Science Question

[pelmut]

None of that alters the fact that the gender of an individual is a matter of genetic fact rather than choice.

It certainly isn't a matter of choice, but there is no firm evidence that it is purely genetic either.  There may be other factors such as the mother's hormonal state at a critical stage of the pregnancy or a genetically-linked susceptibility to environmental factors.

It is often thought that gender is fixed and cannot vary, but whilst that is almost certainly true, it is possible to have a gender which switches randomly between two points or which 'wanders' over a limited range.  That is a 'fixed' gender condition; even though the gender itself changes, the condition remains constant and unchangeable.  Many transgender people report that there are some days when they feel gender dysphoria stronger than others without any obvious external cause.

[Myopic Bookworm]

None of that alters the fact that the gender of an individual is a matter of genetic fact rather than choice.

The self identification thing is a social construct and cannot alter the scientific facts.

I thought that was made clear earlier in the discussion. It is the sex that is a matter of genetic fact, not the gender. Self-identification is a social construct, but so is other-identification: the imposition of gender identity by society is a social construct.

[Barleymower]

My wife and I have a couple of friends who are both scientists; Ian is a physicist and Mary is a biologist.

The other evening, we were conversing over a glass of wine when Mary told us her daughter believed that a person's sex was determined by the child themselves when they were able to articulate their decision for themselves. Being scientists, they both disagreed. Mary said that a child's sex was determined at conception with the passing of the sex chromosome. Ian had a different view, saying that sex was determined the first time the child was actually seen, either at the ultrasound scan or at the moment of birth.

I don't agree with the daughter as I think she is speaking from an ideological rather than scientific perspective. As for which of her parents is correct - I confess my ignorance.

I'm not educated sufficiently in the realm of of QM to give a definitive answer. Who is? On that basis it is a philosophical question for me at least.
I think it is an interesting concept that the sex of the foetus is chosen by the foetus before birth. It's a commonly held belief that we become aware of our sex at around 4 years. This may not be true babies may be aware of their sex long before then. They may be aware at birth. They may be aware before birth. They may have made the decision themselves as foetus.
It would explain why humans in general have no sympathy for anyone who is outside of the accepted norm. Subconsciously they think: it was your decision.
The question then of QM comes in which seems unbelievable and yet there it is! The two slit experiment proves there is more ro be explored in the subject.
Here's the two slit experiment:
https://youtu.be/A9tKncAdlHQ

[bikesaurus]

My wife is a Ph.D. Chemist, so I asked her this. She says sex is determined at conception and thinks attempting to apply quantum physics to biology is silly.

Since I spend all my day working on servers in the cloud, I'll just have to agree with her

[rode_kater]

Since I spend all my day working on servers in the cloud, I'll just have to agree with her

Ha, my experience with cloud servers is that unless something has actually observed a server working, it's probably down in such a way that still costs lots of money.

I can understand the chemists point of view: their job is doing processes where you often cannot directly observe the results, so the view of "it hasn't really happened till I observe it" is not useful to them.

OTOH I follow physicists who talk seriously about block universes, particles that go backwards in time to change causes, multiverses, etc, the idea that the sex is undetermined till observation feels fine to me. For example, while in theory you could detect androgen insensitivity syndrome from just the DNA, in practice such a person is going to be labelled biologically female despite having XY chromosomes.

I guess another way of putting it would be: when it comes to complex processes (as foetal development certainly is) I find it more useful to draw conclusions from the output of the system than to reason directly from the inputs. That's the computer scientist in me. Now, if there there were unit tests....

[Stu]

She says sex is determined at conception and thinks attempting to apply quantum physics to biology is silly.

Ok. Why does she think that?

I'm not taking a side on this, by the way. We know quantum mechanics works: we invent things on the strength of quantum calculations. This is about the nature of reality itself. Your wife is siding with the intuitive, which is totally rational, but I don't think it's right to say the other view is "silly".

[ScotL]

I think we’re going down some rabbit holes here that we just shouldn’t but should go back to MIS.

But I did ask a friend who’s a physicist and his thoughts were that the physicists he knows (and his beliefs) do not believe a fetus is both male and female until seen. He said physics doesn’t really deal with biological sex.

But I also don’t think it’s silly to apply quantum mechanics to all fields. One reason I am absolutely addicted to science is you can discuss everything and anything if you have the scientific mindset that 1) we don’t absolutely know and 2) we are interested in learning with an open mind.

So off topic discussion here is apropos for the heading of this group of posts. But I’m interested in what you mean by physicists believe biological sex is determined upon sight. Or maybe I’m not understanding what you’re saying. But I’m being very honest when I say I’d like to.

[Stu]

ScotL

I am not saying what all physicists believe - how would I know? If you are a physicist working with, say, producing energy from ocean currents, then you may not be knowledgeable about or convinced by quantum theory. However, a quantum physicist would know exactly what I was talking about. Reality is, under that theory, subjective. Physical phenomena like light are known to change their behaviour depending on whether or not they are being observed or measured. There is no reason why the same rule doesn't apply at the larger scale, including biological reality. Under QM, if a woman thinks there is a 50/50 chance she may be pregnant, and no entity knows for sure one way or the other, then her pregnancy is in a super-position, i.e. she is both pregnant and not pregnant at the same time. Once she takes the pregnancy test, the wave function collapses and that forces her to a state of either being pregnant or being not pregnant.

[ScotL]

ScotL

I am not saying what all physicists believe - how would I know? If you are a physicist working with, say, producing energy from ocean currents, then you may not be knowledgeable about or convinced by quantum theory. However, a quantum physicist would know exactly what I was talking about. Reality is, under that theory, subjective. Physical phenomena like light are known to change their behaviour depending on whether or not they are being observed or measured. There is no reason why the same rule doesn't apply at the larger scale, including biological reality. Under QM, if a woman thinks there is a 50/50 chance she may be pregnant, and no entity knows for sure one way or the other, then her pregnancy is in a super-position, i.e. she is both pregnant and not pregnant at the same time. Once she takes the pregnancy test, the wave function collapses and that forces her to a state of either being pregnant or being not pregnant.

I believe in quantum mechanics but what I believe is irrelevant. I’m not a physicist. My physicist colleague works in quantum mechanics. He disagrees with you.

Im gonna disagree with you on pregnancy as it’s one of the few things that is binary. You are or are not pregnant. The fact you haven’t taken a confirmatory test does not change what’s going on inside you. You’re stating the pregnancy test creates the pregnancy state. Fertilization of the egg and implantation does that.

I believe what you are discussing is Schrödinger's cat experiment. This is a thought experiment but in reality the cat is actually live or dead. The experiment states until we confirm one state or the other, we don’t know and in our heads, the cat could be alive or dead. Both possible states exist until confirmed by opening the box. But opening the box neither keeps the cat alive nor kills it. Just reveals the answer and removes one possible state of being.

[rode_kater]

I believe what you are discussing is Schrödinger's cat experiment. This is a thought experiment but in reality the cat is actually live or dead.

Is it? That's the whole point. It may be a thought experiment, but in reality we have no way of determining whether cat is really alive or dead or in a super-position before we open the box. If you beleive the cat is either alive or dead before you open the box, then you subscribe to "macroscopic realism", which is known to be incompatible with QM. That doesn't mean it's wrong, just that we can't prove it right either (yet).

Another example: suppose someone finds out they're intersex once they're an adult after some unrelated tests. Were they intersex all their lives, or did they only become intersex once the test was done and we stuck a label on them? That's a philosophical question, you can argue either way, the answer doesn't matter to anything.

(w.r.t the pregnancy, while the states "pregnant" and "not pregnant" are clear, the line between them is fuzzy enough I'm not sure you can really fix a point in time. If the egg dies after a few divisions, were you ever pregnant? In what way is a "yes" answer here useful?)

[ScotL]

Is it?

(w.r.t the pregnancy, while the states "pregnant" and "not pregnant" are clear, the line between them is fuzzy enough I'm not sure you can really fix a point in time. If the egg dies after a few divisions, were you ever pregnant? In what way is a "yes" answer here useful?)

Yes. The cat is either alive or dead. They are two mutually exclusive states as one cannot simultaneously be alive AND dead. The fact we don’t know which state the cat is in does not change the cat’s state, only our knowledge of its state. Therefore in our thoughts, the cat exists in two different states but in reality it exists in only one state.

To suggest otherwise states the opening of the box determines the cats fate. The thought experiment clearly states radiation is released that kills the cat. Not the act of opening the box.

In pregnancy, a developing embryo is by definition pregnant. A defined time

[Stu]

ScotL

You have misunderstood the cat experiment. Of course it would be radiation which has killed the cat rather than opening the box, but the act of opening the box determines whether the toxin would have ben released or not. Prior to that, there is a superposition - the toxin has been released and it has not been released. You are trying to apply the classical understanding of reality to QM which works for most of our practical purposes. However, it doesn't work on the sub-atomic particle scale - and possibly not on the larger scale (like cats, foetuses etc) as everything is made up of sub-atomic particles.

Susan Hossenfelder explains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GerzZ6GDe-0

[ScotL]

ScotL

You have misunderstood the cat experiment. Of course it would be radiation which has killed the cat rather than opening the box, but the act of opening the box determines whether the toxin would have ben released or not. Prior to that, there is a superposition - the toxin has been released and it has not been released. You are trying to apply the classical understanding of reality to QM which works for most of our practical purposes. However, it doesn't work on the sub-atomic particle scale - and possibly not on the larger scale (like cats, foetuses etc) as everything is made up of sub-atomic particles.

Susan Hossenfelder explains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GerzZ6GDe-0

I don’t think I am. In the original thought experiment, there is a Geiger counter that when it detects radiation from a decaying radioactive source breaks the flask of poison and kills the cat. The opening of the box does not release the poison. It only reveals the true state.

https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/mobile ... ent-prove/

Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment. It wasn’t meant to prove anything in QM theory except that we misinterpret the theory’s role in explaining our world.

I brought it up because I thought you were using similar logic to explain why you suggested a person’s sex could exist as male and female until observed. I’m still not convinced that this is what happens in reality.

[Stu]

I brought it up because I thought you were using similar logic to explain why you suggested a person’s sex could exist as male and female until observed. I’m still not convinced that this is what happens in reality.

I am not saying you should be convinced that this is what happens in reality. I am saying there are physicists who do think that (and others who don't). The video I linked explains all that.

As for me, I am keeping an open mind on it. We all have a mental model of how the world works and that serves us well for the vast majority of purposes. However, reality - if such a thing exists - has far more levels than our minds will ever be able to compute, so you can't entirely discount the possibility that the multi-world theory is correct and that awareness/observance/measurement of a non-sentient phenomenon can influence its behaviour, especially where mathematics seems to show actually happens.

[rode_kater]

I don’t think I am. In the original thought experiment, there is a Geiger counter that when it detects radiation from a decaying radioactive source breaks the flask of poison and kills the cat. The opening of the box does not release the poison. It only reveals the true state.

https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/mobile ... ent-prove/

The article is from someone who assumes the Copenhagen interpretation of QM (that "waveform collapse" is a real thing). Personally I find the Copenhagen interpretation ridiculous, there are many other interpretations that don't require something like "waveform collapse" which feels like a mathematical hack.

Which is why they're called "interpretations", because no experiment we have done can distinguish between them.

I brought it up because I thought you were using similar logic to explain why you suggested a person’s sex could exist as male and female until observed. I’m still not convinced that this is what happens in reality.

No need to be convinced, we don't know what happens in reality because we have no experiment (yet) that can tell us for sure. There are scientists who claim they have put bacteria in a superposition such it is both capturing light and not capturing light simultaneously. Sure, the experiment is controversial, but there a big gap between a single particle and a bacteria, and if we can get it work for bacteria, why not cats? There are scientists out there right now trying to think of experiments that will answer the question one way or the other (it would be Nobel prize material after all, maybe you'd become as famous as Einstein).

But the real point is it doesn't matter what happens in reality. Any legal effects and societal effects only occur after observation by a live human being. What happens before is only relevant for random discussion over drinks.