The Gaming Den

Kaelik wrote: There is no difference between the importance of those things other than the degree someone might feel about them.

A law that prohibits the playing of D&D or buying of LotRs is just as bad as a law enforcing slavery.

No, that's not true. A law enforcing slavery actively hurts people in much larger ways than simply prohibiting them from playing a certain game.

But that gets into morality more so than just fact.

I don't think that CeilingCat's desire is immoral necessarily. The bad part isn't so much the desire as the delusion that came from it.

"I'm a dude, but I'd like to be a chick" is okay. It's not inherently harmful to anyone.

The bad comes in when it jumps to the belief: "I am a chick, even though science and common sense say otherwise. I reject your reality and substitute my own and I expect you to feed my delusion by calling me a she."

Red_Rob wrote:

Zinegata wrote:For some people, getting a tattoo is as important as not feeling as though they're trapped in the wrong gender.

I happen to live in the UK. Here we have a national health service that provides free treatment for medical conditions, however not for cosmetic operations. This ensures that people get access to free healthcare, however you still have to pay if you want a facelift or whatever.

According to your prediction, if wanting a tattoo and wanting gender re-assignment surgery carry equal weight, I guess either both will be available at the same level, or neither will. In fact, as tattoos cost £20 and trans surgery cost £20,000 we should see 1000 times as many tattoos approved, right?

Oh wait, treatment for tattoos is limited to removing tattoos that are causing significant mental health problems due to discrimination whilst gender dysphoria has a detailed and lengthy diagnosis and treatment process.

Its almost like being transgendered is a legitimate and recognised condition that is nothing like wanting a fucking tattoo. How odd.

Rob, like the many people before you, read what I wrote before going all prissy.

People value different things.

You're saying doctors view gender dysphoria and tattoos differently from a medical perspective.

Not all people value things as doctors.

Note that I say this not in the context of "it should be like this". But rather, "people ARE like this."

Crissa wrote:RC, all science points to the 'delusion' of gender identity and sexual preference as being biologic in nature. Of course, it's not much in the way of evidence - we can only slice up dead people's brains, of course - but it is evidence.

Gender identity is a social construct. But it totally has nothing to really do with what's going on. This isn't a case of gender, it's a case of sex. I don't find anything particularly wrong with a girl who dresses like a guy and acts like a guy. Seriously whatever. That's a lifestyle and you can live how you want.

However, you have to still be aware that the girl is still a female. She may have taken the male role, but she is still sexually female. If she says otherwise, that's a delusion.

There's nothing innately wrong with cross-dressing. That's not even any kind of delusion. Maybe you like those clothes better, so you wear them. Whatever. There's no inherent reason why dudes can't wear dresses, aside from the fact that it's a social trend.

But I've always believed that being unable to accept reality is a bad thing. Acceptance is a fundamental and useful thing and delusions can lead to a lot of misery and bad shit. Now CeilingCat's delusion is fairly harmless compared to a great deal of delusions. People die every day because people have the delusion of believing in religion. Nobody is going to die because of CC. He may end up living a miserable life because of it, but there's a high likelihood that nobody gets hurt other than himself.

Now, I don't feel like calling him a guy is torturing or making fun of him. I'm just stating that as a fact, similar to how any of us here would correct someone who said 3.5 fighters don't suck. Here at TGD, we try to have a heavy emphasis on the truth, even if it hurts. We've probably ruined a lot of people's RPG experiences by pointing out flaws in the rules. But that is in fact, what we do.

Red_Rob wrote:I happen to live in the UK. Here we have a national health service that provides free treatment for medical conditions, however not for cosmetic operations. This ensures that people get access to free healthcare, however you still have to pay if you want a facelift or whatever.

According to your prediction, if wanting a tattoo and wanting gender re-assignment surgery carry equal weight, I guess either both will be available at the same level, or neither will. In fact, as tattoos cost £20 and trans surgery cost £20,000 we should see 1000 times as many tattoos approved, right?

No, according to my prediction, the numbers of people with tattoos vs tran surgery will be influenced by how much people care about the issue, which I have never once claimed that tattoo people care more, or even as much as Ceiling Cat in 99% of cases, and also based on what a group of people who are not the actual people getting tattoos or trans surgery think is important.

At no point have I ever claimed that most people are smart or write, and that carries over to people writing laws.

Most people who write laws are people who get elected, and most people who get elected, like most people in general, believe in a thing called free will, and so, think that if something is free will, then it isn't as important as not free will things.

Since in fact nothing is free will, this distinction is always arbitrary and meaningless, and only reflects that persons inability to comprehend how the process of thinking actually works.

I would expect some countries to determine that gender reassignment is "beyond free will" because it actually is. But I would expect very few countries to understand that tattoo desire is beyond free will, or that people feel bad if they can't get a tattoo.

Also, governments subsidize things that won't be gotten without the subsidy, so the increased cost of trans surgery makes it more likely to be subsidized, because even if every single person who couldn't get a tattoo killed themselves, still they wouldn't need to subsidize, because everyone could still go buy a 20 dollar tattoo.

I, having been born a white male in a Western country, have never suffered sexism or racism.

I find this so exceedingly hard to believe that I am going to conclude that either:

(A) we define those words VERY differently,
(B) you are very naive
(C) you are a liar
(D) what you mean by the word "never" is "never to the degree that a non-white male (let's go ahead and throw in) heterosexual has experienced it"

Game On,
fbmf

Kaelik wrote: Most people who write laws are people who get elected, and most people who get elected, like most people in general, believe in a thing called free will, and so, think that if something is free will, then it isn't as important as not free will things.

Since in fact nothing is free will, this distinction is always arbitrary and meaningless, and only reflects that persons inability to comprehend how the process of thinking actually works.

Now, this is an interesting angle to take. If nothing is free will, how do you reconcile that with taking responsibility, or being assigned blame, for one's actions? Is that just further determinant programming? Some people will demand recompense from the perpetrators while others will take responsibility for misdeeds?

If so, does this inevitability extend to all facets of the universe--to the exclusion of any method of chance or randomness? How does our inability to perceive the aggregate events that predetermines everything affect this? In short, would observation change the reality? Or would knowing simply become one more piece of the script?

Well, I do know of some people for whom dysphoria is a reason to get tattoos. But I also think that's irrelevant.

RC claims science says that sex is immutable. But that isn't true. Or that gender is entirely a social construct. Alas, that's not true, either.

-Crissa

violence in the media wrote:

Kaelik wrote: Most people who write laws are people who get elected, and most people who get elected, like most people in general, believe in a thing called free will, and so, think that if something is free will, then it isn't as important as not free will things.

Since in fact nothing is free will, this distinction is always arbitrary and meaningless, and only reflects that persons inability to comprehend how the process of thinking actually works.

Now, this is an interesting angle to take. If nothing is free will, how do you reconcile that with taking responsibility, or being assigned blame, for one's actions? Is that just further determinant programming? Some people will demand recompense from the perpetrators while others will take responsibility for misdeeds?

If so, does this inevitability extend to all facets of the universe--to the exclusion of any method of chance or randomness? How does our inability to perceive the aggregate events that predetermines everything affect this? In short, would observation change the reality? Or would knowing simply become one more piece of the script?

Taking Responsibility is pretty meaningless. If you did something, or will do something, then you did or will do it. That is a fact. Assigning blame or taking responsibility are just recursive inputs into your brain. Your future actions can be changed by the assignment of blame, so it makes sense to assign blame in ways designed to create the outcome you want.

As to extending to all facets. Everything we have come to understand on any level has so far been determined to be pretty much 100% deterministic, with the exception of various quantum phenomenon which we currently explain by chance.

But we in lay terms explain coin flips by chance even though given the full calculations it would be deterministic, and just based on how deterministic everything else is, I would not be surprised to find that quantum mechanics work on deterministic principles as well.

As for inability of perfect knowledge, meh, you take your best guess and act on it, and if you really care you try to become more right.

Alternatively, I suppose Apathy is a reasonable response.

Kaelik wrote: Taking Responsibility is pretty meaningless. If you did something, or will do something, then you did or will do it. That is a fact. Assigning blame or taking responsibility are just recursive inputs into your brain. Your future actions can be changed by the assignment of blame, so it makes sense to assign blame in ways designed to create the outcome you want.

Now, how would the future actions be changed in any way? If the summation of the universe led, in part, to you bashing someone's head in with a brick, why then would whether you were ultimately caught and punished effect any sort of change on your future actions? You were inexorably led to the brick-bashing in the same way the detectives, lawyers, and jury were led to convicting you. How are we "creating" anything?

Now, on the other hand, if a brick fell off a building and crushed the person next to you, we certainly wouldn't hold you responsible for that, correct? But what if, to a perfect observer, you were the ultimate agent of that event? Your predetermined movements domino-triggered his predetermined movements that led him to be crushed by the brick. If we knew this, should you then be as culpable as if the brick left your own hand? If not, why should you be culpable for the direct action in the first place? You were, after all, simply following a chain of inputs over which you had no control. You were always going to throw that brick, and he was always going to be crushed by it. Practically, we don't know if exonerating you will prompt a brick-rampage, but philosophically what justification do we have?

As to extending to all facets. Everything we have come to understand on any level has so far been determined to be pretty much 100% deterministic, with the exception of various quantum phenomenon which we currently explain by chance.

But we in lay terms explain coin flips by chance even though given the full calculations it would be deterministic, and just based on how deterministic everything else is, I would not be surprised to find that quantum mechanics work on deterministic principles as well.

As for inability of perfect knowledge, meh, you take your best guess and act on it, and if you really care you try to become more right.

Again, how does observing where the particle goes changes where the particle goes impact the ultimate predetermination of everything?

violence in the media wrote:Now, how would the future actions be changed in any way? If the summation of the universe led, in part, to you bashing someone's head in with a brick, why then would whether you were ultimately caught and punished effect any sort of change on your future actions? You were inexorably led to the brick-bashing in the same way the detectives, lawyers, and jury were led to convicting you. How are we "creating" anything?

Now, on the other hand, if a brick fell off a building and crushed the person next to you, we certainly wouldn't hold you responsible for that, correct? But what if, to a perfect observer, you were the ultimate agent of that event? Your predetermined movements domino-triggered his predetermined movements that led him to be crushed by the brick. If we knew this, should you then be as culpable as if the brick left your own hand? If not, why should you be culpable for the direct action in the first place? You were, after all, simply following a chain of inputs over which you had no control. You were always going to throw that brick, and he was always going to be crushed by it. Practically, we don't know if exonerating you will prompt a brick-rampage, but philosophically what justification do we have?

You are too obsessed with events in the past affecting events in the future. Time and Space are in many ways the same thing. Stop worrying about "changing" the future, because you can't change the future, because there is only one future.

The reason you punish someone for breaking someone else's head is because that punishment is itself an input on actions taken in the future. If you don't have a policy of punishing people, more of the edge cases would occur.

I hate Crissa, but because my brain makes decisions about my actions based on consequences of those actions, while I might greatly enjoy murdering her if there were a zero percent chance of it negatively effecting me in the future, I would be more likely to do so than if I were doing it right in front of six cops and twelve district judges.

You institute policies of punishing murderers because that way, the likelihood of punishment is an input in the deterministic calculation of your brain resulting in what you do.

violence in the media wrote:Again, how does observing where the particle goes changes where the particle goes impact the ultimate predetermination of everything?

Well since "observing where the particle goes" involves detecting it's electromagnetic charge, and the only way to detect electromagnetic charge is to measure the effect on a different charge or field nearby interacting with the first charge...

I'm not going to rule out that some deterministic effects completely explain the wave-particle switch.

I'm not at all claiming that is the most likely or best explanation, because I don't know, but the fact that everything we thought was chance has increasingly discovered as the product of deterministic interactions we couldn't understand at first, I'm certainly not going to kick the pattern until I see a reason to.

Upholding immigration laws is racist.

That is all.

Psychic Robot wrote:Upholding immigration laws is racist.

That is all.

No, upholding immigration laws isn't racist.

Police don't uphold immigration laws. It's not their job. It's the job of the INS, border patrol, or customs.

It's like giving homicide detectives a no tolerance policy for other offenses - they won't get many cases solved if people are too afraid of coming clean on their small shit.

So first off, the law makes crime worse.

Secondly, there's no reason for the law. The majority of people who are here illegally are doing no felony crime, not even misdemeanors. In fact, the nearly all of them are adding to our GDP by spending money. That's good, not bad. As a law, would it make sense to detain people for parking tickets or other infractions? It'll cost more money than you'll take in fines.

Lastly... If a law disproportionately impacts a [protected classification] people, it's probably unfair or racist. And that is supposed to be against our highest law.

The law as written doesn't mean every person who is given an infraction is run through E-verify - only those they have suspicion of do. So it won't hit illegal immigrants equally. Illegals from [insert caucasian group] will be less impacted by this.

There are even more arguments: This will impact legal citizens, immigrant or not. This inverts the burden of proof required by law. This is outside state jurisdiction. This helps illegal employers. This probably won't reduce actual illegal immigration.

So many arguments against the law. This is a law in a state with a one in three Hispanic population... So if you find someone with dirty, worn shoes who speaks Spanish? They're probably from around here.

-Crissa

s/legally/equally/ - no idea how I did that.

fbmf wrote:

I, having been born a white male in a Western country, have never suffered sexism or racism.

I find this so exceedingly hard to believe that I am going to conclude that either:

(A) we define those words VERY differently,
(B) you are very naive
(C) you are a liar
(D) what you mean by the word "never" is "never to the degree that a non-white male (let's go ahead and throw in) heterosexual has experienced it"

Game On,
fbmf

I cannot recall a time that I was made to feel that my sex, race or sexual preference was inferior to someone elses. What is your definition?

Crissa wrote: RC claims science says that sex is immutable. But that isn't true.

Show me a guy who had a sex change operation who can get pregnant.

Show me a girl who became a guy who can impregnate other girls.

Then maybe I'll agree with you.

Until then it's just a matter of cosmetic surgery.

Well, have there been times when you were told/inferred you could not do something because of your race, gender, or sexual preference, even though you were physically/mentally capable of it?

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Show me a guy who had a sex change operation who can get pregnant and maybe I'll agree with you.

Strangely, not all cisgendered women can get or be pregnant. So I'll gladly skip over your stupid assertion that gender == working gonads.

-Crissa

Crissa wrote: Strangely, not all cisgendered women can get or be pregnant. So I'll gladly skip over your stupid assertion that gender == working gonads.

That's basically what the sexes are all about: reproduction. Now obviously some people may have gonads that in fact don't work, but if you are truly capable of changing sex then you should be capable of creating someone with at least the possibility of working gonads. If you can't, then you really haven't changed sex at all.

And that's what simply cannot be done right now. You can look like another sex, you can get your sex organs removed, but you cannot have sex organs from the other sex. Therefore at best, you can become no longer male or female, but cannot actually become the other sex.

Crissa->

You're a racist for wanting to uphold immigration laws. Why are you denying people the right to enter America? Don't you know that these same immigration laws force some people to wait up to six years just to be reunited with the families in the US?

May God have mercy on your soul. Fortunately, He is a forgiving God hence you still have time to repent!

Psychic Robot wrote:Upholding immigration laws is racist.

That is all.

Seriously though, stupid Crissa debating aside, not upholding immigration laws is bad. Because it also lets bad people into the country like drug dealers and the like. The kind of people who mess up minority communities and leave them in perpetual poverty.

But at the very least saying all immigration laws are racist is consistent. Not like the hypocritical horseshit the Democrats regularly pull on the immigration issue.

Crissa wrote:RC claims science says that sex is immutable. But that isn't true.

Crissa wrote: So I'll gladly skip over your stupid assertion that gender == working gonads.

-Crissa

Shut up, right there. If you want to talk about the vagueries of Sex and Gender, you are not allowed to conflate them yourself.

Gender is a social construct. Sex is just chromosomal happenstance. No amount of cosmetics, surgical or otherwise is going to change XX to XY or XY to XX, or XXY to any of the others. The chromosomal sex is just that - the genuine chromosomes that actually exist. And nothing we ca currently do is going to change that.

If someone says that Sex is immutable, and you respond with some aphorism about Gender, you are deliberately lying. Stop doing that. RC's forays into discussions of functioning gonads is only of tangential relevance, but he was defending himself from an accusation which is false. He said that sex didn't change. And he's right.

-Username17

Kaelik wrote: You are too obsessed with events in the past affecting events in the future. Time and Space are in many ways the same thing. Stop worrying about "changing" the future, because you can't change the future, because there is only one future.

That's what I'm arguing, that under a deterministic scheme no one can change the future. The events of the past do govern the events of the future, unless you're changing your argument to introduce the possibility of independent predetermined events. You're the one who is muddying the discussion with statements like "creating outcomes" and "making decisions" and "likelihoods." None of those things exist in a deterministic universe.

Now, maybe you're talking about the illusion of such things as a result of our imperfect perceptions? That's fair, but I'm arguing from a position of an omniscient observer. As we approach omniscience, the deterministic nature becomes more apparent. Does our knowledge of this predetermination allow or enact change in the system? Does acquiring the knowledge that you will murder Crissa (to use your example) at a specific time and place in the future, as well as all the inputs that led to that event change anything? Can it?

violence in the media wrote:

Kaelik wrote: You are too obsessed with events in the past affecting events in the future. Time and Space are in many ways the same thing. Stop worrying about "changing" the future, because you can't change the future, because there is only one future.

That's what I'm arguing, that under a deterministic scheme no one can change the future. The events of the past do govern the events of the future, unless you're changing your argument to introduce the possibility of independent predetermined events. You're the one who is muddying the discussion with statements like "creating outcomes" and "making decisions" and "likelihoods." None of those things exist in a deterministic universe.

Now, maybe you're talking about the illusion of such things as a result of our imperfect perceptions? That's fair, but I'm arguing from a position of an omniscient observer. As we approach omniscience, the deterministic nature becomes more apparent. Does our knowledge of this predetermination allow or enact change in the system? Does acquiring the knowledge that you will murder Crissa (to use your example) at a specific time and place in the future, as well as all the inputs that led to that event change anything? Can it?

Kowledge of "the future" is merely another input into the equation that results in the future occurring as it does. It doesn't change anything.

There is only one future. It is a single future. You having knowledge about what will happen in the future cannot change the future, because when the future occurs, you will have that knowledge, and no future will occur in which you don't have that knowledge, so there is nothing to change.

Yes, knowledge helps determine what actions take place. Knowledge of likely future occurrence is an input into your head that helps determine what the future is going to look like.

Red_Rob wrote:I cannot recall a time that I was made to feel that my sex, race or sexual preference was inferior to someone elses. What is your definition?

I cannot recall a time that I was made to feel that my race/sex/sexual preference was inferior to someone elses.

I can recall many times in which different people have attempted but failed to make me feel that my race/sex/sexual preference are inferior.

So does that mean that Martin Luther King Jr was never the subject of Racism because he didn't believe racists?

Zinegata wrote:

Psychic Robot wrote:Upholding immigration laws is racist.

That is all.

Seriously though, stupid Crissa debating aside, not upholding immigration laws is bad. Because it also lets bad people into the country like drug dealers and the like. The kind of people who mess up minority communities and leave them in perpetual poverty.

But at the very least saying all immigration laws are racist is consistent. Not like the hypocritical horseshit the Democrats regularly pull on the immigration issue.

To be fair, most of my drug dealers have been american born. Now, drugs come across the borders of both canada and mexico, but for the most part it's a distribution network and the "drug dealers" are primarily local. It's drug trafficking that comes from outside.

FrankTrollman wrote:Gender is a social construct. Sex is just chromosomal happenstance. No amount of cosmetics, surgical or otherwise is going to change XX to XY or XY to XX, or XXY to any of the others. The chromosomal sex is just that - the genuine chromosomes that actually exist. And nothing we ca currently do is going to change that.

If someone says that Sex is immutable, and you respond with some aphorism about Gender, you are deliberately lying. Stop doing that. RC's forays into discussions of functioning gonads is only of tangential relevance, but he was defending himself from an accusation which is false. He said that sex didn't change. And he's right.

Sex isn't only gonads, and sex isn't only chromosomes. It's a list of expressed primary and secondary features present in a being, of which gonads and chromosomes are only a part of. There are totally creatures in this world we share DNA with that change their functioning gonads; let alone anything else on that list that relate to the sex of a creature.

So we know these things can change. But that's irrelevant, since we don't know bring these things into concordance in humans.

Don't be stupid, Frank. There are people with male looking and functioning bodies with female chromosomes and people with female looking bodies with male chromosomes. The argument that sex and gender are 100% concordance and binary in living humans is wrong.

And Ceilingcat may not be changing her sex, but she did change her gender. As I understand it, RC is arguing that sex is immutable and gender isn't real, so we shouldn't respect her changing her gender because it isn't real.

But gender is expression and words! With that sort of argument is it that gender isn't real, so you should base gender upon the pronouncement of a doctor when you were born?

Basically, Frank, you may be learning to be a doctor, but on this subject you're full of shit doctors say when they're full of shit.

If anything, we've found evidence which strengthens transsexual diagnosis. There's nothing in the world that doctors can do to abate gender dysphoria aside from transition and surgery. And even then, it only is lessened, not eliminated. Maybe if we knew how to change more than appearance, we would have a cure instead of a treatment.

-Crissa

PS I'm going with the definition of immutable to mean 'can not be changed, period' where I think Frank is going with 'can not be changed by current medicine'.

Crissa wrote:Sex isn't gonads, and sex isn't chromosomes

No. Sex is chromosomes. A single cell can - and often is - male or female. This is the realm of facts. And the fact is that sex is not mutable at the level of the whole human without killing that human.

Other organisms do it differently. Some organisms don't have chromosomal sex, or have the ability to turn genes on and off in order to literally change their genetic sex over time. But humans can't do that.

That is wholly different from gender, that actually is just a social construct. If someone decides that they want to be called "he" or "she" that is an entirely arbitrary decision that is every bit as valid as deciding whether they will or will not be OK with being referred to as "ass face" or "the crazy guy."

-Username17