jnwilliams
New member
Thanks Dr Dave!!
GENDER IN POOL ... Do Men Play Better Than Women? ... Recent Legal Trial
- Thread starter dr_dave
- Start date
Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University (with a PhD).
...and a sense of humor.… but I did stay at a Holiday Inn once.
pj
chgo
any argument that says
men are-
or women are-
is too short sighted to get to
the heart of this baffling discussion
i like the argument that comes from
the world of chess-
women are too smart to devote
themselves to something so inconsequential
and that doesn’t pay very well
men are-
or women are-
is too short sighted to get to
the heart of this baffling discussion
i like the argument that comes from
the world of chess-
women are too smart to devote
themselves to something so inconsequential
and that doesn’t pay very well
George the Greek
Well-known member
A friend and I are on hormone injections to stop testosterone going to the prostate. The downside is not being able to get in the right headspace during a match. There's no kill instinct
On the page 10 of "The Battle of Trans Sexes" there is a table of track&field world records and I believe the last two disciplines (especially shot put) can be quite confusing for readers as it doesnt show the full info, for someone who doesnt know any better it would seem that in shot put women are quite close to men which of course isnt the case. My suggestion would be to include the info about the weight men vs women use in those disciplines: in shot put women use 4kg vs men 7,26kg, in javelin women use 600g vs men use 800g. Other than that it is a good source of info for this kind of discussion
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Do you see the irony in this?
By the way, I'm just messing with you. That last part is spot on. While this is a good and pertinent topic of discission, it would take a team of doctors, psychiatrists, sociologists, historians, and who knows what else to even begin to figure out how we actually got to where we are and what the best way to move forward is. And anyone who thinks this is "simple" or "easy" has no real understanding about society and/or is short sighted and kind of a jerk. And if reading that made you mad, good. That's what it feels like when one human being doesn't care about another human being's feelings.
On the page 10 of "The Battle of Trans Sexes" there is a table of track&field world records and I believe the last two disciplines (especially stop put) can be quite confusing for readers as it doesnt show the full info, for someone who doesnt know any better it would seem that in shot put women are quite close to men which of course isnt the case. My suggestion would be to include the info about the weight men vs women use in those disciplines: in shot put women use 4kg vs men 7,26kg, in javelin women use 600g vs men use 800g. Other than that it is a good source of info for this kind of discussion
Thank you for pointing this out. I will add a clarification to the article.
Well stated. The issue is most certainly “complex.” There wouldn’t be law suits that go to trial if it weren’t.
The complication is much more than society.
The biology isn't simple. It is apparent that many think it is.
My wife has two blood types. How did that happen? I know a person with chimeric Turner's Syndrome. It took years to figure out that some of her cells are XX and some are XO. Such things are collectively much more common than the general public thinks. On of my doctors recently delivered a baby in Texas that is both XY and XX. What box is she supposed to check?
People here are giving responses and statements about biology, physiology, and genetics that don't make sense and readers are cheering them.
The law is an additional complication.
The law is not objective. In law, the best argument wins. It really isn't scientific at all, the matter of evidence is quite a different thing in the law compared to science. I don't believe it has much to do with objective truth or justice. Science is universal, the law varies by jurisdiction.
Then the medicolegal is even more mucky. Not so long ago people argued over whether a certificate of live birth was a birth certificate. In this thread it was said that doctors assign gender at birth by checking a box, which isn't true.
Then we add the complications of competitive sports regulations and relative sports skills and they need to pull in an expert in pool that also happens to be an expert in engineering as an expert witness. How many of those experts exist? And that expert has no expertise in the biology, physiology, or genetics of the matter.
This isn't even a contact sport with the potential for harm when athletes inappropriately compete against others that are smaller or weaker. That problem is being hammered out in other sports. Some sports have weight classes, for example, to help mitigate that. We also have handicap systems as well to help level the competition. But these gender matters challenge all regulations and systems in place.
Personally, and professionally, I find it both amusing and distressing that a person of high expertise is presenting a complex matter and people are coming along saying how simple it is. Honestly, when they say they respect Dr Dave, but also say how simple it is, they are being disingenuous, and disrespectful of his expertise, and all the others that participate as experts in this matter.
I have never testified as an expert witness, but I have been an expert consultant for law firms. I consulted on a very famous case years ago that I posted about here. Watching how that unfolded in the media was quite frustrating. Frankly, a lot of what was said, and believed, was gibberish.
Over the years in pool halls or on this forum, folks that questioned the mantra that women would play as well as men were ridiculed.
The implication was, that one's life experience had no standing and we were anachronisms.
Dr. Dave looks like he put the issue to rest, for the time being.
What I experienced, is that many were of the opinion, that women were gonna play on par with men but it was just over the horizon.
Folks that held themselves out as pool historians fell for the fad and admonished those who had a different take.
I can't tell you how many times I was upbraided for stating the obvious.
The implication was, that one's life experience had no standing and we were anachronisms.
Dr. Dave looks like he put the issue to rest, for the time being.
What I experienced, is that many were of the opinion, that women were gonna play on par with men but it was just over the horizon.
Folks that held themselves out as pool historians fell for the fad and admonished those who had a different take.
I can't tell you how many times I was upbraided for stating the obvious.
I'm just some guy on the internet.… but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once.
Badpenguin
Well-known member
Earl hasn't declined _that_ much. The rest of the world has gotten much, much better.
But yes, eyesight, physical stamina, patience, endurance, all of those things drop with ago.
billiards_watch
Well-known member
It's why we're listening to Dr. Dave.
I’ve posted this elsewhere in the topic but don’t mind repeating it here.
I think an interesting analysis would be to go deep on the normal distributions of men vs women. We already know women are just a fraction over 50% of the population at large. But are about 12% of the pool playing population.
If both were on the same distribution but women were just a smaller pool, you’d see similar distributions of talent but too small a pool to create the most elite talent. But we already know they are not on the same distribution. Women’s bell curve is shifted left. That does mean men have an advantage whether it’s physical, cultural or both (doesn’t matter why, it just is).
We know trans humans are about 0.6% of the population. If the distinction of being trans was as meaningless as hair color, then you’d most likely see the pool of Male-to-Female trans athletes be about 0.6% of the male pool playing population. And you’d likely see their smaller pool would be too small to produce many elite talent.
And you’d be able to look at FargoRates of that pool and see. Does it align with a shrunk down male bell curve (meaning they carried an advantage with them in their transition) or if they aligned with a shrunk down shifted left female bell curve (meaning their transition carried over no advantage).
I hypothesize the later they transitioned, e.g. post-puberty, and the amount of competitive pool they played pre-transition would indicate how much advantage transitions with them. Because you should be able to math out the likelihood of N number of 600+, 650+, or 700+ players to predictably emerge from their pool. There are ranges that are 100% likely and ranges that are statistically unlikely.
Because for me, the likelihood of results on the table are the only factors I consider in this conversation in terms of fairness of the field.
I think an interesting analysis would be to go deep on the normal distributions of men vs women. We already know women are just a fraction over 50% of the population at large. But are about 12% of the pool playing population.
If both were on the same distribution but women were just a smaller pool, you’d see similar distributions of talent but too small a pool to create the most elite talent. But we already know they are not on the same distribution. Women’s bell curve is shifted left. That does mean men have an advantage whether it’s physical, cultural or both (doesn’t matter why, it just is).
We know trans humans are about 0.6% of the population. If the distinction of being trans was as meaningless as hair color, then you’d most likely see the pool of Male-to-Female trans athletes be about 0.6% of the male pool playing population. And you’d likely see their smaller pool would be too small to produce many elite talent.
And you’d be able to look at FargoRates of that pool and see. Does it align with a shrunk down male bell curve (meaning they carried an advantage with them in their transition) or if they aligned with a shrunk down shifted left female bell curve (meaning their transition carried over no advantage).
I hypothesize the later they transitioned, e.g. post-puberty, and the amount of competitive pool they played pre-transition would indicate how much advantage transitions with them. Because you should be able to math out the likelihood of N number of 600+, 650+, or 700+ players to predictably emerge from their pool. There are ranges that are 100% likely and ranges that are statistically unlikely.
Because for me, the likelihood of results on the table are the only factors I consider in this conversation in terms of fairness of the field.
Good post Matt.
It would be very interesting to see FargoRate data on transgender pool players, both before and after transitioning, but that data is not available or collected.
It would also be interesting to see how the average of the female distribution has changed in the past and how it might change in the future.
billiards_watch
Well-known member
This would be useful data and the data we need.
It’s especially interesting because if you took my same sample of US and Canadian players. It was something like 72k established men and 10k established women by the charts FargoRate posted in December 2023. So say you have 0.6% of 72k, 434 established players likely to be M-to-F trans athletes out there. If you have a single trans woman playing at 650 speed, your eyebrows would raise. But if you have 3, 4 or 5 then you’d know these are people that cut their teeth with the advantages of the male bell curve and then took that with them to compete in the women’s bell curve. So while we might not have a lot of data today, we don’t need data on the whole population to start coming to conclusions You’d just need data on the stand-outs of which tend to have some visibility.
And of course I’d look to someone more qualified than me to do the real math.
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Maybe generic labeling - like public restrooms, would be in order. Competitive events, leagues, whatever... may the best doer win.