From an evolutionary standpoint, it would be wise to banish gender differences altogether, allow doping, and reward the winners with a show to find 20 women willing to bear their children. It would cause plenty of havoc along the way, but that seems to be the way it works.

From a more pragmatic standpoint, I think you have to define male and female and discuss each exception separately. There's an inherent problem in questions like this: how far until you cross the line? Each person has an average of 200 mutations compared to the next person, and sometimes they stack; this creates our losers and junkies, athletes and geniuses, average joes, idiot savants and much more. The ultimate problem is that in a universe where everything is unique, you just can't work with laws. And I have no idea of how to tackle THAT problem. ;)

Seems to me we just ran into that bridge. And it appears to be rather dodgy. I say we build a new one.

What constitutes a flaw? Darwin teaches us that the species most responsive to change is most likely to survive. What if, for example, women are catching up with men in terms of muscle power and stamina?

Flaw insinuates positive and negative; a very human trait of cognition, and extremely subject to the zeitgeist of our time. Evolution doesn't work that way. $h!t happens, and sometimes it is either productive or at least non-detrimental; the latter will mean an extra notch under the belt when the inevitable change comes on. That is why rats, bats, birds and many other successful organisms have conquered the planet. They've got an edge.

This may just be the start of a new trend in humanity. It may be latent for a while, but if (extreme example) we get invaded by Martians tomorrow and survive to start an interstellar war, people like her may be of incalculable value. Consider, and consider carefully, the nature of your perception.

Well said!

I disagree. Her ability to run was what got this whole discussion started in the first place :P

Considering that there are plenty of creatures which can be hermaphrodites, and that there are rare genetic variations (YXYY, for example) where one is born with e.g. male characteristics while the sexual organs may be female, this is a difficult point. Where do you draw the line? I know of a few lesbians who, except for the chest, could easily pass for male: large arms and hands, low voice, etc.

The sexual differences are fairly pronounced for "normal" men and women, but there are plenty of in-betweens. Methinks the only thing they can do is make an extensive study of all the differences between men and women, and say that if more than an x number of variables lean towards the one or the other, the person in question must be considered as being of the opposite sex. Either that, or you have to create the Hermaphrodite Olympics. They'll probably still have to investigate each case separately either way.

only on?

I wonder if this is indeed the right way to go about it. I figure that if you're famous enough, there's going to be loads of fora - public and semi-private, mind you - stuffed with defamatory comments. I figure you should just ignore it, set up your own blog, and only react if people really seem to be getting wrong ideas - but then, do so with honesty and integrity on your own blog. Insert a good troll filter so people can comment and avoid the trolls. There's always gonna be shortsighted individuals who'll gripe anything or anyone, whether that person / thing is known to them personally or not. Let 'em rot in their own juices - they'll either shower eventually or rot away, and in the latter case they're hardly worth anyone's time. Also, this avoids Streisand effects and means that anyone seriously interested in what you have to say about something will refer to your blog and not some random forum; the news sites already do so. Just keep on truckin', apologise if you're wrong, react calmly and clearly when you're right, and let the lawyers stay at home.

It's a bit more interesting than that, though. BREIN was actually sueing the company that was planning to take over TPB, expecting an easier grant from the judge (which they got). This opens the door to forcing ISP's to block certain websites, something which BREIN has been trying for but has hitherto miserably failed at. This is all just a sham to set up jurisprudence to slowly swing the courts in their favor. I think I'm gonna go BREINwash their CEO.

We've got the same discussions going on here across the pond, but we're a bit further along. Several laws have already been passed ordering carriers to stop blocking VoIP and such; in Belgium, iPhones must be sold independently of carriers. I think we're starting to get the mix between government intervention and free market right. On another level, we told the telco's to standardise the power plugs they use; they were given an ultimatum after mass public annoyance at all the different chargers we have, and told to "choose or have it chosen for them". Now micro-USB will be becoming the standard. We're getting there!

It makes me wonder, though. I don't believe in free market anymore. There's just too many loopholes, lobbying being the biggest. And I think the U.S. government has a lot of corruption to stamp out before it can be as flexible as the EU has been hitherto.

Having a central government of any kind monitoring this type of thing just won't work. The best we could probably do is set up an automated system which yells BEEP! when it sees a truly suspicious transaction; then amici curiae appointed by the PEOPLE in combination with a random system to prevent infiltrators - NOT the government - are allowed access and can check the records, and indicate action may be necessary. Then, every action these people must be logged and open to public scrutiny. The servers must be monitored by an independent monitoring system, once again open to public scrutiny. That's the only way anybody will have any faith in such a system whatsoever.

But on the other hand: what are they looking for? $1m dollars transferred from Hussein in Iran to Mustapha in the U.S.? Couldn't you completely automate the whole system? Google did for its advertising, and that's the only thing that's keeping a really large group of inspectors at bay.

I posted because I know there may be people struggling with this type of thing, and it never hurts to share your experiences. Why rediscover the wheel yourself when you can get a schematic on internet (even if it does look square in some places) :) But now I respond because I'm curious: what would trigger a response like that? I presume you read the topic itself as well, and did so for a reason. Idle curiosity? Stuck in a similar ship? Frustration? Maybe try discussing instead of biting.

Creativity is hard to categorise. However, it also isn't completely random. When I'm working on a project, I can get myself into "daydream" mode and gently steer my creativity to find answers to the question or problem at hand, so I would guess that even if it is random firing of neurons, it is random firing of the neurons active at that moment. This means that it certainly is NOT random, because you can choose what to think about, and hence, steer that random firing to get a result. Evolution likes that.

With e.g. schitzophrenia, I think that people who have a double copy of the gene and have a high(er) IQ are more likely to find a way around the problem and deal with it. I would guess I'm one of the lucky guys with a double expression of the gene, but also with a good IQ. A lot of what was said was very recogniseable - I've fought with depression, burnout and more, and also had an immense war between myself and my own mind, and have seriously questioned my sanity, before I finally learned to detach from my thoughts and emotions, and stand behind them as it were instead of being dragged along with them on a very rough rollercoaster ride. Meditation, sports, the forced responsibility of having to run my own company and lots of research saved my sanity. Now my creativity is a tool, a part of my mind which can be accessed at will instead of a scary the-voices-say-the-universe-hates-you personal enemy you can carry everywhere you go. I am the eye of the storm, as it were, and it is no longer easy to rip me loose - I would guess that only a long, sustained depression combined with stress over a period of years could do that (because it means that slowly but surely your belief in yourself and your self-imposed structure will be eroded by the negative emotional flood from the amygdala).

I think the problem is compounded once you get depressed. It seems to me that creativity is rampant throughout the brain. When I was depressed, it seemed that my "logical" brain was less active and my "emotional" brain ran the show - all my reactions were negative and emo. This might be because the amygdala seems to "shout louder" at certain times than others, or maybe the rest of the brain is more overwhelmed by its "voice" during depression because it is less active, I don't know. At any rate, it means you are completely at the mercy of emotional reasoning and the torrent of feelings because you don't have your "logical net" to tell you "nah, I'm dramatizing again" and you simply shrug them off as an itch.

At any rate, I know a few others like myself and their stories are similar: mental override, take control, avoid pitfalls of deep feelings (unless they're positive, and even then keep an eye on them), and view the world as a statistical game instead of a personal interaction. The latter is probably the most important, because once you start trying to ascribe a (negative) personal meaning to the events that influence you - for example: "God made me lose my job because I'm bad / worthless / whatever", then you open Pandora's Box on your own mind. That's also one of my warning signs that I may be stressed out or in a downward spiral, and that I need to take more breaks and relax more: if I find my mind trying to reason like that, I know I'm in the danger zone, so I adjust for it. Not doing so probably means you'll end up creating another religion based on frustrated depression.

Amputation. At the hip. Preferably sterilization. And THEN let them do public service for the rest of their lives.

Ok, ok, a wee bit drastic. Or is it? It's the only way I can think of (the sterilization thing, anyway) which gives humanity a chance somewhere in the future, if not now.

I'd rather be happy with ugly teeth than gorgeous and miserable. Fortunately, I'm wonderously good at having my cake and eating it. Good toothpaste rocks.