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Hi MustardSeed. I apologize for my rant about new words and names of places. It distracted from the discussion and I am sorry if it seemed directed at you personally.

Also: https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/113354-scotus-decision-ban-on-talk-conversion-therapy-is-unconstitutional/page/14/#findComment-1210274436 https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/113354-scotus-decision-ban-on-talk-conversion-therapy-is-unconstitutional/page/14/#findComment-1210274474 I am going to stop now, my estimate is a quarter to a third of analytics’ posts that I read through again included explicit comments while some others it’s implied imo.

He has posted a number of pictures of trans men and commented on how well that’s going to go over with women and girls when these trans men are forced to use female only restrooms (or none at all if they are the only ones available). That repeated observation included comments about women’s reactions…which became my primary focus. For example: https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/113354-scotus-decision-ban-on-talk-conversion-therapy-is-unconstitutional/page/11/#findComment-1210274247 This one’s purpose is solely to point out women and girls might not want trans men who present as men in their space: https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/113354-scotus-decision-ban-on-talk-conversion-therapy-is-unconstitutional/page/12/#findComment-1210274294

I don't think Analytics has commented on this much. I should have been more clear about that. My apologies. Thanks, -Smac

Do you mean Mumbai? If so, then I am smiling as I too have moments where I become aware of novelties to me that have actually existed for 30 years or longer. Mumbai became the official name in 1995 according to wiki. So my guess is it was a bunch of fuddy duddies who changed it to be more consistent with a local version rather than the colonial name.

Except what you said was there wasn’t commentary on the impact of women and girls…but there was. Even if you disagreed it was an accurate assessment, it was still present. So it looks pretty much like “not listening” to me when you claimed discussion on impact on females was missing or “precious little”.

I am unclear which lane you picked. The one I labeled "My lane." First, I will again note that these references to people with DSDs are a distraction, as we all know that what is really being discussed is policy preferences designed to let unambiguously male persons into women's spaces. Second, I respectfully reject the claim that there are more than two sexes. There is a sexual binary: male and female. That is it. There is no third sex and no sexless kind of human. Every person is male, female, or (in vanishingly rare DSDs) a disordered mix of those two developmental pathways. Surface uncertainty is not a third category. Modern testing resolves almost all of those cases to one pathway. The handful that stay mixed are still not a third sex. For people with some forms of DSD, I have acknowledged, several times now, that some case-by-case allowances and accommodations can be made for the exceedingly small number of persons who have a DSD and whose biological sex is insuperably epistemically uncertain. Thanks, -Smac

Are you sure the real problem is you aren’t listening? I think there can be, in some circumstances, the tendency to construe disagreement as "not listening." I appreciate you putting a prompt in writing. I do not accept the result as settling the question, for reasons that have nothing to do with “not listening.” 1. Safety is not the only reason those rooms exist. I've said this a lot, and I think you have overwhelmingly ignored and sidestepped it. (I also surmise that this ignoring/sidestepping is a studied and intentional element of the motte-and-bailey tactics being used.) Sex-segregated bathrooms were also built for privacy and propriety: undressing, menstruation, a locked stall next to a stranger of the other sex. “No statistically significant spike in reported stranger rape after a city ordinance” does not answer that. A woman can be wronged without needing to become a crime statistic. Your prompt told the models to weight assault frequency and to treat discomfort as a lesser, “less quantified” harm. That is a value choice baked into the prompt, not a finding. I have been talking about women and girls the whole time. Reducing their interest to “did a paper find more police reports?” is how the impact on them keeps disappearing. 2. There is still no limiting principle. I have have been addressing, and you have been largely ignoring/sidestepping, the utter lack of any meaningful limiting principles in your policy proposal. Again, I think this is a studied element of the motte-and-bailey strategy. “Use the room that matches identity” has no stable stop. Identity is self-reported. If the rule is the claim, then any male who makes the claim is in. You could, I suppose, add “must pass,” “must have surgery,” “must have a letter." Those are different policies. But you have not proposed or defended any of them, and I think intentionally and deliberately so. I surmise that you do not want there to be any limiting principles, because as soon as you present one there will be vitriol from quarters of the trans advocacy groups calling those limiting principles "bigotry" and whatnot. And without limiting principles, the foreseeable effect of your proposal is the eradication of sex-segregated spaces. That is not a moral panic. It is me anticipating the motte-and-bailey switcheroo, and you sidestepping it. To wit... 3. Bathrooms will not stay in their box. If the legal justification is “identity is what the sexed space tracks, and doubting that is bigotry,” there is no principled line that keeps that same justification for putting men in women's changing rooms, shelters, prisons, and sports. Those are not “other topics.” They are the same rule applied to rooms where the stakes are higher. I have already said I want a bright line for that reason. Motte-and-bailey will show up there too: motte = “rare DSDs / rare violent incidents”; bailey = males in the women’s category (bathrooms and changing rooms and sports and prisons). 4. The AI exercise is not evidence. You wrote a prompt that tells three consumer models to ignore one group, treat anecdotes as almost weightless, and compare two crude policies. Those models are trained on the same institutional language your prompt is written in. That they returned Policy A is not a natural experiment. It is three autocomplete engines agreeing with the literature they were fed. Grok’s answer even concedes discomfort under A is “plausible but less quantified,” then still picks A. That is a weighting rule, not a measurement of what women are owed. 5. Policy B as you defined it is not quite my view. I am not trying to march passing trans men into the ladies’ room as a gotcha. The rule I have been defending is sex, observed and recorded as the two reproductive classes—not “whoever looks the part,” and not “whoever says the words.” Awkward edge cases exist. They are not a reason to admit the entire male class on a declaration. Gender-nonconforming women already belong in the women’s room. A sex rule does not require them to look feminine enough for a stranger’s taste. An identity rule does invite strangers to police appearance, which is the confrontation scenario your prompt attributes only to Policy B. 6. Other costs your prompt underweighs: Avoidance: girls who will not use the school restroom, women who skip public facilities. That is harm even when no assault is filed. Predation: the question is not “do most trans people assault women?” It is whether a self-ID door is usable by men who are not dysphoric and do not care about your ordinance’s spirit. The obvious and foreseeable answer is "Yes." Single-occupancy is the actual harm-reducer both sides can live with. Expanding those does not require renaming sex. Category collapse: if “woman” for the door means identity, you have not minimized harm to women. You have changed who counts as the group whose harm you were supposed to measure. Men being told they may not enter the women's bathrooms, and vice versa, is not the same kind of injury as women losing a sexed space. One is a boundary. The other is the erasure of the boundary. I can want people with dysphoria treated decently (medical care, safety from assault, single-user options) without conceding that the women’s room is the remedy. Kindness does not require us to pretend a male is a woman so that the prompt can close. I will keep trying to be measured. I will not treat three chatbots and a harm-only-if-felony frame as the last word on why those doors say “women.” Thanks, -Smac

I found out Friday night that the young have changed the name of Bombay, India. I don't need to say the new name. I guess I dislike all the name changes and new vocabularies needed to communicate with the young. But whatever. Enjoy your new schedule and your new words. Sorry that our words (and schedule?) don't work for you.

I know I am giving myself away as old and out of touch. Is it good, or bad, or something else, to be "gobsmacked", according to the current lexicon among our young people?

We might have forgotten to watch the videos today.

I feel like we need another meeting to discuss the new schedule 😅 I teach GD and a guy in our class who attends every week was gobsmacked to learn that he would be attending Sunday school AND priesthood every week. I told him it was his fault that we had to spend the entire class time watching the videos. ☠️🤣 and then we had to go to RS and watch another video and discuss yet again! Apparently I did not get enough because here I am talking about it again. Heaven forbid bigger changes than this.

Best to you too, Navidad. God brings good out of bad, out of weakness. I hope you and Mrs. Navi the best. God knows what that is for each individually. Its a tough life for most. Keep on. We are getting towards the end. Keep on. We still have maybe greater strength than ever we have known, when we are frail in body. God love you and Mrs. Navidad.

I get this idea and I somewhat agree with it and personally think that one can have meaningfull worship on a noisy, crowded bus too, but if the decorations, the music, the sounds, the design don't help people be in the right headspace why does anyone have them at all? It's because it helps those who are willing to try to get in the right space get there. I think what is wanted in chapels by those who complain is a change of focus. It wasn't all that long ago that the church said the hallways and foyers should have pictures that focus on Christ, yet the room where he is worshipped in a meeting house has no pictures/statues of Christ. So are most of those who are complaining they are not ornate enough really meaning they are not fancy enough or do they just mean the chapels themselves don't remind them of Christ?

That is the hardest part of my health issues for me.

I posted within minutes of your non-edited post. I did not see the part about the catacombs. I assumed you were talking about unadorned simple Catholic churches where the mass either could or would not be as meaningfully experienced as in Notre Dame. I reacted, because my little community has two very non-adorned Catholic churches. They also have no heat or air-conditioning. So they are quite uncomfortable for the parishioners. Ditto for the Pentecostal Assembly of God church in our village. But I would not call them dreadful and undesirable settings. I thought you were doing so. Then, I left the room for a few minutes and came back and deleted my post (still not having seen the catacombs part). I just decided that my one post today was one too many, so I deleted my second one. My truth about today is that my wife and I both are having very bad health days today. I regret it when I am not up to taking the very best care of her. I was worried that truth was eeking out into my posts. That in and of itself might be a dreadful and undesirable thing. Best, Navidad

I am unclear which lane you picked. What binary lane do you put someone who is born intersexed?

For sure. The church would do well to make that effort a bit easier.

Personally, I don't care what the reason is. People are keeping their covenants. I think that's awesome.

In terms of the life of the Church, not at all! Less than two millenia. I tried to emphasize that dreadful settings, necessarily endured with our Lord are wonderful. You might have missed my edit? The importance has to do with necessity. When it became unnecessary to celebrate our faith in ancient tombs, it seemed to be inoffensive and even pleasing to God if we should celebrate in a more congenial atmosphere. I am saying that it might be good if none of God's people assume that a particular of worship, imposed by particular circumstances should be thought to be normative for all times and places. I was giving an approval, for what my approval is worth, if the Latter-day Saints are being led towards a worship space that welcomed a more visual experience of God as well as the auditory. I am not forgetting that "faith that cometh by hearing". But I am thinking that all of our senses can come into play in our worship. PS: I see you changed your mind about posting. That's fair. I did not take your remark in an adversarial way. I hope that my reply clarifies my thoughts in a way that you and our LDS friends find to be reasonable.

Are you referring to this ongoing discussion here?

changed my mind

Maybe my church's best days were underground (the catacombs of Rome). Today we can still see the primitive images of biblical stories painted on the walls. Thank God for our fathers and their best efforts under their circumstances. But when we could freely come out, it would have been unreasonable for my fathers to argue for continuing to worship in a truly dreadful and undesirable setting. Skeletons and skulls in the dark with a candle and Jesus where we gather, can be wonderful when persecuted. But when we can, the truths of the faith of the catacombs has inspired beautiful human art and architecture which in a different culture is an aid to worship too. Thank God for my later fathers who recognized that the Church adapts to every circumstance, and especially with our best efforts to honor and glorify the One that we worship.

That is very well said. I had a friend who became rather well known for saying, "A true friend is one who offers you a different view of the world without making yours wrong." I really like that a lot. If I come across as offering my opinion/belief in order to make yours wrong, then I have failed my friend's test. That wasn't my intent. If your comment was in connection with my latest post, then I receive and accept the kind rebuke. I just hope that doesn't mean that I can no longer offer the same in the future. Please be assured that I will and have offered the same to any church or organization of every kind, just as I have done to organizations all my life. It is how I earned my living. Having said that, I don't want to be in denial because I have blind spots. @bluebell thanks for your comment whether it was offered to me, or not. You have made me think as you so often do. I appreciate that.

Those who are convinced that we are not doing things the “right“ way will often tell us we need to change and behave more like they behave and believe more like they believe. We do the same. We are just honest enough to acknowledge it.