How can a person be free from "external coercion" when they are living in a culture telling them that by failing to live up to the culture's standards they have lost the right to live?

You seem to be conflating influence with coercion, I meant the latter.

I see your usage of organically/naturally, ie without external intervention. Meaning "if left to their own devices". Though the more common lay usage would mean without human intervention, ie you would have to also be removed from the equation.

The identical surgery in a transwoman should also be social, right?
— LuckyR

Again, not necessarily. There is a difference between a trans sexual and a trans gender person. If the person is a trans sexual, this is not gender. This is the desire to embody the other sex, and changing their secondary sex characteristics to resemble the other sex is not gender.

For clarification, my understanding of the terms trans sexual and trans gender seem to differ from your usage here. That is, to my understanding transgender is an umbrella term for all folks whose (internal) gender identity does not completely conform to their biological sex, which includes those who take hormonal and surgical steps (which describes trans sexuals), but also folks who don't take those steps.

Thus why my postings have tried to delineate the borderline between sexual and gender motivations, as described in the OP. But the more I think about it, the blurrier that borderline becomes, to the point that the umbrella term of transgender seems most accurate, since it's an umbrella term, ie all TS are TG, but not all TG are TS.

Its if there is a subjective opinion that doing or not doing these things should be encouraged or limited by your sex.

So if a flat chested woman gets breast augmentation to look "feminine", that's succumbing to social preferences that women should have large breasts. The identical surgery in a transwoman should also be social, right? After all, there are examples of flat chested women, ie large chest size is not a sexual/biological marker for being XX.

And this begs another question - in what circumstances is suicide moral?

It's moral if the individual is competent, free from external coercion and dealing with permanent agony/suffering.

Natural, in my understanding, is normal for nature. Normal, almost identical to common, can apply to nature as well as manmade systems.

To be clear, gender is purely a social expectation that has nothing to do with natural biology. If we said, "All men should get their left toe removed," that's changing your body for gender. There is no biological innate reason a man should get their left toe removed." If a person desires to cut their breasts off to resemble the chest of a man, that's someone trying to emulate sex expectations, not gender expectations of the other sex. That's trans sexual behavior, not trans gender behavior

Well, if I say that women wear their hair long, that's a gender (social) norm. Hair is biology (like left toes), yet the choice of how to wear it is social. Same with eyelashes and fingernails and ear piercing. Folks get plastic surgery to defy age. Facial skin is biology, but the choice to eliminate wrinkles is social. Thus it's established that certain manipulations of our biological physicality falls under social (gender) events. The fact that some women's hip area is less ample than the social norm leads to cosmetic surgery to augment that area, even though their hips were perfectly biologically female to begin with. That's not sexual. So a man getting the exact same surgery is also not sexual (is social), by my reckoning.

I get what you're trying to say and I don't disagree with the central tenets. Though folks who discuss these issues use terms like "I'm a man" and "you're not a man" casually (meaning that sex based language to describe either sex or gender identity at various times). In addition, some of the subjective gender markers include changing one's look, obviously including surgery.

You mean it's "normal" meaning? wink, wink...

I agree there are situations (such as body temperature) that a range is at least as accurate (to the common meaning of "normal") as a single number. I guess my understanding of the word "normal" excludes outliers (since they're by definition, not "normal"), hence the superiority of the mode. For example, statistically the answer to the question at what age do kids normally graduate from high school, should not be lowered because a small percentage of genius 12 year olds have accomplished the feat, in my opinion.

Got it. The presence of life, necessitates the presence of death. Thus death itself is not abnormal or "evil" or "wrong". Assuming humans have agency, then causing someone's death against their will is, as you've noted, the most wrong of wrongs. As would be causing someone's death at their request if you either believed they were incompetent or under external duress or temporary internal duress in my opinion. However, assisting someone who is competent and under permanent internal duress, is an extention of the hospice process, in my opinion.

I see your point, but haven't heard a reason why a range around the mean is superior to the mode. Especially in cases of a bimodal distribution.

Sure. It’s within one standard deviation of the mean

I disagree. If the question is: having how many fingers is normal? The average or mean (less than 10) isn't "normal", neither is the median, nor your range. The correct answer is the mode, that is: 10.

Are you referring to human life or all life?

Are post traumatic stress syndrome and autism spectrum disabilities? How about learning difficulties? Being tone deaf or maybe having stage fright. Who, therefore is completely "abled"?

Define "defective".

Well that's one theory, but as you noted we don't know why the cat behaved the way it did. Another, equally possible explanation is that the cat is indeed a sadist. Similarly, you don't really know why a human sadist does what he does, maybe he's acting exactly as your explanation of the cat. Ultimately, no one knows why anyone (except perhaps themselves, though there are those who doubt that too), does what they do. However, the outcomes of those acts, both human and animal, are very clear. So you're right, humans have observed behaviors and their outcomes and have developed labels (such as good and evil) to describe them and Laws to try to manpulate them, but no one can see inside the Black Box that is decision making. Which is true of both humans and non-human animals.

We cannot say lion's are murderous or evil. We alone have transcended nature

I don't agree. If a cat "plays" with a mouse until it dies, yet doesn't eat the mouse, many would call that torture.

There is plenty of data from depressed folks who attempt suicide, regretting that choice.

Several things. First, I am happy that you found something on your own, bigger than yourself, to work towards. And in my experience, having tangible goals to work towards are the answers to such questions as "why am I here?", "what it all for?" and "why go on?"
True, goals such as accumulate wealth and seek continuous physical pleasure can and commonly do sustain folks in the short haul, they don't have a reputation for being enough in the long term.

Ultimately, everyone will spend the vast majority of eternity in a state of nonexistance, why cut short the brief flicker of time you'll actually exist?

In my experience, you're looking at the issue incorrectly. Humans are not "evil", as a label. Rather all humans will, on occasion, perform "evil" acts. Think about it statistically. If a (as it happens, nonexistent) person chose to do 0% evil acts in their lifetime, everyone would not disagree with labeling that individual "good" ie not "evil". But if the average human makes say 1% evil choices, we should call those folks "average" ie not "evil". If they make 0.01% evil choices, they're likely felt to be "good", whereas those choosing to perform 10% evil, are in fact "evil". Bottom line, no one does zero evil, thus in order to deserve the label one should consider the amount of evil, not merely the presence of evil.

If you mean there is no physical proof of a metaphysical entity, then we're in agreement.

You're, of course, correct especially among lay persons, but here we should be interested in accurate communication. The operative word being: "should"...

Part of the problem with discussions on this topic is that anatomy and genetics are objective, while cultural gender roles are subjective. Thus when someone casually asks "is this person a X?", some view the question objectively, that is that there is one, correct objective answer (and thus the question is obvious and any deviation from this interpretation is misguided). Whereas others view the question subjectively and thus objective interpretations are simplistic to the point of simplemindedness. Better definitions of terms are required for different folks to communicate effectively.

I get what the OP is saying, and the moral "dilemmas" are part of the story, especially in Season 1, but in my opinion, this sort of story (when taken as a whole) is interesting more for HOW things are addressed than WHY. That is it's more of a crime procedural (to borrow the term), than a morality play.

Exactly. Some try to exaggerate what is known. As it happens there's nothing wrong with admitting that the answer to this question is, as yet, not proven one way or the other.

Wrong hands? Ha, ha. Reminds me of a story my wife's cousin told whereby his employer was forced to downsize and thus offered early retirement (which he took), or job retraining, which, of course he didn't. But after thinking about it, he said: I should have told them I needed golf lessons to try to get on the PGA tour as "retraining".

We subjectively by all appearances exist as if we have Free Will, however there is a pathway whereby our decision making could be Determined. This pathway has not yet been proven nor disproven.

I agree with your observations. My point is that if making new discoveries and getting paid are someone's goals, they can be met currently. If someone wants to make new discoveries and make them in the field of their choice, that is also possible a la Edison, Jobs et al ie garage researchers. But having all three, 1)research of your own choosing 2) and getting paid 3) is a bridge too far, otherwise folks would want to research Michelin starred restaurant's dessert menus.

I'm not seeing the problem. There are research jobs in industry where folks are paid (often quite well) to push back the frontiers of ignorance, ie make new discoveries. True, there aren't an abundance of them, but I'm not sure there is an abundance of folks interested in research.

I notice you use many job related analogies. But remember, most folks who work (which is not everyone), only work for the paycheck, that is, performing the work carries little intrinsic value to the worker, even if it is extremely valuable to society, customers, the corporation etc. What everyone wants is a job they love to perform, that is compensated very well and gives great respect from the community. But what percentage of workers get those? Way, way less than 50%. Which is fine if they're making enough to support hobbies etc that provide the emotional payoff outside of employment.

Well, since usefulness (and therefore uselessness) is a subjective term, everyone's answer will only really be meaningful to themselves. Thus advice on process can be germane to many, but advice on the particulars will not be.

The pondering is not an illusion. With the possible exception of epiphenomenalism, the pondering takes place, and the decision is the result of that. Given DBB style determinism, your decision to select chocolate was set at the big bang. Not true under almost any other interpretation, but under all of them (any scientific interpretation), the chocolate decision was a function of state just prior to the pondering, which does not mean it wasn't your decision.

Yes, I know it isn't a true illusion. I said it's a "functional illusion", meaning that since the chocolate conclusion was set at the Big Bang (as you noted), no amount of pondering vanilla was going to result in it's selection, or at least as you correctly noted at the mind state just before the pondering started. Thus while we all agree pondering occurs, as I mentioned, folks disagree whether both sides of the internal argument can result in chocolate or vanilla on one hand or always chocolate on the other.

A distinction without importance since in reality there is no practical difference. My advice: choose the option that sits best with you worldview and move on (to questions that can actually make a difference here on planet Earth).

Agree, until you suggest that you are actually leveraging quantum randomness when doing something like urinal selection (which definitely has rules to it, and is thus a poor example), or rock-paper-scissors, where unpredictability (but not randomness) takes the day.

I concede that the term "randomness" in the context of this conversation is not true statistical Randomness, rather a placeholder term to describe the absence of a logical train of thought as pertains to decision making, pondering, if you will. Thus I'll take your "agree"ment and call it a day.

We can cut to the chase, everyone agrees that humans ponder decisions, weigh the pros and cons of possible choices. What folks disagree on is whether this pondering is a functional illusion, such that I was always going to select chocolate, never vanilla, regardless of going through the act of pondering my "choice". In this scenario one can never go back and make a different "choice", because the concept of "choice" was an illusion. It was always going to be chocolate. Most, however believe that pondering is functionally real and thus yes, they could have selected vanilla. There is no Real World way to prove it one way or another and the answer similarly has no Real World implication since it can only be demonstrated theoretically, never in reality. But I find it more psychologically coherent to believe what I perceive, then to assume my experience is an (unprovable) illusion.

Well, since the value of money (and thus economies) is inter-subjective and not objective, these values can increase indefinitely, if humans agree to give them those (inflated through our current eyes) values.

Sure, it exists, but decision making structures (both machine and biological) are designed to filter out the randomness out and leverage only deterministic processes. I mean, neither transistors nor neurons would function at all without quantum effects like tunneling, but both are designed to produce a repeatable classical effect, not a random one

Yes, that's their design. And when someone is contemplating an important decision, they bring all of that design to bear on the problem. How much of our decision making prowess do we bring to deciding which urinal to use in the public bathroom? Very, very little. What is taking the place of that unused neurological function? Habit perhaps or pattern matching. But what about a novel (no habit nor pattern) yet unimportant "choice"? It may not fulfill the statistical definition of the word "random", but in the absence of a repeatable, logical train of thought, it functionally resembles "randomness".

I pretty much deny this. All evolved decision making structures have seemed to favor deterministic primitives (such as logic gates), with no randomness, which Truth Seeker above correctly classifies as noise, something to be filtered out, not to be leveraged.

Sure, unpredictable is sometimes an advantage. Witness the erratic flight path of a moth, making it harder to catch in flight. But it uses deterministic mechanisms to achieve that unpredictability, not leveraging random processes.

Exactly. I said you were "ignoring" randomness, your wording is "denying". Same thing. Just so you know, randomness exists, human denials notwithstanding.

It's not either/or. It's a percentage thing. Of course there's randomness involved, but in most important situations it's a tiny percentage of the process (thus why human behavior can be predicted better than chance, yet nowhere near 100& of the time). The lower one's perception of the importance of the decision to be made, the lower one's mental/logical input into the decision making process. Randomness takes up that slack. Think about it, how much effort do you put into decisions that you believe don't matter. Me? Not much.

Given this full context, how could you have made a different choice?

How? Because you're ignoring another major factor in Human Decision Making, namely randomness. That is, while commonly recalled (important) decisions are made totally or mostly on logical grounds, most minor to miniscule decisions aren't made after exhaustive consideration, since they're trivial or below. Which urinal do you choose at the airport? Could you have cjosen a different one under identical circumstances? I think: yes. The bigger question is: does it matter?

Being able to juggle theoretical thinking with the day to day aspects of life may be a fine art, or wisdom based philosophy

Yeah, both descriptors are reasonable. But regardless of which one we choose (or even a third one), basically you get out of life what you put in. Thus in my experience, it's totally worth the effort to maximize one's chance of thriving in the future, which after all is where we're all going to be for the rest of our lives.