And I have never denied that. The argument has been noting that the issue is that the phrase 'trans men are men' implies 'man as sex' and is both grammatically incorrect and less logical to have the unmodified man be read 'as gender'. If you would like to give a reason why you think it should be read 'as gender' I welcome that discussion. — Philosophim

The confusion stems from what the expectation of society is. The expectation is not that people that dress a certain way makes them men or women. This isn't even an expectation. It is a definition.

The expectation is that they are already men and women and we expect them to dress in a certain way to be able to tell the difference since their body is now covered. This is why there is a surprise when a man finds out his date is a man when they expected a woman.

If gender was actually the "expectation" (actually definition) that what you wear makes you a man or woman then there would be no surprises.

My comments re "mental masturbation" — Janus

Seems like philosophy itself could be labeled as mental masturbation.

Of course they have to be trained on basic pattern recognition initially. I don't know and would need to look into what they initially were specifically trained on before being released "into the wild". Now that they are out there they are being trained on whatever content is to be found in their casual interactions with people. — Janus

Dood, the content from human beings trained in pseudo-science and other nonsense seen on this forum is available everyday for you to read, without any AI. If anything, posters should run their ideas through AI before wasting time posting their zany ideas to humans. which would eliminate wasting time reading nonsensical posts.

If you take every idea with a grain of salt, you’ll never move beyond hesitation. Critical thinking isn’t about doubting everything, it’s about knowing when doubt is justified. In logic, mathematics, or physics, for instance, constant suspicion would paralyze learning; you suspend doubt provisionally because the framework itself has earned trust through rigor.

In a philosophy forum, though, caution makes sense. Most participants lack grounding in epistemology, logic, or linguistic analysis, so what passes for argument is often just speculation dressed up as insight. Honestly, you could gain more from interacting with a well-trained AI than from sifting through most of what appears here, it would at least give you arguments that hold together. — Sam26

"With a grain of salt" is a 1600s direct translation from Modern Latin "cum grano salis", and salis is genitive of sal, which, in addition to ‘salt’, figuratively means "ntellectual acuteness, good sense, shrewdness, wit.

The Latin phrase is found in English literature in the 1600s and 1700s, and salis appears to precisely mean ‘good sense, intelligence’.

My point was that for one avoid parroting others you should be skeptical of what others say, not that you should avoid logic and reason.

Someone is wrong if they claim that God exists but they're not wrong if they claim that the word "God" means "creator deity" (or whatever). — Michael

Are they wrong if they say "God" is the universe? Isn't that the point - that anyone can use the word the way they want, but does it make them correct in any instance of their use of the word? IS God the universe? "God" is a nebulous term, unlike "man" or "woman". They have a scientific basis, and any cultural expectations that exist are just that - expectations of the culture as a whole, not an individual's personal feelings. You're trying make these terms as meaningless as the word, "god" in that it means whatever anyone wants it to mean. Communication only works when we agree on the terms being used. So if you want to use words in a certain way it would only be in your own private language, or a small group that thinks the same way you do.

And I don't understand how this relates to the topic under discussion. Are you saying that English-speaking people don't use the word "man" to refer to those whose gender is male (regardless of sex) or are you saying that people whose gender is male (regardless of sex) don't exist? — Michael

Male is a sex. Man is a specific sex of a specific species. We use those terms to refer to one's biology, not how they dress. If one does refer to a female as a male then they are either confused by the way they are dressing, because in a society where it is illegal to be naked in public we have established expectations of the sexes to tell the different for finding mates, or a someone who has simply jumped on the trans-gendered bandwagon without thoroughly reflecting on it.

All this seems to be the stock map vs territory speach, but nowhere is it identified what you think is the map (that I'm talking about), and the territory (which apparently I'm not). — noAxioms

The map is the first-person view. Is the map (first-person view) not part of the territory?

Very few consider the world to be a model. The model is the map, and the world is the territory. Your wording very much implies otherwise, and thus is a strawman representation of a typical monist view. As for your model of what change is, that has multiple interpretations, few particularly relevant to the whole ontology of mind debate. Change comes in frequencies? Frequency is expressed as a rate relative to perceptions?? — noAxioms

I never said that people consider the world as a model. I said that our view is the model and the point was that some people (naive realists) tend to confuse the model with the map in their using terms like, "physical" and "material".

You do understand that we measure change using time, and that doing so entails comparing the relative frequency of change to another type of change (the movement of the hour hand on the clock vs the movement of the sun across the sky)? Do you not agree that our minds are part of the world and changes like anything else in the world, and the time it takes our eye-brain system can receive and process the information compared to the rate at which what you are observing is changing, can play a role in how your mind models what it is seeing.

So old glass flowing is not an actual process, or I suppose just doesn't appear that way despite looking disturbingly like falling liquid? This is getting nitpickly by me. I acknowledge your example, but none of it is science, nor is it particularly illustrative of the point of the topic. — noAxioms

:meh: Everything is a process. Change is relative. The molecules in the glass are moving faster than when it was a solid, therefore the rate of change has increased and is why you see it as a flowing process rather than a static object. I don't see how it isn't science when scientists attempt to find consistently repetitive processes with high degrees of precision (like atomic clocks) to measure the rate of change in other processes. QM says that measuring processes changes them and how they are perceived (wave vs particle), so I don't know what you mean by, "none of it is science".

You don't see the difference between stating a number of possibilities, and selecting one possibility? Come on Harry, where's your mind at? — Metaphysician Undercover

I was doing both. I gave a number of possibilities and gave a reason as to why you would choose either option. I don't know what you might do because I'm not in your head, but you are and you would know t he answer to the question. I was basically imagining being in your head and describing the possible options you might have available and the reasons why you would choose one or the other. Was I right in picking the options you would have available and the choice you would make give the reason I gave?

I'm sitting on a chair. In a few minutes I will decide to get up. I will decide this without reasoning. I make many such decisions without reasoning, every day. I just decided to take a sip of tea without reasoning first. — Metaphysician Undercover

But you did reason. You said, "In a few minutes I will get up", which is your reason to get up when you did. WHY did you get up? To get a snack, because your back was aching, because the chair was on fire, because you said you were going to get up a few minutes ago, etc.?

Much of what all of us do is "parrot." Not many people can come up with an original idea to save their life. — Sam26

The objective in thinking for yourself is to take every idea you hear from others with a grain of salt, and to even question your own ideas constantly. I have come up with certain ideas on my own only to find out that others came up with it as well. Some minds do think alike given the same kinds of experiences.

Well, yes such quotes are no substitute for argument, and obviously they do not belong to the one who quotes. It is all the more objectionable if the person presents the quoted passage as their own work. It's easy enough to find them out if the quote is from a prominent philosopher, whether alive or dead, Not so with copying and pasting AI generated text. — Janus

I don't necessarily mind if others post a quote as an argument. Sure it's not their argument, but it is an argument and needs to be addressed if it puts a whole in your position, regardless of where it came from. To deny this is to be intellectually dishonest with yourself.

Posting others words as if they were your own is an issue I can understand, but AI is not another person (at least that we know of). It is no different than you getting your answer from a calculator, or making grammar adjustments using Grammarly or a thesaurus, or even re-writing another's ideas in your own words. If it wasn't your idea to begin with, does it matter if its in your own words?

The details and the superficialities have changed, sure, but the exploitative nature of relationships between humans has not changed. — baker

Yet our lifespans and health have increased, which was my point. Do we still have work to do? Sure. It takes all of us to stop voting for the status quo and to take money out of political campaigns, as a start.

Well, it's a bit more than that. Your thinking and speech are already communal. It's a fact of your existence that you are a member of a community. All you get is some small say in how big that community is. — Banno

It would only be communal in a society in which each individual gets the same voice. In any other society, an individual, or a small group of elites, control access to information and it is their thoughts and speech that you possess, or only the thoughts and speech they want you to possess, not the community as a whole.

In a society with multiple political parties, people choose to live in certain political bubbles. Their speech and thoughts are that of the political party and not the community as a whole, which is made up of alternative views. In some societies you can choose which community you are part of, and switch when it appears your community has moved to far to the left or right.

I value logic and reason. You might say that I developed in a community that values logic and reason. But I didn't. I grew up with religious parents. I abandoned those beliefs in my late teens and early twenties. And I credit my own experiences, not the community's (can we even say a community has experiences like an individual does?) of the hypocrisy and inconsistency of that community that lead me to start to question my community's ideas.

So I don't see how it can be totally communal. If what you say is true, we would be stuck in our communities without the ability to change, or choose, communities that align with our internal principles.

Why think that if these things are objectively wrong, then these things would never happen? If it is objectively wrong that the Earth is flat, does that necessarily mean that nobody will believe the Earth is flat? — 83nt0n

It depends on why they believe the Earth is flat. It would seem logical that one would believe the Earth is flat from a certain perspective of the Earth, even though they are wrong. We can predict what shape people will believe the Earth is based on their current experiences. What reasons would someone kill another human being, and would any of them be legitimate reasons, therefore acknowledging that it is not objectively true that killing is immoral?

Well, which country do you live in and who writes the laws there? I wanted human ability to be legal rights. The police can't arrest me for killing you because it's my right (i.e., ability). — Copernicus

This has nothing to do with what I am saying about access to accurate information and how it extends or limits our freedoms regardless of the current laws.

If you never had the information that provided you the option to kill someone, what need is there for laws and law enforcement? Information controls freedom. Your choices will be determined by the amount and type of information available, not by laws.

Do you even understand what a metaphor is? — Copernicus

I thought my use of the Allegory of the Cave showed that I did, but you are avoiding that point, so I agree with you on this point that this conversation is hopeless at this point.

I see freedom as ability, not allowance. — Copernicus

Yet you described the state as the one that allows freedom.

This is the current state of the U.S. where the masses think they are free because we have laws that state that the government has limited power over us as individuals, but if they control access to information, and replace it with misinformation, are we really a free society?

You view individuals as units of the community. I see each individual as the only self that is real or matters to himself (solipsistic view). — Copernicus

This seems contradictory to what you're saying in the other thread.

Yes, thematic. I don't say this 5 cm area of my consciousness is 31 degrees Celsius hot, so to speak. That's what I said. You can't dissect it like you would your wrist nerves. — Copernicus

Measurements are simply relative comparisons and are part of the shadows (your are essentially comparing different shadows). How do you understand the distinction between distance and spacing of objects if not the different areas they appear relative to each other in your conscious visual experience? Are you a naive realist? Do you really think that the world is as it appears in your visual experience - located relative to your eyes?

Yes. The collective sovereign land you reside in and its institutions. — Copernicus

Let me help you. The collective consists of autonomous individuals, some of which have acquired enough resources and influence to get others to follow their own autonomous decisions. The point is that the collective always resolves down to the individual.

Why is that? I don't think you got my point. — Copernicus

You can be given all the legal freedoms the state has to offer, but if you have access to limited information to make informed decisions, how are you suppose to realize your true freedom if you are not aware of other options that might offer better outcomes?

What I said was that we can't mentally feel and touch our consciousness to dissect it for understanding. Only a thematic comprehension. — Copernicus

The very feelings you speak of IS your consciousness, and is the mirror used to access things outside of your consciousness. Think of the Allegory of the Cave. You only have direct access to your cave and access to everything else via the shadows cast by them. You see the cave as it is. You see the rest of the world, including other people's minds, only by the shadows they cast in your cave. Your mind is the cave. Other people's minds (their brains) are the shadows, but each shadow is cast from another cave. The shadow is equivalent to the physical brain. The cave is equivalent to the mind.

Not everyone uses the word "slay" to mean "impressive" (or whatever it means to youths these days), but that is nonetheless one of its meanings.

If you don't want to use the word "man" to refer to anyone whose gender is male, regardless of sex, then don't. But it's bizarre to suggest that other people are wrong if they do use it that way. It's prominent enough to warrant being considered another meaning. — Michael

So it's not wrong when other people use the word, "God" in a way that implies that it is male living in another dimension that wants you to do its bidding and exists? Mass delusions exist which can make many people say the same wrong things.

Me saying someone is wrong is not what makes them wrong. It is the distinction between the words they use and the reality of the situation that makes them wrong. Me saying they are wrong is just representative of that truth, but is not what makes it true.

The collective. — Copernicus

A collective of what? Does the "state" always represent the masses?

I want self-autonomy to be legalized. — Copernicus

It can be legalized but won't matter much if you choose to live in a bubble, or have limited access to information.

Notice I did not explicitly say "to get people to hold the door for me". If you're being honest when you see a woman vs a man, you do have a different initial impression and treatment of them. Some of this is likely biological, but part of it is also culture. A person who is dressing in a way to emphasize their sex may be desiring these other smaller interactions they see others doing (or they do themselves) like being gentler with their voice, not talking about sports, etc. It is not one specific objective action they desire, but a collective subjective treatment that they see. — Philosophim

I don't know what culture you live in, but here in the U.S. chivalry is dead, and has been replaced with politeness towards all. I hold the door open for anyone that is right behind me when opening a door. Are you seriously saying that if I was right behind you, you wouldn't hold the door open, but let it shut in my face?

The way I might adjust my tone or avoid certain subjects with others has nothing to do with their sex. I have talked about sports with women, and spoken gruffly to them as much I have any man. The things you are saying are simply sexist.

Again, you're only emphasizing encounters of sexuality, not mere differences of sex expectation. In most general cases non-sexual gender treatment is mostly harmless. As you noted, most gender treatment should be equalized to people as a whole, and not merely given to one sex or the other. That is an ideal, but often not a real. In these cases, if someone mistakes a transgender person for the opposite sex in a quick public encounter, no one is wiser or cares. I do not view this as immoral, as the person may very well feel better and happier presenting as such for themself. — Philosophim

Exactly. The quick public encounter is gender/sex-neutral - where one's gender/sex is irrelevant. That is why I am focusing on the scenarios where it is relevant.

In the case of situations that impact the other person directly, like direct sexual interest, a trans individual should immediately let the other person know that they are in fact trans. To not do so would be sexual abuse. — Philosophim

Exactly.

Exactly, and that is the point. To choose not to decide is an example of a type of choice which escapes your description of what a choice is, which was either A or B. Therefore your description of choice was faulty. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's not. There are typically more than just two options in any decision-making process, of which not choosing is a choice precisely because it leads to a different outcome than if you had chosen one of the other two. You choose outcomes, not necessarily the means because the means can change along the way.

That's not a prediction, it's an expression of logical possibilities. A prediction would be to select one or another possibility as the one which will occur. You totally distort the nature of "prediction", in an attempt to describe a person as predictable. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see the difference between "it's an expression of logical possibilities" and "elect one or another possibility as the one which will occur".

Now you totally distort the meaning of "making decisions" to support what you want to argue. Many decisions are made without reasoning. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not. Give an example of making a decision without reasoning. I've been asking for specific examples but you have yet to provide one.

Legal freedom is not. — Copernicus

Legal freedom is secondary freedom. You have to be aware of options that might be counter to what the state expects of you, even if you might be jailed for it, to be able to make any decision other than what the state expects of you.

Legal freedom is usually intimately tied to the amount of free information in a society. Which is why you don't see alternative views in societies with strict, nationalistic laws.

That's because the laws are made by the state, uniformly, for individuals. — Copernicus

What is the state?

What I meant is that the same way you can't scrutinize your eyes the way you can your palms, you can't dissect your consciousness in the mental laboratory. — Copernicus

My point is that all you have is your mental laboratory and it is your mental laboratory that is used to investigate other mental laboratories. How you perceive other mental laboratories will always be indirectly, like how you see your eyes in a mirror. The only thing you have direct access to is your own mental laboratory.

You seem to be saying that indirect access is what provides truth where direct access does not, which is counter-intuitive.

The a.i.’s final answer reveled how it was able to take a philosophical discussion from a vague starting point and bring it to a level of depth and detail which opened up a vast array of much more nuanced questions. And because I am well acquainted with the authors being discussed, I knew that the information it was using for its arguments was not being simply fabricated out of whole cloth, but was highly relevant and based on real texts of the authors. I almost always find this to be the case with regard to A.i’s treatment of philosophical issues. — Joshs

I experience the same thing when coding with AI. You can start off with some basic structure and expand on specific areas, building on what was created before. And you need to know the programming language to be able to pick out mistakes and make the adjustments you want to see. Also the first block of code it wrote worked right out of the box, which lines up with what you said about AI is not fabricating. It can take learned data and apply it to a new situation like my specific request for a certain function that has never been written before - the same way a human programmer would - and it worked.

Just because we use calculators to perform simple arithmetic, we have not forgotten how to do simple arithmetic. Calculators are tools to speed up the process of things that we already know how to do. We do this with our own brains. Once we learn a task, like riding a bike, we outsource the decision-making when performing those tasks to unconscious areas of the brain. We no longer need to consciously focus on each movement of each leg and our balance. It is all done unconsciously, which is why your mind can be in a different place while riding a bike and you arrive at your destination but don't remember the ride.

Yes...so what? What do you think you are disagreeing with here? — Janus

I'm not disagreeing with anything necessarily. I was just seeing if you were being consistent. So, the question now is: Have you made this much of a fuss about other members' posts whose sole content is a quote from somewhere else?

What I am disagreeing with is the notion that, on a philosophy forum, we should be focused so much on the source more than the subject, as that is the focus of philosophical discussions, and attacking the source is a red herring or genetic fallacy, usually seen when one side has no more arguments to make.

I know how to read. You don't seem to know how to write your ideas in a consistent manner.

I think the issue is that many of the people on this forum that spent their hard-earned money on philosophy courses and degrees are simply upset that now AI can do philosophy with the best of them, if not better because it lacks the emotional baggage that some on this forum carry. :wink:

If everything humans do is not necessarily nonsense the the information AI has access to is not necessarily nonsense. You pull the rug out from under your own nonsense.

As usual, and AI did not change anything in this regard, you have to do your own research with access to multiple sources, not just what AI is telling you.

But then AI was not being trained on its own nonsense, only on humanity's nonsense. — unenlightened

And you and every other person on this forum are part of humanity, no? So this forum is full of nonsense? Thanks for contributing to the nonsense. What is the point now of having any discussions when it is all nonsense?

How can you account for the exponential progress humanity has made in the past few centuries compared to the first several thousand years of our existence. It would seem to me that we have begun to emerge from all the nonsense of the past several thousand years that preceded the scientific revolution.

It doesn't always have to be about sexual attraction, but other indicators like wanting to be viewed as 'sweet' and having doors held open for you, etc. A large amount of gendering is about sexuality, but there is plenty of gendering that also has nothing to do with sexuality, and a person can be transgender because they want those non-sexual expectations that come with it. — Philosophim

I hold doors open for others, regardless of their sex, to be polite. It has nothing to do with gender. To hold doors open for one sex and not the other is sexist. Would you not hold a door open for an elderly man? Being sweet has nothing to do with gender. Any sex can be sweet, or nice. What you are describing are simply human behaviors, not gendered behaviors, as these are not traits specific to one gender or the other, except if you are sexist.

That's a fairly loaded question. If one is attempting to be perceived as the opposite sex purely for their own purposes, and but does not hide the fact when they would benefit from a sexual interaction, this is not immoral. If they hide the fact for the benefit of a sexual interaction they know an individual would not give to them if the other person was aware of their natal sex, then yes this is deceiving another person into doing something they wouldn't do if they saw the truth of the matter for personal gain. That would be immoral. — Philosophim

The first part makes no sense. The immorality is in fooling another about your sexual identity which does not allow others to realize their own identities as either gay or straight. The intent is irrelevant because anyone with an ounce of brains would know that other people might be fooled by your charade, meaning that you would need be up front about what sex you actually are, so there will always be some intent to fool others in cross-dressing.

Well, quite often I decide not to choose, or decide to do something completely different, totally unrelated to A and B. How is this compatible with how a computer makes a decision? — Metaphysician Undercover

Ever listen to Rush, where Geddy Lee says, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"?

You would need to provide specific examples of you doing this because it sounds like you're making stuff up.

It seems to me that when you appear to make a decision with no reason it is because the outcomes of those options are the same. Choosing between your two favorite ice cream flavors isn't a decision because the outcome will be the same of you enjoying some ice cream. It doesn't matter which one you choose as the outcome will be the same.

Haha, that's a joke, isn't it? That someone might be able to predict what I would do in one specific situation makes me "predictable"? — Metaphysician Undercover

Not a joke at all. I don't know you and I can predict that you will either respond to this post, or not respond to this post in an effort to try and make a point that you have free will, and that you will have reasons for either decision you make, or that you will use my prediction as information to try and choose something you don't normally do to make your point but you would really end up proving my point in that you have reasons for your decisions.

If you have no reasons then you were not reasoning and making decisions is a type of reasoning.

Then you must also believe that using a long-dead philosopher's quote as the crux of your argument, or as the whole of your post, is also an issue.
— Harry Hindu

It's not the case that I must think that at all. That said, I do generally refrain from quoting philosophers, whether dead or alive. I mostly prefer to discuss things using my own ideas and in my own words. I realize that my own ideas are mostly not original, but I have no idea what source most of them came from, so I could not acknowledge the originators even if I wanted to. Add to that the fact that whatever originator we identify probably cannot claim true originaility for their own ideas. — Janus

You said,

if one is not the source of the post, then it is not one's post. — Janus

.

So if one did not write the post themselves, but merely copied and pasted a quote as the sole content of their post, then by your own words, it is not their post.

And 50% and growing of public website material is produced by AI. So it is eating its own bullshit to an ever increasing extent. — unenlightened

And before AI many internet sites were copies of other sites, and still are - with the same information. News networks piggy-backed off the reports of other news networks. You're complaining about something that has been pervasive well before AI became a thing.

This is why the source is no longer important. It is what is being said that is important - not the scribbles, but the subject the scribbles refer to.

One merely needs to make a simple observation to see that this is not true. The fact that we have prisons at maximum capacity in indicative of the fact that people do act in ways that contrast with the society they live in.

I define freedom as choices. The more choices you have the more freedom you have. The more information you have, the more choices you have. So freedom is obtained by having access to all information, which is what the government and those in power want to limit so they can control you. In this sense we have more freedom by controlling the flow of information, which means limiting the power of government and politicians, which means abolishing political parties (so that media can no longer be a mouth-piece for the political parties), imposing term limits and stopping the flow of money into political campaigns.

What I meant is that the same way the eyes themselves cannot see them, without external help, consciousness itself cannot interpret (look within) itself. — Copernicus

Of course it can. How can you even report that you are conscious to me in the "physical" world, outside of your consciousness if you do not "have access" to your own consciousness? Consciousness has this ability to loop back upon itself - of being aware of being aware, of thinking about thinking - kind of like how you get a feedback loop by turning a camera to look back at the monitor it is connected to. Your report would be akin to the external help I need to access the contents of your consciousness.

The issue with your argument is that there is no external help one can receive in viewing another's consciousness, nor does it explain how physical objects like neurons create the sensation of visual depth and empty space. The solution is to abandon this dualistic thinking and that the "physical" is more real than the mental when you only know of the "physical" by way of the mental - by the way the world appears mentally.. "Physical" and "material" are merely ideas stemming from the way you perceived the world and the relative frequency of natural processes and your perceptual processes. Relativity plays a role in the way you perceive the world.

Femboys for example don't want to change their sex, but want to have people view them in the visually sexualized way they look at women. For these individuals, I think the definition of transgenderism as intended fits quite well. Its not an entire encapsulation of the opposite sex's gender, but a selective desire to (sexual in this case, but not all cases) get a particular reaction from people that they see society giving the opposite sex. — Philosophim

This seems to square up with what I was saying about the expectations society has of the sexes is a means of attracting the opposite sex. A woman might wear sweat pants and shirt to the supermarket because she has no intention of trying to attract a mate. She is simply there to buy some groceries and not making a statement about her sexual identity, but about her sexual motivations, or lack thereof.

The problem arises when one's sexual preferences are taken advantage of and manipulated because another is trying to identify as the opposite sex but isn't. Is it moral to fool another of your sex in the context of seeking a mate that fits the other's sexual preferences?

What if I'm alone in a galaxy with no refelctive substance to see myself? — Copernicus

A very unlikely scenario. Stop moving the goal posts and answer the question as posed.

Secondary sex characteristics absolutely have to with hormones. The longer the body is dominated by T the more it will masculinize and the longer it is dominated by E the more the body will feminize to the point of heterosexual attraction. That is what puberty does to you and why puberty blockers are given to buy time for the teen to make a decision.
The proliferation of this treatment, puberty blockers and so on is why you're discussing it. That is why it is frequently in the news of "irreversible changes". A recent trans story (the Kirk shooter's trans girlfriend) had nothing whatsoever to do with clothing as the person wore hoodies. — Forgottenticket

Blocking hormones erases sexual differences, just as removing societal expectations removes gender differences. When you remove the distinctions you no longer have a spectrum to move along, thereby erasing trans because there are no longer any distinctions to transition between.

So it seems that the ultimate goal here doesn't seem to be conductive to the trans-community. Erasing the distinctions erases the trans-community and diversity and makes us all the same.

Exactly. So the next step to move the conversation forward is to DEFINE what you mean by "fly" or "see".

Which one is better evidence of the color of your eyes - hearing someone telling you your eye color, or looking in the mirror?

In other words, trans people are not identifying as a gender. They are identifying as the opposite sex and the difference is the level of detail one wants to obtain (simply wearing a dress or having surgery). It would seem that the lazy ones (the ones that only cross-dress) are the ones that are reinforcing sexist stereotypes.