EnergyAmy (u/EnergyAmy)

EnergyAmy commented on Yet Another LLM Rant overengineer.dev/txt/2025... · Posted by u/sohkamyung

Barrin92 · 16 days ago

>Current evidence seems to prefer decentralized theories of consciousness like Dennett

There is no such thing as consciousness in Dennett's theory, his position is that it doesn't exist, he is a Eliminativist. This is of course an absurd position with no evidence for it as people like Chalmers have pointed out (including in that Wikipedia article), and it might be the most comical and ideological position in the last 200 years.

EnergyAmy · 16 days ago

From the link:

> However, Dennett is not denying the existence of the mind or of consciousness, only what he considers a naive view of them

It doesn't seem like he's Eliminativist. It also seems like the criticisms rely on harping on about qualia, which is one of the sillier schools of sophistry. I'd need to see actual criticisms before believing that Dennett is pushing for something comical.

EnergyAmy commented on Google has dropped more than 50 DEI-related orgs from one of its funding lists cnbc.com/2025/08/01/googl... · Posted by u/gslin

meatbundragon · 22 days ago

For those who are reading the parent comment, no, that's not what equity means.

Equity means just and fair allocation of resources and opportunities, not equality of outcomes.

EnergyAmy · 22 days ago

I have personally gone through HR trainings that directly contradict what you're saying. "just and fair" allocation is also a vacuous qualifier. According to whom? If it's just and fair allocation according to someone that believes in equality of outcome, then you're not disagreeing with the comment you're responding to.

I think in practice, equity does in fact mean equity of outcome. Pretending that that's not the case feels like gaslighting to people, and drives people away from DEI initiatives.

EnergyAmy commented on More women than expected are genetically men (2016) novonordiskfonden.dk/en/n... · Posted by u/pavel_lishin

sunshowers · a month ago

We're talking about 99th percentile women competing against each other though?

EnergyAmy · a month ago

If you're talking about trans women competing against women, then no. That's men competing against women. I suspect you're quite aware of that and intentionally confusing the two for rhetorical effect, but that's a great example of why protecting the plain-sense definition of words matters. "Woman" means adult female human, which categorically excludes men regardless of their gender identity.

EnergyAmy commented on More women than expected are genetically men (2016) novonordiskfonden.dk/en/n... · Posted by u/pavel_lishin

dragonwriter · a month ago

> Organisms that produce the larger of two gamete sizes are female, and organisms that produce the smaller of two gamete sizes are male.

That's one of many ways sex is defined and it's definitely useful for some purposes, but I have no idea why some people think that is appropriate for making social distinctions.

> Women have a right to sex-specific sports

Gender (social, including legal, categories based on sex traits are gender, not sex) categories in sports were almost without exception created to prevent men from having to compete with and potentially lose to women. There is certainly an existing practice of gender segregated competition in some some sports and other competitive domains, but I’m not sure where the idea that this practice of segregation is a matter of rights comes from, no matter what basis of assigning gender is used. (Gender segregation has been frequently used as a means of preserving unequal treatment while meeting the US legal obligation for numerically equal opportunities in school sports insuring, but that’s obviously not the same thing as gender segregation being a right.)

EnergyAmy · a month ago

That's the way that sex is defined. There's a few extremist academics who are trying to push their pet redefinition, but nothing serious. The UK Supreme Court ruling affirmed that recently from a legal standpoint, and that marks the high tide of those extremists' efforts. Gender ideology trying to erase sex is over.

> created to prevent men from having to compete with and potentially lose to women

You deeply misunderstand the origin of women's sports leagues. They were created by women for women as a result of patriarchal efforts to exclude women from sports. Men shoving their way into women's sports by way of gender identity is just one more example of males not accepting "no", and is exactly the reason why women have a right to their own spaces.

EnergyAmy commented on More women than expected are genetically men (2016) novonordiskfonden.dk/en/n... · Posted by u/pavel_lishin

lukev · a month ago

> healthy

You're just using more normative words, implying that you can tell what someone "really" is aside from literally any definition you can articulate, since we've established that gamete size does not apply in all cases.

> Sex in humans is binary and immutable, but that doesn't mean boys can't play with dolls and girls can't like trucks or whatever dumb culture war stuff is raging.

Unless you are a biologist who specializes in this, caring so much about this means you are actually very much invested in the culture war.

EnergyAmy · a month ago

> normative words

Look, you're trying to argue with the field of biology as a whole. Good luck.

> since we've established that gamete size does not apply in all cases.

We've established no such thing. Find this mystical person first and then we can talk about something specific, instead of just waving your hands about hypotheticals.

> caring so much about this means

This is the worst sort of argument. Spout pseudoscience, get called on your bullshit, and then pull out "why do you care so much??? :(". Don't spout off in the first place and you won't get called out on it.

EnergyAmy commented on More women than expected are genetically men (2016) novonordiskfonden.dk/en/n... · Posted by u/pavel_lishin

gruez · a month ago

>I don't see the need to create and articulate a universalizeable moral framework to decide how I should react to a specific case in front of me.

You kinda do, otherwise your position just sounds like "why are you talking about trans athletes? You should just Trust the Experts, except when I disagree with them, then it's an Important Moral Issue that the public needs to weigh in on".

>I listed rulemakers and organizers but also athletes themselves. I don't know much about the history of the olympics but I would guess the desires and probably activism of women athletes played a role.

This is a very perilous position to hold, because it basically means if there's enough TERF athletes to outnumber trans women athletes (which doesn't seem too implausible, based on purely demographic factors) then it's okay to exclude them.

EnergyAmy · a month ago

To your last point, most women don't want men in their sports, but have been pressured to go along with it.

It is okay to exclude men from women's sports because women have the right to sex-specific spaces.

EnergyAmy commented on More women than expected are genetically men (2016) novonordiskfonden.dk/en/n... · Posted by u/pavel_lishin

lukev · a month ago

Should produce... given what definition? I thought gamete size was definitive?

Look, I get what you're saying. Such cases aren't "normal". The claim that "humans have two biological sexes" is true in same way as the claim "humans have five fingers." And yet, people with six fingers exist, as do uncommon sex variations. It's fine. It happens.

The only reason to insist so stridently that there's an absolute and inevitable binary is if you're trying to enforce a social or religious norm, and are insisting that it's an immutable fact about the world instead of something culturally mediated.

EnergyAmy · a month ago

"Should" meaning "would if it were mature and healthy"

> "humans have two biological sexes" is true in same way as the claim "humans have five fingers."

No. There are no intermediates. Nobody produces "spergs" or "speggs". Someone may produce no gametes because they're not yet mature or because of a developmental disorder, but that just means that they will later on in life, or won't produce the gametes their body is set up to produce.

> The only reason

Bullshit. I bring this up because it's a fundamental fact of biology and HN should know better than to push pseudoscience. Sex in humans is binary and immutable, but that doesn't mean boys can't play with dolls and girls can't like trucks or whatever dumb culture war stuff is raging.

EnergyAmy commented on More women than expected are genetically men (2016) novonordiskfonden.dk/en/n... · Posted by u/pavel_lishin

drewcoo · a month ago

> binary M/F

does not exist for sex or gender.

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/gender-has-a-history-and-...

EnergyAmy · a month ago

The article is rank nonsense, citing someone that when called on her bullshit backtracked by calling it an "ironic essay":

https://x.com/Fausto_Sterling/status/1229878759261712385

She is deeply unserious, and should be ignored if you value truth.

EnergyAmy commented on More women than expected are genetically men (2016) novonordiskfonden.dk/en/n... · Posted by u/pavel_lishin

lagadu · a month ago

Having and X or Y (or even multiple of each, as some people do, XXY and XYY are real, even single X or Y too) is binary, what's not binary is how it doesn't perfectly correlate with the sex (not even getting into gender here) that the person in question belongs to.

EnergyAmy · a month ago

XXY and XYY and whatnot are all variations within a sex. Sex is defined by gamete size, females produce the larger gametes and males produce the smaller gametes. In humans, this is binary and immutable.

EnergyAmy commented on More women than expected are genetically men (2016) novonordiskfonden.dk/en/n... · Posted by u/pavel_lishin

Kye · a month ago

I forget the details, but someone asserting clear lines on Twitter some years ago was asked to define woman, and people kept hitting them with examples that matched the proposed definition like chairs and horses.

EnergyAmy · a month ago

It's not squishy, and it's not hard. Woman means adult female human, and female means someone that produces the larger of two gamete sizes. That's the real, literal biological definition.

Since I'm rate limited, to be slightly more specific, it's the gamete size one would or should produce. I elided that part but biologists are well aware of disorders of development.

Another edit: This has nothing to do with religion or any sort of intelligent design woo. Read "should" as "would if it were mature and healthy".