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Us humans certainly prefer to put boundaries and names on things. And indeed, it is often unwise i.e. with (one of our) species definitions: A can procreate wit
by teekert 8y ago
Us humans certainly prefer to put boundaries and names on things. And indeed, it is often unwise i.e. with (one of our) species definitions: A can procreate with B, B can with C but A cannot with C, meaning A==B, B==C but A!=C, a paradox because of our tendencies.
Could it be a cultural thing? While I grow older I find it more natural to think of things as continuous or to assign uncertainty to "facts", but perhaps our educational system does not give much attention to this. Perhaps it's too much about facts and names and boundaries.
In this articles' case though, of course mental disorders are a continuum but the drugs and methods for treatment we have are not. So perhaps in this case a label is nice. One should always keep the continuous nature in the back of one's mind though.
- darkerside 8y agoI agree with much of what you say. I've heard it said that education is a series of increasingly small lies. If you started teaching the whole truth and nothing but, from a young age, the student would fail to grasp the big picture and the broad connections in the way the world works. When you let something go, it drops. Well, unless it's lighter than air. And it doesn't drop, it attracts to the Earth. And actually, it attracts the Earth back to itself. And it doesn't simply "drop", it accelerates. And gravitational forces and air friction determine the acceleration and the jerk. If you don't omit anything, you can't communicate anything. The broader point I'm getting at is, first you need to learn about the artificial distinctions so you can "from" the subject. Then, once you know all the rules by heart, you can feel free to break them.
- teekert 8y agoNice way of putting it. Yesterday morning my son asked how humans came to be and I ended up stuttering that perhaps at some point some molecule of unspecified complexity gained the ability to replicate at which point it became subject to natural selection based on descent with modification... You get the problem. Better say: It started with simple life and the best ones (sometimes more complex ones) ended up in the next generation. FFWD 3.5 billion years and voila. It's a bit of a lie because "what's life, what's before that, what's best, what's fitness" etc. But it works. I keep having problems with this though, but yeah, what to say to someone without any grasp of cells or DNA or "1 billion years", do even grasp it "correctly"??... Man, speak about rabbit holes. I didn't even start on evolution on the population level.. I see my son loosing interest during my explanation, while I get more and more enthusiastic. It's a hard problem.
- MrQuincle 8y agoTrue, but do definitions not encourage a more thorough analysis? If A is a male, B is a female, C is a male, your operator definition is even troublesome within a species. What kind of mathematical object comes closer to this abstraction of a species? Maybe it's not about names and boundaries, but about getting to understand things for which you need abstractions. I always appreciate when people do not fuss about definitions and easily change them but reason consistently after indicating their interpretation of those concepts.
- teekert 8y agoAgreed, of course we need definition to discuss, and indeed we should be fluent about them. This is difficult to explain to a child or indeed to some adults.
- baddox 8y agoI don’t think your example really applies, because no one expects the definition of “species” to imply that the “individual A can mate with individual B” relation to be transitive.
- iguy 8y agoI think the analogy to species is misleading. While there are interesting edge cases, the basic idea that there are different kinds of animals is really obvious & clear: Sparrows don't try to mate with owls, seagulls, pigeons, let alone mice, earthworms & cockroaches. Instead with other sparrows, and produce more sparrows, which we can really confidently distinguish from owls, knowing just one of size/food/color/call would be enough. Nature is extremely clumpy here. Lots of points in the size/food/color/call space simply aren't occupied. Maybe a better analogy would be to the informally defined neighbourhoods which exist in many cities. Everyone knows there's a Little Italy and a China Town, and could point out the main street of each. But whether or not an apartment three blocks away is or isn't in that neighbourhood gets pretty fuzzy, and depends a lot on what the realtor thinks you are looking for.
- phkahler 8y ago>> Could it be a cultural thing? While I grow older I find it more natural to think of things as continuous or to assign uncertainty to "facts".... Yay! You've overcome splitting! Now if the profession could achieve what they want from patients...