It’s more like we are on both paths at the same time.

Fun fact: according to our models the photon doesn’t exactly travel in a straight line and hit the eye of the cow. It’s a probability wave that spreads out spherically across an astronomical range. It might as well “hit” Mars instead of the Earth. What actually happens is that the huge wave randomly interacts with the eye of the cow. At that time the probability collapses into a certainty (the photon), making it impossible for the wave to interact with anything elsewhere in the universe.

Edit: or if you subscribe to the many-worlds interpretation, the wave interacts with both Mars and the Earth. When the wave reaches the eye of the cow, a new series of waves ripple out. They contain the effects of a photon interaction, but the original (standing) wave before the interaction also remains. We can make a slice of the multiverse in which the cow’s brain perceives the photon, and another slice in which there was no interaction and the cow didn’t see it. Because of how consciousness is tied to a single chain of events, the cow as a matter of experience doesn’t both see and not see the photon. Rather it’s as if there are two separate experiences that exist independent of each other.

Yes

All of these are measurable. I’m not sure what’s the source of your confusion. Yes the terminology becomes a bit ambiguous unless we make up a new word/term for the tuple, but gender identity is just one dimension of it. It can be measured with a standardized questionnaire.

I like how you think but I’m not sure if that alone will hold water. A variable can vary wildly even though it’s not very relevant to the property you’re interested in, and PCA would consider such a variable to be very significant. Perhaps a neural network could find a latent space. But ideally we want the components to have some intuitive meaning for humans.

I’ve been thinking about this now and again. IMO gender, if one insists on tracking it at all (which I mostly find counterproductive), would need to be a vector / tuple of floating-point values. The components would be something like:

1. Sexual Development Index: Encodes chromosomal sex, genitalia, and other primary sexual characteristics (X/Y chromosome ratio).
2. Hormonal Balance & Secondary Sexual Characteristics: Combines hormonal levels and the resulting secondary traits (body hair, muscle mass, etc.).
3. Brain Structure: A dimension indicating how a person’s brain structure aligns with typical male or female patterns.
4. Gender Identity: A measure of self-identified gender, representing the psychological and social dimension.
5. Fertility/Intersex Traits: A combined measure of fertility potential and the presence of intersex traits (e.g., ambiguous genitalia, mixed gonadal structures, etc.).

Ideally it would track the specific genes that code for all of the above factors, but unfortunately science hasn’t got those down yet.

Yes I uploaded the image and asked it the same question as OP

Some guesses by ChatGPT:

Left Switch (“K” setting):

• K: Likely for a “constant mode,” where the calculator uses one operand as a constant for repeated >calculations (e.g., multiplying several numbers by the same value).
• The other position is likely “normal mode,” disabling this feature.

Middle Switch (“A/2/4/6” etc.):

• This could control decimal rounding or precision:
• “A” might stand for “automatic” mode.
• “0, 2, 3, 4, 6” refers to the number of decimal places displayed or used in calculations.
• “F” likely stands for “full precision,” using all available decimal places.

Right Switch (“Σ” setting):

• Σ: Likely enables a “summation mode,” where the calculator automatically adds results to a running total (useful for bookkeeping or repetitive additions).
• The other position disables this mode.

Being Swedish the “constant mode” seems likely as we often used k (for “konstant”) in school math to represent a constant (e.g. for the slope of a line).

Also gets the taste of dick out of their mouth for a while

Rugs can really tie the room together. Why would you want to get rid of them?

with tons of interesting stories and anecdotes about life

…which he will find ways to clumsily segue into again and again, regardless of how many times you’ve heard them

The “right answers” are pretty shitty too. I would say all substances are excitations of the fermionic fields.

Are you implying that she’s a bitch

The Lord works in mysterious ways

It’s both. Always was, always will be.

- Lord Helmet!

- WHAT?

- You’re needed on the bridge sir!

- Knock on my door! Knock next time!

- Yes, sir!

- Did you see anything?

- No, sir! I didn’t see you playing with your dolls again.

- GOOD!

Try looking in this list of corresponding communities.

Also this.

In programming there is also the Heisenbug: as soon as you try to observe the bug, it disappears or changes its behavior.

One year the entire family got a stomach flu over the Christmas holidays. The kids were around 3-6 years old and didn’t know to throw up in a bucket in the night; they just vomited all over the bedsheets each time. We nearly ran out of sheets and had to load the washing machine in the middle of the night to keep up, while taking breaks to puke and shit. My diarrhea was so bad that my blood pressure dropped while sitting on the toilet, so immediately after dropping a load I had to lie down on the floor to avoid passing out, only to pull myself up seconds later to puke in the (now diarrhea-filled) toilet bowl. Meanwhile I hear the kids crying and puking outside and my then wife being pissed that I’m not helping.

I am unable to parse that last paragraph