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Categorising between objects is what humans require to navigate the world and communicate observed difference but at what resolution does one re-think drawing l
by simmo9000 5y ago
Categorising between objects is what humans require to navigate the world and communicate observed difference but at what resolution does one re-think drawing lines between categories?
This is the root problem the whole world is grappling with IMHO.
Country borders?
Gender lines?
(Pick another...)?
At what point does a sibling become a new species. Is fungi more plant or animal. At what point is green on the colour spectrum.
How do we define the point as to when to stop drawing distinct lines and accept a certain "grey scale" while understanding that lines are required somewhere?
- nexuist 5y agoI think the social solution is market competition. Have several different people and standards bodies publish their categorization system for the world to judge, and whichever one becomes the most popular is the de-facto correct categorization to use. For example, most of the world has agreed to allow the United Nations to determine how many countries there are and who represents them on the world stage. Us software engineers generally agreed to allow IANA to categorize domain names. ISO gets to categorize date fields(ISO 8601) and IEEE tells us what floating point is (IEEE 754). They do the hard work and the rest of us just have to accept their proposals. Or, we can bring up our own, subjectively better ideas on how to split things.