[SEQ RERUN] Where to Draw the Boundary?
Today’s post, Where to Draw the Boundary? was originally published on 21 February 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Your definition draws a boundary around things that don’t really belong together. You can claim, if you like, that you are defining the word “fish” to refer to salmon, guppies, sharks, dolphins, and trout, but not jellyfish or algae. You can claim, if you like, that this is merely a list, and there is no way a list can be “wrong”. Or you can stop playing nitwit games and admit that you made a mistake and that dolphins don’t belong on the fish list.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Arguing “By Definition”, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
“Fish” may not be the best example, given that “fish” is a paraphyletic group (it doesn’t form a clade). (Cladistics is why “birds are dinosaurs” is a usefully true statement.)