4 ms·

It's always been the egg. The egg is laid by a proto-chicken and has the genetic mutation required to tip it into the "chicken" classification.

saalweachter 7y ago
Is a chicken-egg an egg laid by a chicken or an egg that yields a chicken?
- philbarr 7y ago
  Nice try - but the original question doesn't state the egg has to be a chicken-egg, just "the egg".
  - ukz 7y ago
    But a bird's heavier than feathers.
    - sbarker 7y ago
      But when birds of a feather flock together, many hands make light work.
      - stronglikedan 7y ago
        And it's known that a bird in many hands is just a gross bunch of fleshy bits with feathers sticking out.
  - sharperguy 7y ago
    Eggs were laid long before birds even evolved. If that's the criteria then the question becomes much easier to answer.
- misnome 7y ago
  Well, if you want to turn it into a semantic argument then we can go on to discuss whether a plane can take off on a conveyor belt.... (It can, unless you want to argue the semantics of the question, in which case gestures at internet)
  - saalweachter 7y ago
    I mean, as considered by Aristotle, et al, the question was really asking "If you have a sequence of alternating events going infinitely far into the past, which came first?", which is more a math problem than a biology problem. (To which Aristotle, admirably, reached the conclusion that there wasn't a first event and it was a meaningless question.) It was only in the context of the Biblical creation that people decided it had a definitive answer (the chicken), and like 70% of "the egg came first" is really saying "Biblical creation was wrong!!1!", which is fun at first but kind of boring in the long haul. A more useful point of meditation in the modern world is this: which is more important, the design (the egg) or the implementation (the chicken)? Was the chicken "created" when the first egg containing the design for a chicken was laid, or when the first chicken was fully implemented (the egg-laying chicken)? Obvious parallels to technology, engineering, and startups, etc.
dictum 7y ago
It just occurred to me that the chicken-and-egg problem, Schrödinger's cat and the ship of Theseus are essentially the same question, with slightly different contexts.

saalweachter 7y ago

Is a chicken-egg an egg laid by a chicken or an egg that yields a chicken?

philbarr 7y ago
Nice try - but the original question doesn't state the egg has to be a chicken-egg, just "the egg".
- ukz 7y ago
  But a bird's heavier than feathers.
  - sbarker 7y ago
    But when birds of a feather flock together, many hands make light work.
    - stronglikedan 7y ago
      And it's known that a bird in many hands is just a gross bunch of fleshy bits with feathers sticking out.
- sharperguy 7y ago
  Eggs were laid long before birds even evolved. If that's the criteria then the question becomes much easier to answer.
misnome 7y ago
Well, if you want to turn it into a semantic argument then we can go on to discuss whether a plane can take off on a conveyor belt.... (It can, unless you want to argue the semantics of the question, in which case gestures at internet)
- saalweachter 7y ago
  I mean, as considered by Aristotle, et al, the question was really asking "If you have a sequence of alternating events going infinitely far into the past, which came first?", which is more a math problem than a biology problem. (To which Aristotle, admirably, reached the conclusion that there wasn't a first event and it was a meaningless question.) It was only in the context of the Biblical creation that people decided it had a definitive answer (the chicken), and like 70% of "the egg came first" is really saying "Biblical creation was wrong!!1!", which is fun at first but kind of boring in the long haul. A more useful point of meditation in the modern world is this: which is more important, the design (the egg) or the implementation (the chicken)? Was the chicken "created" when the first egg containing the design for a chicken was laid, or when the first chicken was fully implemented (the egg-laying chicken)? Obvious parallels to technology, engineering, and startups, etc.

dictum 7y ago

It just occurred to me that the chicken-and-egg problem, Schrödinger's cat and the ship of Theseus are essentially the same question, with slightly different contexts.