Legal definition of woman is based on biological sex, UK supreme court rules

[Loren Pechtel]

I was talking about my medical records keeping becoming female. The most recent instance the radiologist noted "normal mammogram" on an x-ray of my abdomen.

Aside here, but you might want to see if there's a female Loren Pechtel somewhere in your vicinity. I've spent about a year going back and forth with a collection of doctors trying to get my records untangled, and get claims sorted out - there's another person with the same name and day of birth as me in the area. I keep getting bills for cardiology treatments despite not having any heart problems. The worst of it is that my neurologist *merged* our records, since apparently she has epilepsy too. So much fun.

No, it's just people looking at "Loren" and going on the fact that it currently is a female name, not realizing that when I was born that was the male spelling. I've looked over the NPD data breach, there are only two Pechtels in the state and no more than a few hundred in the country. AFIAK my name is unique although it appears to be associated with some bogus data and I've found many cases where it's a flawed web scrape--words attributed to me that I "said", the fact that they were quotes getting lost.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Here I definitely disagree as languages can't discover words. Newton discovered calculus, it's testable, it's reproducible, it makes accurate predictions (simple example: volume equations are integrals of area equations.) That sure looks like a science to me. I'm sure there are other examples but that's the only one I know the origin on.

Newton didn't discover calculus, he and Leibniz invented calculus. It's not like calculus is some naturally occurring thing out there in the universe that was just waiting to be found. The invention of calculus is similar to the invention of computer languages - it's a system of syntax and definition that can be applied in order to represent a set of actions and outcomes.

Discover or invent doesn't change the fundamental nature--it's sure waddling and quacking as a science.

 

[Emily Lake]

I was talking about my medical records keeping becoming female. The most recent instance the radiologist noted "normal mammogram" on an x-ray of my abdomen.

Aside here, but you might want to see if there's a female Loren Pechtel somewhere in your vicinity. I've spent about a year going back and forth with a collection of doctors trying to get my records untangled, and get claims sorted out - there's another person with the same name and day of birth as me in the area. I keep getting bills for cardiology treatments despite not having any heart problems. The worst of it is that my neurologist *merged* our records, since apparently she has epilepsy too. So much fun.

No, it's just people looking at "Loren" and going on the fact that it currently is a female name, not realizing that when I was born that was the male spelling. I've looked over the NPD data breach, there are only two Pechtels in the state and no more than a few hundred in the country. AFIAK my name is unique although it appears to be associated with some bogus data and I've found many cases where it's a flawed web scrape--words attributed to me that I "said", the fact that they were quotes getting lost.

I can totally seeing that being the cases if it's just your record saying female. But a radiologist noting a normal mammogram is either a case of records for different people being mixed up... or you've got a really incredibly shit radiologist. An abdominal x-ray wouldn't provide sufficient information or imaging for a radiologist to form ANY opinion about whether or not your breast tissue was normal, and given that you don't have boobs, it's extraordinarily unlikely that a radiologist looking at your abdomen would make any comment on the health of your non-existent breast tissue.

I mean... you do know what's involved in a mammogram, don't you? I sure hope that your radiologist knows what's involved.

 

[Emily Lake]

Here I definitely disagree as languages can't discover words. Newton discovered calculus, it's testable, it's reproducible, it makes accurate predictions (simple example: volume equations are integrals of area equations.) That sure looks like a science to me. I'm sure there are other examples but that's the only one I know the origin on.

Newton didn't discover calculus, he and Leibniz invented calculus. It's not like calculus is some naturally occurring thing out there in the universe that was just waiting to be found. The invention of calculus is similar to the invention of computer languages - it's a system of syntax and definition that can be applied in order to represent a set of actions and outcomes.

Discover or invent doesn't change the fundamental nature--it's sure waddling and quacking as a science.

You're assuming that math exists independently of humans, that it's something inherent in the universe. That's not the case though. It's a language used to describe things that exist in reality, but math itself isn't part of the fabric of the world.

The relationships that math describes and codifies exist outside of humans. But the syntax we use to describe those things isn't some external thing. It's not like god made calculus during the big bang and has just been sitting around waiting for Newton and Leibniz to come along and find it under a rock.

Math is the most universally translatable language, with the most consistent syntax and grammatical rules we know of. It has virtually no idioms or colloquialisms. It still has dialects though - particularly the number system in use by the speaker, which is why we have modular math to translate between those dialects.

 

[Bomb#20]

Emily made a claim about Semenya's gender (while probably intending to make a claim about sex -- Emily sometimes conflates those two.)

Mmm.... I disagree. I don't conflate them. Gender is an externally imposed set of social expectations, based on sex. Gender is bull..., and I reject it.

Not consistently -- you called Semenya "he". Being referred to with "he" is an externally imposed social expectation. There's nothing about the word "he" that follows from Wolffian anatomy; what it follows from is the social convention of dividing people into categories based on learning previous generations' categories by example and inferring criteria by hypothesis falsification. To call someone "he" or "she" is to help your listener identify your antecedent by utilizing the shared set of social expectations to narrow down the possibilities. That's gender, not sex.

Semenya can have whatever internal gender identity he wants. But Semenya's sex is male,

Right; and Semenya's gender is also male. When I said you made a claim about his gender, I was absolutely not saying you made any claim about his internal gender identity.

and Semenya presents as a man and acts like a man and moves through life as a man. Any unbiased observer with no prior knowledge of Semenya's internal feelings would perceive them as a male man.

Images of Caster Semenya with his wife

None of those are pictures of his reproductive anatomy. The pictures show how he conforms to an externally imposed set of social expectations. To introduce them as evidence of Semenya's manliness is to rely on gender norms.

It's hard to avoid conflating male gender with male sex because the two concepts appear to pick out the same set of people, so to get it right it helps to get into pedantic distinctions between sense and reference, intension and extension. But I think a simple thought-experiment should clarify the issue. Imagine that you're Brian and you've just been abducted by aliens. But these aliens have the wit not to crash their flying saucer, so when they get done anal-probing you or whatever they want to pick your brain. They just saw a strange-looking human presiding at the execution of another human for saying Jehovah, who suddenly stopped the proceedings and demanded to know if there were any "women" present. The aliens ask you for an explanation. What pray tell, are "women"? What could you say to them? It couldn't be anything about Mullerian pathways or gamete size or anything resembling a biological definition of sex -- none of that stuff had been discovered yet. But all the people in the stoning mob apparently knew perfectly well what "women" meant. What did it mean and how did they know?

 

[Bomb#20]

Newton didn't discover calculus, he and Leibniz invented calculus. It's not like calculus is some naturally occurring thing out there in the universe that was just waiting to be found. The invention of calculus is similar to the invention of computer languages - it's a system of syntax and definition that can be applied in order to represent a set of actions and outcomes.

Discover or invent doesn't change the fundamental nature--it's sure waddling and quacking as a science.

You're assuming that math exists independently of humans, that it's something inherent in the universe. That's not the case though. It's a language used to describe things that exist in reality, but math itself isn't part of the fabric of the world.

It certainly exists independently of humans -- an awful lot of other species can count.

Number sense in animals - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

As for being inherent in the universe, does the same thing getting independently reinvented enough times ever promote invention to discovery? Maybe.

The relationships that math describes and codifies exist outside of humans. But the syntax we use to describe those things isn't some external thing. It's not like god made calculus during the big bang and has just been sitting around waiting for Newton and Leibniz to come along and find it under a rock.

"God made the integers; all else is the work of man."

 

[Bomb#20]

or to decide for them which aspect of their identity is real and which isn't, to claim you know more about their perthos than they themselves do.

Pretty funny a supposed atheist who rejects religion will indulge exotic mumbo jumbo because it suits their dumb narrative.

Arthur Koestler said philosophy is the systematic abuse of a terminology specially invented for that purpose. He might as well have been talking about gender ideology.

There is nothing exotic or mumbo-jumbo about neurobiology or the scientific study of cognition and the sense of self.

Your inability to understand my point might be due to my inability to explain it in terms you understand, or it might be due to your inability to understand it at all.

Either way, it feels like I'm trying to explain static electricity to a cat.

Nobody in neurobiology or the scientific study of cognition and the sense of self coined "perthos",

I know.

I coined it.

I made it up.

You think you need to tell me that I made it up? You don't.

I already know I made it up.

Of course you do. I belabored the point in order to drive home how ridiculous you were being to paint seanie and me as claiming the conclusions of neurobiology are exotic mumbo jumbo, when it was painfully obvious that we were calling your made-up term "perthos" exotic mumbo jumbo. You were strawmanning us. Don't do that.

Quote me.

I want to see what you think was me strawmanning you and seanie.

Sorry, got mixed up -- I meant to say TSwizzle and me. I'm talking about "There is nothing exotic or mumbo-jumbo about neurobiology or the scientific study of cognition and the sense of self", which was a blatant insinuation that TSwizzle's "exotic mumbo jumbo" charge and my endorsement of it were directed at some scientific claim of yours that your link could back you up on. You have to have known perfectly well we were talking about your "perthos" coinage.

You strawmanned seanie too but that was separate. You said seanie claimed to "know more about their perthos than they themselves do." He'd claimed nothing of the sort and you didn't have a reason to think he had.

As for the claim that the portmanteau I wrote is "exotic", I suppose it was in the sense that it was an unfamiliar term. But portmanteaus are a regular addition to American English. Words like sexting, bromance, fursona, mansplain, glamping, spork, podcast, hangry, etc. weren't part of the English language when I was a kid, and yet I don't see anyone having problems with them being added or new ones being made.

With most of those the meaning is obvious; and most of them don't appear intended for serious discussions.

As for it being mumbo jumbo, I provided a definition. I said it was portmanteau of "person" and "ethos" to indicate the beliefs, values, character, and identity of a person as it relates to their perception of self within and in relation to their society and its customs. What part of that don't you understand?

Why you're cobbling together beliefs, values, character, and identity as if they're one thing, and what any of it has to do with ethos, and most of all, what planet you must be on to think that mess is a reasonable substitute for gender.

Or are you using "exotic mumbo jumbo" as code for "I don't agree with you but I can't articulate my reasons so I'll just handwave away your point in a mocking, dismissive manner", which is what TSwizzle appeared to be doing when he brought that phrase into this discussion.

I've articulated my reasons for agreeing with TSwizzle; feel free to ask him for his reasons. I'm mocking and dismissive because it's terminology specially invented for the purpose of being abused. You advocated using "perthos" as a replacement for "gender" which plainly means something quite different, and you said a claim of seanie's was about "perthos", which it plainly wasn't.

 

[Toni]

I was talking about my medical records keeping becoming female. The most recent instance the radiologist noted "normal mammogram" on an x-ray of my abdomen.

Aside here, but you might want to see if there's a female Loren Pechtel somewhere in your vicinity. I've spent about a year going back and forth with a collection of doctors trying to get my records untangled, and get claims sorted out - there's another person with the same name and day of birth as me in the area. I keep getting bills for cardiology treatments despite not having any heart problems. The worst of it is that my neurologist *merged* our records, since apparently she has epilepsy too. So much fun.

No, it's just people looking at "Loren" and going on the fact that it currently is a female name, not realizing that when I was born that was the male spelling. I've looked over the NPD data breach, there are only two Pechtels in the state and no more than a few hundred in the country. AFIAK my name is unique although it appears to be associated with some bogus data and I've found many cases where it's a flawed web scrape--words attributed to me that I "said", the fact that they were quotes getting lost.

I can totally seeing that being the cases if it's just your record saying female. But a radiologist noting a normal mammogram is either a case of records for different people being mixed up... or you've got a really incredibly shit radiologist. An abdominal x-ray wouldn't provide sufficient information or imaging for a radiologist to form ANY opinion about whether or not your breast tissue was normal, and given that you don't have boobs, it's extraordinarily unlikely that a radiologist looking at your abdomen would make any comment on the health of your non-existent breast tissue.

I mean... you do know what's involved in a mammogram, don't you? I sure hope that your radiologist knows what's involved.

Men have breast tissue ( albeit less developed, usually) and can get breast cancer. It is much more rare ( about 1% of all breast cancers diagnosed are in men) but it happens.

 

[Arctish]

or to decide for them which aspect of their identity is real and which isn't, to claim you know more about their perthos than they themselves do.

Pretty funny a supposed atheist who rejects religion will indulge exotic mumbo jumbo because it suits their dumb narrative.

Arthur Koestler said philosophy is the systematic abuse of a terminology specially invented for that purpose. He might as well have been talking about gender ideology.

There is nothing exotic or mumbo-jumbo about neurobiology or the scientific study of cognition and the sense of self.

Your inability to understand my point might be due to my inability to explain it in terms you understand, or it might be due to your inability to understand it at all.

Either way, it feels like I'm trying to explain static electricity to a cat.

Nobody in neurobiology or the scientific study of cognition and the sense of self coined "perthos",

I know.

I coined it.

I made it up.

You think you need to tell me that I made it up? You don't.

I already know I made it up.

Of course you do. I belabored the point in order to drive home how ridiculous you were being to paint seanie and me as claiming the conclusions of neurobiology are exotic mumbo jumbo, when it was painfully obvious that we were calling your made-up term "perthos" exotic mumbo jumbo. You were strawmanning us. Don't do that.

Quote me.

I want to see what you think was me strawmanning you and seanie.

Sorry, got mixed up -- I meant to say TSwizzle and me. I'm talking about "There is nothing exotic or mumbo-jumbo about neurobiology or the scientific study of cognition and the sense of self", which was a blatant insinuation that TSwizzle's "exotic mumbo jumbo" charge and my endorsement of it were directed at some scientific claim of yours that your link could back you up on. You have to have known perfectly well we were talking about your "perthos" coinage.

You strawmanned seanie too but that was separate. You said seanie claimed to "know more about their perthos than they themselves do." He'd claimed nothing of the sort and you didn't have a reason to think he had.

As for the claim that the portmanteau I wrote is "exotic", I suppose it was in the sense that it was an unfamiliar term. But portmanteaus are a regular addition to American English. Words like sexting, bromance, fursona, mansplain, glamping, spork, podcast, hangry, etc. weren't part of the English language when I was a kid, and yet I don't see anyone having problems with them being added or new ones being made.

With most of those the meaning is obvious; and most of them don't appear intended for serious discussions.

As for it being mumbo jumbo, I provided a definition. I said it was portmanteau of "person" and "ethos" to indicate the beliefs, values, character, and identity of a person as it relates to their perception of self within and in relation to their society and its customs. What part of that don't you understand?

Why you're cobbling together beliefs, values, character, and identity as if they're one thing, and what any of it has to do with ethos, and most of all, what planet you must be on to think that mess is a reasonable substitute for gender.

*Sigh*

I was not suggesting using perthos as a permanent substitute for gender in the English language, but as a way to separate the self perception aspect from the assigned-at-birth aspect of gender identity in this discussion.

That's why I said

Sex and gender get conflated in English all the time. People have "gender reveal" parties where they celebrate the presumed sex of a fetus. What they are using as evidence of the fetus' sex isn't 100% accurate, as anyone who has been discussing Caster Semenya no doubt knows. What those families are really having is a "my fetus is growing a penis or not growing one" party.

So let's move away from that point of confusion and try to be more clear. I propose, for the purposes of this discussion, using the term perthos instead of gender. It's a portmanteau of "person" and "ethos" to indicate the beliefs, values, character, and identity of a person as it relates to their perception of self within and in relation to their society and its customs. A perthos isn't tied to sex but is in relation to it, either as conforming with social norms or non-conforming. There is an aspect of pathos contained within perthos (we are, after all, emotional beings and our emotional connections to others is enormously important), as well as logos.

You don't have to use it if you don't like it. But you don't have to get your undies in a bunch, either. If you prefer to stick with long-winded explanations when a sentence or paragraph is referring specifically to gender identity, we can do that.

Or are you using "exotic mumbo jumbo" as code for "I don't agree with you but I can't articulate my reasons so I'll just handwave away your point in a mocking, dismissive manner", which is what TSwizzle appeared to be doing when he brought that phrase into this discussion.

I've articulated my reasons for agreeing with TSwizzle; feel free to ask him for his reasons.

Been there, done that.

I'm mocking and dismissive because it's terminology specially invented for the purpose of being abused. You advocated using "perthos" as a replacement for "gender" which plainly means something quite different, and you said a claim of seanie's was about "perthos", which it plainly wasn't.

I see where the confusion originated. I failed to be really, really wordy in the post where I suggested using perthos. I did not anticipate you or anyone else getting stuck on the first sentence of that paragraph and not understanding that the part that followed it contained important information that explained and hopefully clarified the point I was making.

I should know better than to think you or anyone else could have just read the paragraph, gave it a single moment's thought, and realized I suggested using perthos as a way to clearly state when one was referring to gender identity, the individual and highly personal aspect of gender that incorporates beliefs and values, one's sense of their own innate character and their perception of themselves in relation to their society, not to the broader concepts of gender.

We are not communicating well, and I'm tired of explaining the same thing to you over and over again.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I was talking about my medical records keeping becoming female. The most recent instance the radiologist noted "normal mammogram" on an x-ray of my abdomen.

Aside here, but you might want to see if there's a female Loren Pechtel somewhere in your vicinity. I've spent about a year going back and forth with a collection of doctors trying to get my records untangled, and get claims sorted out - there's another person with the same name and day of birth as me in the area. I keep getting bills for cardiology treatments despite not having any heart problems. The worst of it is that my neurologist *merged* our records, since apparently she has epilepsy too. So much fun.

No, it's just people looking at "Loren" and going on the fact that it currently is a female name, not realizing that when I was born that was the male spelling. I've looked over the NPD data breach, there are only two Pechtels in the state and no more than a few hundred in the country. AFIAK my name is unique although it appears to be associated with some bogus data and I've found many cases where it's a flawed web scrape--words attributed to me that I "said", the fact that they were quotes getting lost.

I can totally seeing that being the cases if it's just your record saying female. But a radiologist noting a normal mammogram is either a case of records for different people being mixed up... or you've got a really incredibly shit radiologist. An abdominal x-ray wouldn't provide sufficient information or imaging for a radiologist to form ANY opinion about whether or not your breast tissue was normal, and given that you don't have boobs, it's extraordinarily unlikely that a radiologist looking at your abdomen would make any comment on the health of your non-existent breast tissue.

I mean... you do know what's involved in a mammogram, don't you? I sure hope that your radiologist knows what's involved.

Yeah, it's pretty nuts. I would be digging into it except it appears to be a mistake that it was ordered in the first place.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Here I definitely disagree as languages can't discover words. Newton discovered calculus, it's testable, it's reproducible, it makes accurate predictions (simple example: volume equations are integrals of area equations.) That sure looks like a science to me. I'm sure there are other examples but that's the only one I know the origin on.

Newton didn't discover calculus, he and Leibniz invented calculus. It's not like calculus is some naturally occurring thing out there in the universe that was just waiting to be found. The invention of calculus is similar to the invention of computer languages - it's a system of syntax and definition that can be applied in order to represent a set of actions and outcomes.

Discover or invent doesn't change the fundamental nature--it's sure waddling and quacking as a science.

You're assuming that math exists independently of humans, that it's something inherent in the universe. That's not the case though. It's a language used to describe things that exist in reality, but math itself isn't part of the fabric of the world.

The relationships that math describes and codifies exist outside of humans. But the syntax we use to describe those things isn't some external thing. It's not like god made calculus during the big bang and has just been sitting around waiting for Newton and Leibniz to come along and find it under a rock.

Math is the most universally translatable language, with the most consistent syntax and grammatical rules we know of. It has virtually no idioms or colloquialisms. It still has dialects though - particularly the number system in use by the speaker, which is why we have modular math to translate between those dialects.

The symbols are human. But any hypothetical alien race is going to develop the same techniques but with their own symbols.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Men have breast tissue ( albeit less developed, usually) and can get breast cancer. It is much more rare ( about 1% of all breast cancers diagnosed are in men) but it happens.

The whole thing was some sort of mistake so I didn't dig into it. I was just listing it as the medical world making me female.

 

[Emily Lake]

Emily made a claim about Semenya's gender (while probably intending to make a claim about sex -- Emily sometimes conflates those two.)

Mmm.... I disagree. I don't conflate them. Gender is an externally imposed set of social expectations, based on sex. Gender is bull..., and I reject it.

Not consistently -- you called Semenya "he". Being referred to with "he" is an externally imposed social expectation. There's nothing about the word "he" that follows from Wolffian anatomy; what it follows from is the social convention of dividing people into categories based on learning previous generations' categories by example and inferring criteria by hypothesis falsification. To call someone "he" or "she" is to help your listener identify your antecedent by utilizing the shared set of social expectations to narrow down the possibilities. That's gender, not sex.

I see where you're coming from, but it's so far down in the weeds as to be lost among the dust particles. In english, pronouns are used to represent sexes. Sure, there's a strong correlation with gender roles and gendered expectations - both of which I reject and think are stupid. But the pronouns themselves don't confer a role or an expectation. Those pronouns have remained tied to sex despite social conventions and expectations changing over the last 1500 years.

Semenya can have whatever internal gender identity he wants. But Semenya's sex is male,

Right; and Semenya's gender is also male. When I said you made a claim about his gender, I was absolutely not saying you made any claim about his internal gender identity.

If you want to believe that Semenya should be expected to act a certain way, take on certain jobs and be prohibited from others, and required to wear a certain style of clothing... I'm not going to stop you.

As far as I'm concerned, the word gender is a polite synonym for sex. Any other social bagage attached to it is regressive bullshit that ought to be shot into the sun at high speed.

and Semenya presents as a man and acts like a man and moves through life as a man. Any unbiased observer with no prior knowledge of Semenya's internal feelings would perceive them as a male man.

Images of Caster Semenya with his wife

None of those are pictures of his reproductive anatomy. The pictures show how he conforms to an externally imposed set of social expectations. To introduce them as evidence of Semenya's manliness is to rely on gender norms.

It's hard to avoid conflating male gender with male sex because the two concepts appear to pick out the same set of people, so to get it right it helps to get into pedantic distinctions between sense and reference, intension and extension. But I think a simple thought-experiment should clarify the issue. Imagine that you're Brian and you've just been abducted by aliens. But these aliens have the wit not to crash their flying saucer, so when they get done anal-probing you or whatever they want to pick your brain. They just saw a strange-looking human presiding at the execution of another human for saying Jehovah, who suddenly stopped the proceedings and demanded to know if there were any "women" present. The aliens ask you for an explanation. What pray tell, are "women"? What could you say to them? It couldn't be anything about Mullerian pathways or gamete size or anything resembling a biological definition of sex -- none of that stuff had been discovered yet. But all the people in the stoning mob apparently knew perfectly well what "women" meant. What did it mean and how did they know?

Meh. I presented images to counter the claim by someone else, that Semenya's gender and gender identity are both female in nature. No matter how you choose to slice that pie, Semenya is a male by sex and a man by expression and presentation. Literally the only thing that slightly differs is his claim that he's actually a woman in some undefined and undefinable way.

 

[Emily Lake]

I was talking about my medical records keeping becoming female. The most recent instance the radiologist noted "normal mammogram" on an x-ray of my abdomen.

Aside here, but you might want to see if there's a female Loren Pechtel somewhere in your vicinity. I've spent about a year going back and forth with a collection of doctors trying to get my records untangled, and get claims sorted out - there's another person with the same name and day of birth as me in the area. I keep getting bills for cardiology treatments despite not having any heart problems. The worst of it is that my neurologist *merged* our records, since apparently she has epilepsy too. So much fun.

No, it's just people looking at "Loren" and going on the fact that it currently is a female name, not realizing that when I was born that was the male spelling. I've looked over the NPD data breach, there are only two Pechtels in the state and no more than a few hundred in the country. AFIAK my name is unique although it appears to be associated with some bogus data and I've found many cases where it's a flawed web scrape--words attributed to me that I "said", the fact that they were quotes getting lost.

I can totally seeing that being the cases if it's just your record saying female. But a radiologist noting a normal mammogram is either a case of records for different people being mixed up... or you've got a really incredibly shit radiologist. An abdominal x-ray wouldn't provide sufficient information or imaging for a radiologist to form ANY opinion about whether or not your breast tissue was normal, and given that you don't have boobs, it's extraordinarily unlikely that a radiologist looking at your abdomen would make any comment on the health of your non-existent breast tissue.

I mean... you do know what's involved in a mammogram, don't you? I sure hope that your radiologist knows what's involved.

Men have breast tissue ( albeit less developed, usually) and can get breast cancer. It is much more rare ( about 1% of all breast cancers diagnosed are in men) but it happens.

ORLY?????

 

[Emily Lake]

Here I definitely disagree as languages can't discover words. Newton discovered calculus, it's testable, it's reproducible, it makes accurate predictions (simple example: volume equations are integrals of area equations.) That sure looks like a science to me. I'm sure there are other examples but that's the only one I know the origin on.

Newton didn't discover calculus, he and Leibniz invented calculus. It's not like calculus is some naturally occurring thing out there in the universe that was just waiting to be found. The invention of calculus is similar to the invention of computer languages - it's a system of syntax and definition that can be applied in order to represent a set of actions and outcomes.

Discover or invent doesn't change the fundamental nature--it's sure waddling and quacking as a science.

You're assuming that math exists independently of humans, that it's something inherent in the universe. That's not the case though. It's a language used to describe things that exist in reality, but math itself isn't part of the fabric of the world.

The relationships that math describes and codifies exist outside of humans. But the syntax we use to describe those things isn't some external thing. It's not like god made calculus during the big bang and has just been sitting around waiting for Newton and Leibniz to come along and find it under a rock.

Math is the most universally translatable language, with the most consistent syntax and grammatical rules we know of. It has virtually no idioms or colloquialisms. It still has dialects though - particularly the number system in use by the speaker, which is why we have modular math to translate between those dialects.

The symbols are human. But any hypothetical alien race is going to develop the same techniques but with their own symbols.

I would agree that any sufficiently advanced critters would develop counting and arithmetic. In order to develop the science necessary for space travel, they'd need to develop a language that includes zero, a manipulatable system of counting and arithmetical operations, placeholder symbols for problem solving, etc. They would need to have a language that allows for the manipulation of observed data, expression of the relationships between those data, etc.

I would say that a lot of the language will be symbolically the same - just like human languages have a substantial amount of symbolic similarity - concepts and terms for me and you and we and they and fire and water and the other descriptive nomenclature needed to be able to transmit knowledge from one individual to another. They will be substantially similar and translatable, because the objective real phenomenon that they're describing are the same things.

I'm not convinced that aliens would necessarily develop all of the same techniques. Many of the fundamentals, sure, assuming we're not talking about a species with a crazy kind of telekinesis that lets them mentally warp spacetime without actually having to develop mathematical relationships in the first place. But set theory, or imaginary numbers? Maybe not. Maybe not even linear algebra. They may not even have developed modular math if they evolved in a relatively homogeneous way.

 

[Toni]

I was talking about my medical records keeping becoming female. The most recent instance the radiologist noted "normal mammogram" on an x-ray of my abdomen.

Aside here, but you might want to see if there's a female Loren Pechtel somewhere in your vicinity. I've spent about a year going back and forth with a collection of doctors trying to get my records untangled, and get claims sorted out - there's another person with the same name and day of birth as me in the area. I keep getting bills for cardiology treatments despite not having any heart problems. The worst of it is that my neurologist *merged* our records, since apparently she has epilepsy too. So much fun.

No, it's just people looking at "Loren" and going on the fact that it currently is a female name, not realizing that when I was born that was the male spelling. I've looked over the NPD data breach, there are only two Pechtels in the state and no more than a few hundred in the country. AFIAK my name is unique although it appears to be associated with some bogus data and I've found many cases where it's a flawed web scrape--words attributed to me that I "said", the fact that they were quotes getting lost.

I can totally seeing that being the cases if it's just your record saying female. But a radiologist noting a normal mammogram is either a case of records for different people being mixed up... or you've got a really incredibly shit radiologist. An abdominal x-ray wouldn't provide sufficient information or imaging for a radiologist to form ANY opinion about whether or not your breast tissue was normal, and given that you don't have boobs, it's extraordinarily unlikely that a radiologist looking at your abdomen would make any comment on the health of your non-existent breast tissue.

I mean... you do know what's involved in a mammogram, don't you? I sure hope that your radiologist knows what's involved.

Men have breast tissue ( albeit less developed, usually) and can get breast cancer. It is much more rare ( about 1% of all breast cancers diagnosed are in men) but it happens.

ORLY?????

?

Men sometimes have mammograms.

 

[laughing dog]

ORLY?????

Men sometimes have mammograms.

As a man who had a mammogram and a resulting lumpectomy of what turned out to a benign tumor, if the radiologist’s reaction of disbelief when I appeared is typical, it is indeed was a rare occurrence iver 25 years ago.

 

[Emily Lake]

I was talking about my medical records keeping becoming female. The most recent instance the radiologist noted "normal mammogram" on an x-ray of my abdomen.

Aside here, but you might want to see if there's a female Loren Pechtel somewhere in your vicinity. I've spent about a year going back and forth with a collection of doctors trying to get my records untangled, and get claims sorted out - there's another person with the same name and day of birth as me in the area. I keep getting bills for cardiology treatments despite not having any heart problems. The worst of it is that my neurologist *merged* our records, since apparently she has epilepsy too. So much fun.

No, it's just people looking at "Loren" and going on the fact that it currently is a female name, not realizing that when I was born that was the male spelling. I've looked over the NPD data breach, there are only two Pechtels in the state and no more than a few hundred in the country. AFIAK my name is unique although it appears to be associated with some bogus data and I've found many cases where it's a flawed web scrape--words attributed to me that I "said", the fact that they were quotes getting lost.

I can totally seeing that being the cases if it's just your record saying female. But a radiologist noting a normal mammogram is either a case of records for different people being mixed up... or you've got a really incredibly shit radiologist. An abdominal x-ray wouldn't provide sufficient information or imaging for a radiologist to form ANY opinion about whether or not your breast tissue was normal, and given that you don't have boobs, it's extraordinarily unlikely that a radiologist looking at your abdomen would make any comment on the health of your non-existent breast tissue.

I mean... you do know what's involved in a mammogram, don't you? I sure hope that your radiologist knows what's involved.

Men have breast tissue ( albeit less developed, usually) and can get breast cancer. It is much more rare ( about 1% of all breast cancers diagnosed are in men) but it happens.

ORLY?????

?

Men sometimes have mammograms.

Yes, they do. For the reasons you mentioned. What they don't have is abdominal x-rays to check for breast health.

Toni, I think you're the bee's knees. But sometimes I really feel like you don't actually read posts thoroughly.

 

[Politesse]

As far as I'm concerned, the word gender is a polite synonym for sex.

Ha! The admission! I remember when you were (angrily no less) pretending to understand the difference. Pants on fire, much?

 

[Toni]

I was talking about my medical records keeping becoming female. The most recent instance the radiologist noted "normal mammogram" on an x-ray of my abdomen.

Aside here, but you might want to see if there's a female Loren Pechtel somewhere in your vicinity. I've spent about a year going back and forth with a collection of doctors trying to get my records untangled, and get claims sorted out - there's another person with the same name and day of birth as me in the area. I keep getting bills for cardiology treatments despite not having any heart problems. The worst of it is that my neurologist *merged* our records, since apparently she has epilepsy too. So much fun.

No, it's just people looking at "Loren" and going on the fact that it currently is a female name, not realizing that when I was born that was the male spelling. I've looked over the NPD data breach, there are only two Pechtels in the state and no more than a few hundred in the country. AFIAK my name is unique although it appears to be associated with some bogus data and I've found many cases where it's a flawed web scrape--words attributed to me that I "said", the fact that they were quotes getting lost.

I can totally seeing that being the cases if it's just your record saying female. But a radiologist noting a normal mammogram is either a case of records for different people being mixed up... or you've got a really incredibly shit radiologist. An abdominal x-ray wouldn't provide sufficient information or imaging for a radiologist to form ANY opinion about whether or not your breast tissue was normal, and given that you don't have boobs, it's extraordinarily unlikely that a radiologist looking at your abdomen would make any comment on the health of your non-existent breast tissue.

I mean... you do know what's involved in a mammogram, don't you? I sure hope that your radiologist knows what's involved.

Men have breast tissue ( albeit less developed, usually) and can get breast cancer. It is much more rare ( about 1% of all breast cancers diagnosed are in men) but it happens.

ORLY?????

?

Men sometimes have mammograms.

Yes, they do. For the reasons you mentioned. What they don't have is abdominal x-rays to check for breast health.

Toni, I think you're the bee's knees. But sometimes I really feel like you don't actually read posts thoroughly.

Or sometimes I just respond to part of a post.