EnergyAmy

How do we know they don't feel true pain? Can you define it well enough? Perhaps humans are the ones just "simulating" pain.

We've proven that they can have substance, we imbue it with a process called RLHF.

Airplanes and bees are both structured entirely differently and yet they still both fly.

Just because LLMs don't work the same way the human brain does, doesn't mean they don't think.

You can do that with an extension, I do a 2x2 workspace. Although extensions can be problematic and break between versions, I haven't had any issues with this one.

Part of his arc was posting about himself on Reddit using sockpuppets, calling himself a genius:

https://comicsalliance.com/scott-adams-plannedchaos-sockpupp...

Your first link seems like he was just trolling. He says "intelligent design" and then defines it in a way that nobody else would.

> What he means by intelligent design is the idea that we are living in a computer simulation. We are overwhelmingly likely to be “copies” of some other humans who intelligently designed us, in a virtual reality.

That seems to have been pretty common with him. "I believe in X. And by X I mean Y. Look at all these people talking about X, aren't they stupid?"

You're still not providing any citations, why is that?

It's not about what motivates me, it's about the scientific consensus in the field of biology. The same consensus that has remain unchanged for well over a century. I've provided citations affirming this consensus, and you've refused to back up your comments. Why not just admit that you're wrong?

EDIT: Rate limited by HN, so I guess we are done here. I'm not sure why you think prompting you to get specific about the group means being unaware of it. I'm rather disappointed in your bluster, it makes me wonder in retrospect if I've been baited into arguing with a bot.

I'm literally asking you to get specific so we can talk about particulars, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.

I don't really get the point of this dance you're doing. Why not just admit that you don't have anything to back your comments up?

You're still not providing any citations, why is that? Surely you can ask some of the people in field work that you run with.

I'm also not sure why you're so focused on Colin Wright when I provided other examples of people affirming the same stance, as previously stated. Take your pick, or provide citations of your own.

Do you have a particular example in mind for the South African hermaphrodites?

I look forward to your citations supporting any of your points.

The gamete-based definition of sex is merely a description of reality.

I continue to look forward to your citation disputing the truth of what he lays out in that paper, or the other links I provided that affirm the same stance. Ad hominems are boring, don't you have anything?

You unfortunately don't really understand the point here, but to reiterate, just because someone is born with nonfunctional/missing gonads doesn't mean their body isn't sexed. As an analogy, if someone is born without a hand, we don't just shrug and say that it could've been a fin, or antlers, or a firetruck. That's the point of saying that their body is organized around the production of one of exactly two gamete types.

There's no conflict, physical form and chromosomes are variations within a sex, which is entirely defined by gametes. Chromosomes are part of how sex is determined, but gametes are how sex is defined.

I look forward to your citations of these people doing field work that support your points.

You can't legislate reality away. If you're tracking biological sex, then it doesn't matter what a court decides. If you're tracking legal fictions then you might.

I look forward to your citation disputing the truth of what he lays out in that paper. In the meantime, feel free to peruse the list here of people affirming the same stance:

https://projectnettie.wordpress.com/

Or someone else:

https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/33/2/in-humans-sex-is...

You should ask the people you run with why no human is born with a body not organized around the production of gametes. You'll notice that when you read about conditions like anorchia or ovarian agenesis, the sex of the person with that condition is not a mystery, it's literally in the name.

Biology is messy indeed, and that's why finding such a universal definition was so useful.

Technically correct, but to be specific sex is binary, not merely bimodal. Sex is entirely defined by gametes, and is binary in anisogamous species such as humans. Isogamous species don't have sexes, they have mating types (and often many thousands of them).

There's actually an ideological movement to try to redefine sex based on sex traits instead of gametes, but this ends up being incoherent and useless for the field of biology. Biologists have had to publish papers explaining the fundamentals of their field to counter the ideological narrative:

Why There Are Exactly Two Sexes

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-025-03348-3

That's why I thought it was worth mentioning. Many people are confused because of the culture wars. To bring it back around to the general topic of this thread, it's fine to store someone's sex as a boolean, because sex is binary and immutable. Storing cultural constructs like gender as anything other than an arbitrary string is asking for trouble, though.

I'm responding specifically to your comment in regards to "but if you want to talk about biology then" followed by a list of biological variations that don't dispute the sex binary. The goalposts are exactly where you've left them.

You and the other person are probably talking past each other. For most people, "gender" is merely the polite way of saying "sex", and that's probably what the other commenter was referring to.

Gender in the sense of "the social roles and norms on top of biological sex" is indeed a construct, though heavily informed by the biology that they're based on. Biological sex is very much real and not a construct.

XXY/etc are all variations within a sex. The above poster is correct to point out that sex is defined entirely by the gamete size that one's body is organized around producing in anisogamous species like humans, and is binary.

Intersex is a misleading term, the better term is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development. There are male DSDs and female DSDs. Even in the case of ovotestes, you'll have one gamete produced, and the other tissue will be nonfunctional.

Sorry but cars are the worst form of transportation. Not even a "worst except for all the rest", just straight terrible. The US has finally realized how colossal of a mistake it's made over the past few decades and is starting to fix the problem.

I like the language saying "it's not as easy as you think" when I'm about to do something ill-advised like roll my own mutable tree structure.

Is something troubling you? What are your feelings now?

Tell me more about that. I'm not sure I understand you fully.

Does talking about this bother you?

We were discussing you, not me. Are We going to Chat?

Do you believe it is normal to be not sure how to make this any clearer. you're not going to engage in debate. you've asked for an example from the beginning. An example contains both sides. If me wish to provide an example( and you hope me do) it will consist of two interlocutors with 10 to 20 individual statements. The example will demonstrate genuine debate. Do you understand the request?

Perhaps you would like to be able to finish it please? Are We going to Chat? I can't help you without a dialog!

"By existing I mean ..."

As per my previous comment:

> Do you agree or disagree that "trans people existing" is too vague to be meaningful? Alternatively, what exactly do you mean by "existing"?

A genuine response would be responding to that, not metacommentary while refusing to engage. A simple response of "By existing I mean ..." would be perfectly genuine.

I don't really know what to tell you, other than that it would help if you stopped being deliberately obtuse.

"Genuine discussion" includes responding to the topic of "trans people existing" by pointing out that "existing" is vague and needs further definition. That is genuine discussion, inviting you to clarify what you mean by "existing". I helpfully included a few other relevant bits of genuine discussion that welcome related tangents, but directly responded to your comment with genuine discussion directly about "trans people existing".

If you're going to no-true-genuine that conversation that's fine I guess, but I don't really understand the point of wasting time on simple rhetorical tricks that don't fool anyone.

Addressing the point. Do you agree or disagree that "trans people existing" is too vague to be meaningful? Alternatively, what exactly do you mean by "existing"?

I directly addressed your statement. "Trans people existing" is a vague statement that avoids talking about specifics. Discourse is toxic because of rhetorical tricks like this where you desperately try to avoid actual discussion.

Yes

Trying to fight "hey guys" is stupid and tilting at windmills. It's a great example of performative wokeness that achieves nothing but making some people feel good about themselves.