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Comment by iiioii | Hacker News Reader

> I agree with this, although I suspect most of what Taylor reports is true and not "placebo", as it matches other reporting from people who are chemically transitioning.

Certainly I do not doubt that they have recently started enjoying romantic comedies, human interest stories, sewing, cooking and not getting into arguments about racism, but I am skeptical that these are caused by externally-induced hormonal changes, rather than correlating as part of a broader set of intentional gender-transitional changes.

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It is well documented that hormone levels affect activation patterns [1-5], so I am not sure why you are skeptical about it. Using references from another commenter.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19789167/

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17117339/

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25505380/

[4] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29544637/

[5] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18842345/

Sorry but, pasting in five citations of papers you've not read, from another commenter who probably just grabbed the first five they stumbled across from searching PubMed, doesn't really add to the discussion.

Also, the first paper is written in Croatian and the second in Spanish, so it seems odd to link these on an English language forum. The odds of finding someone who understands all three languages well enough to discuss these researchers' work with you is, most likely, extremely low.

You can take a look at the abstract and then look for related articles in English.

You are dismissing articles that contradict your beliefs on the basis of lacking the capacity to read them, not of their content.

No comment on the other 3 references, thus that response does not contribute to the discussion, except for showing that you do not care about reaching some truth. But then again that account is only a few minutes old.

It is not my responsibility to fill in the blanks of what you want your argument to be.

If you would like to make a point about why you believe that enjoying romantic comedies, sewing, cooking, etc. are driven by hormonal changes rather than some other factor, please lay out your case.

Citing a random selection of papers that you haven't read does not help to achieve this. It just gives the impression that your viewpoint is not a seriously considered one.

My claim WAS that hormones affect activation patterns. That is a well supported claim.

Changes in activation patterns affect our perceptions, our senses, and literally the medium by which we experience the world. They may not affect our personality instantaneously, but our personality is malleable, and depending on feedback, it changes.

If our brain's activation patterns change s.t. certain things are more enjoyable, then these new patterns integrate in our personality.

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