This is an unbelievable tragedy, for all of them. She just turned 18, I wonder what her sentence will be like. I assume that in the US - unlike the situation over here in Europe - there is no special “juvenile justice” for young adults, so she might face multiple lifetimes in prison after being convicted for murder. If I remember correctly you can get separate sentences for each victim, which will sum up to your total sentence.
Wow. The argument against trans women in sports is already unscientific enough. Why is chess even split into gendered categories? This just makes zero sense.
It is generally not, most tournaments anyone can enter. However, there are women-only tournaments because for a lot of social and historical reasons, men dominate the open tournaments.
Interesting side-note fact on the power of social norms: if a woman and man play without knowing each other’s gender the woman will be more likely to win than she would if either party is made aware.
Seriously, a lot of people would play better chess if they weren’t intimidated by their opponent. Unless you consider headology part of the game, the way it is in poker and Cripple-Mister-Onion.
There most certainly is evidence that going through male puberty can confer an advantage in some sports. Not all sports. If there are going to be restrictions placed, I would prefer they be placed by the sports’ governing body, who presumably understands how competition works in their sport, based on science.
In this case, though, it seems to be based on social issues, as some others in this thread have pointed out. There are reasons why the womens-only tournaments were formed in the first place, and some feel that letting trans women in would undermine those reasons. We can’t just pretend those reasons don’t exist.
Socially, I have no problem addressing trans women however they want to be addressed, or letting them use whatever bathroom they want. I would prefer to let the governing bodies of individual sports and activities decide what is most fair for all involved, using science. I think politicians should generally get their noses out of all of it, and leave people alone to discover who they are.
There are reasons why the womens-only tournaments were formed in the first place, and some feel that letting trans women in would undermine those reasons. We can’t just pretend those reasons don’t exist.
Yeah, sadly transphobic bigotry is real and we can’t just pretend it doesn’t exist, we have to fight against it, but there’s no legitimate reason for this
The science here is a bit more roundabout. The women’s leagues appears to have been started in the first place (based on some of the other posters here) because males have more success at the highest levels than females. Everyone acknowledges that this gap shouldn’t exist, yet we still have it. So it’s not a scientific basis justifying the segregation, it’s that science can’t explain the outcomes, so the segregation was established to try and make the outcomes more equitable.
Another poster asked whether trans women somehow need to “prove” that they’re oppressed to the same extent. And, ultimately, that might be what’s required, as absurd as it sounds. Because I think we legitimately don’t know whether this male advantage maps to all males, or just those born male.
Maybe, once we establish some data from more trans women competing at the highest levels, we’ll be able to answer that. For now, they made a decision which basically turns the women’s leagues into cis-women’s leagues.
Didn’t even know there were separate women’s tournaments. Don’t really see the point, honestly, chess isn’t like Greco-Roman wrestling or something where the gender disparity is pretty significant.
But, whatever. On the whole this strikes me as an actually reasonable compromise, so long as they do remain willing to conduct these investigations and reassignments without too much feet-dragging.
It’s just a technicality. The gendered leagues don’t need to exist in the first place. But since they do, cleaving to the rules helps maintain the sense of fairness for all the cis folks. Say, if someone was a teen champion, they would no longer be the teen champion once they aged past their teen years. They become a former teen champion.
I agree it’s fundamentally rooted in transphobia, it’s literally a compromise with it. But I find that preferable to an outright ban of even acknowledging transition in the first place.
And yea, we’ll have to see how they handle it. I definitely noticed them opening the door for foot dragging. It’ll ultimately be up to whoever is actually in charge of their investigative wing though. If they actually are fair about it, this could be a step forward.
Eh. Just because some compromise is bad does not mean all compromises are bad. Every situation is unique, and it’s not like compromise is murder or something.
Democracy outranks human rights. The human rights were put there in the first place by the democracy, and can be amended by it as well. It completely outranks them, unless you believe they are “god-given” or something.
This is why compromise within your own political system, in certain cases, retains value. If your faction is not strong enough, as trans folks in international chess probably aren’t, then it’s a tacit acknowledgement of your right to exist.
Assuming the previous position was an outright ban, anyway. I don’t actually know if it was or not.
I mean, a) no, a whole ass war’s worth of violence was a necessary element, b) we don’t let a simple majority vote change those fundamental human rights, we make amending our constitution very difficult and put important stuff in there that probably shouldn’t be changed for a reason
Well, yea, the war put the voting system in place. After some initial hiccups getting started, the bill of rights was one of the first things voted on.
Just because the amendment process is difficult does not make it undemocratic. Note, I’m trying to be objective here, not say that one is more valuable or important than another. Simply that one is functionally more powerful.
Democracy outranks human rights. The human rights were put there in the first place by the democracy, and can be amended by it as well. It completely outranks them, unless you believe they are “god-given” or something.
Just have to chime in here.
Human rights are fundamental and intrinsic. They can't be "outranked."
Legislating for them and enforcing them is due to institutions such as governments (and in an international context the ICC if, say, the government has become genocidal).
Those Uyghurs had and have rights whether the Chinese government knows it or not. Bad things happening doesn’t make those things suddenly not-bad.
Point being, they’re only intrinsic because we say so.
The sky is only blue because we decided on the word “blue” for that frequency of light, and there’s plenty of other things that are the way they are just because we say so.
And if this isn’t just a “I just don’t think ‘rights’ are the correct word” semantic argument for you here, please refer back to the first two sentences.
I think I see what's going wrong in this conversation.
By definition, "rights" can be legal, social, or ethical.
To you, they are only a legal thing and if they don't exist in law or custom, then to you they don't exist.
But to me, (and others here) they also have an ethical dimension and exist as an ethical value independent of the legal or social useage.
Saying ethics depend on laws and customs would be moral relativism (which is a tricky thing to hold for most people, because of the implications around stuff like child rape and murder being ok if everyone was doing it).
I agree. I explicitly said I’m only referring to which one is functionally more powerful.
I would point to history though, to show thousands of years where rape and child murder were considered just fine, in certain circumstances. You had to be conquering a city or something, but then it wasn’t too unusual to murder and sell the population into slavery.
Ethics, in its entirety, is also one of our creations. We all tacitly agree to something of a unified code of ethics that we follow to keep our societies running smoothly. This code, unless it was given by some divine structure, though, remains one of our constructions, through whatever governmental/organizational structure we exist in.
Just curious, are you pointing to history because you are adhering to moral relativism (i.e you think that doing those things was just fine because so many people thought it was)?
No, I am not describing my personal beliefs, merely arguing what I perceive to be an objective position. I think the idea that right and wrong can exist outside of people’s judgements is a little silly, honestly. I am not a philosopher though, admittedly.
I'm actually not trying to argue with you, @Candelestine, just trying to work out what your perceived "objective position" is so I can understand you. It does kind of sound like moral relativism if you think "wrong" is only a construct.
If that's the case, I can see why you don't believe in inalienable human rights.
So, I guess I don’t. I give people inalienable rights, but I do not think they exist outside of our opinions. We choose the things we value, and some things make more sense to value than others.
This is why it remains so important to fight for the rights of people. Because otherwise we will not necessarily receive them.
Thanks for explaining your position. One nitpick, if rights only exist when/where they are given, then they can't be "inalienable". You believe rights are alienable (able to be removed).
But I agree with you totally about the importance of fighting for rights to be extended politically, recognised and not violated.
In the end, it doesn't much matter whether you think people have rights from an ethical point of view or if you just think they should be given them - we both want the same outcome.
The only problem arises if there is a group of people you want to take human rights away from.
The gendered leagues exist to promote women in chess. They need to do this because women have historically been discriminated against. These new rules feel like they are asking trans women to prove they are oppressed enough to deserve to play in women’s leagues.
Some of the requirements for the change in status is problematic as well.
That is a hard requirement to meet in large chunks of the world. Many countries don’t legally recognize gender change so it may be quite literally impossible to comply with “national laws and regulations.” There’s some carve out for asylum and refugee status. But it is possible to be a trans woman in a country, not be able to legally change your gender, and not feel unsafe enough to seek asylum.
I’m reading more on the titles now. So from the actual FIDE document:
And from what [FIDE titles]en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE_titles) are on Wikipedia. It seems there is an underlying misogyny in how women’s titles work. It seems to me the proper solution is to get rid of the separate title requirements.
Ooh, that’s clever. They ducked out of having to set their own criteria.
That definitely changes things somewhat. I was assuming the investigation would involve your doctor providing testimony, not whatever hoops your local jurisdiction may or may not have in place.
I suppose women’s leagues had more value in the past than they do now, I don’t see any problems with just getting rid of them at this point. But this could just be my western perspective speaking. They might still have great value in other parts of the world.
It now sounds like they just ducked the issue though, for the most part. Not setting their own criteria or using the criteria of an international medical association was a little underhanded. Just because the local laws vary from place to place shouldn’t mean trans folks from some places can’t win chess tournaments anymore.
Honestly that surprises me a lot less though. Chess is unusually popular with intellectual-leaning bigots for some reason, it’s a bit of a refuge for racism sometimes. Makes me really glad Magnus is the top player these days, he’s a bit more of a modern guy.
I think women’s leagues have their place still. Or some kind of system to encourage more women into chess. There’s currently 15.7k men with titles and only 4k women with titles. Until those numbers get closer I would want to see some kind of action taken.
If you want to get radical with women’s league you can just have the requirement for them to declare that you are a woman. It can quite literally be a checkbox on a forum when registering. Social pressure will take care of most of the issues. The edge case of men regesterioin bad faith can be handled on a case by case basis.
We really do need some better way to catch cis folks mis-registering in bad faith. It’d resolve some issues around the whole broader battle.
We could just do blood tests. Check for a wider variety of steroids in professional sports while we’re at it. Then, your hormone levels would classify you, not anything you could say or choose.
We really do need some better way to catch cis folks mis-registering in bad faith. It’d resolve some issues around the whole broader battle.
No we don’t and no it wouldn’t, bigots are just going to come up with the next excuse for their bigotry while we’re subjecting innocent people to things that are (as you aptly put it) invasive as all hell
Yeah, but otherwise they’re just going to keep shutting it down with accusations of cheating. You can’t just hand wave that away, it won’t go away. It needs to be dealt with systematically, eventually.
Hand waving away bigoted nonsense is exactly how you make it go away, it’s the only way it goes away. If you give these people an inch they’re just going to crow about how that proves they were right all along about everything and why we have to give in to their next set of demands.
I disagree whole heartedly that that makes it go away. If that worked, bigoted nonsense would have gone away by now.
People’s ability to create arguments that influence other, neutral parties is far more powerful than the rational truth, and needs to be addressed in some way.
If that worked, bigoted nonsense would have gone away by now.
I genuinely have no idea what period in history you could be basing that on
People’s ability to create arguments that influence other, neutral parties is far more powerful
We already had that discussion and now the overwhelming majority of doctors and researchers understand trans people are people and gender affirming healthcare is good healthcare. If you’re neutral at this point you’re at best embarrassingly ignorant and most likely just a bigot.
I think that’s a little out of touch with different American sub-cultures, which do not all share the same values. They certainly do not necessarily share our faith in modern, evidence-based methods. While that may be embarrassing to you, embarrassment is a cultural phenomenon. They clearly feel no embarrassment.
We tried to shove bigotry under the rug for huge chunks of the past century, just ignoring things like neo-Nazism in the hopes they would go away. They have strengthened instead.
The fact of the matter is the cheating argument is plausible, and that makes it compelling. It’s their only one. That makes ignoring it unwise, when it could be simply dealt with.
If they don’t believe in empirical evidence and the scientific method then there is less than nothing to be gained from debating them, it will set things back for people who aren’t engaged in this issue to see them being taken seriously like there is any real debate here.
I feel pretty strongly that you’re ignoring forgetting the Nazi element of this right now with this insistence on taking their bullshit arguments seriously
The fact of the matter is that it is not plausible and you reiterating that it is doesn’t make it so.
e; I’m still giving you the benefit of the doubt that you genuinely mean well here and are just mistaken, tried to adjust the language to better reflect that
Being an asshole isn’t cheating. Plus, if we’re gonna throw out every chess player who is an asshole we’re gonna be throwing out a lot of them.
e; And there’s no practical way to go after assholes here without harming a lot of innocent non-assholes in the process.
Also, if your goal is just to avoid any controversies and arguments, wait until someone accuses their opponent of being trans to try to get them thrown out.
It’s a stupid rule that solves a non-issue while creating a lot more problems.
I couldn’t help but note that you backed off from saying cheating is not plausible. The plausibility of the argument is the problem. That’s what makes it effective in the social space.
I also don’t really see how a policy of blood testing would actually be harmful. Inconvenient and expensive, yes, but it would be done to everyone. That makes it fair. If the information was kept private, it wouldn’t be harmful either.
I don’t think I did. Forgive some paraphrasing, but this was our exchange as I understand it,
Me: This is a dumb rule.
You: It will prevent cheating.
Me: No it won’t.
You: It will prevent a specific kind of asshole behavior.
Me: That kind of asshole behavior doesn’t constitute cheating, it’s just being an asshole and trying to prevent that causes more harm than good.
And speaking of more harm than good, blood draws for everyone that wants to participate in women’s chess is inconvenient and unpleasant enough to defeat the whole point of this league in the first place. Like, “So we wanted to be more inclusive and get more women involved in chess, yahta yahta, now let me stick you with a needle and take some of your blood. Oh, no, you wouldn’t have to do this in an open tournament, just some special hassles for your tournaments is all.” is not going to go over well is all.
So, yeah, I still think this is a stupid rule that “solves” something that’s not a problem and creates a couple of new ones.
Admittedly, I’m not thinking about just chess, but the overall argument of how to classify and allow trans folks to participate in competitive events. I don’t see a big difference between trans people in chess vs swimming or basketball.
Regardless of how you want to frame the discussion, it’s this argument they put forward to justify banning trans people. You seem to want to ignore it entirely. I really think that’s unwise, and I’m looking for some kind of potential solution to actually address it.
I think, overall, and regardless of how popular it is, this method of ignoring opposition arguments is very detrimental. 90% of the country’s land area has never seen a trans person in real life, so the arguments they read about are all they have.
Anecdotal. You don’t encounter many LGBT folks in rural areas, the stigma is still too strong. You would get physically assaulted in certain situations. Trans folks are unheard of, except in media.
It’s not until you get closer to urban areas that they become a little safer and more comfortable expressing themselves.
90% is just a rough estimate of the ratio of urban to rural.
I don’t see a big difference between trans people in chess vs swimming or basketball
I mean, there clearly are big differences between chess and basketball.
it’s this argument they put forward to justify banning trans people.
Right, I think I get what you’re saying on this level, the bigots out there have gotten more traction with dumbass centrist types when they attack trans people participating in sports than they have had with other things and it would be good to have an effective rejoinder to that whole line of attack.
But that’s exactly what I’m doing here. I’m not ignoring their arguments, I’m saying they’re fucking stupid, they’re made only as a pretext to hurt trans people, and they’re going to lead to policies that make women’s chess worse for everyone. You don’t need to know the first thing about gender affirming healthcare or to have ever met a trans person to understand that, but the moment we start needlessly saying untrue stuff like “the people making these arguments make some good points” or “the people making these arguments aren’t just hateful scum” we start making this issue more complicated and confusing than it should be for the persuadable ones, and the bigots are just going to say “See, we were right about that, and we’re also right about [more transphobia] and we need to [more repressive policies targeting trans people].”
I think you sorely underestimate the reasons other people believe the things they do. You’re approaching this from your own background, maybe, and have never been something like an evangelical christian? They’re a massive segment of the population, wielding significant power.
Calling their argument stupid, when it is 100% possible, is fundamentally foolish. You’re not actually dealing with their argument, you’re just saying its false and calling it stupid.
These are not rational rejoinders against an argument that lies within the realm of possibility.
Yes, I understand that chess and basketball are not the same. That is why I clarified that I am really thinking more generally about competitive events as a whole. This was why I mentioned steroids earlier, which are not common in chess. It’s a broader discussion, really, chess is just the latest example.
So you think we should “maintain a sense of fairness for cis folks” at the expense of creating actual unfairness towards trans and nonbinary folks? Since it’s been shown (cis) women fare better against men when neither knows the other’s sex, wouldn’t it be fairer to simply hide the combatants from one another? Then it would be pure chess.
I don’t really agree here, as a trans women myself I face issues like sexism just as cis women do, and depending on how well a trans women passes she might face additional issues with transphobia. Chess is a sport of strategy and there is no science that somehow suggest AMAB people have more brain power than AFAB people.
In what world is this a reasonable compromise? Your second paragraph also directly contradicts your first paragraph. You don’t see why there are gender based divisions, but also we should reinforce those divisions and in addition force transwomen to submit to "gender investigations? "
As a german, I always find amusing when americans are scared of not being able to find a job because they have nude photos online. Meanwhile I have practically seen all of my colleagues/family naked either at the job showers, sauna or nudist parks and beaches.
No the point is the choice to be seen nude. Plenty of people in the US are quite comfortable being seen nude, but you’re correct that most people don’t want that. I’m pretty sure if you took a camera into a sauna in Germany, and posted the pictures online, the subjects of your photos would be upset about it.
German here too. I have no idea why, but I’d find that so incredibly weird. I guess I grew up in a very prude family. I’d love to be more open towards nudity because why the fuck not, there’s nothing inherently sexual or weird about naked people, but I really struggle with that
Relevant/important watch for everyone who’s not already familiar: youtu.be/AHX6tHdQGiQ “Ink Cartridges Are A Scam”
He talks about basically the computer coding “bricking” the system if you try to do anything other than spend more money on their racketeering; their “razor and blade cartridges” profit model of selling the one item for cheap then price-gouging the fuck out of a required component to keep it working
I can’t recommend reading A Chemical Hunger enough. These scientists are right, obesity isn’t a willpower issue, despite common belief to the contrary.
TL;DR: We don’t know why obesity is. Yeah sure you eat to much, you get fatter. But why do some people crave so much excess food? Why does their metabolism try so hard to keep the fat in? Why is the obesity epidemic worsening everywhere in the world, despite measurably improved eating habits over the last ~15 years?
The article goes at length to disprove mainstream myths like “not enough exercise”, “too much shit in our food”, etc. Truth is, we don’t know what’s happening chemically (same issue as the scientists encounter in the NYT article). However, the thesis of A Chemical Hunger is that there are good reasons to think that everyone has a “lipostat” which dictates how much fat we should have. Too skinny, and you will want to eat more and gain weight faster, and vice-versa. Yet for an increasing number of people, the lipostat is breaking.
The open question is, why? Right now, we don’t really know, but we really aren’t studying the biochemical causes of obesity hard enough due to this stupid belief that fat people are fat because they’re “weak minded” or whatever.
I like the concept of the lipostat, but I disagree that it will be a purely biochemical model that will explain how it is regulated, because fat accumulation is not just about past and present, it may also be about stress and more generally about the subjective feeling of “how you perceive your future ability to eat to be at risk”. It’s certainly not just about willpower in general, but about mechanisms different people use to handle frustration, about certain types of depression, even when they have plenty of willpower to do other things.
However, I read somewhere else (can’t find the specific article) that Ozempic seems to act as an anti-depressant (some anti-depressants make you lose weight e.g. SSRIs) to cause weight loss. So, hey, maybe it is biochemical :)
plus that on top. Epigenetics+psichiatry+nutrition the combination of unholy medical arcane topics that is entwined with sociology and economics, no wonder it’s much harder to figure out than cancer.
It’s a mix of willpower and habits, America has bad regulations on foods making that most foods have added sugars, portions in American culture are massive and everyone drives everywhere because cites were built for the cars.
In Europe we have strict regulations on food, with food scores on the packages telling you how bad it’s for your health, our portions are smaller and we generally prefer fresh ingredients to heavily processed products and most European cities are made for walking and cycling.
40% Americans are obese vs ~22% in Europe
You get the same with Australia another car centric country
But obesity rates in Europe are still steadily climbing, despite food scarcity not being a widespread issue for decades and food quality increasing in the 21st century. Sure we’re behind America, but it’s not getting any better; we’re seeing the same kind of linear increase in obesity cases, on both sides of the former Iron Curtain (and obesity was already growing in many communist countries where access to cars was… elusive at best before the fall of the Wall):
The essay I linked talks about The Australian Paradox where “obesity in Australia nearly tripled between 1980-2003, while sugar consumption dropped 23%”.
It’s not as simple as “our food is better” or “they have more cars”. Yes it’s better (significantly so), and we aren’t as car dependent as Americans (though it’s still very bad here outside of historical city centers), but the correlation with obesity in particular is more elusive to find than you’re implying since things have also been steadily getting worse on this side of the Atlantic.
I would highly recommend reading the article I linked, it goes to great lengths to thoroughly debunk common myths like this about the causes of obesity.
You, as a human being, have a limited ability to resist temptation.
Anything within your means that you want badly enough you’ll eventually have. The only way around it is to want something else, mutually exclusive to the first temptation, more.
And when it comes to weight loss, even if you’re in the 5% of attempts that are successful, most people will still gain weight back because once the motivation of setting numbers go down fades, old habits are always just as easy to fall back on as all the new ones are.
Nutrition is also particularly hard to study because there’s no way to accelerate it. It happens at a snails pace and we can’t speed up the human digestive system. It’s why so much food science is disproven 10-15 years later as new results appear.
The recent steepening in the yuan’s decline is a result of China’s widening yield differential with the U.S., and investors’ mounting concerns over China’s weak economic growth and rising default risks in its property and shadow banking sectors.
The government’s slow delivery of stimulus measures to bolster growth has disappointed investors. Meantime, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has eased monetary policy to support the economy, though the price paid for lowering interest rates is more pressure on the yuan.
HP used to be good circa 2005-8. I used to have a HP mini and it had great build quality. DK what happened after that coz all of the stuff they have sold after 2010 is pure garbage honestly.
At this point HP isn’t a printer company. They’re an (overpriced) ink subscription company that makes DRM-ridden printers designed to keep you on their subscription model.
Given how many other printer companies are following suit it seems that this is unfortunately a lucrative business model.
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