[pjc50]

> 2 sexes, male and female. Simple and true. It does not add to it by interjecting about intersex .

The thing is, you always have to choose one of "simple" or "true".

It turns out that mammals which use the "XY" chromosomal system can all have the same type of exceptions to the simple rule. This can result in hermaphroditic or intersex animals. It is relatively rare in dogs, but is sufficiently common in cows that there's a word for it: an intersex cow is known as a "freemartin".

Now, why does this matter? Both for this discussion and the purposes of liability limitation of AI answers?

The short answer is that we tend deal with the inconvenience of exceptions in animals by euthanizing them. So you don't see them around. Just as you see far, far more hens than roosters. When you do this to humans, people complain. (Traditionally, many intersex people were given nonconsensual genital surgery as babies, so they may not know they're intersex. And some chromosomal variations like chimeraism don't show up at all.)

What people are scared of is the Procrustes AI; produce simple categories then chop bits off people until they fit neatly into one of the two categories.

(This applies to other, less heated categories: for example, an AI will probably answer the question "are peanuts edible?" with something that rounds to "yes, if you take them out of the shell". But that's not true for _everybody_, because there are some people for whom eating a peanut will be fatal. Not many, but some. And yes, it's annoying that you have to make an exception when you encounter someone who doesn't fit your nice clean categories, but all you have to do is not give them a peanut.)

[Workaccount2]

But these are edge cases that are almost always irrelevant.

It's like running off into the weeds for a week in a computer science class because "Cosmic rays can flip bits and make true things false". Like sitting with a group of people who refuse to move forward without always acknowledging cosmic bit flip scenarios.

[enragedcacti]

> But these are edge cases that are almost always irrelevant.

More than 99% of atoms are either Hydrogen or Helium, all other proton configurations are edge cases that are almost always irrelevant.

As with anything, you have to determine the question you are actually asking and the context you are asking it in before you can decide whether or not edge cases are relevant. Are you engineering for a satellite? You better consider the possibility of cosmic rays!

Also intersex people are astronomically more common than bit flips on earth and people with sex hormone imbalances are even more common than that.

[_0ffh]

Are humans a bipedal species?

Just asking, because some people are born with a different number of legs.

[enragedcacti]

Informally speaking? yeah sure. Discussing the relative benefits of natural forms of locomotion? absolutely. Designing the entrance of a building? I should consider that not everyone is bipedal.

[_0ffh]

I would submit that the question if humans as a species are bipedal is not concerned with the question if any individual specimen happens to have two legs.

(This is not meant to imply that no consideration should be given to the exceptions, which quite reasonably it clearly is.)

[enragedcacti]

I agree which is why I phrased my answer the way I did (apologies that I wasn't very clear about that), but I don't think the claim is really analogous to "2 sexes, male and female. Simple and true." (not that you claimed that, just what someone above us said). The equivalent claim would be something like "humans are a sexually dimorphic species" which I think is of course true.

All to say, I don't really care much about these claims in isolation, I care when someone says e.g. "there are two sexes, so we shouldn't let trans people transition". Those conversations are a context where edge cases, caveats, and complexities all play a huge role.

[pixl97]

>But these are edge cases that are almost always irrelevant.

Which is why authoritarians choose 'them' groups that are small and mostly powerless to demonize and exterminite first.

[tristor]

> The thing is, you always have to choose one of "simple" or "true".

In most cases you can choose both "simple" and "true", they are not mutually exclusive. However, by choosing "simple" you leave out nuance and depth to what is "true". The issue you are expressing (and is generally being discussed in this thread) only exists because humans created said issue for their own emotional and social reasons, rather than it having any basis in what "true" or "real". I put the words "true", "real", and "simple" in quotes because these are contextual concepts, that don't really exist necessarily in isolation.