Hm, I wonder why those reputable biological journals and dictionaries don't call it "XX sexless syndrome" then. Is there not one who's reputable enough?
Merged Strict biological definitions of male/female
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Hm, I wonder why those reputable biological journals and dictionaries don't call it "XX sexless syndrome" then. Is there not one who's reputable enough?
Picky, picky. One might reasonably argue that the whole organism of a hermaphrodite is a system that produces both types of gametes:Good question. Probably because they're not much concerned about the topic. You may wish to read several seminal papers on it to appreciate their focus:
Though, somewhat sadly, both of those are now paywalled, the former somewhat recently.
But that someone misuses conventional terminology and definitions hardly qualifies as a refutation of the principles behind the definitions. Unless you think someone saying "2+2=5" nullifies all of arithmetic?
But your "reputable enough" is definitely something of a thorny problem. Though I rather doubt that Wikipedia should be taken as the last word -- particularly since they insist that transwoman and Olympian Laurel Hubbard had "transitioned to female":
Laurel Hubbard - Wikipedia
Maybe many here will assume that "she" had "her" testicles replaced with ovaries, functional or not?
But more particularly on your other point, when there are disputes between "experts" there's some merit is questioning the premises and principles each one is using to reach their "conclusions". ICYMI and as a point of reference, my own kick at the kitty trying to show the logical and epistemological reasons behind the standard biological definitions:
Rerum cognoscere causas
Mechanisms in Science: things learned at my mother's knee and other low joints
humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com
jt512
Philosopher
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State the definition of biological sex (5 points). Then use the definition to answer your own question (5 points).
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Where, exactly, does it say that one can't more or less arbitrarily order the nominal items in a categorical variable?
Wikipedia's article lists blood types as a categorical variable with nominal "instances" of A, B, AB, & O. We might then determine how many people have which type and plot a population distribution, the X axis consisting of the "spectrum" "A, B, AB, O".
And your later example of quarks might reasonably be ordered by first letters: B-ottom, C-harmed, D-own, S-trange, T-op, & U-p. Works for millions of dictionaries all across the land.
Kinda think you're overly fixated on the definition for spectrum based on the visible one where wavelength provides an "innate order":
Do note Goggle/Oxford-Languages example of "the political spectrum".
Glad that you at least accept the concept of a discrete spectrum. Seem to recollect that I had some difficulty convincing (some) people here of that in earlier discussions.
Rolfe
Adult human female
I'm pretty sure that 3-4% of human beings are not identical twins. That's not very well worded but you know what I mean.
Matthew Best
Penultimate Amazing
Identical twins occur in about 3–4 out of every 1,000 births worldwide.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
I used to think there was no such thing as a stupid question. I am now reconsidering that position.
bobdroege7
Illuminator
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I see you did not answer the question, maybe you are dodging it.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Humans that have cells with both XY and XX chromosomes have DSD such as Klinefelter syndrome, and as has been explained to you numerous times previously...
Questions are not always intrinsically stupid. They can be stupid because an individual keeps asking the same question, and gets the same answer, but pretends they haven't been asnwered.
You do know what is defined by doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different outcome?
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Rolfe
Adult human female
No, Klinefelter's syndrome is XXY (male). What I think you are describing is some sort of mosaic, or perhaps a chimera.
Talking of chimeras, a friend of mine who breeds Hereford cattle recently sold a breeding bull, most of whose blood cells are XX. What sex is he? (Bonus points for knowing how my friend knew about this, and how it came about.)
Talking of chimeras, a friend of mine who breeds Hereford cattle recently sold a breeding bull, most of whose blood cells are XX. What sex is he? (Bonus points for knowing how my friend knew about this, and how it came about.)
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Frankly, I think bobdroege7 is just making up stuff as he goes. Nothing he has come up with so far supports his claim that sex is anything other than binary... it is not bimodal and it is certainly not a spectrum.
Sure, characteristics of individual humans such as weight, height and strength can be bimodal, i.e. they have ordinal variables, and values plotted on a chart there will show two peaks, one for males and one for females, but that does not make sex itself bimodal. There would need to be a way to measure "maleness" or "femaleness", and so far, bobdroege7 has either dodged or failed spectcularly to answer that question.
Sex is no more bimodal than the 1s and 0s of the binary number system.
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bobdroege7
Illuminator
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Yes I do.
That's possibly not an Einstein quote, because he was a musician.
Telling lies over and over again is the same thing, you think eventually someone will believe you.
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
Okay... but you DO understand that a fertilized egg can only occur as a result of a sperm merging with an egg, right? You get that, don't you?
That fertilization is sexual reproduction. The splitting of an already fertilized egg might *technically* be "asexual reproduction" if you stretch the meaning... but it's nothing at all like what you were implying. You were implying that humans can reproduce without sex... which is patently false.
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
You can arbitrarily order it however the ◊◊◊◊ you want. But the fact that it's arbitrary makes it non-ordinal.
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
That would make it 0.3% to 0.4%
bobdroege7
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Of course I get that, I was not implying humans can reproduce without sex, you were reading too much into what I posted.
I did get the percentage wrong, the number I posted was for all twins, not identical ones as I posted, but it was how google answered.
I should have checked more thoroughly.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
I'm not the one whose lying here. I post this stuff with facts, evidence, reason and sources. You post whatever comes into your head, after desperately Googling for rebuttals to challenges to your claims. And sometimes you get those Google searches wrong (hint: scroll past the AI Overview part of your search results. It often gives misleading information and and sometimes just gets it plain wrong. It once told me that the Irish rock band U2 got its name from a Berlin railway/tram line, the U-Bahn, specifically the line from Pankow S-Bahn through Alexanderplatz* to Potsdamer Platz. Its called the U2 Line. (The correct answer is that their name comes from the U2 spy plane). Don't believe what you read on the AI overview.
*(Those who are fans of the Jason Bourne movies series might recognize this as the place where Bourne meets agent Nicky Parsons at the World Time Clock and manages to kidnap her off a tram and disappear into a crowd of demonstrators).
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Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
So what? You said:
That the items or instances in a category -- blood types for example -- are ordinal doesn't mean they can't be arbitrarily ordered into a spectrum of sorts. As with the "political spectrum" example I pointed out before -- not that you seem much willing to consider it. Though the order chosen of course will affect measurements like means and standard deviations, and the shape of the distribution.
For example, here's a spectrum of a subset of the Big-Five personality traits - neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness -- with subtypes of masculine and feminine "genders":
