Partial orders can also have maximums
But maximums are only guaranteed to be represented by a unique element in in total orderings.
Edit: also, infinite sets might not necessarily contain an element of their maximum value.
There are demonstrably not infinite humans alive at the same time though.
Okay, so Earth exists. This means for a set volume of space (say about the size of the solar system) there is some positive probability that it contains a planet that is indistinguishable from earth. Let’s assume the universe is infinite. If we can search an arbitrary volume instantly, our probability for finding a duplicate of earth approaches 1 as our volume increases. This means the probability we will never find a duplicate of earth is exactly 0, which means that we will find a duplicate upon searching a finite volume. Since in our hypothetical the search is instant, we can perform this search again, locating a second duplicate of earth. Following this process, we can locate an arbitrary number of perfect earth duplicates in a finite ammount of time. This means that if Earth arose from natural processes in an infinite universe, there are infinitely many exact duplicates of earth with life that includes specimens genetically identical to humans.
This implies that there is no one gayest person in the universe.
Sexuality has multiple axes.
- Intensity
- Orientation (towards Men, Women, Frogs)
- Time (people have been known to have straight periods, gay periods, horny periods, ace periods, etc.)
There are probably others that we relate to kink and paraphilia.
So the very gayest person would have to be specifically defined. Which is gayer: the horniest bisexual or the average-libido gay who has absolute-zero-Kelvin interest in the other sex? Or the gay man who is totally in love with (and exclusively devoted to) his hubby and has been this way for fifty years?
The gay agenda’s got axes now?
Turning the frogs gay and then giving them axes!!
Comment sections like this make me feel like I’m in a room full of crazy people, and or I eventually start to question my own sanity.
I mean sure, a spectrum is defined by at least 2 most extreme points (depending on the amount of dimensions). But like, what’s stopping us form mapping two or more people to either extreme? Why can’t 2 people be equally most gay or equally least gay?
If you limit the resolution of the gayness measurement, sure. You could define least gay as 0 and most gay as 5, then you have millions of people on 5. But there are infinitely many real numbers, and if there were some theoretical 100% accurate way to measure “gayness” (whatever that means) at “infinite resolution”, the chance of two people being equally most gay is theoretically 0. On the other hand of the spectrum, it’d be impossible to be ENTIRELY not gay at all, so even if millions of people are very close to 0, one would be the closest.
I’m way overthinking this lol
I mean it has to be a limit, a person can only be so gay. Like even if we define a spectrum as far and wide as we like. Let’s say height for example. That’s an infinite scale, but a human will never be a light year in height, it’s just not physically possible. And once there’s one human to reach the highest physical limit, what’s stopping someone else from also reaching that point?
But we know the tallest person in the world and possibly the tallest person in history. I’m sure if we can calculate a gayness metric we can also find these values, at the very least once our metric is define.
Not only that. What if there are multiple aspects to what gay defines. Is it just how much they like the same sex, or also how many fake stories they post online? One can score a 5 on one, and a 4 on the other.
Number theory suggests that by whatever metric it’s determined, there’s bound to be an infinitesimal difference between two measurements. Observation leads to significant figures, not reality
Well that depends on if gayness is a continuous or discrete quantity. If gay comes in very small but distinct indivisible units, the minimum could certainly be just 1 of these units.
Still, the upper range is likely to be unbound.
I don’t think there’s such a thing as a discrete gay… number and the sofar unmentioned bi spectrum implies a distributed or Cartesian system of expression
I think that could be possible. If sexuality were multi-dimensional and “gayness” was just a 1-D collapse of a higher dimensional space then you could pick a vector in the higher dimensional space to represent gayness, such that a few points at the extreme happen to have the same dot-product with that vector.
But then you would be defining gayness around the gymnastics of setting that up instead of something you are actually trying to estimate about people on that spectrum.
The meme saying there’s a gayest person, kinda implies this. Of course it’s actually nonsense in real life, all I’m trying to say is that a spectrum by definition doesn’t exclude the possibility of 2 entities being on the most extreme end (doesn’t really matter if we have more dimensions or just one representing gayness, all can be maxed out). If one person can someone how obtain the highest amount of gayness physically possible, how does that stop someone else from doing the same?
How is a spectrum supposed to not have a total ordering? To me saying sth is a spectrum always invokes an image of being able to map to/represent the property as an interval (unbounded or bounded) which should always give it a total ordering right?
How is a spectrum supposed to not have a total ordering?
I’m pretty sure a spectrum is always totally ordered. You can’t say “this point on the spectrum holds no relation to that point”, because then it’s not a spectrum.
It all comes down to definitions. First off, Totally Ordered is a property of the function that compares two elements not the set you are talking about. most sets have total orderings (if the axiom of choice is true then all sets have a total ordering). With Fields and vectorspaces there is the concept of a totally ordered Field which is essentially when the total ordering is compatible with it’s field operations (e.g the set of complex numbers has many total orderings, but the field of complex numbers is not an ordered field).
So it really depends on how we define the sexuality spectrum. So long as it’s simply a set then it has a total ordering. But if we allow us to add and multiply the gays then depending on how we define those functions it could be impossible to order the gay field.
Also a total ordering doesn’t mean that there is exactly 1 maximal element (it would need to be a strict total ordering to have that property), so we can all be the gayest.
There could also be an elite group of the gayest people on earth. Or it could just be 2 gay lords.
I think that same as you can’t get an arbitrarily accurate measurement of length, since at sub-atomic scales you can no longer perfectly define where exactly an object ends (and eventually you’ll reach planck scales and quantum foam and the task becomes even more impossible), it might not be possible to measure gayness with enough accuracy to decide between the most gay contenders. Let’s be real - gayness is probably extremely fuzzy if you look into it closely.
Also the definition of ‘gay’ and ‘gayest’ is poorly defined. This assumes that gay is some sort of scalar, where in reality it’s a projection from a multidimensional ‘queerspace’ that can change the appearance of the spectrum wildly depending on the methodology the one projecting uses.
A colour wheel is not even partially ordered, I don’t think. There is a relation between some colours on the wheel but it’s not an ordering.
You can impose a partial ordering on it. HSL uses a hue angle. If we assume full saturation and lightness and pick an arbitrary direction to be positive, there’s your partial ordering. But not total ordering, there is no most clockwise color.
A spectrum can have multiple dimensions, but that might not matter if you’re only comparing in a single dimension?
Ig thats where most of my confusion comes from, to me saying sth is a “spectrum” always evokes sth along the lines of gay <--------------------> straight (ie one dimensional) with things mapping into this interval. But ig if you also include more than one axis in your meaning of “spectrum” there wouldn’t be as straight forward of an ordering for any given “spectrum”. + Like @saigot@lemmy.ca said technically even the 1 dimensional spectrum can have more than one order and the “obvious” one is just obvious because we are used to it from another context not because its specifically relevant to this situation.
Gynophilia, androphilia, romantic attraction, sexual attraction etc. absolutely makes everything complicated yeah. And then there’s cultural stuff and minor personal preferences. There’s no real end to how many axis you could legitimately argue for including in a sexuality chart.
Total ordering doesn’t mean that the order is strict though. You can have multiple individuals with the same level of gayness.
Total ordering means all elements are comparable (=< would be a suitable relation), not that all elements have their individual rank (< relation).
A spectrum implies that the set is totally ordered but not necessarily strictly ordered.
