5 ms·
People have 2 arms and 2 legs with 5 fingers/toes at the end of each. This is a fact, not changed by the fact that indeed there are some people with more than 5
by Ourgon 5y ago
People have 2 arms and 2 legs with 5 fingers/toes at the end of each. This is a fact, not changed by the fact that indeed there are some people with more than 5 fingers/toes, some with fewer or even none at all. Those people are the exception to the rule.
In the same vein a woman is an adult human female, characterised by having double-X chromosomes, producing large gametes and generally being capable of conceiving and nursing children. The presence of people with a double-X + Y chromosome (who are, in fact, men, not women, search for 'Klinefelter syndrome' [1]) does not change this fact, nor does the fact that some women - yes, of course they are still women - can not conceive or nurse children.
[1] https://www.webmd.com/men/klinefelter-syndrome https://www.webmd.com/men/klinefelter-syndrome
- greyface- 5y agoThat's not a rule. That's a heuristic.
- Ourgon 5y agoThat is word play and does not achieve anything other than to muddle the discussion. What, in your words, is a woman?
- greyface- 5y agoHumans often -- but not always -- have 2 arms and 2 legs and 5 digits on each limb. Women and men often -- but not always -- are cisgender/cissexual. You are allowing for an exception to the heuristic in the first case, but not the second.
- dekhn 5y agoIts a heuristic which is consistent with biological evidence and our best understanding of human biology and evolution.
- kadoban 5y agoHeuristics are by definition approximations. If all you're claiming is that it's a heuristic, I suspect you're not making the argument you probably think you are.
- akomtu 5y agoIt's a physical law, which is a heuristic so accurate that exceptions are almost unheard of. We don't say "the 3rd Newton heuristic" just because in some weird curcumstances it's not accurate.
- da39a3ee 5y agoThat's what biology is like. The binariness of human sex is much clearer than many distinctions in biology.
- a_shovel 5y ago> People have 2 arms and 2 legs with 5 fingers/toes at the end of each. This is a fact, not changed by the fact that indeed there are some people with more than 5 fingers/toes, some with fewer or even none at all. Those people are the exception to the rule. > Those people are the exception If there are exceptions, then it's not a fact. At best, it's an approximation that works well in most situations, and is subject to exceptions where it is simply false.
- Ourgon 5y agoThat's just sophistry which doesn't add anything to the discussion. Given that the vast majority (99.98%) of humans do end up either male or female [1] it is a fact that humans are sexually dimorphic with male and female phenotypes with the exceptions being just that: exceptions. [1] the prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224490209552139 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0022449020955213...
- vba616 5y ago>with the exceptions being just that: exceptions This is a parochial viewpoint. Are you aware that other species have a wide variety of mechanisms for determining sex? Which means that evolution can and does result in the modification of fundamentals, at least if you take common descent for granted. This can only happen if a mostly bimodal distribution is not entirely bimodal - what would provide the material for evolution to something different otherwise? Hence, the outliers are not insignificant at all, except according to some arbitrary value system. I don't have a reference, but I vaguely recall reading that the asymmetry between the X and Y chromosome has developed under evolutionary pressure and eventually the Y chromosome may disappear entirely.
- vba616 5y agoEppur si muove.