BlackHumor comments on Transsexuals and otherkin - Less Wrong

11 Post author: lucidfox 15 July 2011 07:10AM

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Comment author: BlackHumor 17 July 2011 11:52:46AM 1 point [-]

I suspect that you're vastly underestimating how similar people are.

My guess is that people's guesses will be essentially random, except possibly for the trolls (because they're trying, and so will be portraying caricatures of the opposite sex instead of actual people).

I know that I personally have never so far been able to tell men from women over a purely text channel without having been told explicitly, which I assume would be off limits. Though now I think of it that's not entirely true; I would guess from lesswrong demographics that you, Armok, are male. ('course, if you happened to be female that would prove my point nicely.)

Comment author: Desrtopa 18 July 2011 08:47:03AM 2 points [-]

I know that I personally have never so far been able to tell men from women over a purely text channel without having been told explicitly

I have. There are text analyzers which give statistical likelihoods on the gender of the author of a given piece of writing. They generally give fairly wide confidence margins, but their algorithms are pretty simple and they don't apply a lot of heuristics that humans can use. Even the best gender analyzer can only guess with limited confidence, but a person's writing style offers considerably more than zero information about their gender.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 17 July 2011 12:12:39PM 1 point [-]

It wouldn't be off limits, and you're supposed to specifically be fishing for their gender and they're supposed to be cooperative except for the trolls.