Showing all 56 replies.
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>>5127245
Taxonimists love doing this shit to annoy everyone. Like the berry thing they do where every berry you'd care to name aren't true berries™, only some random thing no one has ever eaten or made jam out of. We've been calling these things berries for centuries, come up with a new name for that shit you just found in the jungle somewhere.
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>>5128880
"In botany, a berry is a fleshy fruit produced from a single flower containing one ovary.[1] Berries so defined include grapes, currants, and tomatoes, as well as cucumbers, eggplants (aubergines), persimmons and bananas, but exclude certain fruits that meet the culinary definition of berries, such as strawberries and raspberries. "
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>>5129712
It can be confusing, because "fruit" is both a botanical and a culinary term. Botanically a fruit is just the seed bearing part, that forms from a flower. In the kitchen fruit/vegetable is classified because of how they taste and are used, pretty much disregarding any botanical concerns. Therefor a tomatoe is a fruit AND a vegetable. Same goes for cucumbers, zuchinis, egg plants, pumpkins and a shit ton of other things. Saying they are "actually fruits" is kind of misleading and bullshit
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>>5129712
>Actually
Fruits can be vegetables, it's literally just a culinary term and depending on how you decide, all fruits are vegetables anyway, but the usual distinction is "savory/not sweet" plant shit that's edible
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>>5128880
They're not doing it to "annoy everyone", people just started naming organisms before we started to scientifically classify them, and the names they were given are too grounded in everyday language to be changed for scientific accuracy
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>>5130706
>bunch of extinct reptiles similar to crocodiles found
>believed to be distant relatives of true crocs and to have convergently evolved their crocodile-ness
>name them pseudosuchia (fake crocs)
>turns out they are the ancestors of true crocs after all
>this means true crocs are now placed within pseudosuchia
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File: huh.gif (3.4 MB)
>>5130733
If the set of characteristics doesn't encompass the things people already use the term for then the set of characteristics is bad for that term and they should just come up with a different term to describe the set of characteristics to avoid confusion.
Its like some speccy cunt coming up with a set of characteristics for "car" and coming up with "vehicle with petrol engine" and then some speccy faggot is like "ERM SCIENTIFICALLY THATS NOT A CAR BECAUSE IT HAS A DIESEL ENGINE" but then happily label a speedboat a car. Maybe your set of characteristics is bad if it includes things it shouldn’t and doesn't include things it should. Maybe you should just call them "petrol vehicles" instead of trying to retrofit the term "car" onto them.
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>>5130733
They are reusing and therefore redefining common words. They do, in fact, do this to annoy everyone. The easy sciences are full of midwits with ego issues and they 100% want to create excuses to correct people.
>THATS NOT A REAL FISH YOU’D KNOW IF YOU…
Arts majors are basically this but they live in an alternate reality entirely and think they have a moral imperative to do so. Which can’t be real beyond the word of God because there is nothing that isn’t material or God. God doesn’t allow the fantastical to exist. We have measured the depths of the earth and the breadth of the sky and thus broke the covenant of wonder.
t. physicist
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>>5131108
>They are reusing and therefore redefining common words
They aren’t though. They are using the term independently of its common use and giving it a specific definition to use in a scientific setting
>They do, in fact, do this to annoy everyone. The easy sciences are full of midwits with ego issues and they 100% want to create excuses to correct people
They don’t, but I can see why a retard like you would think this
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>>5131102
>If the set of characteristics doesn't encompass the things people already use the term for then the set of characteristics is bad for that term and they should just come up with a different term to describe the set of characteristics to avoid confusion
That doesn’t work though. There is no set of characteristics that applies to both raspberries and blueberries but not to apples. Almost all fruit would be berries and almost all elapids would be cobras by that logic
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>>5131536
Well yeah it was an example of a stupid set of characteristics that misdefine a term.
>>5131577
How does it not work?
>There is no set of characteristics that applies to both raspberries and blueberries but not to apples.
Then use a different term, as I said. Just like how vegetable isn't a scientific term. Berry doesn't need to be a scientific term if everything we actually consider to be berries wouldn't be berries but things we don't consider berries (eg watermelon / banana) are considered berries scientifically. Just call them something else You don't need to use the same term. There are infinite possible words.
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>>5131937
>How does it not work?
Because there is no set of characteristics that encompasses everything commonly referred to as berries while excluding fruits that aren’t commonly referred to as berries
>if everything we actually consider to be berries wouldn't be berries
But many berries are botanically berries, like blueberries for example
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>>5131577
>almost all elapids would be cobras by that logic
Wikipedia lists "American Cobra" as an alternate name for the Eastern Coral Snake, so at some point in the past someone may have been using this strain of knowledge.
Or maybe they were just trying to hype up the coral snake.
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>>5131983
He's saying that the overlap is the problem. We use the term berry to describe shape, taste, and eating experience, and that pre-dates the scientific term. Taxonomists should have not used the word berry at all and instead developed a different term for their own purposes. This conflation is lazy at best or full on hubris at worst.
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>>5132026
>We use the term berry to describe shape, taste, and eating experience
No we don’t. Fruits of wildly different shapes, sizes, tastes and textures are referred to as berries. A juniper berry shares almost nothing in common with a strawberry
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>>5132096
You're not understanding the problem here. The word berry was already in use for specific things even if they don't have the same guts under the microscope. Instead of stealing the word berry and applying it to things no one called berries before, they should have invented a new word to encapsulate the new common thread.
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