Epistemic Scoundrels Mega-Thread

[Carl-Richard]

1 minute ago, SwiftQuill said:

@Carl-Richard I think being educated about philosophy of science would help. But I'm not going to insist on citations and philosophers and all of that. I've made my position clear on why I think the video is low perspective.

I think you name-dropped Kuhn because you view everything through that lens because it's easy to dismiss perspectives not based on substance / specific points but "lowness of perspective".

[SwiftQuill]

@Carl-Richard I wrote a decent summary of why I perceive that video as a low perspective. All of my arguments are focused on substance. I've actually gone more in depth describing the issues with the example I gave, in this thread, than many other people who posted other examples. On Kuhn, I think it is important for people who engage in debates about science to know the basics. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, this is introductory stuff in the topic. And if people skip philosophy of science... and then engage in debates on science, they risk believing in wrong assumptions. You think my mention of Kuhn is too much or wrong, that's fine. I'm not going to insist on that issue.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, SwiftQuill said:

@Carl-Richard I wrote a decent summary of why I perceive that video as a low perspective. All of my arguments are focused on substance. I've actually gone more in depth describing the issues with the example I gave, in this thread, than many other people who posted other examples.

None of it had anything had to do with Kuhn, more than anything scientific having anything to do with Kuhn. You can apply a meta-lens to everything all the time but it lacks substance. The video I linked was two scientists fighting over whether the current state of physics is good or whether things are getting stale and a revolution is in hand and that some are preventing this from happening and the history behind things becoming stale, etc. That's Kuhnian "substance".

Edited May 31 by Carl-Richard

[SwiftQuill]

4 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

None of it had anything had to do with Kuhn, more than anything scientific having anything to do with Kuhn. You can apply a meta-lens to everything all the time but it lacks substance. The video I linked was two scientists fighting over whether the current state of physics is good or whether things are getting stale and a revolution is in hand and that some are preventing this from happening and the history behind things becoming stale, etc. That's Kuhnian substantively.

In my opinion we're in a period of paradigm lock. Because academia is woke and is too afraid of publishing studies that come across as "transphobic". It is possible in the future there will be so much evidence that scholars and scientists will stop being afraid, and will stop canceling and firing one another, and grow a pair and address this issue once and for all. So no I didn't name drop Kuhn for the sake of it. And I've already explained by mentioning Kuhn I was mostly referring to externalism. People who use science as source of information and over rely on studies tend to not understand the concept of externalism in science. That's my point. And if you keep insisting that I was wrong for mentioning Kuhn, that's fine. Replace Kuhn with externalism. John Oliver doesn't understand externalism.

[Carl-Richard]

10 minutes ago, SwiftQuill said:

In my opinion we're in a period of paradigm lock. Because academia is woke and is too afraid of publishing studies that come across as "transphobic". It is possible in the future there will be so much evidence that scholars and scientists will stop being afraid, and will stop canceling and firing one another, and grow a pair and address this issue once and for all. So no I didn't name drop Kuhn for the sake of it. And I've already explained by mentioning Kuhn I was mostly referring to externalism. People who use science as source of information and over rely on studies tend to not understand the concept of externalism in science. That's my point. And if you keep insisting that I was wrong for mentioning Kuhn, that's fine. Replace Kuhn with externalism. John Oliver doesn't understand externalism.

Great. Then you also agree that to call a culture of wokeness "paradigm lock" is a bastardization of the concept. Wokeness is not a way of doing science that needs to be upheaved by a revolution which leads to vast changes in the field and unlocks new discoveries that were previously not possible in principle. It's indeed just a culture or sociology that impacts "normal science".

Edited May 31 by Carl-Richard

[Leo Gura]

Quality scientific reaearch on the trans issue is very lacking, from what I have seen. A few studies exist and they are cherrypicked by both sides to rationalize their preexisting political views. And also the people doing the studies cannot be trusted to be objective and epistemically serious. The topic has been too politicized by both sides.

Edited May 31 by Leo Gura

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Here's a cool idea to solve the trans sports issue: give trans women a handicap score.

So, if on average men run 20% faster than women, then a trans woman can compete with women but will need to run 20% faster to win.

It's hard to apply for team sports but works for solo sports like weightlifting or running.

We had a TV show called "Mesternes Mester" (The Master of Masters) where old national athletes from different disciplines and genders competed against each other in different challenges. In some of the challenges, the men were given a handicap (e.g. something to do with weight) because they were men. I did not like this concept when I was 14 and I'm not sure if I like it now. Once you make the rules too tailored to the specific context (overfitting), it loses the feeling of competition. The competition assumes that the stated rules are the same for all, or else it's an exercise.

Edited May 31 by Carl-Richard

[Davino]

Epistemic boss:

What a statement!

[yetineti]

For the sports part of the conversation: 

The variation between men and women and trans people is still too great.

Certain cycling leagues or even the military, measure vO2 max. They’ll have to use something like that, in combination to other things like hormone levels, while maintaining a coherent structure.

Nobody will really care. The sports that have the most competitive essence will adapt but as a niche with low profit; not mainstream.

For the most part I’m sure we can still expect men and women’s leagues, continued trans issues, and things like the ‘Enhanced Games,’ where they explicitly check chromosomes and allow steroids.

Edited June 1 by yetineti

[SOUL]

Genesis 1:27 "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them". So according to the bible God is both sexes, one might even read that as transgender or hermaphroditic. 

Also, using quite a few pronouns there, don't let it trigger you.

 

[Aaron p]

Jesus Christ was kind of an epistemic scoundrel

[Alexop]

@Leo Gura this is the epistemology of a person shortly after they WOKE up from a hangover 

 

 

[Alexop]

19 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Here's a cool idea to solve the trans sports issue: give trans women a handicap score.

So, if on average men run 20% faster than women, then a trans woman can compete with women but will need to run 20% faster to win.

It's hard to apply for team sports but works for solo sports like weightlifting or running.

Still controversial. Many trans-men take T which is considered doping in performance sports.

 

[Dazgwny]

20 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You could even calculate it for team sports. Calculate how much better a men's soccer team is vs a woman's soccer team.

Well I can tell you the gap in standard here is gigantic, absolutely massive. You can find on youtube a game played by a lower level English men’s team Wrexham, against USA women’s national team who were the women’s world champions at the time, so basically a collection of the best women’s players in the world. It’s only a 20 minute game or something like that and it’s total destruction, the men win 12-0 I think it was. The gap in standard is brutally evident

[Leo Gura]

58 minutes ago, Dazgwny said:

Well I can tell you the gap in standard here is gigantic, absolutely massive. You can find on youtube a game played by a lower level English men’s team Wrexham, against USA women’s national team who were the women’s world champions at the time, so basically a collection of the best women’s players in the world. It’s only a 20 minute game or something like that and it’s total destruction, the men win 12-0 I think it was. The gap in standard is brutally evident

In this case, for every trans women on a team the team must score 2 extra goals to win. Something like that.

[integral]

56 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

In this case, for every trans women on a team the team must score 2 extra goals to win. Something like that.

For them to care about this logic they first need to acknowledge the differences between the sexes. They are blind to the differences in favor of values and ideals, so this idea you suggest looks like more inequality.

In addition they will say we should apply the same logic to same sex sports, "if a man is taller he should have a 0.2 second penalty for every inch... (100m sprint) so everything is equal and fair.

They want to eliminate all differences.

Edited June 1 by integral

[yetineti]

@Leo Gura

52 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

In this case, for every trans women on a team the team must score 2 extra goals to win. Something like that.

Are you joking?

[Leo Gura]

9 minutes ago, yetineti said:

@Leo Gura

Are you joking?

Nope.

It's called a handicap. Golf works this way.

I could play a game of golf against Tiger Woods and it would be a fair game. It just requires the right handicap.

Edited June 1 by Leo Gura

[Nemra]

How much of a (dis)advantage do trans men or trans women have, respectively, compared to men or women in sports?

[Leo Gura]

3 minutes ago, Nemra said:

How much of a (dis)advantage do trans men or trans women have, respectively, compared to men or women in sports?

This is an empirical question which just needs to be carefully measured with experimental games.

You can set a soccer game of all natural women vs all trans women and calculate the average difference. You could play 100 such games and get a very accurate handicap.

Edited June 1 by Leo Gura