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Beehaw decides: what is the set of all genders? (strawpoll.com)
submitted 4 months ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/askbeehaw@beehaw.org
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critical minds want to know the answer to this question

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[-] jeff@programming.dev 30 points 4 months ago

I'm way overthinking this, but I'm going with finite. It could be an unfathomably large number, but gender is a human construct and there are a finite number of humans. Let's say each human that ever lives has a unique gender identity - there could be billions or trillions, but it would still be finite.

[-] polonius-rex@kbin.run 11 points 4 months ago

but you could birth a new person who didn't fit that finite number

there will always be a hypothetical new person who could exist

[-] match@pawb.social 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

me, pedantically giving birth to a new child in order to prove the n+1 case

[-] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 3 points 4 months ago

Countries have been trying gamification and incentivization to increase birth rates, when they should have been appealing to our pedantic impulses all along.

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

There are finite number of possible humans due to there being a finite number of states a brain can be in.

There is an argument for moral realism that takes advantage of finiteness and computability of mental processes to show that there could be an objective morality

@askbeehaw

[-] polonius-rex@kbin.run 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

a finite number of states a brain can be in

there are infinite ways to arrange and configure finite neurons

computability of mental processes

are mental processes entirely computable though? you kind of run into a halting-problem-style issue because if you can compute your response to anything that should imply that you can never make a decision that surprises the computation. but if you feed knowledge of the computation's result into your decision making process you can just pick the opposite

[-] Zadig@beehaw.org 4 points 4 months ago

there are infinite ways to arrange and configure finite neurons

hm? i don't see how this is true at all. a finite of anything in a finite space can only have finite configurations.

[-] jlou@mastodon.social 1 points 4 months ago

The universe might be discrete.

If mental states are finite, then the space of all possible human minds is finite and includes the one that believes they have knowledge of the computation's result. It is possible for mental states of 2 minds to be different but extensionally behave like the same person. We would exclude human minds whose models don't map well onto the physics of our universe though. You might not be willing to pick the opposite if we are talking about morality also @askbeehaw

[-] match@pawb.social 1 points 4 months ago

It's possible that brains act stochastically such that two discrete identical brains produce a range of outputs under identical conditions. In that case, mental states would be confined by the space of outputs of minds, and if that's the real numbers then it would be uncountably many.

[-] ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago

There are a finite amount of resources in the universe to make more humans.

[-] polonius-rex@kbin.run 3 points 4 months ago

but an infinite number of ways you could spend those resources

[-] PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I was going to write up a similar argument, but does a gender exist if no one has it? Because then we might be able to "fill in the gaps" and get it to uncountably infinite.

[-] jeff@programming.dev 6 points 4 months ago

Yeah, I got to that point in my thinking and then just gave up and posted my first thought.

[-] match@pawb.social 8 points 4 months ago

what about Genders Georg, who lives in a cave and has uncountably many genders all by xemself?

[-] jeff@programming.dev 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I thought something similar, but the human brain is finite, so I don't think a single person could have an uncountably infinite gender; unfathomably large, maybe, but it would still be finite.

Edit: I'm not trying to be bigoted here. If someone does identify that way I don't want to discredit your identity.

[-] polonius-rex@kbin.run 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

A single human brain is finite, but the possible configurations of neurons across any possible hypothetical brain is decidedly infinite.

[-] jeff@programming.dev 6 points 4 months ago

I'm no mathematician, but I don't think that's how it works. A quick Google says there are 100 billion neurons. So you would have 100000000000! possible combinations, unfathomably large, but finite. Granted, a human brain is more complex than the configuration of neurons, but I don't know how it becomes infinite.

I'm also way past the point of overthinking this.

[-] polonius-rex@kbin.run 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

yeah, but the relative positions and relative lengths and relative widths and relative densities and relative conductivities of those neurons are real numbers

[-] jeff@programming.dev 7 points 4 months ago

Now we are getting into the quantum physics question of if the universe is discrete or continuous. Which seems to be unsolved.

So I guess that's my answer. If the universe is discrete then there are finite genders, and if it's continuous then there could be infinite genders.

[-] knokelmaat@beehaw.org 5 points 4 months ago

I fucking love where this went, as I was thinking the exact same responses while reading this thread! Love it when a question about gender results in fundamental ideas surrounding mathematics and the nature of reality.

[-] polonius-rex@kbin.run 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

so at the very least, the lower bound is the natural numbers, or a countably infinite number

[-] Gaywallet@beehaw.org 27 points 4 months ago

this poll is homophobic, gays are not good enough at math to know the difference between countably and uncountably infinite /s

[-] nowitsabby 18 points 4 months ago

Does the set of all genders contain itself?

[-] ulkesh@beehaw.org 5 points 4 months ago

Came here for this comment. Was not disappointed.

[-] fogstormberry 4 points 4 months ago

pangender is a thing, so yes

[-] sculd@beehaw.org 12 points 4 months ago

Countable infinite. Infinite because there are infinite possibilities. (Spectrum) Countable because the number of human beings is countable.

[-] xilliah@beehaw.org 1 points 4 months ago

🤔

[-] apotheotic@beehaw.org 8 points 4 months ago

A finite number of genders will be experienced by people, but there are an uncountably infinite number of genders.

The set of genders is like the real number line. You can throw a dart at it and pick out a new gender for every person, but you will never be able to throw enough darts to exhaust the set, even given infinite time.

[-] jarfil@beehaw.org 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Some people may even have a gender experience variable over time, maybe repeating cyclically, or maybe more or less randomly jumping across a set, or maybe sliding across a real section, or maybe sliding in multiple dimensions.

If we were to define gender as each person's "gender experience", the number would be g∈ℕ, since the number of people is going to be finite.

However, if we try to define a "gender experience" as a function of common genders, then g:[f(n∈ℝ),...], making it an uncountable infinite.

Interesting paradox: finite as long as one doesn't count them, but uncountable infinite as soon as one tries to.

[-] hernanca@beehaw.org 5 points 4 months ago

With enough funding, I will finish my research on the Hilbert space of genders where every particle in every possible reality has a one-to-one correspondence to a gender. I call it the "Everettian gender hypercontinuum".

[-] its_me_xiphos@beehaw.org 4 points 4 months ago

I just respect everyone and never assume their identity is what I initially (subconsciously?) think. It took a long time to get there, but I just take every person as a person worthy of respect and dignity as my default.

[-] RadioRat@beehaw.org 3 points 4 months ago

I guess it depends on whether we’re willing to say a gender exists if theoretically possible though not ever embodied. Will artificial sapients have gender identities?

[-] red@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 months ago

I'd say finite, up to 8.1 billion options. My throught process is that what isn't alive doesn't count.

[-] jarfil@beehaw.org 1 points 4 months ago

That begs the question: is "gender" exclusively a human experience, or is it a construct or quality that describes something? What about animals, plants, other living begins, viruses, AIs, etc.? If it isn't exclusively human, then where do we put the line? Does Earth as a whole have a gender?

[-] Crotaro@beehaw.org 1 points 4 months ago

Understandable, but I would say the entire set would include genders and gender variations that haven't been seen in the wild yet.

Similar to how you don't need to write down all the possible numbers between 0 and 1 to know that they do exist.

[-] xilliah@beehaw.org 1 points 4 months ago

I'm glad to know that I've reached peak beehaw today.

[-] AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 1 points 3 months ago

That's a hell of a question, buddy

this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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