Comment

Comment on That's a whole lotta hydrogen!

No it is still not empirical. The definition of sex is difficult to set in stone, and yours fails to argue for itself on the basis of a result that is just a stretch of the empirical truth. In fact, you saying that it is a consensus in the field of biology when a notable amount of biologists argue against this is very far-fetched.

Again, take someone with Swyer syndrome that don’t have the ability to produce any large gametes. By saying it is “organized around the production of large gametes”, you are extending that empirical fact related to that person, and ascribing them an alternate reality where there can produce large gametes. You’re defining someone around something that they cannot do.

Concretely, this means that sex is way more complicated than just “revolving around the production of gametes”. I am not an expert in biology, and will not be able to tell you exactly what it is without not considering all of the edge-cases of it’s definition. But there are too many contradictions with saying that it’s binary because XYZ.

I am of the opinion that our society’s obsession with figuring out someone’s sex, if it is assigned by birth by a doctor, determined by an onlooker, etc. is in it of itself harmful. Not that there’s anything wrong with knowing about your body, but the way it’s been morphed into these essential classes is harmful for those that defy said class, intentionally or not.

That said, I hope you look at more examples of teleology in biology. In fact, what I explained should be understandable if you have a look at the wikipedia article. If you do not mean “organized around” in a teleological sense, then what do you mean? Also, you failed to address my previous analogies in your response. If it’s because you feel like it’s fallacious, or that it’s simply wrong, then why not respond accordingly? I’m starting to suspect the use of AI…

source

Sort:hotnew top

a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Something to understand is that power struggle pretends to be the last word on things. Powerstruggle is not a scientist and doesn’t even seem to have relevant degree credentials.

Push them on it. It gets pretty funny.

source
- powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This user is weirdly obsessed with me to the point of eroticism. You’ll want to be careful around them.
  
  I’ll explain again though that “pretending to be the last word” is the opposite of what I’ve done. I’ve cited many reliable sources to demonstrate that I’m merely conveying the consensus in biology. This user has done nothing serious.
  
  source
  - a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Weirdly obsessed is funny. Especially given that the moment is comic shows up you have to be there to express your opinion.
    
    source
powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Which biologists are arguing against it? I think that’s a more concrete claim.

Your argument is basically “This person was born without something at the end of their leg, but we can’t say they’re missing a foot. Maybe it was a fin! Or a baboon! Or an aircraft carrier! There’s just no way to tell”

A human body tries to build a foot at the end of the leg. Sometimes it fails, but until we observe a stable, inherited body plan that doesn’t grow a foot at the end of a leg it is not teleological to use “tries” in that sense. It’s descriptive

source
- Binette@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Few examples of biologists arguing against it:
  
  www.asrm.org/…/just-the-facts-biological-sex/ www.biorxiv.org/content/…/2023.01.26.525769v1
  
  pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40199245/
  
  radcliffe.harvard.edu/…/ideology-versus-biology
  
  By the way, when I look towards more sources for your claims, I often find christian institutions and TERF adgacent sources. Some even argue for teleology. This, again, contredicts the theory of evolution, which we are still abiding by, correct?
  
  Also, your section on determination vs. definition (in your last message) is cyclical. People determine based on definition. To say the opposite would beg the question: “determined based on what?”, and the answer will be a definition, right or wrong.
  
  I’m not the one saying “it could be a baboon, who knows”. You are lol. I’m saying that there is no such thing as a “could be” in concrete empirical analysis of nature, just a “be”. We can make educated guesses based on the empirical data, but they’re just that: guesses. We can say “they are missing a foot”, but it is a shorthand for “this person has no foot. Usually, people have a foot there. It might allow them to walk more stabily, so let’s try sollutions that mimic the structure of a foot”.
  
  Because how can they be lierally “missing a foot” if they never had one in the first place? The supposition that something is “supposed to be there” is a cognitive shortcut, but nothing is supposed.
  
  It is teleological, because there are two options in interpreting this sentence:
  
  A human body tries to build a foot at the end of the leg.
  
  The empirical one, which, as you should know, is a concrete observation of what is going on. You’d rephrase the sentence as:
  
  This person has no foot at the end of their leg. Typically, humans have feet at the of their leg.
  
  Using this interpretation, it would be ridiculous to define a human empiricaly around the fact that they have 2 legs. Remember, right now we are using terms in order to explain something more concrete.
  
  The human body actually tries to make a foot at the end of the leg -> same teleological argument as I explained in my previous reply.
  
  The “stable, iherited body plan” is still a teleological sentence lmfao. You’re basically disaproving my argument on the basis of it not being teleological.
  
  Since you’re arguing for teleology, I suppose that you have a fickle understanding of evolutionary biology. Tne human body doesn’t “try to do something”. It either doesn’t or it does. Ascribing a certain attempt or will to the body is a shorthand, like i’ve said several times, but it is not accurately depecting the experience.
  
  As a thought exercise, can you describe your definition of sex without using teleological language? But then again, your reply shows a lack of understanding on what teleology is, so if you reply with anothe misunderstanding of the concept, I’ll just move on from this.
  
  You also stated that you’re autistic in your bio. As someone that is also autistic, you might want to reflect if you’re actually arguing for science, or rather for a more rigid worldview that you want to stay the same. This argument of yours seems repetitive and circular, so I’d suggest reflecting on
  
  source
  - powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    One of those papers gets to the heart of your confusion and is interesting to consider, but first:
    
    pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40199245/
    
    Did you read this before you linked it? “Hence, it is essentialism and typological thinking that we should dispense with, not biological sexes.” It agrees with everything I’ve been saying!
    
    www.biorxiv.org/content/…/2023.01.26.525769v1
    
    Biologist adding commentary to another biologist’s takedown of this. It’s nonsense: whyevolutionistrue.com/…/colin-wright-debunks-a-d…
    
    The authors of the MEA paper actually recognize that sex is binary when making arguments against it. For example, they mention the damn penis in the female hyena without realizing how they know she’s a female, and somehow think that variation within a sex effaces the sex binary.
    
    www.asrm.org/…/just-the-facts-biological-sex/
    
    Mostly uncited and wrong. The one definition it cites for biological sex comes from a committee of non-biologists tasked with improving data collection. Irrelevant (and also wrong).
    
    You’re confused about what determination means. It’s not cyclical, please read and understand
    
    Your other link isn’t saying what you think it’s saying (radcliffe.harvard.edu/…/ideology-versus-biology). I’ll start off by noting that it agrees with me:
    
    Within the scientific community, Sun notes, Parker’s gametic definition of biological sex was generally accepted
    
    It’s also frequently incorrect (unsurprising since the article was written by a PR person), “binary definitions of biological sex fail to account for roughly 1.7 percent of the population according to one estimate” is false and relies on work from a deeply unserious person, Anne Fausto-Sterling, who got called out on her bullshit and said she was being “tongue-in-cheek” and “ironic”.
    
    But this is the real claim from that link:
    
    Variations in genes, chromosomes, and internal and external sex organs are often called disorders in sex development in the medical community. I think that’s wrong in many cases. It’s just natural variation
    
    It’s not actually disputing the sex binary. It’s basically a dispute about the term “Disorders of sex development” vs “Differences of sex development”. So it doesn’t disagree with me, though the question of “disorder” vs" difference" loops back to your confusion.
    
    You’re confusing the various meanings of the word “should” (or supposed to, or take your pick of terms). It can be used descriptively or prescriptively. You’re saying that incorrect prescriptive use invalidates descriptive use, and that’s wrong.
    
    Using this interpretation, it would be ridiculous to define a human empiricaly around the fact that they are “supposed” to have feet at the end of their leg,
    
    Humans aren’t defined that way. Someone missing a foot is still human. You have the definition the wrong way around and complaining that it doesn’t make sense, when in fact it doesn’t make sense because you’re thinking wrong.
    
    A completely non-teleological definition is that sex is defined by what structures one has in their body that are required for production of one gamete type that are not required for production of the other gamete type.
    
    source
    Binette@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    For the first link i am sorry, i confused my pubmed links in my copy tray: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34096131/
    
    I read the text debunking second link. The author writing this is more concerned with the usefullness of the gamete size definition for us than the actual definition of it.
    
    As I’ve mentioned before, the recognition of the gamete size binary—the so-called “flattening”, has in fact been enormously productive in biology, for it’s given us not only an explanatory basis for sexual selection (which itself explains a ton of biological phenomena), but also enables us to make predictions about how parental investment affects behavior (e.g., why female seahorsea rather than males are members of the sex with colorful adornments).
    
    Flattening it has never been useful to this. Knowing people’s sexual characteristics as a whole instead of just figuring out which gametes should be produced is more helpful
    
    Another case of semantics vs actually understanding what the authors are saying. They argue that since they acknowledge that they called the hyena “female” that they recognise the sex binary. They were actually calling the hyena female because the wider scientific community calls them that, not because they believe it is. It’s a bad faith argument.
    
    The author keeps also talking about ideology and, in tfe end, mentions how the paper got through because of DEI. Like seriously??? That’s not how DEI works 😭
    
    Your claim about ASRM is quite disengenuons i feel. Saying that medical doctors are “non-biologists” disregards their education in biology and anthropology.
    
    Either way, my point is that there are biologist that have contested it.
    
    Then if you were talking beforhand about the sex determination mechanism, then you’d be off topic. My argument has nothing to do with how the body determines it’s sexual function, but simply the end result, as you say it. The sex determination process is a process that, again, doesn’t have a strict set of rules, other than, at best, the patterns that we observed and used as norms. Sex determination doesn’t “fail” because, on it’s own, it doesn’t have any goals. We only say it has a goal to explain things easily, but concretely, it just does stuff
    
    For the havard link, I want to empasise: you say that it wants to dispute the terms “disorder” and “difference”. But this is exactly what we’re arguing about. Just put in another context.
    
    The paragraph on Fausto-Sterling is also not helpful. You didn’t even reply with what she said, so why can’t I asume she was just being ironic about it? Like what are you even talking about?
    
    You’re confusing the natural extention of the thesis of the author for their thesis: sex is not binary. I want you to not only undrestand their argument as to why it isn’t, but also recognise that a significant amount of biologists are against your claims. Here is the paragraph directly against what you’re saying:
    
    Sun finds Geoff Parker’s gametic explanation of biological sex, published in 1972, to be the most useful—yet it too is incomplete. Parker suggested that sex is defined by the size of the reproductive cells present in each individual. That is, males produce smaller gametes (sperm) while females produce larger gametes (eggs). However, Sun emphasizes that this definition does not account for individuals that produce no gametes at all or those that produce gametes that are not fully viable—that is, intersex individuals.
    
    My point isn’t that humans are defined this way by the general population. But if they were the fact that people without feet at the end of their legs would be proof that humans cannot be defined with that, the same way that sex can’t.
    
    Your teleological definition is slightly beter at explaining what you’re getting at, but contains quite the contradiction.
    
    If by “stucture”, you mean everything that is directly invoved in the creation of the gametes, then I can just show someone that doesn’t have ovaries or testes. No organs in their body are creating them, so that person has no sex?
    
    If by “stucture”, you mean that including the rest of the sexual characteristics, then someone that has traits of two different structures is both sexes? Since I can just say that someone with Swyer syndrome was trying to make a structure organised around making small gametes, but failed, because the SRY didn’t activate.
    
    source