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Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

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Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#61

Post by copsarebastards »

Kalium wrote: post #39
copsarebastards wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we agree that 70 million people is not a negligible number?

Depends on what you're dealing with and the significance of it. 70 million is not a significant number of atoms of most things, for instance. The important question is the second one I posed. What is the acceptable level of error in an approximation?

> Depends on what you're dealing with

We're dealing with people.

> and the significance of it.

People are generally pretty significant. 70 million people is very significant.

> 70 million is not a significant number of atoms of most things, for instance.

70 million people is a pretty significant number of people.

> The important question is the second one I posed. What is the acceptable level of error in an approximation?

Since you seem to have mistaken my rhetorical question for an actual question, I'll restate it as a statement: 70 million people is not an acceptable level of error in an approximation.

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#62

Post by TuringTest »

Kalium wrote: post #23
Aloisius wrote: post #17

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.

As simon_ and Symmetry point out, that binary is in fact a pretty accurate approximation. So it seems we have both a binary measurement and an approximation in one. Perhaps we should consider that something can be both a binary measurement and a reasonably accurate approximation of a spectrum. Regardless, my earlier question stands. At what point is it acceptable for an approximation to not be accurate in detail? Wha…

> What's the acceptable level of error in approximations?

I'm fairly sure the lifes of those affected negatively by the error are outside the "acceptable level". We're talking about humans here, not mathematical rounding errors.

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#63

Post by esrauch »

copsarebastards wrote: post #57
coldtea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's a pointless argument to make when your 1% margin of error includes 70 million people. You say that like it's some huge number. 70 million or not, it's still 1%. Numbers get their significance relatively, not in themselves.

> You say that like it's some huge number. 70 million or not, it's still 1%. Numbers get their significance relatively, not in themselves. Relative to what? I can't believe I'm having this conversation. 70 million people is more than the number of people killed in both world wars. 70 million people is more than the population of the UK or Canada. Are you claiming that the world wars caused negligible deaths, or that…

> 70 million people is more than the number of people killed in both world wars

Not that I necessarily disagree with your sentiment, but the world population was lower when those wars happened, so the the same number of people dying was far more than 1% at the time. Looks like WW2 alone was 3-4% of the global population. The world wars were also important for reasons other than number of deaths anyway.

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#65

Post by PinnBrain »

Jach wrote: post #47
PinnBrain wrote: post #13

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.

It's hard to predict what beings more intelligent than us will do. Yes sex and race cease to become very valuable concepts when people can configure their bodies to be whatever they like in any mix at any time. But we can also consider that having machine-memory allows us to be very specific with the characteristics we want to advertise. e.g. from one of my favorite sci-fi books The Golden Age , the main character's…

The Golden Age...thanks! Bought on Kindle.

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#66

Post by PinnBrain »

anon4 wrote: post #64
PinnBrain wrote: post #13

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.

Or free to choose.

Then it's no longer race or gender--it's something else. Not that we'll be using anything like English or Spanish then.

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#67

Post by Kalium »

copsarebastards wrote: post #61
Kalium wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you're dealing with and the significance of it. 70 million is not a significant number of atoms of most things, for instance. The important question is the second one I posed. What is the acceptable level of error in an approximation?

> Depends on what you're dealing with We're dealing with people. > and the significance of it. People are generally pretty significant. 70 million people is very significant. > 70 million is not a significant number of atoms of most things, for instance. 70 million people is a pretty significant number of people. > The important question is the second one I posed. What is the acceptable level of error in an approxima…

OK. Then what is an acceptable level of error in approximation when dealing with people? 7 million, at a scale of billions? 7? 1?

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#68

Post by threatofrain »

copsarebastards wrote: post #57
coldtea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's a pointless argument to make when your 1% margin of error includes 70 million people. You say that like it's some huge number. 70 million or not, it's still 1%. Numbers get their significance relatively, not in themselves.

> You say that like it's some huge number. 70 million or not, it's still 1%. Numbers get their significance relatively, not in themselves. Relative to what? I can't believe I'm having this conversation. 70 million people is more than the number of people killed in both world wars. 70 million people is more than the population of the UK or Canada. Are you claiming that the world wars caused negligible deaths, or that…

Yes, but so what? How do you link this argument back? 70 million is a lot of people in MORAL terms. What about scientifically?

We aren't talking about killing 70 million people. We're talking about the strength of constructs in terms of scientific utility.

This is also the problem with huge numbers. It's very hard to process and we are intuitively intimidated by the largeness, such as with numbers from the state budget. $70 billion? Oh my god. How am I supposed to process that number?

Also note that 1% is a figure arising from the most inclusive definitions.

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#69

Post by copsarebastards »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #59
coldtea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's a pointless argument to make when your 1% margin of error includes 70 million people. You say that like it's some huge number. 70 million or not, it's still 1%. Numbers get their significance relatively, not in themselves.

Numbers are perfectly significant in being themselves large. 70 million is a great market for a set of niche clothing lines, self-help books, sex toys, etc. It's just not enough of a market for governments to spend an extraordinary amount of effort on dealing with the specifics. This is a long-tail number, too; 'Male', 'Female', and 'Other' probably makes sense if you expect 1% of respondents to select other. However…

> However, 1% don't select other; They get offended that you don't have Facebook's 72-pronoun list, and even if you do, that doesn't cover their particular favorite.

Keep in mind that social media generally exemplifies the dregs of humanity. The people who make a fuss about "Other" on the internet are not representative of the everyone in that 1%. I'm pretty sure you don't have enough information to make the statement you did above.

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#70

Post by hackuser »

Torgo wrote: post #50

There is a spectrum of how many legs a human is born with. Some people are born with two, some with none, some one, some with three. Some people are born with between one and two legs that enable them to walk upright on the side of a slope. The idea of two legs is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that. What I am getting at is, there is science and then there is the social context for a…

> the pure scientific fact may not be useful at all, or actually confound your ability to understand things.

That's true in the abstract (undeniably, some scientific fact is confounding -- I don't need to know about about quantum uncertainty to cook dinner) but I don't think it applies well to this issue.

This report may confound some people's understanding of sexuality, but to people who don't fit that conventional understanding, and to their loved ones, it does the opposite. Imagine a lifetime of being reminded that you don't belong -- every bathroom sign, do you attend the girls school or the boys, every form you fill out, every locker room experience, every medical procedure, etc etc. Addressing that seems much more important and fair than reducing the confusion that new ideas can bring.

This is the nature of change and progress: Humans naturally are very egocentric, and can be wholly unaware of others' experiences and perspectives. When the reality of those experiences is thrust upon us, we often object -- everything seems fine to us, after all, and our old theories explain our experiences.

Think of the responses to racial and gender discrimination, where many in the majority insist that it doesn't exist. After all, they haven't experienced it.

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