Jump to content
Seriously No Politics ×

All Activity

This stream auto-updates

  1. Past hour
  2. Sigh. You are ignoring what I say, fighting against a straw man, and making wild proposals that will harm the people you say you want to protect (i.e. woman and girls--using your definitions). Or so it seems to me. I asked ChatGPT to look at every post in this thread and evaluate this. I’ll put the prompt in a quote box and GPT’s response below in blue. GPT: I read the supplied conversation from forum pages 10 through 23, including the later posts where Analytics and Smac clarify positions that were less precise earlier. I am using “women and girls” exactly as you requested: biological females, regardless of gender identity or expression. Answers 1. Has Analytics addressed the impact of the various bathroom policies on women and girls? How much? Yes, substantially and repeatedly. A recurring part of his argument is that a strict biological-sex rule itself harms females—particularly by requiring very male-presenting biological females to enter women’s facilities, thereby creating fear, confrontation, and privacy problems for other females. My read is broadly consistent with Calm’s later estimate that roughly one-quarter to one-third of Analytics’s posts contained explicit discussion of the impact on females, with the issue implicit in additional posts. 2. Has he argued that Smac’s proposed laws will do more harm than good to women and girls, and that this is one of the main reasons he opposes them? Yes. Analytics repeatedly frames the issue as a harm-benefit comparison, saying Smac’s laws create “real-world problems to solve a hypothetical problem,” questioning whether they do “more good than harm,” and eventually stating expressly that the biological-sex requirement “harms women and girls.” That is clearly one major reason for his opposition, although not the only one; he also emphasizes liberty, harms to transgender people, lack of demonstrated need, and legal/constitutional concerns. 3. Does his preferred bathroom policy require the formulation of a strict “limiting principle”? If not, should he be required to articulate one? No strict categorical limiting principle is logically required by his basic proposal, because his proposal is essentially “don’t enact a law assigning everyone to a restroom by sex.” He nevertheless eventually articulates a softer principle: use the restroom that minimizes discomfort, use it for its ordinary purpose, and obey laws against harassment, voyeurism, intimidation, etc. I would not require him to invent a bright-line sex/anatomy rule merely to defend not having a bathroom-assignment law—although if he were proposing an affirmative legal entitlement overriding property owners or institutional rules, a more administrable legal standard would be necessary. 4. Would expanding Analytics’s reasoning to other settings give men carte blanche to enter women’s changing rooms, shelters, prisons, and sports? No. That is not a fair description of his position. Analytics explicitly says those are “separate issues”; he supports allowing sports organizations to exclude biological males from female competition, and he says prisons and shelters should make context-specific decisions. His locker-room position is more permissive and less sharply defined, but even there he discusses conduct, nudity, and privacy separately rather than asserting an unrestricted right of entry. 5. Is Analytics arguing that the word “woman” be radically redefined? Not as a biological term. He explicitly says that when he calls a transgender woman a “woman,” he is using woman as a gender/social category, “rather than as a synonym for adult human biological female”; he simultaneously says that this does not require pretending biological sex has changed. Smac can reasonably object that this is a broadened social usageof “woman,” but Analytics is not claiming that biological males thereby become biological females. 6. In my opinion, is “the foreseeable effect of Analytics’s proposal the eradication of sex-segregated spaces”? Has Smac provided valid evidence for that view? No, if “eradication” means that men’s and women’s facilities disappear or cease functioning as distinct spaces.Analytics’s policy would admittedly make them less than perfectly sex-exclusive under your strict biological definition, because some biological males could use women’s rooms and some biological females could use men’s rooms; but that is very different from eradicating the two-space system. Smac has provided valid evidence that offenses and privacy conflicts sometimes occur in female facilities, but he has not provided evidence establishing the much stronger causal claim that Analytics’s policy foreseeably causes sex-segregated facilities to disappear; his strongest case for that proposition is conceptual rather than empirical. 7. Which proposal is more radical? Will Analytics’s proposal lead to the eradication of sex-segregated spaces? As a matter of government policy, I think Smac’s is more radical: it takes what historically operated largely through social convention and individual judgment and turns it into a categorical, legally enforced biological-sex rule. Analytics’s position is more revisionary if the baseline is strict biological exclusivity, but overall it leaves the familiar men’s/women’s restroom system intact and changes how difficult edge cases are handled; I do not think it foreseeably leads to the practical eradication of separate men’s and women’s spaces. Representative quotes Analytics: “What is your basis for thinking that the laws you support are doing more good than harm?” Analytics: “The laws you support are creating real-world problems to solve a hypothetical problem. The tradeoff isn't worth it.” Analytics: “The limiting principle should be this: if you need to go to the bathroom, go in to the one you think is most appropriate…” Analytics: “Do sex-distinct facilities have value? Sure. Nobody is arguing against that.” Analytics: “I'd love to hear a professional psychologist explain why requiring this individual to use women's restroom would be psychologically beneficial to women and girls.” Analytics: “Sex-distinct restrooms in free societies have thrived for generations without laws assigning every person to a restroom according to biological sex.” Analytics, on locker rooms/sports/prisons: “Those are separate issues. If we want to analyze them rationally, we should treat them as separate issues.” Analytics, on sports: “If you are transgender and want to swim, then swim with the boys. Or don’t swim.” Analytics: “I was using [‘woman’] as a gender category rather than as a synonym for adult human biological female.” Analytics: “Your preferred solution—requiring people to use the restroom that corresponds to their biological sex rather than their gender expression—harms women and girls.” Smac: “Bathrooms will not stay in their box… there is no principled line” preventing the reasoning from reaching changing rooms, shelters, prisons, and sports. Smac: “There are documented incidents of males accessing female facilities and committing offenses.” He then provides a list of examples. The biggest thing I think the full 14-page exchange establishes is that Smac’s characterization of Analytics as simply ignoring women and girls, opposing sex-separated spaces, refusing any limiting principle, and necessarily opening every female setting to every male is not a good description of Analytics’s actual position by the end of the discussion. Smac has serious substantive objections to Analytics’s position, some of which are legitimate policy questions, but several times he turns a disagreement with Analytics’s answer into a claim that Analytics has not answered the question at all.
  3. Today
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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
  7. I don't think Analytics has commented on this much. I should have been more clear about that. My apologies. Thanks, -Smac
  8. 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.
  9. 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”.
  10. 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
  11. 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
  12. 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.
  13. 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?
  14. We might have forgotten to watch the videos today.
  15. Yesterday
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. 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?
  19. That is the hardest part of my health issues for me.
  20. 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
  21. I am unclear which lane you picked. What binary lane do you put someone who is born intersexed?
  22. For sure. The church would do well to make that effort a bit easier.
  23. Personally, I don't care what the reason is. People are keeping their covenants. I think that's awesome.
  24. 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.
  25. Are you referring to this ongoing discussion here?
  26. 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.
  27. 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.
  1. Load more activity
×
×
  • Create New...