6 ms·

I’ve been teaching my daughters about these “pirate terms” like tomatoes being fruit, peanuts being legumes, palm trees are not trees. She has a hard time beli

I’ve been teaching my daughters about these “pirate terms” like tomatoes being fruit, peanuts being legumes, palm trees are not trees. She has a hard time believing me — tomatoes was ok, but for peanut she said “no daddy, there’s nut in the name” And so now we call it pealegume and jelly sandwiches

tshaddox 4y ago
> for peanut she said “no daddy, there’s nut in the name” There’s also pea in the same. It’s kinda like a pea and kinda like a nut.
jerf 4y ago
Child pyschological development is always a entertainingly fuzzy science, but I think there's at least some good reason to believe that the ability to apply multiple categorization systems to a set of objects at a time is something that will take until the teen years to really come in. Some people never really grok it. With my younger kids, I settled on just introducing the ideas of multiple overlapping systems, but not pushing on it too hard until they're older. They're only now getting to that age and I've been folding it in to some conversations lately more strongly. I think having some fun with it early as you are is a very strong approach to the topic. I sort of dislike the framing of this sort of article, as well as the "actually nothing's really a berry" and similar culinary silliness, because this is a really important cognitive skill for higher-level thinking and introducing it with an approach virtually guaranteed to produce resistance and associating it with trickery rather than clear thinking is a real disservice, in my opinion. This article, once it gets going, is good; I'm only complaining about the framing, not the content. I will complain about the culinary version of this, where the trickery I'm referring to is "You think that a strawberry is a berry (often heavily implied, 'dumbass'), but really it's an aggregate accessory fruit (often heavily implied, 'as I am smarter for knowing than you')." The whole frame is wrong; it isn't really one thing or the other, it is both, and several other things besides. The multiple classifications all exist at once and they aren't better or worse than each other, they are better or worse for certain uses, and there certainly isn't one classification that is the "real" one and all the rest are fake. For people pushing this, it's like, yeah, you almost get the idea that multiple classifications can exist at once, but you've still completely missed the point.
DangitBobby 4y ago
For practical purposes, tomatoes are vegetables, peanuts are nuts, and palm trees are trees. Tomatoes and peanuts are primarily known to be useful as food, and in the context of food, they fill the niche of vegetables and peanuts, respectively. Palm trees are useful pretty much only decoratively and to provide shade (unless you harvest them, which most people don't) so they have exactly the same utility as trees, making them trees. It's interesting to think about how these things are biologically different from the other things in their practical category, but we strip away the utility of placing things into categories if we try to apply them outside of the context in which the category is... useful. So unless you're in a biology lesson (or you are a botanist, or just having fun with facts), tomatoes are vegetables.
- ranko 4y ago
  Tomatoes are vegetables and fruit. "Fruit" is a botanical category, including plenty of things that are inedible for various reasons. "Vegetable" is a culinary category, including many things that are fruit (aubergine/eggplant, cucumber, and many more).
  - j16sdiz 4y ago
    The word "Vegetable" also means plants in general, according to the english dictionary. Human languages are great, aint they?
    - brabel 4y ago
      Wouldn't that be "vegetation"? I agree with OP, it's not a vegetable if it's not edible!
      - ttctciyf 4y ago
        As in ‘the vegetable kingdom’ or ‘animal, vegetable or mineral?’ etc.
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    Yes. However, you tell me fruit and I think sweet, so telling me a fruit isn't actually useful.
dekhn 4y ago
Why would tomato being a fruit be a pirate terms? It satisfies all the conditions of being a fruit.
ghoogl 4y ago
[dead]
rags2riches 4y ago
"Pirate terms" because science hijacked perfectly good words and changed their meanings?
commandlinefan 4y ago
> tomatoes being fruit, peanuts being legumes, palm trees are not trees Strawberries aren't berries but bananas are.

tshaddox 4y ago

> for peanut she said “no daddy, there’s nut in the name” There’s also pea in the same. It’s kinda like a pea and kinda like a nut.

jerf 4y ago

Child pyschological development is always a entertainingly fuzzy science, but I think there's at least some good reason to believe that the ability to apply multiple categorization systems to a set of objects at a time is something that will take until the teen years to really come in. Some people never really grok it. With my younger kids, I settled on just introducing the ideas of multiple overlapping systems, but not pushing on it too hard until they're older. They're only now getting to that age and I've been folding it in to some conversations lately more strongly. I think having some fun with it early as you are is a very strong approach to the topic. I sort of dislike the framing of this sort of article, as well as the "actually nothing's really a berry" and similar culinary silliness, because this is a really important cognitive skill for higher-level thinking and introducing it with an approach virtually guaranteed to produce resistance and associating it with trickery rather than clear thinking is a real disservice, in my opinion. This article, once it gets going, is good; I'm only complaining about the framing, not the content. I will complain about the culinary version of this, where the trickery I'm referring to is "You think that a strawberry is a berry (often heavily implied, 'dumbass'), but really it's an aggregate accessory fruit (often heavily implied, 'as I am smarter for knowing than you')." The whole frame is wrong; it isn't really one thing or the other, it is both, and several other things besides. The multiple classifications all exist at once and they aren't better or worse than each other, they are better or worse for certain uses, and there certainly isn't one classification that is the "real" one and all the rest are fake. For people pushing this, it's like, yeah, you almost get the idea that multiple classifications can exist at once, but you've still completely missed the point.

DangitBobby 4y ago

For practical purposes, tomatoes are vegetables, peanuts are nuts, and palm trees are trees. Tomatoes and peanuts are primarily known to be useful as food, and in the context of food, they fill the niche of vegetables and peanuts, respectively. Palm trees are useful pretty much only decoratively and to provide shade (unless you harvest them, which most people don't) so they have exactly the same utility as trees, making them trees. It's interesting to think about how these things are biologically different from the other things in their practical category, but we strip away the utility of placing things into categories if we try to apply them outside of the context in which the category is... useful. So unless you're in a biology lesson (or you are a botanist, or just having fun with facts), tomatoes are vegetables.

ranko 4y ago
Tomatoes are vegetables and fruit. "Fruit" is a botanical category, including plenty of things that are inedible for various reasons. "Vegetable" is a culinary category, including many things that are fruit (aubergine/eggplant, cucumber, and many more).
- j16sdiz 4y ago
  The word "Vegetable" also means plants in general, according to the english dictionary. Human languages are great, aint they?
  - brabel 4y ago
    Wouldn't that be "vegetation"? I agree with OP, it's not a vegetable if it's not edible!
    - ttctciyf 4y ago
      As in ‘the vegetable kingdom’ or ‘animal, vegetable or mineral?’ etc.
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  Yes. However, you tell me fruit and I think sweet, so telling me a fruit isn't actually useful.

dekhn 4y ago

Why would tomato being a fruit be a pirate terms? It satisfies all the conditions of being a fruit.

ghoogl 4y ago

[dead]

rags2riches 4y ago

"Pirate terms" because science hijacked perfectly good words and changed their meanings?

commandlinefan 4y ago

> tomatoes being fruit, peanuts being legumes, palm trees are not trees Strawberries aren't berries but bananas are.