Reality is what there is, hence to posit something "beyond reality" is to posit more of what there is, and "beyond reality" is a grammatical error. — Banno

Well I think it's implicit that we're talking about known reality.

The way I look at it is this: I think hypotheses that we are living in the matrix or whatever are vulnerable to occam's razor. They have no better explanatory power than the hypothesis that I am a Homo sapiens on earth 2025, but posit additional entities.

And I think it's also important to stay within this explantory / hypothesis space. Because sometimes people make the claim that everything around us being a dream is somehow simpler than believing in a gigantic universe. But scale, and physicality, are not complexity. Or you sometimes get allusions to a an idea of a universe being "easier"; both of these claims are baseless and/or irrelevant at this time.

The idea that free will requires this sort of "rewind" possibility and that if we reset the whole universe to that moment (including your brain and memories) you could have chosen otherwise is what I've called "rollback incompatibilism" in a paper I wrote a few years ago. I think it's false, but it does seem to be a shared presupposition between libertarians who insist it's required and possible and hard determinists who insist it's required and impossible. — Pierre-Normand

I would go further than just calling it false, I think it's nonsensical. Rewind time and things are either going to be the same, or different for things like quantum indeterminancy (which we don't consider to be a reasoned choice). If there's a third way that could make sense, no-one seems to know what it is.

And this rewind possibility is the standard framing. I've watched or taken part in countless online and in-person debates where the whole premise was this (false) dichotomy of "Determinism vs free will" and usually a subtext of "Could we have chosen differently?"

When I acknowledge that someone's blame is fitting, or feel shame or regret where I should, I'm not just being moved into acting better in the future (though I may be). I'm recognizing that, in this case, I was or wasn't properly responsive to the demands of reason. When I say that I could have done better, I don't mean that I lacked the general ability and opportunity to do better. — Pierre-Normand

I think there's room for a lot of nuance on the concept of blame, but broadly I disagree.

I doubt that blame makes sense from a god's eye view, that is, with perfect knowledge. And I think this whether or not my decisions are predictable.

But I'll start with the nuances.

Firstly, as a practical matter, we have to hold people accountable for their actions. Both because we don't have perfect knowledge (and in terms of predicting actions, we likely never will) and we're limited in what we could do anyway. So it's necessary to praise and encourage the good, and condemn the bad, as part of just having a society.

(I would still say though that justice systems should be primarily based on rehabilitation, deterrence and public protection and not punishment. Because the notion of punishing evil is vulnerable to us finding genes, or neuropathologies highly correlated with violence say.)

Secondly, in terms of what you're saying about not living up to our potential, I get why it feels like that: I look at many dumb things I've done in my life that way. But it's usually the result of having greater knowledge and awareness now, often due to seeing the results of past dumb behaviours.

There's a strong correlation between impulsive behaviours and youth -- does that mean young people aren't their true self? Someone who died at 25 was never their true self?

But anyway, in general, I don't think blame works in the abstract. If God asks me why I did X, I can always give an explanation and it was down to what I understood at the time, and just the way I was wired (e.g. disliking pain, being attracted to women etc). All things God is at least as culpable as me for.

I appreciate this and I apologise if my comment may have been a little curt — Pierre-Normand

Thanks and reading back my own post, I will say the same. My posts are often more acerbic / confrontational really than they need to be and I appreciate you cooling the temperature.

But surely, you must grand that ordinary uses of the phrase, like "I didn't stop by the corner store to buy milk after work (and hence couldn't have chosen differently) because it was closed" are meaningful? — Pierre-Normand

I do agree that that description is meaningful.

I'll try to clarify my position.

I believe that we make choices, but those choices are the product of our knowledge and predilections.
If you could rewind time to the moment I made the biggest mistake of my life, and you "rewind" my memories back to that state, then I'll do the same thing for the same reasons.

Some might balk at calling this "choice" then, but I think this is the *only* thing we can mean by choice. What's a choice that *isn't* the product of knowledge and predilection, what would that even mean?

In a universe is magic, souls and indeterminacy, how do the fairy folk decide between coffee or tea?

I'm a bit curious about the process whereby you are able to look at the concept itself and deem it incoherent. Do you pluck it directly from Plato's Heaven and put it under a microscope? Rather than arguing that you've never heard a formulation of the concept that isn't meaningless or inconsistent (which is not really an argument but more of a gesture of exasperation — Pierre-Normand

It seems to always be the case that when I state my opinion that free will is incoherent, the response is always, essentially, how dare you. No-one ever seems to respond with a coherent definition, or give a description of how it could function in a hypothetical universe.

But anyway, to respond to your points, I have given examples of formulations, like "could have chosen differently", and explained why I think they're meaningless. So I did do the thing you're suggesting.

If you know of better definitions, let's hear them, I'm here for it. In the meantime, yes my opinion is that it's incoherent, not just because all the formulations I have heard have been, but because I've heard all of the most popular ones.

I don't really understand why you think that. Let me be clear in turn that I think that this is a tenable position (that free will may not be a valid concept, or at least that it has serious problems), but it needs to be supported with honest work. — SophistiCat

I gave my reasoning -- that I've never heard a formulation of free will that wasn't meaningless or self-inconsistent.
If you believe that there are definitions of free will that clearly define something that could potentially exist in a hypothetical universe, I'm open to hearing it. I just never have.

"Free will" is a thing, so to say - the concept has been in use for a long time, not only in exalted domains of philosophy and theology, but also in common parlance and in specialized secular domains, such as law. — SophistiCat

Lots of people believe a thing does not make it rational though; concepts and arguments need to stand on their own merits.
Besides, it's not like I'm the sole dissenting voice; there are plenty of philosophers and theologians that believe there's no free will. And I would argue their position is in fact that the concept itself is incoherent even if they don't seem to appreciate it themselves. Now, hear me out, because I know the obvious retort is that I am claiming to know their minds, I am not.

What I mean is, many philosophers, like those I mentioned upthread, will not merely say that there is no free will but that there cannot be free will. The only difference between them and people taking my position, is that by them keeping the focus on our universe, rather than considering whether this concept can be realized in any universe, they don't fully appreciate that the problem is with the concept itself.

I rather think you should begin by asking the bolded question. You may even find that the question of determinism vs indeterminism isn't as relevant to free will as all that, belying your first and second points — SophistiCat

My position is exactly that we should start with asking what we mean by the concept, and that determinism / indeterminism is a red herring -- see my first post in this thread. I was just explaining the steps by which I (and others) got there.

In any case, these first two points prompt the conclusion that free will is impossible, not that it is meaningless. — SophistiCat

True, but it bears the burden of showing it's meaningful.

Let me be clear: there are plenty of things we don't understand, or even are entirely speculative, but are perfectly valid concepts.
Free will has not even attained that level yet though. It's self inconsistent, at least in the formulations that I've seen. A reasoned choice that can't be traced to reasons.

NB: I wouldn't normally derail a thread like this, but seeing that this is yet another pathetic attempt at self-promotion by one of our resident crackpots — SophistiCat

Is that at me? WTH?

Is this why you think that the concept of free will is incoherent? Why? — SophistiCat

Apologies -- I've repeated my position on this so many times, on so many forums that I can forget the need to explain myself on a different site.

1. The concept usually gets framed first around Determinism. The reasoning is that, if the universe is Deterministic I might think I chose coffee or tea, but actually that choice was predictable from the big bang. I only had the illusion of choice.
Fine.

2. Then, when it's pointed out that the universe may well not be determinstic, thanks to quantum indeterminancy, this is usually handwaved away. How can randomness be called choice?

3. But to me, (1) and (2) combined leave a bad smell. In (1) it seemed that the issue was with our decisions being predictable, being integrated in the causal chain of events. When the suggestion (2) arrives that this may not be the case, apparently it's still insufficient to have free will.
So, to me, at this point we should be asking What exactly do we mean by free will, and is it something which could even potentially exist?

4. And basically I've never heard a satisfactory answer to (3). No-one can seem to breakdown how a "true" free will decision would be made, or what it even really means.
The popular "Could have chosen differently" is quite a woolly definition. Every reasoned action I've made in my life I did for reasons, that I could have told you at the time. And some of those reasons were more important to me than others. When we talk about "could have chosen differently" what do we mean in this picture -- that I could have been aware of different things, or would value different things more highly? But these things can also be traced to events / properties external to me.

If some people's notion of free will is incoherent, one option is to advocate for dispensing with the notion altogether. Another one is the seek to capture the right but inchoate ideas that animate it. The idea of free will clearly is conceptually related to the idea of determinism, on one side, and to the idea of personal responsibility, on the other side. Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett have argued over which one of those two attitudes—eliminativist or revisionist, roughly—is warranted. — Pierre-Normand

True, but I think it's a bit misguided, or maybe gets us off on the wrong foot. (I mean their descriptions, not that you are misguided)
For example, Sam Harris, Stephen Law, Alex O' Conner etc will say that they don't believe that there is free will -- tacitly agreeing that "free will" has been well-defined as something which could potentially exist in some reality.

But their reasons for thinking it free will not exist are more fundamental than just talking about Determinism. They talk about where the will comes from, and that random events could not be called free will.

Therefore I think they would struggle to describe any universe that would have this concept. And, furthermore, the scrutiny should then be placed on the concept itself; basically questioning the premise that I just mentioned -- that free will is a meaningful concept that could exist.

My position remains that the concept of free will is incoherent. Let me be clear: I'm not agreeing with the position "there is no free will", I am saying that that position is "not even wrong" because it's meaningless.

A reasoned choice is the product of reasoning: the product of (knowledge of) past events and individual predilections: both of which can be traced to causes outside of the self.

Determinism is a red herring here, because IME no one can give an account of how free will would work and make sense even in a non deterministic universe.

They literally do not. They discuss translocation and mutation. They do not discuss several allele variations. I presume you can quote the passages you are referring to, as I was able to do? — AmadeusD

All genotypes originate as mutations.

Look, let's even take a step back. I'll give you credit for the fact that you tacitly accept that the standard arguments for sex determination to be binary and trivial (on the basis of internal or external genitalia, sexual dimorphism, chromsomes etc) don't work. Because these things can sometimes be equivocal and even when, say, chromosomes fit cleanly in one bracket, another thing like external genitalia might fit in a different bracket.

The problem is that you seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge exactly the same issues with the SRY gene. There are hundreds of different observed genotypes for this gene, and it also may not align with other markers of sex.

You can read the names of the authors. I assume. But am getting less certain of your capabilities in this regard. Luckily, you've simply whittered. So no worries mate. — AmadeusD

Yeah an ad hominem, that totally works as a cite of even one biologist that agrees with your position.

Why not nothing? = Why being? Asking either question assumes being, so being is inscrutable by questioning. — ucarr

To ask the question of why anything exists requires a questioner, yes. But so what?

We also need a questioner to ask what dark matter is made of...does that observation solve the question of what dark matter is? Does it entail that a universe without dark matter is impossible?

Likewise the fact that sentience is a prerequisite for asking why anything exists, does not in any way answer the question. And it doesn't tell us that nothingness is impossible.

This supposed 'Nothing' cannot be. This mistaken 'it' has no it and so it cannot even be meant; therefore existence must be, for it has no alternative, and indeed there is something; so no option. — PoeticUniverse

In English, "logical NOT" and "thing" get concatenated into a noun, nothing, but it's a special noun.

If we say "There's nothing to be afraid of", we don't mean that there's exactly one thing to be afraid of, that we are calling "nothing". We mean there are zero things to be afraid of.

Likewise "nothing existing" in the cosmic sense doesn't mean some entity we're calling "nothing" has the property of existence. It means zero things have the property of existence, including space-time.

I mention English, because not all languages do this thing of concatenating "no + thing" into a noun.
So a sentence like "nothing is still something" translates into absolute gibberish in many languages. e.g. It can translate into "zero things are one thing", or in some cases "it is not the case that thing is a thing".

You can read the quote you quoted. But you are literally incapable of taking in information which is counter to your emotional position. Fortunately for my attitude, I have demonstrated that you are wrong. Several times. With absolutely no retort other than repeating a claim which is incorrect. — AmadeusD

You think that a quote that says that there are hundreds of observed genotypes for the SRY gene, supports your claim that it's strictly binary? WTF level of gaslighting is this?

Anyway, I asked you directly for which biologist has stated your position of SRY being the singular and binary determinator of sex. Say a name or admit that none do.

Also on the topic of the OP, a man spent a month in jail for posting a meme following charlie kirk's death. A meme that seemed to be pointing out Trump's hypocrisy and callousness. The justification for bringing charges though was supposedly that the meme was claimed to have been taken to be a threat against the school.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/larry-bushart-charlie-kirk-meme-charges-b2855116.html

People are really stupid and (as it seems you are quite disposed to do) actually look for things to get upset about because it scores them social justice points. — AmadeusD

The irony of this kind of statement, when the whole tangent about transgender is recreational outrage. A tiny number of people are transgender, and are disproportionately victims of crime rather than perpetrators. As I say, it's a drummed up boogieman, the moral panic of our time.

I have now addressed that exact thing four times. You repeating your patently, demonstrable and obviously false position doesn't change it. I have provided ample evidence, with highlights ,providing that you are flat-out, dead wrong and I have provided direct, ample evidence for such. — AmadeusD

So once again your response is "nuh-uh!".
Your own cites told you that there are multiple genotypes for the SRY gene, to summarize:

"Functional" SRY (XY): The typical male genotype, usually resulting in the development of testes and male characteristics.
Non-functional / Mutated SRY (XY): Loss-of-function mutations or deletions in the SRY gene in individuals with an XY karyotype can cause Swyer syndrome (46,XY complete gonadal dysgenesis), where the individual develops female sex characteristics.
Translocated SRY (XX): In cases of 46,XX testicular DSD, the SRY gene is translocated onto one of the X chromosomes. These individuals develop male characteristics despite having a female-typical chromosome pattern.
Various Point Mutations and Variants: More than a hundred different variants (missense, frameshift, and truncating mutations) have been identified in patients with DSDs, especially within the HMG (high mobility group) DNA-binding domain of the protein. These variations can have different impacts on the protein's function, leading to a spectrum of conditions from complete to partial gonadal dysgenesis.

IOW this is useless for the purpose of claiming sex is strictly binary, unless, that is, we just arbitrarily group everyone as functional SRY or "other". In which case, we may as well have grouped genitals, chromosomes etc in a similarly arbitrary way, except even there the problem comes when genitals and chromosomes etc don't align.

All of the ones I posted, including providing quotes and explaining hte slightly nuanced technical language in a way that is easily understood by those who cannot read a biological paper except to cherry pick buzz words they think, but are wrong about, supporting their erroneous view. — AmadeusD

Oh, all the experts agree with you. Great, so let's start with one.
Which one of the experts here has said that SRY is the singular, and strictly binary, determinator of sex?

There is no third genotype. Translocation is the only "third option" for SRY and it is a location aberration. It has nothing to do with sex. Alleles don't come into this. You are wrong. — AmadeusD

There's only so many times I can point out to you that your own cites allude to multiple genotypes of SRY (as there are multiple genotypes for any non-fatal gene), so let's just cut to the chase.

Which human biologists have claimed that human sex is a function of the SRY gene and is binary?

Stating that you have not changed your position does not clarify your understanding, of the points being put to you and whether you have any counter-arguments.

Practical tool, yes. Means to learn about reality? No. Not the TRUE reality.

Like I said, I'm a theoretical person with little concern for practicality. — Copernicus

Yes you said that already.

I responded that the same methodology that delivers us practical tools and inferences also helps us to understand reality, demonstrably so.

You then simply said "sure", so I asked you to clarify whether you are accepting the argument.
Just repeating your original position doesn't give us that clarity.

Please now clarify: do you accept the argument? Do you believe you have found a flaw in it?

Incidentally, I also noticed a significant asymmetry in this discussion among people claiming there is such a thing as a selfish act, but no such thing as a selfless one.

Say we take the example of a man spending all his money on a flash car and fine clothes while his children go hungry...we'd call that selfish, right? Because that person was satisfying his want of nice things and putting that ahead of others that depend on him.

However, if we flip it, and talk about a father that sacrifices because he wants the best for his children, suddenly we can't talk about his wants and motivation in this simple way.
No, we instead now need to go super reductionist, and try to find neurochemical underpinnings, or even the whole evolutionary history of the species, to find an agency-free description.

IMO you can't have it both ways: if you want to take the agency out of selfless acts, you need to do the same for selfish acts and claim there's no such thing as a selfish act either.

people call mass "weight". — Copernicus

Every thread now is just pithy responses. Why are you on a discussion forum, if you're unwilling to discuss the points being put to you?

Anyway, I'll give your response the courtesy you didn't give mine.

The difference with "weight" is that both the technical and colloquial meanings of weight are useful self-consistent terms, used by people speaking English to refer to actual phenomena.

Whereas the idea of "selfless" meaning very literally having no concern for the self, and not even having any biological basis for the behaviour, isn't a term anyone actually uses. Outside of threads like this, that is.
Threads claiming that there is no such thing as a selfless act is the only time we seem to encounter this extreme meaning of the term.

"Sure" what? Do you now acknowledge the solid grounds for having confidence in science, both as a practical tool and as a means to learn about reality?

If you're satisfied with practical benefits then sure. I'm not. I'm a theoretical person. To me, the truth is more important than functionality. — Copernicus

The two go hand in hand. When we are using a scientific model to make accurate predictions, it can be seen as both an attempt to find useful, practical implications and a validation of a claim about reality.

Our understanding of quantum mechanics for example is being tested with every transitor operation in the device that you are using to read this. Billions of tests per second and our accurate predictions are correct every time. That doesn't give you confidence that that model represents at the least partially how this reality works?

The more narrowly we are defining "selfless", the less importance the claim that selfless acts don't exist has.

That's on top of the fact, as already pointed out, that the conception of "selfless" as literally meaning having no concern for the self whatsoever, is nowhere related to what the word actually means.
(NB: I would guess some dictionaries might give a very terse definition, that implies no concern for the self, but they would also probably define words like "monopoly" or "democracy" in similar simple terms that would imply they don't exist either, if taken literally)

So if you want to create a term that means a willful action that's not willed, and not even originating in biology, possibly even causality...then sure, that doesn't seem to exist (or even make coherent sense). I'm with you on that.
Meanwhile back in the real world, people can be motivated by a desire to help others, putting their own needs second (within reason), and that's what people actually mean by the term selfless.

@copernicus "observations" is just one part of science, we make models and then we test those models. The usefulness of this method is easy to demonstrate by eg the device that you are using to read this.

No. That's an odd question. Are you unfamiliar with the scientific method or was it a rhetorical question?

I wouldn't put it that way, since speculation is also part of the scientific method.

But the key difference between the two is prediction and testing, which we can then use in building technology and making decisions.

Sure they are both the same with respect to an impossible standard to meet.

However a difference of course is that science is empirically testable and therefore gives us both a pragmatic and a logical reason for belief.

The pragmatic reason is that science is useful. Just the observation that swallowing foodstuffs sates my hunger is a kind of science. This is very useful information regardless of what the true nature of reality is.
Meanwhile religion might make us feel good but in ways that are easy to explain without the need to assert supernatural involvement. Other than that religion simply makes false claims and false predictions.

And the logical reason is that there can be true facts about this reality regardless of whether it's a simulation or whatever. Induction is useful and we have as much grounds for trust in it as we would in a hypothetical universe that we somehow knew was objectively real.

However, if you look at those doctrinal magisteria as a venn diagram of human wisdom, you may see a small area of overlap, which could be labeled as Philosophy : Rational but not Empirical ; Ideal but not necessarily Real. Plato and Aristotle worked together, but one focused on metaphysical Ideality (abstract & utopian) while the other emphasized physical Reality (practical & pragmatic). Yet their disparate philosophies did overlap in the middle : pursuit of Truth. — Gnomon

This.
Asking how religion and science can integrate is similar to asking how science and philosophy can integrate. Philosophy covers a lot of things that one day could be a science; that could be objectively testable. But today they are not, and so we apply the tools of philosophy as both an end in itself and also to aid in defining the problem in a way that it becomes scientifically studyable.

And so with religion, I think if someone wants to believe a god made the universe say, there's no problem. I mean, I don't agree with the arguments for that position, but in the context of this thread, it's not harmful to science.
And we see that in the fact that vast numbers of scientists, probably the majority, are theists, and it doesn't affect their ability to do their work.

Where science and religion *do* overlap of course, then they cannot be integrated, and very simply science has always won. We learn about reality by observing it, not through revelation.
So religion either steps aside, or you get the sad reality of places like the US, where ignorance of the scientific method and critical thinking must be maintained, so that grown adults can continue to believe it all began with a talking snake and a magic tree.

Neuroscience has shown that our emotional and instinctive systems start the process of action before we even realize it. — Copernicus

I think it's more complex than that; it depends upon what action we're talking about.
And I think you'd likely agree that the subsconscious mind is also part of the person, so I think you're agreeing with me, but coming at it from a slightly different angle.
My position was that our "wiring" is such that we can go into a state where we appreciate that we are responsible for this important, fragile thing, and moment to moment we are not doing a cost/benefit analysis; there's no time for that.
You're suggesting we are internally motivated by our mind seeking particular activation for certain actions: yeah, I'd say those things are alternative descriptions of the same set of phenomena.

If a truly selfless act must have no internal motive at all, then it wouldn’t really be an act of will — it would just be something mechanical, like a leaf falling from a tree. — Copernicus

Agreed. It's also interesting that you throw in the concept of will here, because my main objection to the OP is the same as for the free will debate. But I'll avoid the temptation to tangent into it completely.

To call an act “selfless” just because the person wasn’t aware of its benefit is to confuse consciousness with motivation. Every voluntary act comes from within: from emotion, instinct, or belief — all of which exist because they help the self endure. — Copernicus

I was agreeing with you right to the end :)
Firstly, I don't think we should take the structure of the word that literally; I don't think it's understood as meaning literally absent the self. If a kind person does a kind action, and someone calls it "selfless", we're not saying it appeared from nowhere (which would make it as worthy of praise as being struck by lightning).

And secondly, no, I don't think all voluntary acts necessarily exist for helping the self endure.
Social species have group selection pressures, so there will be some behaviours that are not optimal or even to the detriment of the self. Plus just genetic drift will mean humans are likely saddled with some arbitrary proclivities.

And heck, a mother caring for her child is to the detriment of the self. Hear me out.
I know that parental love is such a strong thing, and a familiar thing to us all. And that all organisms prioritize reproducing above all else. So we casually consider reproducing and caring for the next generation to be aiding the self. And that we "live on".
But the next generation isn't the self.
Those behaviours evolved for the genes' benefit, not mine.
Again, we might not mind at all, because we get the benefit of feeling good about ourselves later. That doesn't make it the reason we behaved that way though.

The problem with this topic is in reasoning that if we find some benefit of an action, or a future beneficial state, that proves it's a selfish action.

But surely the intent matters here? If I help an old man cross the street, and he turns out to be a billionaire who buys me a car, that doesn't make it selfish, because that wasn't my reason for helping.

I know that's a silly example, but I just want to establish the distinction, because now we can take a look at an example from the OP:

The OP mentions a parent caring for their child and mentions things like self satisfaction. And sure, being a good parent feels good. Was that the reason for doing it though?
I would say: no. I wouldn't necessarily say it's "love" either.
I think there is a responsibility hat that we sometimes wear, instinctively. It's only occasionally that we get to stop and think about consequences of *not* looking after a child, or how much we love them or whatever. The rest of the time we're operating out of a sense of duty; someone is depending on us.

Of course, we can take this a step back and say that that instinct of duty exists for selfish (gene) reasons. But to me it's absurd if we're requiring selfless acts to go back beyond this level. We'd be implicitly defining "selfless" as "reasonless, and yet non random". Yes of course a nonsensical thing doesn't exist.

I object to violations of free speech rights on both sides of the political spectrum. If you don't live in the US, why are you defaulting to their oppositional binary?

If you care about free speech, you oppose all violations. — Jeremy Murray

I *do* oppose all violations, I am just focusing on the currently most widespread and dangerous.

As I said in my initial post in this thread, something akin to woke outrage has been the case for decades in the UK, under the banner of "political correctness gone MAD". It was almost always exaggerations if not outright bollocks, but it reliably sold newspapers. It's also made us vote against our own best interests several times (e.g. brexit).

And right now we're on the edge of the same cliff that the US is hurtling down. There's plenty of disinformation about migrants and trans etc in the UK, the latest one being that migrants are eating swans (why is that familiar)? We're in a weird place where accusing someone of racism is treated more seriously than actual racist propaganda.
Which has helped a far-right party lead in election polls. If they get in, I think it's just a matter of time before we have universities, journalists, broadcast media etc gagged in the name of "protecting" us from "woke".

That said, the UK is a more symmetrical situation than the situation in the US. There are things that the left (-ish) wing government has done that I strongly object to, like proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist group, and the recent arrest of a screenwriter for offensive (but not illegal) views.
The 1 : 100 estimate of severity earlier was meant for the US.

And I have explained to you why, in detail: translocation is not a genotype. I even gave you room to say that this is not what you mean. You have not. I presume it is what you mean. Translocation is not a third genotype.

There are not three genotypes for SRY. There are not three genotypes for SRY. There are not three genotypes for SRY — AmadeusD

I have explained you that I am not talking about translocation; that's your word, not mine. I said the genotype and mentioned alleles.

And the part where your cite disputes your conclusion is this:

"Mutations [of the SRY gene] lead to a range of disorders of sex development with varying effects on an individual's phenotype and genotype"

So it's not binary. Now sure, you can, as this cite has, call all the other genotypes "disorders" but the point is, it hasn't got us any closer to a supposed binary gold standard.
If we're going to arbitrarily say we only accept two forms as "correct", then we could have just done that with genitals, chromosomes etc. The problem remains that you have millions of people worldwide that don't fit in the two boxes.

I've provided air-tight support for [SRY being the (binary) determinator of sex]. — AmadeusD

And then your own cites say:

"SRY is clearly important for the development of male sex, although in rare instances a male phenotype can develop in its absence"
"Most XX men who lack a Y chromosome do still have a copy of the SRY region on one of their X chromosomes. This copy accounts for their maleness" (emphasis added)

I don't understand why you don't read your own cites.
Look, I'm not your enemy here. Consider this helpful because one day you could be on a debate stage trying to defend these talking points.

Sorry man, I still don't. I included five links that are contrary to your generalization, two articles from John Turley who wrote this exhaustive review of free speech and rage politics in the US in 2024.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199897939-the-indispensable-right

My links aren't long - why not consider them? — Jeremy Murray

You've linked a book here. I am not going to buy and read a book to try to find evidence for you.

I'm absolutely open to having my mind changed. I should mention by the way that I used to be a member of the Conservative party here in the UK, and still consider myself a centrist. But if we're talking about freedom of speech in the US, nothing that happened under Obama or even Biden (who was involved in some of the gagging of Palestinian protests) compares to what's happening under MAGA and project 2025.

It goes to show that all the stuff of "I may not like what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" (or whatever the exact quote is), was bullshit. The people that whined about trans people choosing their own pronouns don't give a toss about people being deported, defunded, fired, imprisoned etc on the basis of their political views.

Wrong. This isn’t government impinging on speech. It’s government saying you can say whatever the hell you want, but that they won’t pay for it anymore. And I’m fine if the government decides not to give money to any college.

Got it yet? — Fire Ologist

I've "got it" that I think you're a hypocrite, because this thread is about you and others losing your shit over things that are orders of magnitude less invasive and less restrictive on speech than what MAGA is doing daily.

And I even forgot some pretty significant stuff, like student visas being revoked on the basis of political views, and academics who tweeted negatively about trump not being allowed into the country.

You quoted the bit about government funding and ignored the rest because that was the one comeback you could think of. And I call BS even on that -- that you'd be excusing a left-wing government making funding of all major institutions provisional on political views.

That just means the taxpayers aren’t going to be forced to pay for whatever the college wants to say and promote. It has zero impact on freedom. — Fire Ologist

And you'd be saying that if it was the other way round, with conservative ideas banned and liberal ideas explicitly mandated under financial penalty?

I didn't mention the threats to the media because we were talking about colleges for that example, but in the context of also pulling licenses, it seems government is pulling every lever to restrict speech.
So what is even the point of the first amendment?

I’m sure you are right about some improper arrests. Point one out. Who was arrested for speech? — Fire Ologist

Almost all of the arrests are for "criminal trespass" and disorder, hence why Human Rights Watch described it as an assault on free speech and free assembly. But if you consider those arrests "proper" then it was 100% proper for those two conservative guys to have been considered to have been trespassing and disorderly.

We are talking about kids K-12. These are almost entirely minors. Ok? Kids. — Fire Ologist

No I was talking about the "stop WOKE act" impinging on the freedom of higher education institutions. I just quoted the press release that also happened to mention it included K-12. I don't expect it to make much of any difference at that level, since CRT wasn't taught to kids anyway. But it may have a chilling effect on teachers who may choose to just avoid topics like slavery outright.

State funded colleges and universities? Or all of them? If all of them, the laws are a problem. If state funded, be brave my anxious friend. — Fire Ologist

So again, you don't care about the government impinging on free speech as long as it's your side and your ideology.
I'll hold you to this. If a Democratic government comes in, and forces universities to push "woke" content (whatever that means), and ban conservative ideas about immigration or marriage, say, or get their funding cut, you don't get to say anything. It's all fine, and not a problem for freedom of speech, according to you.

Studies have found that people who use AI have lower cognitive ability than people who don't, you're making yourself worse off for using it. — Darkneos

I'd like to see those studies; I would be very skeptical of a causal link. Especially for such a broad term like "cognitive ability".

Between physics and semantics there can be no bridge law, only correlation.
A physical process can correlate with a semantic event, but it can never translate into or cause it. The relationship between brain and mind is therefore not causal, but correlative — two complementary descriptions of one and the same dynamic viewed from different epistemic perspectives.

That is why such theories can never be verified even in principle. There is no possible experiment that could demonstrate a causal transition from a physical process to a semantic or experiential one. — Wolfgang

OK, I think I 90% agree with you.

As I have been saying in the parallel thread on the hard problem of consciousness, the problem of explaining subjective experience in a scientific model looks intractable.

I can't imagine a set of words I could write on a page that would enable a person with no color vision to experience red. Or for me to imagine what ultraviolet looks like to birds.
These things seem absurd, yet the problem of trying to explain experience itself in a scientific model is pretty much the same. Note: the experience itself, not the correlates of the experience.

I think the areas of disagreement, would be first of all I can't claim that it's impossible. It seems highly implausible that some words could make me imagine a new color say, but I am not aware of a proof from first principles. And generally we should be careful not to prematurely claim that things are impossible.

Secondly, and this might not be a disagreement as such, but the level of verification that is possible for these models remains very high, even if experience itself remains a black box. For instance, we could find a particular neural structure in the brain that is essential to triggering pain, and not only that but be able to make testable predictions of how much pain someone will experience based on the pattern of activation and their own specific neural structure.
(In principle I mean, I know measuring individual neurons in vivo is basically not a thing yet)

So I don't see it as either "solve the hard problem of consciousness" or "worthless". Figuring out the neural correlates can get us knocking on the door of consciousness (and indeed be medically and scientifically useful). Even if the door looks more like a brick wall.

Theories of consciousness usually start with an unproven assumption and then build a theory around it. This assumption is neither empirically confirmed nor even verifiable – and therefore such a theory is not only unscientific but also epistemically useless.
[...]
The Integrated Information Theory (IIT) claims that consciousness arises from and is identical with integrated information.

The second example is Predictive Coding [...] [it] claims that organisms minimize uncertainty. — Wolfgang

Thanks for clarifying. I would say this:

All scientific models include assertions and assumptions.
The assertions are the actual claims of the model and are the things we are going to test.
And the assumptions should be minimized to just known established facts and reasonable extrapolations -- these are also indirectly tested.

I don't think the things you are calling assumptions are assumptions, I think they are the actual assertions of the model.

So it comes down to the testability of these hypotheses.

If these hypotheses are not testable for now, that's fine, because we are still in the early phases of trying to create a model of consciousness.
At the frontier of science, it's always the case that we start with speculation, and trying to firm up our speculation into something testable. Then we create a testable model. Then we test the model and refute it or gain confidence in it.
If we shut down all speculation because it's not testable then we can't even get started.

If you're saying both of these hypotheses are never testable, even in principle, then can you focus on that part of the proof please? Because I have not seen how you've demonstrated this.

No. I'll quote myself:

There is no third option. There are not three genotypes for SRY.
— AmadeusD

I note you also quoted this, and then charged me with saying something very much different. — AmadeusD

I am not "charging you" with anything. I am pointing out that your own cite said there are more than two genotypes for this gene, and you think just asserting that there isn't is a refutation.

You have also just conflated gender and sex. Unsure if you've noted that. We are talking about sex. Gender is another discussion, but if one takes hte position that gender does not vary independent of sex, then that's all that person would want to argue. I agree gender is a different thing. We're not discussing it — AmadeusD

The only reason that we're discussing sex is because of the context of the gender discussion; your position seems to require asserting that the underlying sex is binary, and you're failing to find support for that assertion.

Secondly, it doesn't 'override' anything at all. It is the determining factor for sex in humans. — AmadeusD

Cite please: an actual biologist, not your misreading of what chat gpt told you.

Let's do these one-by-one because the longer posts are, the less likely people are to read them IME

Right wingers want to talk ideas at a university (you know, a university, where ideas are talked about and minds are supposed to be challenged). https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/maga-debate-group-at-tennessee-state-university-escorted-off-campus-after-chaos-erupts/ar-AA1NeoqB
And the media calls it "escorted off" - meaning threatened, bullied and scared into running for their lives. — Fire Ologist

I don't see any evidence of violence, it looks like the students exercising their free speech; the same reception left wing journalists get at Trump rallies.

But let's just give you this one: let's say that those guys were physically threatened and intimidated off campus. Let's put that on one side of the ledger as evidence of the left wing shutting down speech on college campuses.

What do we have on the other side, of the right wing shutting down speech?

• $400 million of funding cut from Columbia Uni, with an additional $5 billion under review, for not "protecting Jewish students from antisemitism" i.e. not shutting down the protests against Israel.
  Anyone that doubts this interpretation, is free to look at the list of demands for restoring funding, which were about shutting down protests and introducing more conservative content and precisely nothing about prosecuting assaults or whatever.
  Columbia was also forced to expand it's definition of antisemitism to include basically anything "anti-zionist" i.e. anti-Israel.
  
  Harvard, Brown and UCLA have had funding cut for the same reason, all for over $500 million.
  
  An additional 60 universities were threatened with the same fate as Columbia if they do not comply.
  
• There have been 3,100 arrests of Palestine protestors, including many faculty members. Human rights watch has condemned this as a "campaign of draconian campus arrests".
  
• Trump's Compact for Academic Excellence requires universities to sign up to a list of demands including "Restrictions on “divisive concepts” such as systemic racism, critical race theory (CRT), and gender ideology" otherwise also face funding cuts and other sanctions.
  
• Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act” (2022), expanded in 2024–2025, bans CRT-related content in both K–12 and public university curricula.
  
• Trump's executive order 14149 (2025) — “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship” — directs federal agencies to audit universities accused of “Marxist indoctrination.” and again, withdraw funding from “divisive race or gender ideologies.”
  
• So far under this government over 20 states (e.g., Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Idaho, and North Dakota) have passed or proposed laws restricting how colleges teach race, privilege, and history.

BTW @Jeremy Murray do you appreciate now why the 1% figure was not a number plucked from nowhere; it was an attempt to weigh up the attacks on freedom of speech, leaning towards being generous towards the MAGA side.

Each theory interprets optical illusions differently, since all are underdetermined, i.e. they have no empirical explanatory power. — Wolfgang

Ok, but do you disagree or agree with my point?
That is, that it does not follow, in the abstract, it is not necessarily the case that we need to make a toy consciousness to verify / refute different models of consciousness.
After all, we have already used many observations about human consciousness to test our predictions and inferences.

Or have I misunderstood you: are you simply saying that, in your view, the only way to distinguish between these specific models is with a generated system? But in that case, I don't understand why we're narrowing our focus in that way; another model could come along tomorrow and be verified purely by observations on/by humans.