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One of the predicted outcomes of the Singularity is the removal of sex as a characteristic. Note that race would be removed as well. A posthuman (of whatever form) would be free of both sex and race.
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> If the "simplistic" male/female binary explains >99% of observations, there does not seem to be a strong case for describing biological sex as a "spectrum"... 1% of the world population is nearly 70 million people. That is not a small population. One would hope that we might be more flexible in our descriptions considering how large of a population that is.
Does that make a highly accurate approximation into a less accurate one? At what point is it acceptable to say that something is an approximation, and should not expected to be precise and accurate in perfect detail?
"Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of [atypical sex]." If the "simplistic" male/female binary explains >99% of observations, there does not seem to be a strong case for describing biological sex as a "spectrum"... I am 10,000% behind tolerance and acceptance for people of all genders and sexes and orientations, and it's very useful to understand how much biological complexity and…
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary
note: this is a re-post of a comment made on a child of the OP.
"Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of [atypical sex]." If the "simplistic" male/female binary explains >99% of observations, there does not seem to be a strong case for describing biological sex as a "spectrum"... I am 10,000% behind tolerance and acceptance for people of all genders and sexes and orientations, and it's very useful to understand how much biological complexity and…
This is a fascinating article, and stands on its own merits. Go read it. The point I'd like to make though is that sometimes we use science to justify intolerance, and time and again the science has caught up with what people have reported as their own life experience.
Do you have any examples of this?
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Does that make a highly accurate approximation into a less accurate one? At what point is it acceptable to say that something is an approximation, and should not expected to be precise and accurate in perfect detail?
Yes, we should, because getting it wrong can ruin lives and even cause deaths.
Does this mean approximations should not be used, or does it mean that one should be aware that the map is not the territory?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Does that make a highly accurate approximation into a less accurate one? What we have right now is not an approximation, but a binary measurement. Turning sex into an approximation would be considered a significant step forward considering science tells us it is not binary.
The 'two-sexes approximation' is boolean, not binary. Boolean involves two possible values; binary involves an infinite number of possible values, represented in base-2.[1][2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary
Boolean is simply a binary variable, having two possible values: true and false.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does that make a highly accurate approximation into a less accurate one? At what point is it acceptable to say that something is an approximation, and should not expected to be precise and accurate in perfect detail?
Can we agree that 70 million people is not a negligible number?
The important question is the second one I posed. What is the acceptable level of error in an approximation?
Some of the unusual situations mentioned are birth defects. About 3% of babies have birth defects.[1] [1] http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/features/birthdefects...
Sounds to me like someone is reaching to make science match the way they feel about gender.