[ceceron]

> No, the entire point of critiquing the author's qualifications is to break apart the idea that, because the author is well-spoken, they are therefore correct or even reasonable. If the author had declined to publish a miniature biography beside the article, then I would not have said anything. I haven't, for example, examined the rest of his body of work; I don't have any predictions to make about what else he may have written.

So basically you make an attack ad personam because it is effective way to win the discussion. It is not enough to dismantle his argument, you have also to make him unreliable source of knowledge. For my part, I haven't noticed the little bio, but I know it's a common practice to show a short info about the author under his article. It's a two edge sword, some readers may be impressed, some may feel like you.

> but it's completely wrong to say that humans have two biological sexes

So I guess saying that humans have two arms and five fingers per hand is also completely wrong. You know that due to strange genetic conditions, some people are born with more fingers, etc.? Some people get Down syndrome due to an extra chromosome, but still it's correct to say that humans have 20 chromosomes. It doesn't mean that there are no exceptions and doesn't dehumanize those exceptions.

I believe you're oversensitive in this area, but I guess you already told me why.

[Kednicma]

It's all a matter of how wrong you want to be, and what information you want to use for deduction. If you see a humanoid approaching you, do you start with "that is a human (99.99% certainty)" or "that is a man or woman (98% certainty)"? I can see the use in the latter, but only here when quantified and compared to more generic alternatives.

I assume that you know about the facts that some humans have fewer than two arms, and some humans have not just fewer than five, but also sometimes more than five fingers [0]. In what way, then, do you hope to show that the facile versions aren't wrong? I think that what you're saying is that it is quite common for human genetics to plan for people to have two arms and five fingers. But it's not universal. We must distinguish between the two, because every time we make a universal claim about humans, we implicitly exclude the humans who aren't covered by the claim. Indeed, intersex folk, polydactyls, amputees, and folks with Down syndrome are all marginalized in our society, and all via this same mechanism of minimization and normalization.

On personal attacks: I've only lost karma in this thread and I'm going to continue losing it; I'm not sure by what means you could imagine that I'm effectively winning.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydactyly

[ceceron]

> It's all a matter of how wrong you want to be, and what information you want to use for deduction. If you see a humanoid approaching you, do you start with "that is a human (99.99% certainty)" or "that is a man or woman (98% certainty)"? I can see the use in the latter, but only here when quantified and compared to more generic alternatives.

Generalization is one of the main mechanisms making the communication (language) work. Otherwise one should probably treat every human as an individual, similarly to the Duns Scotus and his haecceity concept.

It's somehow related to the concept of overfitting, you acknowledge existence of the outliers but at the same time you may want to generalize them for the sake of the better generalization...

> On personal attacks: I've only lost karma in this thread and I'm going to continue losing it; I'm not sure by what means you could imagine that I'm effectively winning.

Who cares about karma. What's important is that your comments may encourage some readers to think ;)