7 ms·

"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 observation

• Aloisius 12y ago
  > 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.
  • Kalium 12y ago
    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?
    • Aloisius 12y ago
      > 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.
      • Kalium 12y ago
        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? What's the acceptable level of error in approximations?
        • TuringTest 12y ago
          > 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.
          • Kalium 12y ago
            It seems your objection is not to approximations or the error inherent in them, but to what happens when people forget approximations are not reality. Is that correct?
      • nickff 12y ago
        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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary
        • quadratical 12y ago
          Not to be pedantic, but binary is entirely correct in this context. We aren't talking about computer science. Binary means relating to, composed of, or involving two things. Boolean is simply a binary variable, having two possible values: true and false.
    • pornel 12y ago
      Yes, we should, because getting it wrong can ruin lives and even cause deaths.
      • Kalium 12y ago
        When an approximation is confused for reality and policy formed, yes, the consequences can be very ugly. This must be avoided. Does this mean approximations should not be used, or does it mean that one should be aware that the map is not the territory?
    • copsarebastards 12y ago
      Can we agree that 70 million people is not a negligible number?
      • Kalium 12y ago
        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?
        • copsarebastards 12y ago
          > 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.
          • Kalium 12y ago
            OK. Then what is an acceptable level of error in approximation when dealing with people? 7 million, at a scale of billions? 7? 1?
            • copsarebastards 12y ago
              I think an acceptable level of error in approximation in legal and scientific terms would be one where the error is not likely to affect people negatively according to shared values (a shared value might be: people shouldn't get beaten to death or commit suicide--both problems among atypically sexed people). That number is difficult to come up with: it would have to look at impact analysis to see whether programs can effectively help people. And as technology, social programs, and medicine become better, the margin of error would likely go down. I can't come up with that number exactly, but given that we've seen significant benefits from social programs for atypically sexed people in the last few decades, I think it's pretty clear that we can still provide more benefit.
  • Symmetry 12y ago
    It's closish to 99.9% so 7 million. Which is a big enough population that we should consider how we draft our laws and policies but not nearly so large that "male" and "female" cease to be useful concepts for our everyday lives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Population_figures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Population_figures
    • TuringTest 12y ago
      > not nearly so large that "male" and "female" cease to be useful concepts for our everyday lives. Who says those are not useful? The point is to not make therm exclusive by forcing everybody to be identified by one of them when it's not a good fit.
    • Aloisius 12y ago
      The article is referencing "DND" or Disorders of Sex Development. This is a far larger group than what "intersex" covers.
  • Crito 12y ago
    For comparison: Approximately 1.3% of black males are born with polydactylism.
• breadbox 12y ago
  Surely 1% of the population is enough that we should e.g. have a way to legally recognize them, instead of forcing everyone to fit themselves into one of the two options.
• ahelwer 12y ago
  I'm not sure what you're saying. If your model does not accurately reflect observations, your model is wrong. That's not to say it isn't useful - we still teach Newtonian mechanics, after all - but you wouldn't use it in any serious discussion of the topic.
  • sbergot 12y ago
    You wouldn't use Newtonian mechanics in any serious discussion? This is a strange claim.
    • Retra 12y ago
      They probably meant 'serious discussion' as a proxy for 'discussion demanding the highest available accuracy.' But that doesn't really work in this analogy because quantum physics essentially assumes Newtonian physics as axiomatic, so there is no way to avoid it no matter how 'serious' you're trying to be.
• barrkel 12y ago
  CO2 is 0.04% of atmospheric air by volume. Would it be a highly accurate approximation to say that air has no CO2? Could we then say that it is not possible to have problems with too much CO2 in the atmosphere, since our highly accurate approximation says there isn't any? The article stands well on its merits. It's not political. It's talking about specific, measurable things with specific measurable effects, and 1% of a large number is still a large number.
  • jcromartie 12y ago
    Molecules in air do not exist on a spectrum from Nitrogen to Oxygen.
    • barrkel 12y ago
      And cells don't exist on a spectrum between male (XY) and female (XX) - leaving aside cells with abnormal numbers of chromosomes.
• moomin 12y ago
  Not really. There's 600 people in my office. The chance that all 600 match your approximation is about 0.2%.
• xxxyy 12y ago
  Also there is the fact that not all forms of atypical sexual development are really relevant to daily life. For example it did not surprise me that the woman described in the beginning had no idea about her chimerism - after all her sexual organs were straight female (proved by the fact that she got pregnant, three times), so her blood was probably circulating lots of estrogen instead of lots of testosterone. Sure, her color vision was maybe working at the reduced, male level, but really - it is not that important. On another note it is worth remembering that in vitro fertilization increases the risks of mosaicism and chimerism.
  • panzagl 12y ago
    Yeah, from reading some of the comments here they act like it's the height of inhumanity that places only have 2 bathrooms instead of nine.
• copsarebastards 12y ago
  1% of the world's 7 billion people[1] is 70 million people. That's a little less than the population of Congo, a little more than the population of France. [2] I'll admit that what you're willing to call a "highly accurate approximation" is pretty arbitrary. There are some systems where I would call an approximation with a 1% margin of error a highly accurate approximation. But it's a pointless argument to make when your 1% margin of error includes 70 million people. I think we can all agree that issues which affect 70 million people are not negligible. [1] http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
  • coldtea 12y ago
    >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.
    • kaonashi 12y ago
      Nice try, Stalin.
    • copsarebastards 12y ago
      > 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 the populations of the UK or Canada are negligible? You can't just say 1% is a negligible amount without context. Whether 1% is a negligible margin of error is entirely dependent on context. 1% blood alcohol will probably kill you, 1% error on your taxes, if intentional, is enough to put you in jail, 1% error in floating point arithmetic is the difference between a missile that hits its target and a missile that lands in a civilian residence. But numbers get their significance relatively, right? 70 million people is a lot of people.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• zenogais 12y ago
  Why defend a "highly accurate" approximation that also happens to be oppressive to the people who fall outside of it? So far as I can see learning to incorporate more nuance into our social understanding is the way these oppressive institutions are overcome, and how more diverse groups learn to coexist. Defending approximations like this runs dangerously close to committing the "naturalistic fallacy" of taking the way things are as the way they ought to be.
  • panzagl 12y ago
    Did you read the article? How is it oppressive? 1% of people have chromosomal problem that might affect fertility or have other medical impacts. This has nothing to do with an 'oppressed class'.
    • zenogais 12y ago
      This is a reply to another post on here, that I think mistakenly got slotted at the root level.
• errrrttt 12y ago
  > I am 10,000% behind tolerance and acceptance for people of all genders and sexes and Really? Would you suppport former man who legaly (no operation or hormones) changes his gender, to avoid military service or to study for free? Would you support woman who becomes lesbian just to get attention? Or how about men who becomes gay just to adopt a kid.
• haberman 12y ago
  > highly accurate approximation An approximation, by its nature, is simplistic compared to reality. That's what makes it an approximation.
• flipside 12y ago
  A strong case can be made because the line is extremely blurry and there can be severe consequences for forcing a category on people that doesn't fit. Sex and gender are shoved in people's faces practically every waking moment which means this "highly accurate approximation" breaks down billions of times a day with consequences ranging from discrimination and depression to sterilization and death. How certain are you that you or some close doesn't fall outside the binary?
• zenogais 12y ago
  Why defend a "highly accurate" approximation that also happens to be oppressive to the people who fall outside of it? So far as I can see learning to incorporate more nuance into our social understanding is the way these oppressive institutions are overcome, and how more diverse groups learn to coexist. Defending approximations like this runs dangerously close to committing the "naturalistic fallacy" of taking the way things are as the way they ought to be.
• BuildTheRobots 12y ago
  > 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'd suggest that it all comes down to how we're making those observations and what we're then doing with the classifications we've derived. Why are we trying to describe the idea of biological sex? If it's for the sake of a scientific classification, then simplistic is a horrific idea. Biology by definition (in a modern world) is dealing with the small scale deviances and the nitty gritty. We're 99% rat, but the differences are somewhat remarkable. We've been observing the wrong thing for thousands of years. Your assertion is almost correct; 99% of the time the _outcome_ of observation might be male or female, but it doesn't actually _explain_ anything. All it does is answer the question "does it have a penis"[1]. Which in 2015 has far less medical relevance than it did in centuries gone. "Well Mr. Smith, she is of the weaker species, this little touch of the vapours is to be expected, of course." is a diagnosis heard less and less. We're now increasingly diagnosing and categorizing conditions a genetic level, never-mind just what your second sex chromosome is. [2] From a technical point of view, it's already far more complicated than male/female. Simplifying science to that degree does it a disservice. The big problem with binary though is the way it permeates through culture, language society and even thought. Essentially, at birth, we clumsily label and categorise people based on their sex organs and worse, refuse to officially acknowledge the grey area. It's like asking someone with severe allergies if they want the shell fish or the peanuts. "Oh I'm sure they would both kill you, Sir[3], but you will be eating one for your entrée" Put bluntly, I don't effing understand why everyone is so interested in what I have down my pants? You'd think it's entirely irrelevant except for some very specific circumstances, but instead we all have to publicly broadcast this binary allegiance all day every day. Everything. Pretty much every trivial form online makes me choose between "Mr", "Mrs", "Miss" or "Dr"[4] and usually as a mandatory field and yet you really don't need to know if I have a labia or not to be able to print my name and address and post me a parcel. It doesn't need to announce this on my bus pass or in nearly every english pronoun. Through childhood I repeatedly went through conversations along the lines of "Which football team do you support?" I don't. I don't watch football. "That's fine, but which team do you support?"[5]. Not having an allegiance, even a lapsed one, is not an option. By simplistically describing homosapien sex as binary it means anyone who doesn't conform is left out. It's not a legitimate option. Not viable, abnormal, mistakes, a freak of nature if you will. We're essentially saying that these people are inhuman and unnatural, which is obviously untrue. The UK has allowed people to change their legal gender for over 10 years now[6], which legitimises the idea that external observation and internal state might not be linked. Simplifying that disparity to a binary state though, does a great disservice to the human condition. It seems odd that it's now legitimate not to identify as M||F but you've still got to identify as M||F. "No", "Other" or "I don't know" should be a completely legitimate answer in response to sex or gender. It needs it's own category, it needs words to identify it and language to be able to describe it otherwise it's not a real thing, it's just anomalous. And anyway, I'm disappointed; this is hacker news. Define it as either binary value or a boolean, but we should all be aware that as well as TRUE or FALSE, 0 or 1, variables can legitimately be undefined and it's something you have to be capable of handling. apologies for the rambling answer. --------------- [1] Admittedly a bit glib, but ignoring the last 120 years of science this is probably the most distinct observation we've been able to make of a live subject. Talking points might include testis and eunuchs, the ability to give birth and the difference between sex, gender and gender stereotyping... oh, and sea horses. [2] http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/genetics/vgec/highereducation/topics/dnageneschromosomes http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/genetics/vgec/highereducati... vs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_sex-determination_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_sex-determination_system [3] Penis [4] which until rather too recently has basically meant "penis", "already owned by a penis", "has no rights, available to be owned (warranty void if introduced to thinking)" or "even more respected penis". [5] Feel free to make your own analogies; I recommend some of the misunderstandings between religion and atheism or the futility of voting for a political party you don't like as starting points. [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Recognition_Act_2004 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Recognition_Act_2004