Giant Polygamy Sidetrack!

Because it only took Viking-Sensei three years (and the approaching end of Errant Story) to come up with a better name for "General Discussions"
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ChunLing
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Re: Giant Polygamy Sidetrack!

Post by ChunLing »

Well, I guess the giant text walls could contain lots of sexual profanities and misogynistic denigration of typical feminine concerns...
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Re: Giant Polygamy Sidetrack!

Post by Imp-Chan »

Or they could contain personal attacks. This has been a pretty respectful discussion of a set of fairly controversial ideas... that's not really all that common on the internet, though fortunately it is common HERE.

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Re: Giant Polygamy Sidetrack!

Post by Sareth »

Yes, this has been really a good, respectful discussion. I seldom find that. Which amuses me greatly given we tend to almost celebrate Labrats... Perhaps we get all our nasty out in fun loving ways, and that frees us up to actually discuss the controversial stuff nicely?

Anyway, I was going to start a new thread for the gender stuff so as not to confuse gender and polygamy arguments. But I'd hate to have to make Impy move things twice, so I'll just wall-o-text you here. Again. Which will probably kill the brand new thread.

I talk too much.

Anyway, I wrote this earlier forgetting that it wouldn't let me put many links into it. Here it is sans links:

****

Before I get on with my replies, I think I should start with a few explanations of terms and my own background on the topic. This should help prevent some of the inevitable confusion that these conversations tend to entail.

First, owing to my professional background (such as it is) I draw a clear distinction between "Sex" and "Gender." Let me define these.

"Sex" in this context is not the act of sticking bits into other bits and wiggling. Sex is the physical identity of a body in those species which display dimorphism (particularly humans). Sex can be determined by two means. The examination for the genome for XX or XY chromosomes, and lifting skirts to check for the presence of primary sexual characteristics (typically a vagina or penis). Ordinarily sex will be female (possessing a vagina and XX chromosomes) or male (possessing a penis and XY chromosomes). However, birth defects can result in indeterminate sex ("intersexed") and modern technology can allow reassignment surgery that confuses this matter.

"Gender" is specifically referring to the roles played within the social order by individuals, usually based upon sex. While sex is generally excepted to be fixed, gender is a location for considerable debate as people attempt to determine how much of gender beliefs are created and how many inherent. While the majority of cultures divide gender into the categories "male" and "female" (closely mapping these to sex) some cultures recognize a third gender, and elements of Western thought find themselves engaged in debate over a wide variety of terms. The most extreme position opposite the female/male duality recognize female, male, trans-woman, trans-man, and genderqueer. A few might even distinguish between female (sexually viable woman) and girl (non-sexually viable woman) owing to the different role expectations played.

In terms of my own background, I am finishing up a Masters Degree in communication wherein I specialize in exploring identity and conformist pressures. While I particularly utilize internet spaces as my "laboratory" I have to rely heavily on the research and body of theory that has been accumulated in the physical world historically. My particular body of theory on the subject tends to be post modern in nature, emphasizing the way situations tend to be too individually complex to apply "one-size-fits-all" explanations that are anything but uselessly generalized. As such, the discussion of things like gender identity have been an area of professional interest.

This is my very, very abbreviated perspective on sex and gender:

Typically, an individual is born with a specific sex. (The incidence of indistinct sex is rare enough to be little more than a side note here, and surgery usually "corrects" this in infancy.) This sex has certain physical consequences that influence the individual throughout life. Hormones influence not only the development of certain physical traits (testosterone increases muscle mass, which is why men are on average larger than women, while estrogen and progesterone regulate the reproductive cycle of women) but also have the side effect of influencing mood. This impact on mood tends to be exaggerated in popular thought, however.

What really matters in terms of sex are the physical differences observed. Men have been demonstrated to have greater physical strength on average and tend to be less impacted by injury. Women, on the other hand, tend to have somewhat more efficient brains (the male brain has more "white matter" in the left side than the right, while women's white matter is balanced) and a healthier cardiovascular system. These differences don't make one better than the other, but simply grants each certain strengths and weaknesses. Men are on average better at moving big objects, but pay for it with less healthy bodies, women tend to be more efficient (note, I didn't say better, just more efficient) but pay for it with slightly less physically capable frames. (In fact, that lovely little sashay that many women have when they walk is the result of having pelvic bones designed to maximize ease in child birth at the expense of efficiency in balance while walking. Thank you Jesus.)

Now, remember that, during this discussion, I've been saying "the average". Note that the average male is closer in height, strength, and mental prowess to the average female than he is to the extreme of his own sex. The difference in body weight is only about 15%, the difference in height is only 8%, and the difference in intelligence marked only in that men tend to be more extreme than women (men will get extreme scores on aptitude/intelligence tests twice as often as women, both high and low end, but average out to be within 3% of where women average out.)

What this means is that most of the real differences between men and women are physical, and these physical differences are mostly superficial in the current day and age. The one area that does show a currently relevant difference is in the use of social judgment. This is where that slightly more efficient brain comes in. Women are a little better equipped to calculate out the subtle clues in social situations (particularly nuanced language.) This isn't to say men aren't as smart. The male brain is very good at locking onto a problem and drilling a hole straight through to the solution. It's just to say the accusation of "one track mind" has a certain degree of truth to it, which is why complex social situations tend to be a little more difficult for them to keep straight. In short, men tend to be a bit more task oriented by a bit oblivious, women tend to be better at tracking complex systems, but are also a bit distractable. And again, the difference between the average man and the average woman is far smaller than the difference between the average man and the extreme man.

The real area of difference between men and women is by and large social. The earliest formation of society was conducted so long ago that we can't see any documentation of it. However, we can guess at what pre-literacy human social structures were like through assumption, deconstructing current patterns, and observation of remote societies that appear to be analogues.

In the estimates of those trying to piece together or cultural development, pre-literacy humanity was far more dependent on the factors that create sexual differences than they are now (well duh.) Muscle power was extremely important for a number of activities (chiefly hunting). As such, muscle-intensive roles rapidly became the Provence of those who could more easily do them. At the same time, other tasks were clearly more attached to the ability to nurture the future of the tribe. Since infants were dependent on lactation from their mothers, the initial care of children by women was mandated by nature itself. However, initially it is quite possible that there was recognition of the basis of these roles being founded in "who can do the job." As such, women might participate in hard physical labor if capable of it and a man might directly become the caretaker of weaned children without being seen as violating a natural order. (Some historical tribes have shown signs of this, such as some men dressing as women, and performing women's duties such as storytelling. Historical examples have been found amongst the Lakota and Navajo.)

Over time, as societies grew into larger bodies, these common sense practices would have crystallized into standard practices. The practical origin would have become somewhat dusty, and a "this is how we have always done it" mentality would set in. The fact that, in the muscle-based economy that would exist up until the Industrial Revolution, these practices still had a practical basis would serve to reduce the chance for counter-examples to challenge the growing sense that these roles were "natural." People would essentially forget that there was any other way to do things.

This change in understanding from "Let the one best fit for the task do the task, and that's usually going to be a insert-sex-here" to "this is insert-sex-here work" did begin to cement the idea of the genders as being separated in capability, but still would not produce an idea that one gender was outright superior. In the "primitive" cultures seen today, women and men usually do have clearly differentiated roles, but many (not all) see those roles as being equal. The work of a woman to raise children or to prepare a hut is just as crucial (maybe even more crucial) as a man's ability to hunt. The reduction of women to a lesser status would, curiously, be a "modern" idea.

As evidence of this assertion, I would point out that historically, Romans were highly critical of the less "modern" Greeks for allowing women to feast at the same table as men, and Christian Europe would be highly shocked at the fact that "Pagan" Scandinavia traced property ownership through women. As societies modernized, they tended to do so at the expense of women.

The exact cause for this is uncertain. The most popular theory I have seen lays the blame at the feet of Monotheism. The theory is that as the first true monotheistic religions (around 1500 B.C.) were established amongst the more "advanced" civilizations (Egypt, Isreal, Babylon) the deities in question were always male. Possibly this was deliberately being done to help clarify that the god in question was a protector god (muscle powered weaponry, remember). Regardless of why this was being done, the side effect was to contrast these new monotheistic gods with the old polytheistic religions. It was quite common for the most important deities in these pantheons to be the fertility goddesses (remember, these cultures were utterly dependent on fertile harvests and on providing new sons and daughters.) As such, the sacred female became a direct representation of (and threat to) these new monotheistic gods. In the effort to stamp out goddess worship, the most important definition of goddess (possessing a vagina) became the symbol of pagan goddess worship. As these monotheistic cultures spread outward, women would become the victims of this witch hunt. (Choice of phrase quite deliberate.) Certain vestiges of this sacred feminine remain hidden within the Abrahamic religions, however. The veneration of Mary was a concession to converting pagans who still needed a mother goddess symbol, and Jewish men are required to go to synagogue while Jewish women are not because women are naturally closer to god.

This theory is rendered somewhat problematic by the fact that, over time, polytheistic religions also began to adopt patriarchal patterns of social organization. If monotheism was the only factor, they wouldn't have followed suit. However, if one views these changes as simply being the spreading of a general idea that didn't take as firmly, one might accept this theory. The non-monotheistic cultures have not adopted the paternalistic patterns as firmly as the monotheistic nations until very recent history. While the monotheistic nations have very few female leaders prior to 1900 (Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria, Tzarina Catherine, and Joan of Arc are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head) the polytheistic cultures are replete with them (Pingyang, Hangaku Gozen, Artemisia, Boudicca, Fu Hao, Cleopatra, Tomoe Gozen, Rani Lakshmibai, etc...) Most recently and obviously in this argument would be the example of Nakano Takeko. During the same time that a small few western women were disguising themselves as men to fight in the U.S. Civil War, Takeko openly led an entire unit of women soldiers in battle supporting the Bakafu (Shogunate) of Japan. (She would be shot during the battle and ask her sister to help her to commit seppuku to prevent her capture.)

Regardless of HOW it came about, the result is that when we entered the 19th century it was generally held as true amongst "civilized" nations that women and their roles in society were firmly fixed in place as inferior to men. (Even as less "civilized" cultures, while still paternalistic, were more flexible on the matter.)

Entering into the 20th century, however, the physical differences can no longer support this premise. With the advent of machinery that reduce the reliance on muscle to a near absurdity (why dig a ditch with a shovel when you have a Kat?) the idea that women can't do certain jobs can't be challenged on physical grounds for the first time in history. This then leads to the question of mentality. Can women handle the job mentally?

Well, the answer is exemplified by the nurse. Today our society insists that nursing is women's work. (Yes, our egalitarian, free, no sex discrimination society still thinks that way.) If a man enters that profession, people insist on clarifying that he's a MALE nurse, as though just calling him "nurse" emasculates him. The irony in this is that, up until the Crimean War (in England) and the U.S. Civil War (in the U.S.) nursing was held to be a male job. Women were thought to be too delicate of constitution to be able to handle cleaning up after sick men, changing their bedpans, wiping them, bathing them, holding their spleens in while the doctor came running to repair torn out stitches, etc... The fact that we have so deeply changed this attitude in only a few generations reveals just how social (and baseless) most of our preconceptions about gender happen to be.

Current theory posits that the majority of our perceptions about the differences between the genders are wrong. They are the result of several thousands of years of "we've always done it this way" thinking that has become so deeply ingrained we often don't realize that we even think that way. The means of altering this are argued rather vociferously. There are some who think that all it will take to change is wanting to (optimistic). Others feel change can only come through legal action (totalitarian). Many believe, however, the only way to change it is through actively changing how society itself thinks. It is this bunch who tend to get the "politically correct" label slapped on them for attempting to alter language. However, there is a logic behind their thinking. Everything we do as humans is firmly rooted in language. We know how to do things, what things are, and even our own roles in life because all of this has been communicated to us. As a result, our language is inherently gendered. The thought is that, if we can change the mental associations behind words (doctor is male, nurse is female) then we can change the entire way society views itself and organizes. The removal of words like "stewardess" in favor of words like "flight attendant" are intended to create a "genderless" societal view towards roles, and leave gender to personal preferences where it belongs.
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Re: Giant Polygamy Sidetrack!

Post by Nell »

@_@ Holy shit!!! Uncle!!!!
ChunLing wrote:...
given that the most aggressive thing it is possible for anyone to do is post giant text walls?
If that's right then Sareth Falcon Punched the entire damn forum.

Edit in view of the post below me: I smell a deliberate element to these wallotexts. >.>
Last edited by Nell on September 21st, 2010, 12:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Precursor of wall-o-text post avalanches.
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Re: Giant Polygamy Sidetrack!

Post by ChunLing »

Well, I'm just having trouble figuring out what one can possibly do on the forum (without breaking the server itself) that would be "more aggressive".

I have to wonder at the totally unsupported assertion that the important differences between men and women are physical. True, many people don't feel that assertion needs justification, but it is a very illuminating distinction. If we discount the idea of any non-physical component (i.e. a spirit or soul with all the supernatural implications), it is a meaningless distinction because all the elements of personality and self-interest are encoded as physical differences in the nervous system. But by asserting that the most important differences between men and women are things like raw strength and the reproductive organs one naturally implies that the more subtle differences (be they physical or metaphysical) are unimportant or non-existent.

It is obvious at a moment's real study of men and women in situations where they are dealing with tasks that obviate gross structural differences that there are still noticeable distinctions in how they deal with the situation and with each other. So there is no real dispute that the "real" differences are social, except when you consider whether by saying that the differences are "social" you mean that those "real" differences result in distinct social behaviors or you mean that the "real" differences arise from socially constructed attitudes, meaning that they are not "real" in any of the normal senses of the word.

I rather strongly suspect that most people don't understand the difference between socially constructed "reality" and actual reality, other than the idea that socially constructed reality can be reconstructed by reconstructing society. But all scientists (at least those in the genuine sciences) understand that in order to know something scientifically, it most be knowledge of actual reality, not knowledge of socially constructed reality. How a society behaves is an example of actual reality, why members of society think society behaves that way is an example of socially constructed reality.

In general terms, those who assume that there is no meaningful distinction between socially constructed reality and actual reality cannot understand the objection of those who do see a difference. But that differences is, eventually, highly actuarial. Societies that try to shape "reality" by social consensus eventually sacrifice the lives of the members of society (often beginning with us deviants who insist that actual reality cannot be ignored).

I would say that the kind of argument indulged in here eventually leads to people like me being hunted down and murdered...except that it has already happened, to me personally. As a murder survivor, I have a rather unique perspective on the whole "socially constructed vs. actual" reality thing.
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Re: Giant Polygamy Sidetrack!

Post by Imp-Chan »

ChunLing wrote:I rather strongly suspect that most people don't understand the difference between socially constructed "reality" and actual reality, other than the idea that socially constructed reality can be reconstructed by reconstructing society. But all scientists (at least those in the genuine sciences) understand that in order to know something scientifically, it most be knowledge of actual reality, not knowledge of socially constructed reality.
On so many levels, no. A scientist understands that to "know" something scientifically, it must be reproducible through experimentation, and not as of yet disproven through same, and that knowing it scientifically does not mean it is reality, it means it's the going theory of reality... right up until it isn't anymore. That's all. It's not much different from the socially constructed reality, really, it's just slightly more rigorous about testing it.

Also, no one asserted that the only important differences between men and women were physical. Sareth asserted that the difference between the physical classifications of sex were physical differences, and that those differences may likely have influenced the differences between gender roles as developed over the next several millenia, but he didn't speak to importance at all. He DID say that the largest perceivable difference between the genders was social, and this difference is constantly in flux. (Right, Sareth? Am I reading you correctly?)

Additionally, no one argued that only physical differences mattered or discounted the possibility of a soul determining actions and decisions (though personally, I don't find the idea of physically encoded probabilities and a soul mutually exclusive, but that's a different really long discussion). No one argued that there was no difference between the genders in how they approached problem-solving. In fact, I believe that Sareth argued that there was a difference.

Lastly, while my stubborn refusal to bow to societal expectations for reality and instead ask skewering questions has gotten me my fair share of bullying, threats, abuse, and isolation and I can readily believe you experienced the same quite possibly to a much greater degree, I must ask... how exactly is anyone a murder survivor? Attempted murder survivor makes sense, but unless we're talking reincarnation, I don't understand how one survives one's own murder as not surviving is kindof inherent to the term murder. And even in the case of reincarnation (which is again a different really long discussion), I'm not sure it would count as surviving.

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Re: Giant Polygamy Sidetrack!

Post by Sareth »

You nailed it, Impy. I was asserting that there are indeed physical differences, and that these do have an effect and do matter BUT that most of our "understanding" of the difference between women and men is socially created, rather than based on the actual physical differences. There are some differences beyond the physical that truly do exist, such as the different attitude toward casual intercourse that is typically exhibited along gender lines owing to pregnancy risks, but for the most part, most of our beliefs are purely constructed things. This does not mean they are inherently bad. It simply means we need to recognize they are the result of social practice, and as such they are subject to change any time they become a disservice rather than advantageous. (Exclusion of women from hard labor ending in WWII comes to mind.) Personally, I consider most of these things to be disservice as they do create bars to both men and women in a number of areas but there are those on both sides of the sex divide who feel these social differences should be kept.
Impy wrote:
ChunLing wrote:I rather strongly suspect that most people don't understand the difference between socially constructed "reality" and actual reality, other than the idea that socially constructed reality can be reconstructed by reconstructing society. But all scientists (at least those in the genuine sciences) understand that in order to know something scientifically, it most be knowledge of actual reality, not knowledge of socially constructed reality.
On so many levels, no. A scientist understands that to "know" something scientifically, it must be reproducible through experimentation, and not as of yet disproven through same, and that knowing it scientifically does not mean it is reality, it means it's the going theory of reality... right up until it isn't anymore. That's all. It's not much different from the socially constructed reality, really, it's just slightly more rigorous about testing it.
This is actually a very interesting sub point, and one that can run us the risk of getting derailed from our current derailment. Never-the-less I'm going to tackle this.

The hard sciences tend to make a very strong argument that they are the only way to genuinely uncover pre-existing reality. By applying reproducibility along with very rigorous proofs they establish clear scientific rules that are subject to refinement. If a rule proves to be flawed, it simply demonstrates that there is a piece of reality we have missed and need to integrate. This marvelous system of examining the world has proven highly fruitful, providing us with such things as polio vaccines, solar power, and refrigeration.

Unfortunately, it has a couple of flaws that can lead us into dangerous territory. ChunLin's post (of which I only quoted a part) provides a rather good demonstration of both, actually.

The first, and far more widespread flaw is that we tend to forget that Science is a human created thing, and that all it can do is give us a representation of the world that is limited by the human created rules. The scientific process reduces things to symbolic representations. A scientific approach to describing a leaf will draw out the qualities which all leaves share (based off of human concepts of similarity.) It will describe the chemical compositions which all leaves share, the purpose of leaves biologically, the physical reactions all leaves have to stimuli and etc. While these are all highly useful bits of data, they tend to forget one thing. None of these things are the actual leaf.

If you sit down and state "these things are a leaf" and then go looking for a leaf, you won't find a leaf. You will find things that share these things in common, which is very useful, but you will find that these objects have far more differences between them than commonalities. mimosa leaves and maple leaves differ a great deal There are more differences than similarity. Do the differences between them make one more leafy than the other? What about pine needles? If we decide that something has to provide food through photosynthesis to be a leaf, then a pine needle is a leaf. But if we suddenly decide that all leaves lose chlorophyll in the autumn and fall off the tree, all of a sudden the pine needle is no longer a leaf. The entire definition of "This Is The Leaf" is subjective to what we decide is "similar enough." Frankly, the pine needle doesn't give a damn about what we think.

Unfortunately, we tend to forget that all of these "similarities" are created by our own artificially created categories in the first place. As such we mistake the scientific symbol that is the accumulation of similarities for the actual leaf itself, and thus discount how important the individual differences are. In many cases this is not a particularly big deal (1+1=2 will always come out that way, regardless of the fact that we're the ones that came up with the idea of mathematics anyway.) Physics is physics, mathematics is mathematics, and chemistry is chemistry. In these areas, the symbolic representation that we have developed is quite satisfactory, and we can do quite well with it even if we forget it's a created ideal in the first place.

The further we get away from physics towards the human being, the more problematic this misunderstanding becomes. Because the idea is "this is reality" when in fact all we've done is reduce diverse individual things into human-created connections of similarity, we start running into huge problems when we try to apply this system to people. The individual has so many radical differences that attempting to convert people into "reproducible" categories or cause and effect systems becomes an exercise in frustration. As an individual professionally examining the social world, I've read plenty of papers that have made the attempt. They always end up with extremely weasily language such as:
when group members had different individual answers, more answers were changed to correct responses than to incorrect responses (77% vs. 23%, P < 0.01). It was more important to have the correct answer than to be the high-performing student, because the student with the correct response (being either the high- or low-performing student) generally prevailed (~ 80% of the time, P = 0.5).
(Taken from an actual "scientific" research paper on collaboration in group testing.)

You will note that this scientific approach has a problem. They have expressed a rule. Collaborating in groups produces change in incorrect responses. The scientific process insists that it has to be true 100% of the time to be a rule. In science, 1+1=2 is always true. But when we approach humans with the same tool (science), we find out that 1+1=2 77% of the time. 23% of the time WE CANNOT REPRODUCE THE RULE. That may be really darned good odds in Vegas, but according to the scientific process, if we fail to reproduce the result even once, then the thing we are examining is not real. Is the thing they are looking at in this paper not real? Darned straight it is, but unfortunately anyone who takes a hard line science stand on this cannot accept the result as reality.

This is where we get the disdain "hard" science types have for "soft" science types. It's not that the soft science folk don't want to play by the rules. Believe me, we've been trying to play by the rules since humans first created the rule book. The problem is we're using a hammer to drive screws, and humans refuse to be confined by these rules. But so long as there is this insistence that Science = Reality and !Science = !Reality we find ourselves unable to deal with humans. Every time we try we're going to end up with a percentage of human "deviation" from "reality."

This leads us to the second issue that ChunLin mentions.
I would say that the kind of argument indulged in here (social creation of reality - Sareth) eventually leads to people like me being hunted down and murdered.
I don't know ChunLin's past history. So telling him that he is wrong in his individual case would be quite presumptuous of me. However, I am going to point out historical lessons that actually flip his statement backwards.

Applying a hard line scientific approach to humanity requires we reduce humanity down to reproducible categories of similarities. Unfortunately, as I have pointed out, in doing so we run across this problem of deviation. Some people just insist on not playing by the rules. Faced with this issue, we find ourselves having to accept one of two things. Either 1) Science is not, in fact, reality, or 2) those who deviate from these categories are violating reality itself.

Because it has been driven so firmly into our heads that Science is not just a way to look at the world, but is in fact THE way to look at the world, historically the tendency has been to accept option 2. Case in point: For a very long time, science has told us that sex is a biological process by which one male impregnates one female for the continuation of the species. We have shored this up with insistence that this is universally true (as it must be to be scientific.) Unfortunately we have some humans who insist on having male-male or female-female sex. What is the response? It's not to say "I guess we need a different tool to examine what is important about sex." Instead it is to say "homosexual behavior is a deviancy that must be corrected by behavior modification, chemical or surgical castration, or death." Don't believe me? Ask Oscar Wilde or Alan Turing. Most proponents of eugenics programs (such as euthanasia or forced castration of mentally or physically retarded people) are proposed specifically to attempt to deal with deviance in the human animal based off of failure to account for the way many people won't play by the "reality" of science. If you look at the arguments given by their proponents, they don't argue from a "We're just trying to craft a social reality" standpoint. They argue from a "scientifically speaking, these deviations reduce the viability of the human species by being outside human norms" perspective.

So, why have I gone at length to rant about this perspective?

Because a significant percentage of people insist that the differences between men and women can only be explained by Science. If it's not tied directly to biology, it's not a real difference. If it's a real difference, it's because of biology. Attempts to explain it through different approaches (such as the "Social Creation of Reality" concept ChunLing just dismissed) are not steeped in hard science, and thus any explanations they arrive at can't be based in reality. And so long as we dismiss the idea that gender roles and behaviors are by and large the result of the social constructions we have created as our view of reality, we cannot address these roles productively. Worse, if we accept this dismissal and insist that the differences are driven by biological roots, we SHOULDN'T change them, because we will actually be self-generating deviations from the rules. The statement that started this debate way back when, "Men are predators, women are pray" will not be socially constructed, and thus socially correctable, it will be grounded in scientific, reproducible fact and attempts to alter that will violate our very scientific nature.
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Re: Giant Polygamy Sidetrack!

Post by ChunLing »

An actual reality based approach to humans leads to treating them as non-interchangeable individuals with actually different characteristics, because that is what humans actually are.

You talk of the dangers of applying science to humanity only after you change the meaning of science to refer to a special class of socially constructed reality, then claim that I endorse the horrific results of applying that perversion. This is natural as you do not believe that science can refer to knowledge of actual reality (and whether you even believe actual reality to have independent existence from socially constructed reality is merely a philosophical question), thus in your minds it can only refer to the (technically social) methods that the community of scientists use to arbitrate what they consider to be "known".

If you accept the idea that there is an actual reality to be known, then it makes sense to talk about whether or not knowledge is reproducible, though it does not make sense to assume that just because there is an actual reality to be known, that reality must be fully comprehensible (by human minds or even by any theoretically possible mind, i.e. God). Since it is in (actual) fact the case that reality is not fully comprehensible, it is obvious that some things will remain unknown to any particular entity exercising the quality of intelligent action associated with predictive adaptation.

For instance, you cannot ever fully understand what I mean when I say that I have survived my own murder, even though it is a statement reflective of actual reality.

That does not change the fact that you could (under the right circumstances) come to understand the practical reality of most other murders or most other survivals.
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