indie OS

it’s the OS that virtually every server uses. even Microsoft servers slowly switched away from Windows roughly a decade ago. Today majority of their servers run Linux

it’s not indie- it’s big and corporate. the difference is there’s a weird serendipitous intersection of OSS and corporate interest that has arisen in a way that allows regular joe schmoe to run software you can actually control. so that your computer actually belongs to you

imagine with your car. would you be OK with ads in your rear view mirror? with your car constantly sending data about how you drive to some nameless corporation? your car randomly turning on and updating itself while you sleep? taking away features you may want or adding features you don’t?

that’s the path we’re going down with cars right now. and it’s partly because people are content to sit on their laurels and cede all of their collective power to companies like Microsoft

at that point it’s not really about the money

everyone needs a purpose. if you take away that purpose, people will start deteriorating.

“journey not the destination”. once you’ve reached something like $50M any more money doesn’t make any real difference in your daily life.

We’re not talking hobbyists. We’re talking top level athletes. Men aren’t just stronger. There are dozens if not hundreds of items they outperform women on.

The sports where women can actually compete with men are rare. For example marksmanship or long-distance marathon. Virtually every sport men have distinct and significant advantages.

Men have larger hearts, more lung volume per body mass, more red blood cells, more clotting factors which means they recover quicker and have a higher pain tolerance.

Testosterone allows for more rapid muscle gain as well as better recovery. So two people training the same exercises an identical amount of time, the man would have gained significantly more muscle mass and strength.

Men have higher blood pressure, which means they feel fatigue less than women. Men don’t lose iron to menstruation, which means there’s more iron for oxygen circulation in the blood.

These items basically make it so men are much better at almost all sports.

For example soccer. The US Women’s national team lost to a team of high school age boys.

Men can kick harder, sprint faster, run longer, train longer & they gain more from training & they recover faster from training so they can do it more, they feel less pain so they can stay at max exertion longer, they can convert oxygen into energy faster so they can sustain all of this more than women,

Etc

There’s a reason we have women’s leagues. If we didn’t have it, women wouldn’t get to compete at a high level.

At a lower level, like hobbyist or local leagues the story may be different. There’s more variance among the general population than amongst top athletes.

Serena Williams, #1 woman tennis player, can’t hold a candle to the 203rd best man. Look up her interview about it. She’s under no illusions about this

Women make up roughly 15% of USCF members yet they only make up roughly 1.5% of grandmasters.

That means they are underrepresented by about an order of magnitude. Women on average are about 200 ELO lower than men.  It’s a very large difference and there has been research done to figure out why.

There are no real conclusive findings (as with much of this type of sociological research) but we have evidence for various different reasons. One, women are not encouraged to play chess at the same level that men are. Similar reason that more men go into Computer Science or Physics. It’s not a built in biological difference, but a cultural one.

Another one is that women are younger by 11 years on average, so their ratings haven’t peaked yet. So we should see this gap close in the coming decades. There are also various other inequities between men and women (like for example stereotype threat).

So that explains at least some of the gap. What I’m trying to say is that beyond these factors, there is also a biological difference that results in men being overrepresented in the top chess players. Notice I’m not saying average chess players, but specifically the best in the world (the grandmasters).

Why?

Well, there’s evidence for something called the "greater male variability hypothesis”. Think of every person sitting somewhere on a normal distribution. Pick a trait like aggressiveness or competitiveness.

There are the extremes on both sides of the bell curve. On the left, super passive and on the right super aggressive. Most people clump at the mean, in the center of the bell curve.

There’s evidence that more women cluster around the mean relative to men. Men are overrepresented at the extremes of the bell curve, even though the average is the same as women. Only by a little bit, but it’s statistically significant. That means that if you took a sample of all the super-aggressive and super-passive people, the majority would be men.

When you look at top chess players, they are more likely to have extreme attributes (being ultra-competitive for example helps you get better at chess).

This same effect is also theorized to be why we see that vast majority of prisoners are male. Vast majority of homeless, etc. Because extreme attributes tend to either be really good or really bad.

So that’s one biological difference. The other is the visospatial intelligence. Men tend to score better on visospatial tests when compared to women. This effect is already visible by 2 or 3 months of age, so it’s unlikely to be some sort of cultural effect.

Visiospatial cognitive ability is positively correlated with chess ability. Another biological difference between men and women that likely has some non-zero effect on chess ability.

So why are women underrepresented in grandmasters when compared to males? There is evidence for both

a) external social factors

and

b) innate biological factors

Nobody knows what % of the difference is due to a) or b). We just know there is some non-zero effect for both.

I encourage you to fact check every claim I’ve made. Don’t just look for one  research paper that confirms your argument. Each claim I’ve made I’ve seen multiple studies on. There are studies that will say the opposite, but look at it in aggregate. Look at metaanalysis studies.

Every claim I’ve made can be double checked by going on Google scholar or libgen. You’ll find multiple studies and recent studies.

Changed it. I always assume people online are male for some reason. I didn’t read your username

Men and women are the same intelligence on average. There are more men at the extremes of the distribution curve for certain attributes, though. And when you are talking about chess players, you are taking a sample of the ends of the distribution curve.

There’s also evidence that chess ability and visiospatial cognitive ability are positively correlated with chess ability. Men tend to perform better than woman on average. (Stuff like rotating imaginary 3d shapes for example)

This may be partially why we only see 42 out of 2500 worldwide grandmasters being women. Men may only perform 2.5~4% better, but when you’re talking about the extremes (best chess players in world) that small % means a lot.

Tldr: It’s not because they aren’t on equal intelligence. Women for example score better on verbal cognition tests.

And on average men and women have the same IQ

This is why my personal opinion is we should allow trans athletes if they didn’t go through male puberty. If they did, sorry you’re out. If they didn’t, it’s OK.

And you’re right not all mtf athletes are going to end up at the top echelon but given enough time statistically speaking they will be drastically overrepresented.

Edit: also the data is quite clear trans women are stronger, have more lung capacity, etc even 5+ years into hormone therapy. Iirc I even saw 10+ years on a paper once

But the ones that went through male puberty. I think this is why we should try and find gender dysphoria earlier and treat b4 puberty. It’s much more effective the younger you start

Of course issue is you don’t want to be too broad with diagnosis because of false positives and the conservatives going nuts. So it’s a difficult thing to do. Maybe we will identify what causes gender dysphoria some day and that will help

What personal experience am I dismissing? Please explain. I’m talking about human anatomy. The organ that produces testosterone are the testicles. Ovaries produce a token amount.

We are talking about T % in blood. Not personal experiences.

All athletes tend to be outliers, regardless of gender. A small % difference in ability is the difference between 1st place and 300th

Which is why Serena Williams, the #1 female tennis player, loses dramatically to the 203rd male tennis player.

If the 203rd male tennis player became trans, he would instantly become the world’s #1 female player overnight.

Virtually all men with functioning testicles have higher T than all women. This is because testicles produce T at 10-50x the rate of ovaries.

Men going through puberty see permanent changes to the body. You cannot undo this. It gives MTF permanent advantages compared to women.

They are stronger than women on average even after years of being on estrogen.

As for the variance naturally seen, you’re right. But consider this

Who ends up becoming a top athlete? The very best, right? So they are already near the top of the bell curve. So when you compare athletes, you’re not pulling random samples from the entire population.

You’re pulling a random sample from the people with highest T, densest bones, highest rate of fast twitch muscles, etc.

The male maximum and the female maximum is vastly different. This is why we see such a massive difference in performance.

Presence of hormones currently in the blood does not entirely measure this.

We’re talking about testosterone in blood not wrestling abilities. A 300lb woman will beat an 110lb man in wrestling. Doesn’t mean she has higher T.

I’ve read multiple papers on this topic. I’m a 2000 rated player and have tutored girls in chess. This is an interest of mine.

There is a very large gap in performance. The research overall implies a complex variety of factors. This includes what you mentioned, along with other inequities. It also includes the fact that women players are roughly 11 years younger on average and therefore haven’t peaked yet, which will account for some.

But there is evidence that there is also an innate biological difference. Men score better on visuospatial intelligence tests when compared to women. Chess, especially at a high level, involves a lot of this type of thinking.

I’m not arguing that women are bad at chess. Humans are individuals and there are varying levels of players in both genders.

Just that if you look at the extremes (which the top chess players will be) you’re going to see a higher level of males even if we fixed all of the inequities currently influencing the gender gap in chess.

We don’t know if the 10x difference is 5% due to biology or 50% due to biology. But we know it’s a non zero number

Essentially I used it as an example in the wider context of why we have women’s leagues and men’s league in sports.

No I don’t understand what you mean about 18-22. What difference does that make?

18-22 is a fully sexually mature adult. The testicles and ovaries are already functional by 14 in overwhelming majority of the population.

And yes I’m putting everything into two piles. Either you have testicles or you don’t. If you have functioning testicles, you will always have more T than someone who doesn’t.

A high T woman is 70 ng/dL and that already is starting to imply some sort of adrenal tumor or polycystic ovary syndrome. The normal range is a lot closer to 20~30

A low T man is ~250 ng/dL and average is around 400~500 ng/dL

A woman will not have T levels similar to men because they don’t have testicles. Even the highest T females compared to lowest T men.

The only time this would be true is in 1 in 10 million cases. If that’s your whole argument, then OK. It is theoretically possible if the woman has an adrenal tumor and the man is effectively castrated.

But for virtually all other cases this simply cannot happen due to human physiology.

Women make up roughly 15% of US Chess Federation members. They make up roughly 1.5% of grandmasters.

That’s an order of magnitude difference.

Show me. Link me a couple.

I don’t think this effect can account for more than a small fraction of the difference. Let’s look at the research. I couldn’t find anything from a quick search but maybe I’m using wrong terms.

You think that accounts for the differences? 42 of 2500 grandmasters are women because all the women are scared and intimidated of the men?

Maybe this plays some small effect but I doubt it’s statistically significant enough in this context

Like you said, it happens to men playing higher rated men. In order to go up in ranking, you need to play and beat progressively higher rated opponents.

By the very nature of being a high level player, that player would have had to go through that.

Yes each individual is unique. But when you pick the top athletes in the world, you’re not picking a random subset of the population. You’re picking the most extreme examples from the edge of the bell curve.

At these levels, even a 3% difference in ability can mean the difference between 1st place and 600th. And the differences between men and women are much more pronounced than 3%.

Just do some research and look at the differences. Serena Williams, best woman tennis player, got absolutely dominated by 203rd male tennis player.

American women’s soccer team got dominated by a high school boy’s team. It just isn’t there. I know people want to believe all sexes and genders are equal and they should be. But just because they are equal under the law or should receive equal treatment doesn’t mean they are the same

She’s not talking about gender he’s talking about sex. Someone born with testicles with XY chromosomes is always going to produce more testosterone than someone born with ovaries with XX chromosomes - assuming both sexual organs are functioning as expected.