7 ms·

Most of the models that we use everyday are "leaky abstractions". They are useful in most contexts, but they get fuzzy at their boundaries. My favourite exampl

by samuel 11y ago

Most of the models that we use everyday are "leaky abstractions". They are useful in most contexts, but they get fuzzy at their boundaries. My favourite example is the "chicken and egg" problem. The difficulty of it is to define what a chicken is, everything is trivial afterwards. The answer, IMHO, is that "a chicken" was born from an egg put by a "non-chicken".

dTal 11y ago
It seems to me that difficulty is not so much defining what a chicken is, but what a chicken egg is - is it an egg laid by a chicken, or an egg a chicken hatches from?
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  Just pick one. That's easier than picking the bird that is a chicken whose parent is not a chicken.
bottled_poe 11y ago
Sorry to be pedantic - but every model is, by definition, an approximation of reality. Everything we experience is a blurry rendition of the inconceivable volume of information dancing around us.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  To look at models as 'blurry' is misleading. Models are imperfect, but the imperfect model can be more crisp than the underlying reality. Newtonian physics are very useful and less blurry than reality. More relevant, categories are useful and less blurry than reality. There doesn't need to be a sudden major difference between a chicken and a not-chicken. They only need to have a clear distinction in the model. For comparison, let's look at integers. 11 is very similar to 12, and 13 is at least as similar, but 11 and 12 are not-teen and 13 is teen. There's no ambiguity, there is only the definition of the category/model "teen". The distinction is arbitrary, but there's still a distinction. You can easily "draw a line" as the sibling comment says.
  - swamp40 11y ago
    Re: Blurry, I think that and Dancing are Thru the glass darkly type references.
jernfrost 11y ago
I really like Richard Dawkins explanation of this, where he has you imagine taking a photo of yourself from your are born to you reach adulthood with 1 minute intervals. If you stack these pictures, there is no single picture you can pull out and say: "Here I transitioned from child to adult" e.g. Likewise with animals and evolution. Changes are so minute that you can speak of a transition from one species to another happening at the point of birth. Only when you look at pictures of yourself far away from each other in the pile can you start differentiating them. Likewise with animals.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Exactly, they are minute because they are constant. We are in constant flux so to speak.
- sageikosa 11y ago
  Also Dawkins posits a relatively good empirical definition of species boundaries (although I'm not quoting him verbatim, and I may be extending/synthesizing some of the ideas somewhat), but...a species is basically the pool of organisms available at a period of time that can generate progeny that themselves can generate progeny. That is, they have replicator compatibility... Under that definition, humans make a species. Horses make a species, donkeys make a species, but mules do not. Apparently in the world of Star Trek, Klingons and humans make a species: Worf (Klingon) had a child with a half-human/half-Klingon woman, and Tom Paris (human) had a child with a half-human/half-Klingon woman. Not sure about Vulcans and Romulans...obviously they can mate, but I'm not sure Spock himself can have children, perhaps we'll find out in a future movie. In Futurama, Kiff reproduced with Leela. As to the concept of a human as a "super-organism", the problem with bacteria being part of the equation is that they do not transmit their replicator payload through the germ-line transmission vector. They are not integrated into the next generation in whole or in part. Via the concept of the extended phenotype they may alter and extend their environment to improve their chance of success (and often mothers and children have the same bacteria flora), but it's better to think of it as symbiosis (or in the worst case, parasitism) than true "super-organism" reproduction. (Me thinks!)
  - 11y ago
eveningcoffee 11y ago
The answer, IMHO, is that "a chicken" was born from an egg put by a "non-chicken". And the thing is, you could not determine when exactly the non-chicken became the chicken i.e. when it is chicken enough. You could not draw a line.

by samuel 11y ago

dTal 11y ago

It seems to me that difficulty is not so much defining what a chicken is, but what a chicken egg is - is it an egg laid by a chicken, or an egg a chicken hatches from?

Dylan16807 11y ago
Just pick one. That's easier than picking the bird that is a chicken whose parent is not a chicken.

bottled_poe 11y ago

Sorry to be pedantic - but every model is, by definition, an approximation of reality. Everything we experience is a blurry rendition of the inconceivable volume of information dancing around us.

Dylan16807 11y ago
To look at models as 'blurry' is misleading. Models are imperfect, but the imperfect model can be more crisp than the underlying reality. Newtonian physics are very useful and less blurry than reality. More relevant, categories are useful and less blurry than reality. There doesn't need to be a sudden major difference between a chicken and a not-chicken. They only need to have a clear distinction in the model. For comparison, let's look at integers. 11 is very similar to 12, and 13 is at least as similar, but 11 and 12 are not-teen and 13 is teen. There's no ambiguity, there is only the definition of the category/model "teen". The distinction is arbitrary, but there's still a distinction. You can easily "draw a line" as the sibling comment says.
- swamp40 11y ago
  Re: Blurry, I think that and Dancing are Thru the glass darkly type references.

jernfrost 11y ago

I really like Richard Dawkins explanation of this, where he has you imagine taking a photo of yourself from your are born to you reach adulthood with 1 minute intervals. If you stack these pictures, there is no single picture you can pull out and say: "Here I transitioned from child to adult" e.g. Likewise with animals and evolution. Changes are so minute that you can speak of a transition from one species to another happening at the point of birth. Only when you look at pictures of yourself far away from each other in the pile can you start differentiating them. Likewise with animals.

ThomPete 11y ago
Exactly, they are minute because they are constant. We are in constant flux so to speak.
sageikosa 11y ago
Also Dawkins posits a relatively good empirical definition of species boundaries (although I'm not quoting him verbatim, and I may be extending/synthesizing some of the ideas somewhat), but...a species is basically the pool of organisms available at a period of time that can generate progeny that themselves can generate progeny. That is, they have replicator compatibility... Under that definition, humans make a species. Horses make a species, donkeys make a species, but mules do not. Apparently in the world of Star Trek, Klingons and humans make a species: Worf (Klingon) had a child with a half-human/half-Klingon woman, and Tom Paris (human) had a child with a half-human/half-Klingon woman. Not sure about Vulcans and Romulans...obviously they can mate, but I'm not sure Spock himself can have children, perhaps we'll find out in a future movie. In Futurama, Kiff reproduced with Leela. As to the concept of a human as a "super-organism", the problem with bacteria being part of the equation is that they do not transmit their replicator payload through the germ-line transmission vector. They are not integrated into the next generation in whole or in part. Via the concept of the extended phenotype they may alter and extend their environment to improve their chance of success (and often mothers and children have the same bacteria flora), but it's better to think of it as symbiosis (or in the worst case, parasitism) than true "super-organism" reproduction. (Me thinks!)
- 11y ago

eveningcoffee 11y ago

The answer, IMHO, is that "a chicken" was born from an egg put by a "non-chicken". And the thing is, you could not determine when exactly the non-chicken became the chicken i.e. when it is chicken enough. You could not draw a line.