3 ms·

> if nothing else the youngest and oldest children of a couple can be 20+ years apart. This isn't relevant to generations. My youngest sister is 21 years young

> if nothing else the youngest and oldest children of a couple can be 20+ years apart. This isn't relevant to generations. My youngest sister is 21 years younger than I am. But we are both part of the same familial generation. My children and her children will also be part of the same familial generation. (This is irrespective of the fact that my sister is a millennial and I am not.) > The same person could easily show up as someones great grandparent (3) and their great great grandparent (4). In the case of the graphic, I suggest that they put each person at the highest possible place in the hierarchy and then simply extended the relationship line down in cases like this.

Retric 9y ago
Now fast forward 200 years and that clean separation you describe starts looking like a tangle as you and your sister marry people from different 'generations'. Basically, if you want to understand how people actually behave you need to exclude the living as their relationships are going to be more complex than such neat abstractions suggest. It's only with dead people that you can really understand their life story after-all someone can get married at 25 and again at 95.
- totalZero 9y ago
  What is your definition of "generation," and why do you refer to it as an abstraction? We are referring to generations as a structural parent-child term, where people on the same tier of the tree share the same generation. This is not the same as saying "Generation X/Y/Z" and so forth, which is a different meaning of the word entirely.
  - Retric 9y ago
    I am deriving the second definition from the first. Basically, as you start looking at the family tree that actually represents humanity the idea of generation breaks down, do you mean the shortest route from you to someone in ~100,000 BCE or the longest route to some person in ~100,000 BCE. You could say your mother's mother's mother's ... or your father's father's father's but even then the length of the chain going back that far stops being equivalent. The only thing that becomes meaningful on such a scale is simply generation as unit's of time.
    - totalZero 9y ago
      > I am deriving the second definition from the first. That doesn't make any sense. The first definition is a parent-child tree relationship. The second definition is a way to characterize the social atmosphere of a given span of twenty-some years. They are structurally different definitions that are not reconcilable.

Retric 9y ago

Now fast forward 200 years and that clean separation you describe starts looking like a tangle as you and your sister marry people from different 'generations'. Basically, if you want to understand how people actually behave you need to exclude the living as their relationships are going to be more complex than such neat abstractions suggest. It's only with dead people that you can really understand their life story after-all someone can get married at 25 and again at 95.

totalZero 9y ago
What is your definition of "generation," and why do you refer to it as an abstraction? We are referring to generations as a structural parent-child term, where people on the same tier of the tree share the same generation. This is not the same as saying "Generation X/Y/Z" and so forth, which is a different meaning of the word entirely.
- Retric 9y ago
  I am deriving the second definition from the first. Basically, as you start looking at the family tree that actually represents humanity the idea of generation breaks down, do you mean the shortest route from you to someone in ~100,000 BCE or the longest route to some person in ~100,000 BCE. You could say your mother's mother's mother's ... or your father's father's father's but even then the length of the chain going back that far stops being equivalent. The only thing that becomes meaningful on such a scale is simply generation as unit's of time.
  - totalZero 9y ago
    > I am deriving the second definition from the first. That doesn't make any sense. The first definition is a parent-child tree relationship. The second definition is a way to characterize the social atmosphere of a given span of twenty-some years. They are structurally different definitions that are not reconcilable.