Okay. First off, I want to appologise for this ahead of time: English is not my first language.
Now I'm cross-posting this from /lit/ because I think this counts somewhat as a scientific problem, specifically in regards to the Species Problem:
So recently, I read Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. It got me thinking about evolution and how one species can change over time into another one. And I realized that gradients like that everything. AND THIS MAKES ME REALLY ANGRY! Why? Because now I find it hard to define anything. Take the image attached. I'm sure we can agree that on one side, it is blue, and on the other side, it is red. But at what point does red turn into blue? You can't mark off any specific line because at any line, the color directly on either side would be nearly identical. SO IF WE CANNOT DRAW A LINE, HOW DO WE DEFINE RED OR BLUE?
More relevant to the book, is the definition of human. You probably consider yourself to be human. You probably consider your parents to be human. And their parents. etc. But if we go back far enough, we get something that you wouldn't be willing to call human.
But let's say we do that in order. We keep going back a generation until we hit something that's not human. But we just called the child of this thing, human. And assumable, they'd be very similar things. So how can you justify calling the parent not human?
I DON'T UNDERSTAND GRADIENTS AND IT'S RUINED MY WORLD-VIEW BECAUSE I CANNOT GIVE ANYTHING CLEAR DEFINITIONS ANYMORE. HOW DO I DEFINE RED VS BLUE? HOW DO I DEFINE HUMAN VS NOT HUMAN? WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TABLE AND A CHAIR?
>>7794873
Basically two things are a different species if they can no longer reproduce to produce viable offspring. So if we go back through time the point at which we can no long knock up a cousin on the Homo tree is the point at which they're two separate species.
>>7794877
boy you're just gonna love ring species then:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
>>7794877
But dogs can have babies with coyotes? And lions can have babies with tigers?
And what about people who cannot have kids? Are they not human?
>>7794882
This is an absolute nightmare.
>>7794873
Just because you can't delineate red and blue doesn't mean you can't tell that the left side is obviously red and the right side is obviously blue. Humans are defined based on general traits. We wouldn't notice a group of human turning into non-humans until the differences are so drastic that it's obvious.
>>7794882
Exactly, they can reproduce with their nearest neighbours but the ones at the ends can't reproduce with each other.
>>7794886
Like I said, basically. It's a touch more complicated than what I've written.
>And what about people who cannot have kids?
No that's just infertility, there's a difference between that and an actual genetic factor that prevents two species reproducing.
>>7794886
The offspring have to be fertile for the parents to be the same species. Hence infertile animals like ligers and mules are not their own species.
>>7794901
Coyote+Dog=Coydog.
Coydogs are fertile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coydog
>>7794873
I see thru your bad english enough to give you some advice.
>>Get a job you maladjusted loser
>>7794873
>I DON'T UNDERSTAND GRADIENTS
The gradient on a function f on a riemannian manifold is defined as [math] \nabla f = {\left( {df} \right)^\# } [/math] where d is the exterior derivative and # is a musical isomorphism.
>>7795001
>musical isomorphism
>>7794958
Wow. Calm down. Learn to handle maladjusted losers because the world is full of them and they won't disappear just because you don't like them.
