What's interesting is that the examples you provide are those allowing only for mutually exclusive solutions.

Transgender athletes can either be allowed to compete in women's leagues, or disallowed. You cannot partially allow it, can you? The same goes for Israel. Palestinian organizations openly claim that they want to destroy Israel, while Israel does not want to be destroyed. Israel cannot exist and not exist at the same time, so logically there is no solution that will satisfy both parties.
 

I don't think there are *only* mutually exclusive solutions. For example international athletics organization impose testosterone level limits, which is neither a complete ban nor a complete permission of transgender athletes. The most frequent solution to the Israel / Palestine conflict is a two state solution, which destroys neither Israel nor Palestine.

It is the absence of discussion that would permit compromise which makes people think that no compromise is possible.
 

I don't think this is something new. I think it's a general characteristic of humanity. For example, there were plenty of people who never wanted black people or women to participate in the Olympics (over 100 years ago). The US initially only allowed whites to be citizens. Our human history is littered with "us vs them", whether it's racial, cultural, gender, or whatever you can use to distinguish groups. Compound that issue with the fact that today's communication ability means that there are no curators and you should be finding lots of polarized articles.

What I hope happens is an eventual recognition of the negative effects that this extreme negativity and polarization has on us as individuals and groups. However, I don't think it will. There are many generational conflicts throughout the world which show me that conflict is easier than compromise. Since most people seem to want the path of least resistance it's going to take an extraordinary person or leadership to right the ship.
 

One of the architects of the polarization and the no-compromise no-bipartisanship politics in US is thought to be the former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt_Gingrich#Role_in_political_polarization



 

Compromise in the US has largely been dead since 2010.

Take a look at this Vox article. How do you compromise with a party that wants to make it harder to vote? Who claim, without evidence, after repeated audits by people in their own party, that millions of illegal ballots were cast? Polls show a majority of Republicans still believe Trump is still the "true" President. These politicians were almost murdered by a mob this year - while voting to overturn the election itself! - decried the violence, but a few months later they were back to kissing the ring out of political expediency. How do you compromise with that? These are not good-faith actors.

I hold no illusions about the future of the US. Biden had 7 million more votes than Trump, but the actual margin was 44,000 total votes in three states. That's after one of the most egregious government responses to a global pandemic. It's entirely likely that Republicans win the House and Senate in 2022 with fewer votes than Democrats, win the White House in 2024 with fewer votes than Democrats, and then the game is up.
 

There are times when compromise isn't possible, or a good idea - I don't think the Allies should have told Hitler "Well OK, you can kill HALF the Jews, and we'll let you have the gypsies if you leave the homosexuals alone" for example :) Other times, compromising and getting along is absolutely the right thing to do. There has to be a judgement of whether what we would lose by compromising is worth the strife caused by not compromising.

I do recommend at least trying to understand where the other side is coming from in a debate, however. They might be using different data, a different mental model of how things work, or different assumptions. It may be that they have different values from you - in which case even if you agree on the data and the model, you may not agree on whether an outcome is desirable, or worth the cost. It's possible that once you understand how the other side came to their conclusion, you still think they're wrong, but being able to explain WHY you think someone is wrong is a lot better than just screaming "Wrongthink! Doubleplus ungood!" and demanding that they be cancelled for their wrongness.
 

With you on all points, Tobold.
 

@Tobold

You say that a society should be willing to entertain the notion of gray areas, and I agree with this whole heartedly. But how do you propose that a society should balance representation and protections based on the unknowns created by all these shades of gray? We have scientists who can't even agree on what constitutes the differences between a biological male and biological female, so how can anyone propose to speak with certainty or authority, on any subject of gender with all of the empirical studies pointing in so many different directions? Are the studies tainted with bias along political or religious lines? How do you go about picking what information you deem accurate or worthy of consideration in these regards?
 

I think the sensible approach would be that it is not the role or function of any athletics committee to define a universally accepted definition of gender. But it is their role and function to define rules that lead to fairness in their athletic disciplines. Which they can do based on measurable criteria like testosterone levels. They don't need to tell an athlete whether he is biologically male or female, they just need to tell him that his testosterone level is too high to compete in a woman's race.
 

The Florida case against vaccine passports is interesting. The governor claims that he is doing it because of concerns about freedom and privacy - that medical information of an individual should be kept private. Here I can agree, there is merit to those concerns.

Here comes the "But". But in the same state of Florida, there is a certain private school (Centner Academy in Miami) that has introduced a policy to not employ teachers who are vaccinated, and those already employed should not come into contact with students. All this because of some idiocy of "vaccine shedding" that was affecting other people.

If demanding to know an individual's vaccination status is an invasion of privacy, then both the cruise ship companies, and that school are doing it. The question here is, if the Florida governor sanction the cruise ships for demanding vaccine passports, will he also sanction that school and other businesses who demand people to not be vaccinated? If he does, I can accept that he may be genuinely concerned about freedom and privacy. But if he only moves against the cruise ships - then there is no gray area or nuance here, he is simply pandering to the anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists.


 

"I think the sensible approach would be that it is not the role or function of any athletics committee to define a universally accepted definition of gender. But it is their role and function to define rules that lead to fairness in their athletic disciplines. Which they can do based on measurable criteria like testosterone levels.

Using testosterone levels as an indication of fairness is the exact reason this is an issue, because it is based on testosterone levels - which are established by using gender to determine the baseline of acceptable levels of the hormone. Should members of any particular athletic committee be fired/cancelled if they rule in favor(or against) your suggestion/agreement to use testosterone as the litmus test for athletes?
 

@tobold

Testosterone testing is inadequate measure. It is irrelevant what level of testosterone the transgender athlete has right now, because the testosterone already played its role in organism's early development. As you may know, in addition to stimulation of spermatogenesis, testosterone also affects bone growth. Once human's organism finishes its growth phase in young adulthood, the level of testosterone is irrelevant. You can have zero testosterone and be Hulk-like because your bones and muscles have already grown this much. You can implant vagina and breasts all you like, but you are now a woman with man's muscle and strength. If you began your sport career as man and trained well, no cis woman will ever be a match for you - they all had lower level of testosterone in growth phase.

The one possible compromise in this situation is to introduce transgender leagues, and it will be eventually done. However right now it is probably not economically viable due to relatively low number of transgender athletes.

I wonder if you've read the section regarding Israel carefully. Palestinian organizations like HAMAS do not care if palestinians have their state or not. Their goal is destruction of Israel. Two states is not an accepted solution to them. No Israel with a Palestinian state or no Israel and no Palestinian state are solutions they would agree to.
 

@souldrinker: I will assume that you are not Palestinian. I don't think you can conclude from what some extremists say what ultimately will be acceptable to the people of Palestine. If you only listen to the extremists, you can replace "Israel" and "Palestine" by "Republican" and "Democrat" and state that these two sides would never accept the other side to survive either.