Science Memes

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#notaseagull (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 2 months ago (3 children)

It's like what I say to bother botanists:

If half of the fruits with "berry" in their name don't fit your definition of berry, you need a new definition

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Pretty sure botanists are aware that the same word can have different meaning outside of their scientific field. The people actually bothered by this are pedants who read about it on the internet, not people who studied botany.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

A slight distinction:

The people actually bothered by this are the friends of pedants who read about it on the internet, not people who studied botany.

The pedants aren't bothered, they're elated they get to display faux superiority, I'm the one bothered by them!

Lol

[–] JackbyDev 4 points 2 months ago

Well, no, there's nothing wrong with the definition of berry, but there would be something wrong about a botanist being annoyed with someone using the colloquial definition of berry.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

What if I told you that words can have different meanings in different contexts? Just because the same word can be used to refer to different things depending on whether its used in everyday or scientific speech doesn't mean either usage is "wrong".

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Context specific definitions are the bane of my autistic existence. Figuring out context is a waste of brainpower that could be better used having anxiety over situations that aren't going to happen.

/Completely serious, but not quite as strongly as worded here.

[–] groknull 2 points 2 months ago

So I take it no one should mention that in astrophysics anything heavier than helium is a metal

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yeah well, people aren't computers and language always has multiple levels of ambiguity. I understand if that is difficult to grasp if you can't understand it on an intuitive level like most people. On the other hand it's not that hard to understand on an intellectual level.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Doesn't change that it was a bad idea to borrow a generic term for small sweet fruits to refer to a specific botanical feature. Not just bad, but completely unnecessary and frankly, simply, a bit stupid.