4 ms·
Birds are not mammals. Fish are not mammals. Mammals on the other hand have males that impregnate the females.
by flippinburgers 4y ago
Birds are not mammals. Fish are not mammals. Mammals on the other hand have males that impregnate the females.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoSomeone forgot that the platypus exists.
- flippinburgers 4y agoThe exception is not the rule.
- icehawk 4y agosomeone forgot the echidna exists
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoAbstractions are useful, this is true, but the exceptions are a reminder that they are not reality, they are just a categorization we overlay on top of reality to help us understand it. Their utility is contextual. Your abstraction ignores all the sterile men and women too, by the way. That's because it is a particularly bad one.
- flippinburgers 4y agoThe fact of the matter is that if someone is missing a leg they are absolutely human but they are broken nonetheless.
- ben_w 4y agoThat analogy illuminates nothing.
- flippinburgers 4y agoTo be sterile is to be broken but it doesn't reduce ones humanity.
- ben_w 4y agoNobody's suggesting that it might. You're the one who wrote: > Mammals on the other hand have males that impregnate the females. We're all saying "that's not a very useful definition".
- ben_w 4y agoProducing a more complicated definition with a special case for mammals vs. not mammals doesn't really add anything, even if it weren't for the platypus or the echidna being further examples of things not working like that. Biology is messy, the boundaries are messy, the words we use are merely for our own benefit to simplify a messy and complex reality.
- flippinburgers 4y agoMessy edge cases doesn't mean let's just throw everything away.
- ben_w 4y agoI didn't ask you to throw anything away.