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A comment on There's No Rulebook for Sex Verification. Parent comment

Re:There's No Rulebook for Sex Verification by Goladus on Saturday August 22, 2009 @07:47AM (#779255)
That bigger problem is exactly the one I was talking about. Competition sorts people by performance already. Adding another new layer of sorting based on computer analysis of last year's performance doesn't really gain you much.

Virtually all sports rely on some level of arbitrary meta-organization. While you could write essays about why that is, it boils down to one: It's interesting that way. It's not just gender, either. Playing fields across most sports are divided by geography, age, affiliation or nationality, or simply arbitrary divisions like in the MLB. So long as the boundaries are recognized by everyone there isn't a problem.

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Re:There's No Rulebook for Sex Verification by SapphireSun on Monday August 24, 2009 @04:16PM (#783204)
I don't think that's the only reason sports are divided up. It's also because you need people of nearly equal skill before the competition actually is competitive and not just one player trouncing everyone else. Statistical methods would ensure that this happens, but may lose the other sort of divisions.
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