What distribution of the colour spectrum are you thinking of? That of a 5900 K blackbody, or that of a sodium lamp? Is one of those not a spectrum?
What makes it more accurate, if you’re going to utilize something other than your opinion?
Cite? You’re right, of course, that I don’t have any study that shows that most people are not completely heterosexual, but by the same token, do you have any study that shows that they are?
One of the more intriguing psychological theories I’ve seen goes like this:
We have deep buried chunks of instinct in our brains - cll them, say, “recognizers”. We recognize healthy and it pleases us, we recognize cute and child-like, which helps parental attachment, we recognize repulsive, dangerous, hostile animals. These are part of our basic instincts, the wiring that drives behavior.
You see “cute” manifested, for example in the general like of puppies (appear child like); whereas, nobody would think of lizards or snakes as “cute”; intriguing or interesting maybe - but not cute. Similarly we recognize healthy (all those psychology experiments that show preferences for symmetry, for example); there’s plenty of psychology experiments that show the 2:3 waist to hips is recognizable as the desirable (i.e. healthy) female shape across many cultures.
Humans, this theory goes, also have a “sex map”. Whether male or female, one or more of these “recognition” processes is mapped to the “sexual desire” process with varying intensities. There is a logical connectivity - males map to desiring healthy females, and vice versa.
This would be the issue - the very flexibility that allows a human brain to be adaptive to many options, means that this process can perhaps work differently, the mapping is not so “hard-wired” and different connections can occur on a random basis during brain development. The most common alternate connections are of course, same sex. Sometimes, the connection could be to something else or nothing - which is how we get pedophiles or asexual types, as well as people who are attracted to opposite or the same sex.
If this is something that happens as the brain develops, the tendencies could be set very early in pregnancy, or possibly as late as a year or more after birth.
It would also explain obsessive personalities, where certain tendencies become “tied” to certain behavior paths for non-sexual areas of behavior.
But the outcome of this theory is that there is no “spectrum” between A or B, male or female preference, Maybe a better analogy is a field of lightbulbs, some of which are off, some of which are brighter than others.
Or, maybe that’s all BS. Nobody knows.
naita, there’s debates about the fairest way to present data all the time! Means, medians, categorical data, yadda, yadda, yadda all have their places. I’ve said from the time I introduced the point that I can see the case for viewing this as a spectrum, but don’t think that is the most viable way of describing the phenomenon. Obviously, I’m in the minority based on responses.
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What distribution of the colour spectrum are you thinking of? That of a 5900 K blackbody, or that of a sodium lamp? Is one of those not a spectrum?
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I’ll concede I don’t know what any of that means. I was referring to this here.
[QUOTE=Chronos]
Cite? You’re right, of course, that I don’t have any study that shows that most people are not completely heterosexual, but by the same token, do you have any study that shows that they are?
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Yes, I cited this hereup thread, and any comments I’ve made have been based on this distribution. So while it doesn’t show that most people are heterosexual, it does show that most American adults do say they are. Yes, I recognize the inherent issues about the problems getting good data on this. But this (or data similar to this) is what we got.
Put it this way: say you’re measuring the spectrum of a light source. Where in the spectrum is the output when the light is off? I’m thinking that when a survey shows that the majority of American adults say they are completely heterosexual, that that is analogous to the same-sex-attraction light being off. It’s a categorical difference from the rest of the population.
Once again, so it doesn’t get lose, I’m only arguing the point as a data-interpretation exercise.
I have no idea what analogy you’re trying to make here.
Just pointing out a light can be on or off, or when it is on, it has a spectrum of visible light. Looking at the distribution of responses in that graph I linked to, the case can me made that the light is on or off (one either has no or some attraction to the same sex), but among those who have some attraction to the same sex, there are different degrees of exclusivity. So is a 0 on that scale part of the spectrum, or is it a categorical difference?
Anyway, I’ve probably flogged this enough, so I’ll go back to work, but it’s been an interesting discussion. 
Is it acceptable to say all people are somewhere on the “autism spectrum”?
But if the light is turned off, you don’t have any part of the spectrum.
My point exactly!
So, in other words, it’s not a spectrum because people who aren’t attracted to anyone aren’t attracted to anyone?
Not being attracted to anyone isn’t on the scale. It’s an artificial construct such that 0 is defined as completely heterosexual and 6 is defined as completely homosexual. So 0 is, by the logic of the scale, the absence of same-sex attraction. So there is a categorical, binary difference between moving from 0 to >/=1. It’s not like moving from red to orange on the colour spectrum. There is no colour 0!
Since you raised the point about not being attracted to anyone, the full tables report “not sure”. as a response, which was picked by 2% of the population.
But which end of the scale was called 0 was completely arbitrary. You could just as easily define a scale where 0 meant “completely homosexual”, or which ran from 10 to 20, or which had 0 right in the middle.
True, but it’s also the designation “completely heterosexual” or “completely homosexual” that also contributes to the underlying binary nature of the concept. Sure you can switch it around and say there is a categorical difference between people with the absence of opposite-sex interest versus people with opposite-sex interest. But the underlying point is you have a bunch of people (a majority in the case of the heterosexuals and a minority in the case of the same-sexuals) who report the complete absence of the the other. So it really is an absent/present dualism. I’ll go back to the rheostat analogy. There is a binary opposition of the light being on or off, but once it’s on, you can turn it up higher.