all those other ways of addressing reality are subjective. It’s not wrong to say that so-called objective reality only exists because of those.

In the conflict between subjectivity and objectivity, the logical outcome for subjectivity is to succumb, because success itself, any kind of success, is by its very nature metaphysical, belonging to the realm of objectivity. — Angelo Cannata

I will grant the existence of an objective reality for the purposes of this discussion. The only way we can know that reality is through our own perceptual and mental processes, our subjectivity. What that means to me is that everything you said about objectivity is actually true about subjectivity. You have it exactly backwards.

Now, in reality, neither what you say nor what I say is right. Objectivity and subjectivity are complementary. Neither exists without the other. The world is half human. There is no contradiction.

I appreciate the offer, but I’m already pretty much a skeptic. That’s not exactly right, it’s more like I don’t see the use of modal logic. Which isn’t to say I don’t think it might not have value for others.

Thank you

Thanks

I’ve always had a hard time understanding the value of the possible worlds way of thinking about things. I read the first section of the SEP article and a little bit of the second section.

I am a self-avowed pragmatist. Can somebody explain how I might use model logic to solve problems or clarify concepts.

Why turning to base trolling and name calling I would expect on other forums? — unimportant

I don’t consider expressing my distaste for the OP as trolling and there was no name calling. I didn’t say anything about you, I only commented on the OP.

I am not saying the OP has the highest intellectual vigour and was rightly placed in The Lounge but there is no need for guttural replies as there it was an honest observation and don't see what is 'creepy' about it. — unimportant

I found it disgusting and I expressed that feeling. That seems reasonable to me.

Best thread on TPF in years, OP. — Outlander

It doesn’t surprise me that’s your opinion.

I have some of the same thoughts the OP has. But I don't think babies are all that special. — RogueAI

There is a difference between having thoughts and making them public. And babies are very special. The most special things.

This is the saddest, creepiest OP I’ve ever seen on the forum. It’s worse than even Hanover’s true stories.

I have an idea—why don’t we close out this thread for now. It’s getting sort of personal.

I have had different times when I broke off from the discussion for different reasons. I miss some of those who have wandered off. — Paine

Yes. I feel the same way.