3 ms·

Suppose you have a definition of a chicken that is rigorous enough to break any ties. Then the first chicken that meets this definition was hatched from an egg.

by not2b 5y ago

Suppose you have a definition of a chicken that is rigorous enough to break any ties. Then the first chicken that meets this definition was hatched from an egg. That egg was laid by a non-chicken (some animal that was very close to, but not exactly, a chicken). So the egg came first.

deleted 5y ago
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SamBam 5y ago
> So the egg came first. Which egg? Obviously "the egg that the chicken hatched from" came first, no one's debating that. But that's all you've said. If the question is "which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg", then it depends on whether the chicken egg is one that houses the chicken, or the one that is laid by a chicken.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  A hybrid of a canary and a goldfinch is a mule. Would you really argue that those eggs hatching into mules are not mule eggs? I could see an argument that those eggs, coming out of canaries, could count as canary eggs, but not in a way that stops them from being mule eggs. "mule eggs" definitely needs to include the eggs that hatch into mules.
jtsiskin 5y ago
Even with this perfect definition there are still ambiguities. You could still debate if a non-chicken egg with chicken DNA is a chicken egg. Its shell and yolk, all contents, were produced by a non-chicken - imagine the eggshell was blue, not white, and the final allele change to become “chicken” switched the “egg color laid once grown” to white. If all this eggs contents were produced by a genetically non-chicken - the egg is blue - is it really a “chicken egg”? Imagine you took a chicken egg, and modified the DNA so that an elephant would hatch. Is this a “chicken egg (with elephant DNA)” or an “elephant egg (with shell, white, and yolk produced by a chicken)”?
mellavora 5y ago
Ok, and is this chicken a perfectly spherical chicken?
crdrost 5y ago
So in case you missed what is wrong with that, what is wrong with that is that you have a very checkered history of chickenhood. Viewed your way, a chicken actually gave birth to a nonchicken who gave birth to a nonchicken who gave birth to a chicken who gave birth to a nonchicken who gave birth to a chicken that was finally the mother of an unbroken line of hens that survives to this day, some of whom had nonchicken fathers. The problem is that the variation of the breeding population is much larger than the distance from the originals to the final result.

by not2b 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

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SamBam 5y ago

> So the egg came first. Which egg? Obviously "the egg that the chicken hatched from" came first, no one's debating that. But that's all you've said. If the question is "which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg", then it depends on whether the chicken egg is one that houses the chicken, or the one that is laid by a chicken.

Dylan16807 5y ago
A hybrid of a canary and a goldfinch is a mule. Would you really argue that those eggs hatching into mules are not mule eggs? I could see an argument that those eggs, coming out of canaries, could count as canary eggs, but not in a way that stops them from being mule eggs. "mule eggs" definitely needs to include the eggs that hatch into mules.

jtsiskin 5y ago

Even with this perfect definition there are still ambiguities. You could still debate if a non-chicken egg with chicken DNA is a chicken egg. Its shell and yolk, all contents, were produced by a non-chicken - imagine the eggshell was blue, not white, and the final allele change to become “chicken” switched the “egg color laid once grown” to white. If all this eggs contents were produced by a genetically non-chicken - the egg is blue - is it really a “chicken egg”? Imagine you took a chicken egg, and modified the DNA so that an elephant would hatch. Is this a “chicken egg (with elephant DNA)” or an “elephant egg (with shell, white, and yolk produced by a chicken)”?

mellavora 5y ago

Ok, and is this chicken a perfectly spherical chicken?

crdrost 5y ago

So in case you missed what is wrong with that, what is wrong with that is that you have a very checkered history of chickenhood. Viewed your way, a chicken actually gave birth to a nonchicken who gave birth to a nonchicken who gave birth to a chicken who gave birth to a nonchicken who gave birth to a chicken that was finally the mother of an unbroken line of hens that survives to this day, some of whom had nonchicken fathers. The problem is that the variation of the breeding population is much larger than the distance from the originals to the final result.