Davroth said:
He addresses many of those points, CrystalShadow.. come on. He talks about Habitual behaviour. If a given character is your main, it stands to reason that you are already habituated to their sex appeal, which is what gives you the edge over your opponent, unless in a mirror. So it's still relevant.
He only adressed habituation in context of mentioning changing outfits frequently, so that your opponent doesn't get used to them. Sure, you can
infer things from that point (about the only one he made, in fact. Also worth noting he effectively implied something had a 1750 ms effect negative effect, then in the same video almost seemed to imply that an effective difference of 20 ms was a bigger deal somehow.)
You can read into it what you want, but the fact remains he never actively explained why it would be a benefit to the player. He made exactly one point that
could be used to explain that, but doesn't use that point in that way at all.
In fact, he completely neglects to so much as mention the point I'm making here. Which means he is omitting basic fundamental issues with his argument.
It's one thing to make a point and not go into much detail about why a major flaw in your argument isn't really a big deal, but it's another thing entirely to completely omit any mention a gaping hole that fundamentally undermines your argument.
Don't believe me? Watch it again and tell me it even so much as occurred to him to even mention this point, much less address it.
Leaving a gaping wide hole in your argument that if left unanswered will basically undermine your whole point definitely comes across as a half-baked, poorly thought out argument, regardless of if there is something that can fill in the blanks or not.
You apparently chose to fill in the gap with your own reasoning, but that still doesn't really make MatPat's presentation of his case any less flawed.
And since, (comedy elements aside), making an effective (if sometimes absurd) argument is kinda the whole point of the series, it's a little dissapointing to see this kinda thing happen.
CrystalShadow said:
On a tangential note, if competitions are meant to be tests of skill, and not just innate biology, it seems that we should put people in categories based on their innate biology, as relevant to the nature of the competition.
-snip-
Turns out, after controlling for health, fitness, and training, the supposed male/female difference in strength was illusory.
A factor not of random innate differences, but one almost entirely defined by size.
The reason women seemed weaker was entirely down to them being on average, physically smaller.
No more, no less.
(the implications for competitive sports seem fairly obvious really. In a lot of ways sorting people by bodytype or size or the like would be fairer than sorting them by sex)
I think you are kinda missing the appeal of competitive sport there. People don't watch the olympics to see who's the fastest runner or swimmer within a certain, predefined range of body type. They watch it to see athletes at their peak performance. And that holds true for most sports. Only notable exception I can think of is boxing, which has weight classes, and even then, the heavyweight championship is the most prestigious and arguably popular, representing the perceived peak of human capability in that sport. Judging by that, if you were to sort people by body type for all sports, the result would be similar in viewership interest.
In my eyes, and I'm not sure if that is an unpopular opinion or not but I'll just say it anyway, what dividing sports by gender does is give women a spotlight. Due to the human kind's sexual dimorphism, as you already stated, women are on average smaller then men, and thus on average behind in upper body strength. If sports weren't divided by gender, then surely there would be women who could rise to the top, to the peak athletes of their field, but there would a lot fewer women athletes in total who could claim that kind of fame.
Not to mention, that would still not be fair considering that science has consistently shown that men have a better reaction time then women, something highly relevant in many, many sports.
~sigh~ Yes, it's a fair point on some level I guess. At least, in terms of why anyone
watches sporting events, though maybe less so when it comes to why anyone bothers to compete in them.
Your assertion about reaction times is pretty frustrating considering what I only just explained though. These kinds of studies have a habit of subtle biases that lead to misleading answers, that really don't get at the core of the matter.
(see my entire argument about strength differences, because that has been studied just as often, and still the common opinion seems to be based on misleading causes)
Without knowing both the range of variance, and the fundamental causes of these differences, grouping people together for competition purposes gets quite arbitrary.
Consider a semi-frequent problem of transgender athletes.
They are frequently barred or hampered from competing within an event if it is gender-segregated.
Usually, the argument is made that they would have an unfair advantage.
If we were grouping people on actual biologically measured criteria for whatever is relevant to the sport in question, that would never be an issue in the first place.
But, since sex is the major division used, and the argument always seems to be framed in terms of fairness...
(kinda laughable considering innate biological differences between two individuals might just as easily mean one of them stands literally no chance whatsoever of beating the other in a competition no matter what they do, and many such differences have nothing to do with sex/gender)
But, if you take the notion of fairness seriously, and aren't just using it as an excuse,
A transgender athlete poses the question directly. Do they have an advantage? If so, in what areas. Just as importantly, why?
Frequently, these answers are assumed, but never actually put to the test.
Does someone who has been taking testosterone supplements for years have the strength and reflexes associated with a man? Or does some other aspect of their biology dominate?
Similarly, if someone has taken testosterone blockers and estrogen, is their strength liable to be in line with a male, or a female?
These are edge cases, for sure, but in these kinds of studies, the edge cases provide an awful lot of information as to what might be the underlying cause of biological differences, rather than just statistical observations of what the difference are, on average.
(incidentally, applying the average as a prediction of individual samples in a population is definitely a form of logical fallacy, and something of a misuse of statistics.)
few competitions are entirely fair, it seems. And even the measures that get used to make them more fair are really rather arbitrary more often than not.
~shrug~