CharonY

There are a lot of papers dealing with the neurophysiology of aggression, including fMRI studies. Especially in humans the question is whether the tests used to assess aggression are sufficiently accurate (so that the measured neuronal correlates are actually related to aggression and not e.g. just stress or other associated states). But this is way outside my expertise and at least from the little I have seen there is (I think) no consensus model as of yet.

I mean, if you wanted to you can. The difference is that in single-celled organism, sex is decoupled from reproduction. In a way we could argue that the combination of sex and procreation is a kind of abnormality, as originally they were clearly two different aspects. In bacteria you can find genetic elements (together often called Fertility factors, as originally their identity were not known) which allow horizontal gene transfer via conjugation. Typically, cells that already have those only conjugate with cells that do not have them. So in a way it could considered binary (presence of absence of these genes), and a distinction among single cells would actually be much more obvious than in multi-cellular organisms. Please go ahead and define a good classification scheme that allows us to capture the whole diversity in human sexual development using only two categories. If nature is strictly binary, there must be technical characteristics that we can use to build these classification without selectively throwing out things that don't fit (which is the very definition of a biased approach). The argument that you may have missed is not that there are three sexes, rather that any classification we use is artificial and, while it captures much of nature, is always incomplete. If folks here think that they have such an impeccable understanding of biology, I would really like to see some evidence of an unambiguous definition that we can use. What people fail to see is that nature does not define "normal" or "exceptions". Those are human constructs. Or alternatively we could argue that we are all exceptions as we all carry some form of mutations or "abnormalities". However, at this point the distinction is at least equally meaningless. What we can define are frequencies (i.e. how common certain traits are- e.g. most humans are bipedal, all viable humans have a brain etc.) and roughly outline the range of variability. The idea of (strict) normality runs against the very idea (and basic understanding) of evolutionary processes where a huge range of variety is generated. If nature adhered and forced a given norm, we would still be normal single-celled organism with a decent separation of sex and reproduction. As I mentioned, one can force an accurate binary definition (e.g. every human with a Y chromosome is male, everyone without is female) and as definitions go, it would neatly and completely separate a given human population into two groups. The issue is that this definition then runs across other definitions used by posters here, which rely on traits such as female outward features.

Pot, kettle and such. A discussion does not require to accept everyone's argument, rather. Especially in science we look at the limitations of an argument. You are not accepting the counterarguments provided so why should one blithely accept your position, especially as they appear to be faulty? Anencephaly is a lethal condition. So what it is your argument? That a species which requires a brain to survive can produce unviable offspring without a brain? Sure that is correct. So if you want you can add as folks without brains as a specific group of humans (which will die shortly after birth). Whether that distinction is useful, depends on context, but clearly they exist and it is not wrong to say so. Interestingly, that should actually challenge your thoughts on that matter how things should be, as everything that nature produces, literally exists. Whether to call something faulty requires to develop a narrative context that requires an observer to interpret and is therefore not a reflection of nature itself. Think about it that way, is the ability to digest lactose a genetic defect or not? Most adult mammals used to lose the ability to digest it in adulthood. So the "normal" development is to lose lactase once one weans off milk. But in some humans we find the "abnormal" mutation that allows the enzyme to be produced also later in life. So based on what one might consider "normal" this is clearly an abnormal trait. Same goes for lack of pigments, or any other range of traits. Some persist while being detrimental. So again, the issue is that nature does not classify things as normal or abnormal. We do and we can discuss that. However, stating that just because two things are similar are the same (any organism without a brain is the same species) is faulty logic and you know better.

I have not caught up with all posts, so apologies if that has been addressed already. Basically that is not what I am arguing. Rather, I am saying that what is generally accepted (even if we use terms in scientific literature) are only an approximation of the true complexity of a system. However these approximations can serve important purposes. It makes a lot sense to define two sexes into which the vast majority of a given species falls into, for a wide range of reasons. What I am saying, however, is that despite its usefulness, it still remains an approximation. As String Junky (via Markus) mentioned, it is a map, a representation of nature's complexity. It is not nature itself. What it also means is that rarities are something that exist in nature. I.e. we cannot ignore them because they do not neatly fall into our neat representation of nature. To take the map vs territory example. A map might not need all the nook and crannies in a particular area in order to help you find the way. But it does not mean that those finer detail are not part of the landscape. Moreover, not everything that exist in nature has to be operational based on narratives we made up. Especially in biology there are exceptions for virtually every model we have. Evolution by natural selection is a simple narrative, for example, but if we look at individual traits (or history of genes and proteins) then the situation becomes very tricky indeed. So while the theoretical framework is not wrong per se, it is incapable of covering all the diversity we see today (all the nook and crannies). Folks often do not seem to understand the complexity of biological systems and how limited our understanding on the most detailed level really is. And at some point, our approximations break from reality. If the question is are there two sexes in humans, I would say yes. But if the question is are there only two, my answer based on my understanding of biology is it is complicated. We can play the same thing with species. "Are there different species?" Why, yes of course how else would we talk about e.g. biodiversity or speciation? "So what is the precise definition of species that covers the biodiversity we see?" Well, we got a couple and each covers a different segment of the natural world, but none really covers all. And then you could ask, if that is the case, are species actually real? Well kind of, but only in a continuum (as measured by overall genetic distance, for example) and we just make artificial delineation based ultimately on the question we are working on. To summarize the overall argument, we use sexes as categories, just like species, because they are useful and are at least kind of a representation of nature. But either definition does not fully cover the complexity of nature. If we confuse both (maps and territory, again) we run the risk of overriding nature/reality with our assumptions of it, which ultimately is bad science. It has little to no impact for common usage and even in many scientific areas we can ignore these finer distinctions. But if your research is to exactly look at these gaps, of course you cannot ignore those finer points anymore.

How about you argue your position then instead of calling everyone else's argument grotesque? If it is so easy it must be trivial for you to present a definition that is universal and covers all cases we find in nature. As for child bearing, if an individual is unable to bear children for whatever reasons, is that male or female? If that is insufficient information, what else is? Saying that it is evolutionary built in trait is akin to the teleological argument, but obviously in nature everything that exists, exists, including infertility. Of course they are generally not positively selected against, but since they continue to appear it means that there are biological mechanisms that result in these cases. It is like saying that homosexuality does not exist in nature as they do not produce offspring. Perhaps to help on the way, I still think that the karyotype is probably going to cover more ground than complex traits (such as childbearing). And if one wanted to force a binary categorization one could simply state that everyone with a Y-chromosome in any of the cells is male. That would be a perfect binary qualifier (either a Y chromosome is present or it is absent). A bit of an issue are for example folks with the Swyer syndrome. They develop female external genitalia, have a functional uterus and fallopian tube, but generally have underdeveloped gonads. Just looking at external features, one would classify them as female, though. Also there are rare cases of chimerism when an otherwise female appearing individual may have tissue with Y-chromosomes. So while this classification seems to be useful in, say, more than the above mentioned 98% or so of the cases, there are still few exceptions not covered. This alone again indicates that our map in this case is fairly accurate but still fails cover all the nook and crannies.

That was a very nice way of phrasing it (I keep forget to use it). The reverse is also true, just because we do not have mapped something, does not mean that the territory does not exist. I find it sad that otherwise intelligent folks start to throw accusations around once they are encountering especially scientific viewpoints that differ from their personal experiences, rather than at least trying to engage into the reasons why ideas are shifting (and obviously, the mere fact that scientific ideas are amenable to changes is what makes science, science, rather than doctrine).

Since when has being scientifically correct become PC? Do you call folks who think that time is relative PC because you think your watch is an accurate and objective representation of time? Considering your interest in physics I find it very odd that you have such a hard time to understand that our nomenclature (scientific or not) are just help us to build representations of nature rather than being nature itself (most of theoretical physics relies on some form of simplification when one tries to apply them).

Let's assume you meant "sex" here and I am saying no, not necessarily, only if a certain research question or perspective makes it useful to do so. As you said yourself, there is variation in nature, and if we, as humans decide, we only want to use two categories, it is basically our decision to do so. Nature does not care and continues to happily exist in a continuum. We have many such examples, such as healthy vs sick. Obviously we are in a continuous state between these extremes and generally do not have fixed categories for the states in-between. Yet, clearly they do exist. What you are hung up on is the difference between common usage which indicates what we think of nature and what nature really is. The question whether there are two sexes is really philosophical as it goes into how we perceive reality. Sometimes we use more gradation (in one of the above examples we clearly use continuous measures for colour, even if made of two pigments, we names for things like darker or lighter grey, we do not try to cram everything using just two categories), sometimes we use less.

Depends on how complicated you want to be. I mean, uterus transplantation are a possibility. And of course this would be the ability to bear argument according to which women with infertility issues would be considered male.

The answer depends on what you want to convey. Two sexes is sufficiently simple narrative, like the sun is yellow or the sky is blue. It is an operating framework that works, but if you ask scientifically, you know it is a simplification. As mentioned before, it is all about context. You know, all models are wrong, some are useful. The karyotype definition covers about 98% of all cases and that will often suffice. Unless of course you want to focus on the remaining few percentages, at which it becomes iffy. The design argument is problematic as an ability becomes the defining factor and any form of sterility makes it complicated. You then again have to override the definition to fit certain folks in. We have generally accepted definitions, but as you mentioned, if we look at them in more detail, it is clear that classifications are all constructs. It does not mean that we should abandon them. However, when dealing with nature scientifically, we should not confuse them with reality, either.

Well, do you call a clownfish then that shows both traits? Male with female characteristics of female with male characteristics? What would be the difference? And also you do realize that if you call it either you make a judgment call?

You got it backwards. Depending on which characteristic you use, you there will be a subpopulation which you could assign to either category, if you only use two. I.e. if you use karyotype, clownsfish have only one sex. If you use behavioral cues you can to some degree of accuracy say that the those that do more of the behaviour of males are males and those that fit female behaviour are female. But if you look at a hundred females assigned that way, 99 might have female gonads, but 1 might still have retained male ones. You might find a couple that still have both characteristics and so on. So in other words, if everything has to fit two categories, you can make them, but it does not mean that those reflect nature. And as a side note, in science lingo, gender and sex are two different (but related things) things. Exactly. And also the photon does not care either way, it is just what it is. The categories are basically made by an observer, not by the photon itself, if that makes any sense.

When in science we assign categories the big question is always what makes sense (aka is it useful?) and to some degree how close do categories reflect reality. For example using categorical variables to assign size (e.g. small, medium, large) has obviously some uses (e.g. for certain clothing) but clearly does not capture the complexity of height ranges in humans. So OP is kind of asking how close the common two categories reflect nature. To answer this question it is obviously necessary to collect data and then decide whether there are categories that reflect that data. I.e. we cannot start of with the assumption that there are only e.g. three categories and then try to squeeze everything into it. If we were to do that, I could make the argument that there are only three heights in humans. So now take a look at potential classifiers and to keep things simple let's stick with humans. One potential way that has been mentioned is karyotyping. We just say that XY is male and XX is female. The issue is that more than those two karyotypes exist. While the number is low, we cannot just ignore them. They exist and therefore the classification does not reflect the entirety of biology. It covers well over 98% of all cases, however, and in many cases it is sufficient to use such a measure. But again, that is a category we make and it does not fully capture the complexity of nature. There are other criteria one could make, such as looking at gonad tissue. But there are cases of chimerism where folks have both types of tissue. We can decide based on fully formed reproductive organs, but then it would include folks whose organs are not fully formed. We can decide based on function (e.g. childbirth) but that would exclude sterile folks. So fundamentally we can make categories that cover most, but clearly not all cases. So to answer the question are there more than 2 sexes, one would have to be very clear what one is really asking. Have we (as humans) created more than two sexes as classifiers? That depends on the field I guess but quite often only two are used as main categories and then the term intersex is often used as a kind of catch-all for all other cases. If you are saying if nature has only two sexes, the answer is not really. MigL, to answer your question, it depends a lot on what the researcher is looking for. If they want to look at genetic control of their sex, they could e.g. look at the expression of the main regulator gene and go from there. If group interactions are what folks are looking at, often the largest in the group is the dominant female and has altered behaviour. That being said, there are many cases where it might not be apparent (e.g. incomplete sex changes) and in these cases you can not really assign a sex trivially. E.g. you might have a fish that behaves like a female but is unable to produce eggs, for example. Or you can dissect the fish to look at the gonadal tissue, but again, it might be unclear. In other words, the researchers assign sex once sufficient parameters are fulfilled relevant to their work (on the tissue, functional organ and/or behavioural level) but they can get things wrong if the transition does not follow the expected route.

Nothing in nature is a defect per se. They may be detrimental in many conditions, but it is something that exists and if there is a classification that claims to be unviversal, these must be incorporated. The classification as a defect is purely an anthropogenic construct. Light skin colour could be seen as a defect in melanin production, for example, but is rarely considered as such. Sickle cell anemia is seen as detrimental, but in some areas they are positively selected. Dismissing genetic elements merely as defects or exceptions do not prove the rule. If one claims that these classifications are universal, they must be universally applicable. If you have to add certain qualifiers then obviously you are just trying to press things into a mold that does not fit. And obviously if we go beyond humans (or mammals) there is far more variability. The issue with using the genetic ability to give birth as a gender means that any mutation that would render someone infertile would define them as male, which obviously not make much sense (as well as the fact that biology changes with different age stages and so does the ability to reproduce). Obviously, sex is quite a bit less diverse than gender and if you imagine both as a biphasic distribution, sex has probably sharper peaks and much fewer cases in between those peaks. But they still exist. Yes, but also they are often only binary in certain contexts. When we divide up a population into male and female, it is a simplification to accommodate a certain research question, for example (i.e. we just ignore cases that don't fit but due to low frequency it is still broadly representative of the larger population). It is like creating models of complex processes. This works out fine in a general sense (i.e. many studies in humans work well if consider sex binary). But on an individual level it can be more complicated, though it typically is more associated with gender, rather than necessarily sex.

I do not think that this is related to immigration, though. Just to provide some data on the Switzerland issue, over 80% of all foreigners in Switzerland are Europeans. The largest Asian population are Turkish (~1%) and the totality of all African immigrants make a bit less than 1%. This is not too different, from e.g. Germany (though they have a larger Turkish population).

...and?

Most immigrants to Switzerland are Europeans, and in contrast to other countries, getting citizenship is rather notoriously difficult (and below oecd average).

That goes to the visibility part. Interestingly, in many cases aggregation of folks are caused by limitations set by the host country, so it can also be policy driven. But overall, it seems that certain events (e.g. Migrant crisis), policy and public framing has a huge influence. For example in the 80s despite much lower immigration rates, the public in many parts of Europe were much more adverse to permanent migration, even from within Europe.

I think it is at least fair to say that we all learn by exposure what is familiar and what is not.

I would add a couple of caveats to that. First, perceived immigration rate is often very different from actual rates. Surveys through the world have shown that in most countries immigration is vastly overestimated (e.g. in the US and UK 2018 values indicate that the share of immigrants is about 14% in both countries, but folks assume that it is actually 36-32%). And related to that, how visible (this includes also how visibly "foreign" the immigrants are). There are different ways to measure acceptance of immigration, and asking e.g. whether you are in favour of more immigration can yield different results from asking whether you would like to have immigrants as neighbours. Asking the former many countries with traditionally high levels of immigration have overall more positive attitudes, though there are some outliers with e.g. Japan recently have become very much in favour of more immigration despite (or because of) low immigration rates. The UK is surprisingly high in terms of seeing immigration as a strength (in line with relatively high immigration rates) but is only middling (but still above average) in the acceptance score (asking e.g. about immigrations becoming neighbours or marrying one). Some studies indicate that acceptance is not strongly related to immigration rate (or is positively correlated). Rather, the way immigration is debated in terms of policy seems to heavily influence perception. E.g. in countries where debates are almost exclusively about economic cost (in many European countries, for example) resistance against immigration is high (though it could be a chicken and egg situation). In others where it is framed as a larger part of economic opportunities, it is generally more positive. But some areas (e.g. Italy and to some degree Germany) have a profoundly schizoid situation where immigrants are accepted on an economic basis with high participation in the labor market as business owners etc. but are often culturally rejected. Invisible immigrants are sought after, but if they become visible (in any number), they are often seen as a threat. It is an interesting, but complex dynamics.

There are a lot of hot zones, and much focus in on spillovers from eth environment. While this is clearly a risk factor, I think folks are underestimating the risks associated e.g. with factory farming. Swine flu has jumped to humans several times and quite a few of these cases happened in the US. It was only by luck that most have not become pandemics, though specifically swine flue eventually did become one (in 2009). Ultimately I think it will be impossible to predict the next location, as it could be almost anywhere and we need a more comprehensive approach to monitoring, detection and reporting. What the current pandemic is showing us is that existing measures are simply isufficient.

This is quite a bit of whataboutism. The German atrocities were on a scale that single-handedly crippled the eugenics movement in the US. Switzerland basically gave (some) of the money back that they owed, but the banks were also heavily critized becaue they blocked tracing Holocaust Victim's money in Swiss banks after they perished. Likewise, the Swiss bank secrecy has obscured Nazi funds, which were stolen from Jewish people. Ultimately survivors won compensation sometime in the 90s, but it was not that Switzerland generously compensated survivors out of goodwill. Also, the deal was brokered with the support of US politicians. I will say that also in German schools the Holocaust was typically taught rather well, though there are movements to cripple that (led by the right-wing AFD). Likewise, there are decent curricula in the US regarding their treatment of the black population. Overall, I am not sure what OP is trying to ask, though. Should folks apologize more, or less, is Germany somehow a reference point, or Switzerland, or the US? Should we cross-compare atrocities? Is it about how different suppressed groups were treated across different times? Perhaps it would be helpful to organize the thoughts a bit better and explain what OP tries to express.

Honestly, I dislike discussing science via videos, especially in areas I have no expertise in. Fundamentally, there is often not a lot of information that you can provide with such a medium. Rather, I would like to read through relevant literature from that person and read perhaps one or two reviews on the topic in order to contextualize it. Of course, it would still be a very incomplete view in areas outside ones expertise, but I would bet that it would still be far superior than what I would gleam from an youtube viedeo. I don't think that the areas where is became (in)famous are inside his expertise, if you look at his peer-reviewed publication record. His self-help book are massive extrapolations from that particular viewpoint. I.e. it is a bit like Dr. Oz and his health woo. I think he is a surgeon, so I am pretty sure that his surgical knowledge is at least alright. But his opinion and diet are oversimplification of the existing evidence with an added heap of unjustified confidence and guesswork.

While that may be true, a couple of posts earlier I mentioned one or two studies that demonstrated that specifically the application of stand your ground laws show quantifiable racial bias. It does not mean it happens in every specific case, but on average black folks are disproportionately disadvantaged when it comes to these issues. This includes either being the shooter claiming self-defence as in the above indicated example or being the victim of a stand your ground shooter.

I know you are joking, but generally speaking everything is a specialty. I.e. research in how to establish personality types is different from looking at e.g. personality and drug use. Or personality type and relationship to status and so on. Which is why sweeping assertions tend to be ultimately wrong as few folks actually have the broad knowledge to do so (and which is why inter and multidisciplinary research as well as collaborations are so critical).