Scientific American has been a joke since about 1990, so this kind of stuff is hardly surprising.
It is considered that autists fall along a spectrum of autism - not that people in general fall along such a spectrum.
We’ve been mostly talking about biological sex here, not gender. The former world be closer to your first graph, the latter closer to your second.
Your two dictionary definitions actually fail to back you up, ignoring the technical definitions (which obviously don’t apply). Merriam-Webster says ‘continuous sequence or range’, neither of which apply, and the OED says ‘Used to classify something in terms of its position on a scale between two extreme points’, which also doesn’t apply.
It doesn’t do either of those things, it simply says there are some innate properties which have an influence on behavior along with socialisation and other non-biological factors. Those innate properties may be immutable in and of themselves (over short time-scales and free from genetic engineering at least), but it doesn’t follow from that the final behaviors become immutable, because they are dependent on the interplay of multiple factors.
that’s not entirely correct. there are numerous traits generally accepted as being required in someone diagnosed with autism, or an autistic spectrum disorder, but also people who aren’t diagnosed in either of those who still have certain of those traits to varying degrees. so there is both an autistic spectrum, and a neurodiversity spectrum more broadly.
And you quite obviously didn’t read the entire definition for either.
Hint: try 2.1 on the Oxford definition for the clearest explanation. Yes,
“a wide range between two extremes” works just fine here.; “Clustered” or
not, yes, human sex, both in physical differences AND behavior, varies over
a wide range, indeed.
We’re done here.
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no, it’s not a wide range either. it’s not any kind of a range.
Here’s what a evolutionary psychologist says about EP as a field:
Evolutionary psychology (EP) has made a bold claim: the human brain comprises a large set of complex psychological mechanisms whose designs are invariant (i.e., universal in the species). These designs evolved by natural selection in response to a limited set of invariant properties of ancestral environments that were relevant to human reproduction, which EP dubs the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA). The designs are grounded in the invariant DNA all humans share. Individuals, as I will explain here, are unique states of invariant complex designs, plus a small dollop of genetic noise (e.g., Tooby and Cosmides, 1990a; Hagen and Hammerstein, 2005).
He then gives the example of “object recognition”-- humans can effortless recognize an object and classify it within 300 ms. It’s not something that is learned, but rather something that is innate to all humans.
According to EP, much of human cognition will be similarly complex and universal, a proposition that is the brain-specific version of the more general, and much more widely accepted, claim that the human organism comprises a large set of complex evolved mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and kidneys, that are invariant in the species.
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Exhibit: Lack of physically expressed gender and/or overt sexual
dimorphism. No, no, intersex/hermaphroditic people don’t exist at all, no,
never -.-’.
Exhibit: Heterosexuality, homosexuality, and asexuality/“neither” behavior.
cough Um, yeah. No variance over a range for either physical or
behavioral expressions of sexuality, oh no, none at all…
Really?
Don’t bother trying again, you’ve got nothing but insistence and I simply
do not care what you insist; I’ll take the actual definition of a word
over your interpretation any day, as an easy example. I do think, however,
that you’re unintentionally exposing a bit more of the actual reasons for
your argument, so thanks for that =).
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my fucking god. You are trying to square a description of observed phenomena with a dictionary’s definition of the words used in that description?
ENGLISH DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!
Nope. I’m squaring the usage of a word by someone else, with yet another person’s misinterpretation of that same word. Relax.
Oh, by the by: Yes, English works fine the way I’m using it. Nitpicking grammar is especially worthless, when you are wrong.
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Obviously, we occupy different points on the linguistic “fitness landscape”.
Certainly. But with a little remedial work, you should be good to go in no time.
I see that you are determined to occupy communication’s plain of thorns.
The waste site has to send the opposite message, straight into the collective unconscious, drawing the eye yet repelling the spirit. The Holocaust memorial in Berlin zig-zags, its hard edges offering no comfort or nobility. Similar thinking led to the panel?s proposed designs.
Consider the Black Hole: a black basalt slab, unbearably hot from accumulated sun?s heat. Laced with thick, crazy-quilt expansion joints like cracks in parched plains, it forbids farming or drilling.
Or the Rubble Landscape: the local stone, dynamited and bulldozed into a crude square pile covering the whole Project. It rears above the landscape, hard to hike through, a place destroyed, not made.
With a bit more trouble, Forbidding Blocks: that same broken stone, cast into mixed concrete/stone blocks 25 feet on a side, dyed black, irregular, distorted. They define a square, with “streets” five feet wide between clocks. But the streets lead nowhere and no one could live or farm there. The blocks get very hot, and the whole crudely ordered array massively denies use. Some granite blocks stand out, covered with inscriptions, warnings.
The Plain of Thorns sprouts eighty-feet high basalt spikes, erupting from the ground. They jut at all angles, which can cause cracking and faster erosion. To offset this, perhaps use a Fiend of Spikes, perfectly vertical, interspersed among the Thorns. If the Thorns can’t fall and damage the Spikes, eventually only the Spikes remain, in a field of rubble."
I’ve no idea what you’re on about at this point, you’re not making much sense.
I never said intersex people don’t exist.
I don’t know why you’re bringing sexuality into it now as well, something definitely a lot more like a spectrum than what we were actually talking about, which was biological sex (we weren’t talking about gender either).
The autism spectrum was so named because various interested parties believed it would be more useful to treat it as a “spectrum disorder”. For instance, if a patient did not squarely fit into the autistic diagnosis, insurers would be more reluctant to fund treatment; schools would balk at the financial and logistical burden of accommodation, etc, etc.
Do “spectrum disorders” share important characteristics with other things that have been called “spectra”? Only in a superficial sense, and it would be counterproductive and even dangerous to resort to this sort of linguistic reasoning.
Autism isn’t a response curve.
I see you are determined to try to ride my ass, for deflecting someone
else’s silly criticism.I wasn’t the one trying to nitpick grammar; next
time, try reading the whole thread, if you’re going to pitch in.
I’m quite aware you have no idea. Why weren’t you, before?
Riddle me this, Batman.
I can show at least 4 states of physical sexuality:
- Male.
- Female.
- Hermaphroditic (varying ratio).
- Asexual/lacking normal sexual dimorphism to some extend, from just a bit
to completely.
Go on, tell us all how “binary” that set is. Run around in more circles…
