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This is a great example of the hubris of scientists that non-scientists can’t stand. Most believe Pluto is a planet. Moons are rocks in orbit around planets, e

This is a great example of the hubris of scientists that non-scientists can’t stand. Most believe Pluto is a planet. Moons are rocks in orbit around planets, etc. Why the obsession to change these names? Brings painful thoughts of our future if this is what they care about.

oblio 8y ago
Science evolves. Backwards compatibility is good, but then again, the imperial system :D Sometimes it's a good idea to break with the past. Regarding Pluto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKoRt-6pjAE&vl=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKoRt-6pjAE&vl=en
- Arnt 8y ago
  The metric system has broken with its own past, though. The breaks were true breaks, not just elaborations, but they were executed with great care for compatibility. 1m has been defined in four or five different ways, depending on how you count. There's a lesson here: There is a middle ground between preserving legacy and causing problems by deprecation.
  - danso 8y ago
    So what are the “problems by deprecation” you see in the current context of redefining Pluto as not a planet? Having to reprint interplanetary tourism guides?
    - Arnt 8y ago
      It's just another minor thing to complain about for the people who like to complain about science. Nothing minor is major. Some of them are minor and worthwhile, some are minor and not.
wool_gather 8y ago
The hubris of revising technical definitions that they themselves created to describe their own work? What are you on about? "Most believe Pluto is a planet" because they were told that by scientists in the first place. Without astronomers, "most" wouldn't even know Pluto existed.
- Arnt 8y ago
  Oh sure. But consider the same issue with different words. You made your API, you told people outside the company about it, you got it widely used. Are you free to deprecate it? Are you free to change it incompatibly? You made your postcodes to better sort and deliver letters. That was your only purpose. You told everyone about them and kept telling them until absolutely every database with addresses included your postcodes, and people started using them for other purposes. Are you free to change them if some tweak would improve your ability to sort and deliver letters? FWIW I don't have an opinion on the matter.
  - lukeschlather 8y ago
    A better analogy is some sort of third-party API rating system. Consultancies put out big whitepapers about what a "storage service" is, and what the relative quality of things like Amazon/Google/Microsoft's offerings are. The change in definition of e.g. Pluto might be analogous to that company originally having classified Amazon S3 as a "backup service" before deciding that it was really a new category of service that has now spawned many competitors. The classification is designed to help us reason and talk about like things. We can all see how Amazon S3 and e.g. Dropbox are fundamentally different categories of service, and they need different names. We shouldn't be afraid of reclassifying things because people will have to change their models. The point of recategorization is that the old models are not as useful as the new models.
  - danso 8y ago
    “Your only purpose”. As if such standards were set in place and there was no ongoing committee to deal with new cases and scenarios that arise as they inevitably do in any complex system.
  - 8y ago
Symmetry 8y ago
It's in the nature of science that sometimes things that were previously believed to be true turn out to be false. The notion that there are nine planets matched what astronomers knew for many decades but with better measurements turned out be be an unsupportable idea. For centuries there were just 6 planets. Then people discovered Uranus and there were 7. Then people discovered Ceres and there were 8. Then people discovered lots of other main belt asteroids and there were 7 again. Then Neptune and 8 again. Then Pluto and 9. And now we've found all these other big bodies in the outer system and we decided to demote Pluto rather than add a half dozen new planets, just like we did with Ceres. I don't think anybody particularly objected to the demotion of Ceres since it hadn't been around that long when it happened. But I can only imagine the furor that must have arisen when people tried to claim that Uranus was a planet despite the number of planets being fixed since the time of Homer. Well, Ok, there was the bit when they turned Earth into a planet and we all know about the people like Giordano Bruno literally burned at the stake over that. So this demotion of Pluto is just another event in the long, long history of scientists revising what counts as a planet. I understand that it's uncomfortable to have to unlearn things you learned as a kid but science is all about changing our view of the world.
- aeorgnoieang 8y ago
  A great { essay / blog post } about this constant churn: - [Ontological remodeling | Meaningness](https://meaningness.com/eggplant/remodeling https://meaningness.com/eggplant/remodeling) My favorite bit: > Jupiter doesn’t go around the sun, and therefore is not a planet by the 2006 definition. > Don’t believe me? In Newtonian mechanics, two bodies orbit their barycenter, or center of mass. If they have equal masses, the barycenter is the midpoint between them. If one is heavier than the other, the barycenter is closer to it. If one has much greater mass than the other, their common barycenter is located within the larger body, and the smaller object goes around that point. Only then is the smaller body said to orbit the larger one. Otherwise, the two form a binary system. > Jupiter is ludicrously heavy: it has 2.5 times the mass of everything else in the solar system combined, apart from the sun. The sun is much heavier still—but the barycenter of their mutual orbit is outside it. Jupiter and the sun are a binary system. Their barycenter is, to be fair, quite close to the sun, and informally it may be reasonable to say Jupiter goes around it. But in terms of the formal definition, it doesn’t, so by the IAU criteria, Jupiter is not a planet.
squirrelicus 8y ago
This article is relevant to most conversations, but very relevant to this one in particular. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-mad...

oblio 8y ago

Science evolves. Backwards compatibility is good, but then again, the imperial system :D Sometimes it's a good idea to break with the past. Regarding Pluto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKoRt-6pjAE&vl=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKoRt-6pjAE&vl=en

Arnt 8y ago
The metric system has broken with its own past, though. The breaks were true breaks, not just elaborations, but they were executed with great care for compatibility. 1m has been defined in four or five different ways, depending on how you count. There's a lesson here: There is a middle ground between preserving legacy and causing problems by deprecation.
- danso 8y ago
  So what are the “problems by deprecation” you see in the current context of redefining Pluto as not a planet? Having to reprint interplanetary tourism guides?
  - Arnt 8y ago
    It's just another minor thing to complain about for the people who like to complain about science. Nothing minor is major. Some of them are minor and worthwhile, some are minor and not.

wool_gather 8y ago

The hubris of revising technical definitions that they themselves created to describe their own work? What are you on about? "Most believe Pluto is a planet" because they were told that by scientists in the first place. Without astronomers, "most" wouldn't even know Pluto existed.

Arnt 8y ago
Oh sure. But consider the same issue with different words. You made your API, you told people outside the company about it, you got it widely used. Are you free to deprecate it? Are you free to change it incompatibly? You made your postcodes to better sort and deliver letters. That was your only purpose. You told everyone about them and kept telling them until absolutely every database with addresses included your postcodes, and people started using them for other purposes. Are you free to change them if some tweak would improve your ability to sort and deliver letters? FWIW I don't have an opinion on the matter.
- lukeschlather 8y ago
  A better analogy is some sort of third-party API rating system. Consultancies put out big whitepapers about what a "storage service" is, and what the relative quality of things like Amazon/Google/Microsoft's offerings are. The change in definition of e.g. Pluto might be analogous to that company originally having classified Amazon S3 as a "backup service" before deciding that it was really a new category of service that has now spawned many competitors. The classification is designed to help us reason and talk about like things. We can all see how Amazon S3 and e.g. Dropbox are fundamentally different categories of service, and they need different names. We shouldn't be afraid of reclassifying things because people will have to change their models. The point of recategorization is that the old models are not as useful as the new models.
- danso 8y ago
  “Your only purpose”. As if such standards were set in place and there was no ongoing committee to deal with new cases and scenarios that arise as they inevitably do in any complex system.
- 8y ago

Symmetry 8y ago

It's in the nature of science that sometimes things that were previously believed to be true turn out to be false. The notion that there are nine planets matched what astronomers knew for many decades but with better measurements turned out be be an unsupportable idea. For centuries there were just 6 planets. Then people discovered Uranus and there were 7. Then people discovered Ceres and there were 8. Then people discovered lots of other main belt asteroids and there were 7 again. Then Neptune and 8 again. Then Pluto and 9. And now we've found all these other big bodies in the outer system and we decided to demote Pluto rather than add a half dozen new planets, just like we did with Ceres. I don't think anybody particularly objected to the demotion of Ceres since it hadn't been around that long when it happened. But I can only imagine the furor that must have arisen when people tried to claim that Uranus was a planet despite the number of planets being fixed since the time of Homer. Well, Ok, there was the bit when they turned Earth into a planet and we all know about the people like Giordano Bruno literally burned at the stake over that. So this demotion of Pluto is just another event in the long, long history of scientists revising what counts as a planet. I understand that it's uncomfortable to have to unlearn things you learned as a kid but science is all about changing our view of the world.

aeorgnoieang 8y ago
A great { essay / blog post } about this constant churn: - [Ontological remodeling | Meaningness](https://meaningness.com/eggplant/remodeling https://meaningness.com/eggplant/remodeling) My favorite bit: > Jupiter doesn’t go around the sun, and therefore is not a planet by the 2006 definition. > Don’t believe me? In Newtonian mechanics, two bodies orbit their barycenter, or center of mass. If they have equal masses, the barycenter is the midpoint between them. If one is heavier than the other, the barycenter is closer to it. If one has much greater mass than the other, their common barycenter is located within the larger body, and the smaller object goes around that point. Only then is the smaller body said to orbit the larger one. Otherwise, the two form a binary system. > Jupiter is ludicrously heavy: it has 2.5 times the mass of everything else in the solar system combined, apart from the sun. The sun is much heavier still—but the barycenter of their mutual orbit is outside it. Jupiter and the sun are a binary system. Their barycenter is, to be fair, quite close to the sun, and informally it may be reasonable to say Jupiter goes around it. But in terms of the formal definition, it doesn’t, so by the IAU criteria, Jupiter is not a planet.

squirrelicus 8y ago

This article is relevant to most conversations, but very relevant to this one in particular. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-mad...