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Comment by tomlock | Hacker News Reader

> you should know that I'm currently a graduate student studying science.

Considering you just invoked appeal to authority, does this seem the slightest bit ironic to you?

> I'm against "science" as a political cudgel. I'm against supporting or rejecting theories based on ideology rather than evidence. I'm against politicians and political activists meddling in science or using selective quoting of unsettled science for political ends.

Awesome. Considering the overwhelming evidence that gender isn't determined in a simple binary fashion, I'm sensing a contradiction here. Have you considered that perhaps you may be wielding a political cudgel of your own?

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There's no contradiction because I never said and do not believe that gender is binary. That's a strawman anyway, no one claims that even sex is binary (no one who knows that hermaphrodites exist, at least). And there's no irony because pointing out that I'm studying science wasn't an appeal to authority, but an obvious disproof of your suggestion that anyone who disagrees with you is anti-science.

BTW, both "binary gender" and "climate change" are off-topic in this discussion about neurobiological differences between the sexes. You have no reason to bring them up here other than to suggest that disagreeing with you is somehow equivalent to denying climate change.

I'd find you much more convincing if you contributed some empirical evidence to the discussion instead of invoking "science" as a magic word.

Oh? So you don't think sex is binary but want to discuss neurobiological differences "between the sexes"?

Which ones do you want to discuss the differences, between?

Another strawman. The existence of biological sexes other than the two most common (male and female) doesn't negate the existence of male and female.

Biological sex isn't actually a spectrum (it's not one-dimensional), but using that analogy, it's bimodal, not binary.

Actually, it does negate the existence of two discrete categories of people that you can ascribe intrinsic biological differences to. You'll always have to delineate the categories at some arbitrary point, and since the delineation is arbitrary, you'll therefore never be sure if your categories are correct.

The usual delineation of male and female isn't arbitrary, it's based on biological mechanisms of reproduction.

Only how (or if) one chooses to include those few who don't fit these categories is fluid.

In other words, there's some uncertainty at the margins, but in the vast majority of cases, biological sex is clear.

If there is uncertainty at the margins, the category is arbitrary.

That is clearly not true, and is an example of a continuum or line-drawing fallacy.

I've not heard of that fallacy. By what authority is it derived? Source? :)

If you can't clearly define a category, any intrinsic traits of that category are not ascribed clearly to individuals. Any uncertainty, even on the margins, makes the definition uncertain. Clear definition is a lack of uncertainty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy

The fallacy is the argument that two states or conditions cannot be considered distinct (or do not exist at all) because between them there exists a continuum of states.

In other words, your reasoning is a textbook example of this fallacy.

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