Why are we so set on labels?

No not chemical labels as such, but labels in general. If I had access I would put this in whimsy, but I dont have access. A number of events, and a couple of recent threads on here, got me thinking.

Labels, we are obsessed with labels, WE being mankind. I do some ramblings on a blog, and one of the topics that cropped up was the kingdoms.

We are currently taught the 5 kingdom system in school, unless you goto the school in the next town, they teach mainly the 3 kingdom system.

So what started the debate? well the fact we cant seem to rest without sticking everything into a box with a label, all kind of neat and tidy.

If you mention Life in biological or theological or even psychological terms, is not neat and tidy. Lets take some examples.

A pencil.
Well its wood or metal or plastic outer, but mainly the thing that defines it as a pencil is the graphite inside that makes the mark.

If I use one, even a fancy roll out one, most people who ask, what am i drawing with? Are happy with the answer a pencil.

Few people get upset if I dont actually define it, or fully label it. If I say I am using a wooden 7 inch, graphite core,red eraser ended writing device, of the order pencil. Would look at me strange!

True there is likely some (probably on here), who would not be happy with a simple, I am using a pencil.

We have even started to sub divide and label people, it was reasonable, maybe even helpful to have for example, Heterosexual and Gay people. Ok like the 3 Kingdom system I can see a reason for it, and in some situations it is helpful for those in some situations.

Now we have decided this isnt enough, so like the 5 kingdom system, we have decided we need to sort out the two groups and make them neater, more tidy, better fitting.

Now this isnt about sexuality as you will see, but it happens to be a relevant example, of what I perceive as a almost obsessive compulsive desire to stick labels on everything.

Worse than that, we need to make sure the label is accurate to 6 Decimal points. So we split it to Hetro, Gay, and Bi. Ok great thats a bit more tidy, me personally being lazy, would have just used the hetro or Gay label depending on my need at the time.

But even that isnt good enough, now we have letters because the labels are many, something like LGBTQ or whatever.

If your in a group and one of those letters describes you, I am sorry if your offended. You just happen to be a good example of what i see in the Kingdoms system.

So lets go back to that.

Animal, Plant and Fungi. Great each is defined, I dont need to describe what makes something fit each group on here!

Then we decided actually some things are not that neat and tidy, so we need another group, we added Monera. Yes I am ignoring the 6 Kingdom system for now.

So we got Plants covered, animals covered, fungi covered and bacteria covered. Great Job done, except no it isnt is it. because if your super anal and arrange your home library using the Dewey Decimal system, then your unhappy with 4 Kingdoms.

You could at a push make do with it, but it would bug you wouldnt it, you would find something that didnt exactly fit one the boxes, now your label wont be super accurate.

So what do we do??? Ok we add a catch all box for the junk, the stuff that dont fit, the box we hide under the stairs ready to sort another day.

BTW blame euglena for this post!

So rather than save on boxes and labels, we didnt drop a box and just get a large catch all the junk that dont fit, we added another box. Protista!

Great surely thats it!! No not really because while we call the American system six kingdom, we cheat. Actually the 6 kingdom system if your getting so anal you need 6 kingdoms, is actually 8. But I guess people thought 8 was going to far, so we use a slash/. the slash lets us stick a divider in the box.

So why cant we have 4? seeing as we have a junk box for stuff that dont fit, why not be happy with just sticking things not in the main 3, into the fourth?

Why do we feel compelled to break it down further? Some of us dont to be fair, many have dropped the kingdom system. Ok we have sort of made matters worse, but dropping Kingdoms allows you to (figuratively speaking, go from Hetro,Gay and Bi, to LGBQT).

So then we start a thread a thread on religeon, ok it wasnt started on religeon as such, but it got there. It start with the believers and non believers, Great two sides! Two box's and labels.

Then slowly we start to sort those groups, we get those that dont know, so we give them a box (agnostic), but as soon as you do that, another group wants to be more precisely defined.

And so on it goes, as a species we are unable to except some things just dont fit, some stuff dosnt conform to how we think it should. At what point if any, are we as a species going to be happy?

Is there a point at which we sit back, look at the boxs and say, great thats it, all neatly sorted?

Dosnt matter what you look at, everything is slowly being labeled. Everything is slowly having to get a label or it bugs us. Take gender fluid, now ok to some the following is highly offensive, I am sorry you are offended. BUT In most cases, medically speaking 99.9% of the planet has XX or XY chromosomes, yes ok a few do indeed not conform to this.

But gender fluid? No need for the box or label, if you wake up and feel XX then sure if it makes you happy, if your asked that day what you are, say i am female today.

If you wake and feel XY then FFS, just for the day say your male. Because biologically speaking your messing up the other box's.

We dont actually have a real thing where your X's and Y's change back and forth by the day, or whatever. So if your so anal you need 6-8 kingdoms, you need to except that if something fits a box precisely, then thats it, thats job done.

Even if your Euglena, you got a box now. I know even Euglena is currently being looked at with a view to splitting it up!!

But in reality if you got animal bits and you can also qualify as a plant (like Euglena), then you got ya box already. Believe it or not this isnt a rant, also it is certainly not having a gop at those who want to say they are fluid.

Truth is I dont care what you label yourself, I do care however when on the one hand, we have more than enough box's and yet despite something fitting that box perfectly, we try and find an excuse to make another box.

Now that is actually a direct rant at something I read about Euglena, its in one of last years science journals (think its last years). See Euglena is something I culture alot of, both for feeding fish fry and other stuff, but also because its a oddball.

Then the gender fluid thing got me because, the person who said to me they are fluid, insisted that Euglena was really nothing at all to do with plants, it just happened to have a chloroplast, but having a chloroplast shouldnt make you part plant!!

Bloody cheeky to have XY chromosomes, declare you are fluid, and then diss my beloved Euglena!!

Now to make it clear, my view is the following. Lets get rid the labels for people, your just a person. You have certain tastes but all you really need is a box marked person!

mark it Human, seriously I dont care what you call the box. But for me personally I am happy you, me and everyone else is a person, i dont need it broken down more than that. it also takes care of the ever increasing number of letters we are getting each day.

AND just for the record.... LEAVE the fucking Euglena in protista! I like it being an oddball, I dont want it broken down more, I didnt want bacteria broken down into Archaea and Archaea/bacteria.

Stop now with prions, virons and phages. Seriously stop the labels, except the world is never going to fit neatly into your world view.

As a side not I love tropical fish, I except that L numbers have become excepted for Loricariidae. Its never going to get sorted properly, so be happy with the number system.

Stop moving killi fish about!! Do that now, i lost first place in a show fairly recently, simply because I didnt know one my fish, has for the fourth time in 10 years been reclassified!! So I got the name wrong. I got disqualified, a great fish lost because a numpty with a label machine and box fetish had moved it again.

Same with religeon, you believe or you dont believe, what you believe in is your business, i dont need to know your label, your a person.

Going back to the pencil thing, your a pencil, i dont need to know, nor do i care, if your a red bodied, wooden cased, graphite inner, black eraser, extendable, replaceable lead pencil.

I am just happy your a pencil and not a pen. Although obviously if your a pen thats ok too, its just I am looking for a pencil, i do also use pens and i have nothing against most pens.

not over keen on ball point pens, I prefer gel pens, actually black gel pens, with a rubber grip .

End of semi rant.

Has anyone understood the post? how many are going to jump on a couple of words and phrases? Will most see what its about, or will there own world view colour it and label me?

This is the reason for the post, I want to see the reaction, who actually understands the post, and who just grabs the bit that annoys them and focuses on that.

Be careful with the box and label for me . My real view is actually completely neutral, apart from Euglena and fish.

I agree with the above and would add that I think that it is a natural human trait to give things names, it makes conversations possible

Quote: Originally posted by wg48

PS I don’t like being experimented on either.

Quote: Originally posted by JJay

Labels facilitate communication and logic. They have their uses.

Quote: Originally posted by Bert

Can we file this under: Quote: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. -Ralph Waldo Emerson And go back to watching porn and blowing stuff up?

Yeah sure, but personally i dont do both at the same time

Oh the link to the book!

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=l4-KrgEACAAJ&dq=verb...

[Edited on 8-2-2018 by NEMO-Chemistry]

Quote: Originally posted by NEMO-Chemistry

JJAY thats an avoidance defense answer.

Quote: Originally posted by JJay

Quote: Originally posted by NEMO-Chemistry   JJAY thats an avoidance defense answer. In a sense you are partially correct. I could write a dissertation on the subject, but is there a coherent connection to mad science?

Well depends if you except madness and genius are just different sides of the same coin, a £1 coin from 2016 with 4 chips from the ......ok i stopped now

Seriously though, the link i sent you was the base of the trigger words, but the layout etc was from a really good book. the other thread about being model driven etc sparked it off.

I really wanted someone in particular to reply, but never mind. I messed it up by replying.

I felt kind of guilty lol.

The science type people and those like yourself, tend to not go in on the attack. So as one thing seems the book was right about, even if people are going to be polite, there is no way to avoid replying.

If you see what I mean, I nearly chose some more contentious subjects, but figured that would just get it going too far. Also I messed up the order a bit.

Quote: Originally posted by NEMO-Chemistry

The science type people and those like yourself, tend to not go in on the attack.

Quote: Originally posted by Diachrynic

So, really not the labels are at fault but the people misusing them and not being reasonable and logical. People insisting on a simple and clear division into categories will be disappointed by reality. JJay, your example is what I believe a logical fallacy known as post hoc. Event 1: The janitor stole something. Event 2: Now something has been stolen. post hoc: The janitor stole it. I don't think labels are to blame here, but rather people being unreasonable.

Quote: Originally posted by Melgar

Okay, I actually had an argument with an LGBT activist about the fact that these Wikipedia pages just seem wrong to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Jenner Pronoun and name changes should NOT be retroactive! Doing so implies that these individuals identified as female for their whole lives, when this probably isn't true. It makes more sense to use male pronouns and names to describe them during periods of their lives when they identified as male, and vice versa. To do otherwise assumes that gender fluidity is not possible. I think I actually got my point across well, which is hard to do with activist types. Anyone that's read anything about Kinsey's studies knows that most people have at least some characteristics of the opposite sex. Mammalian sexuality is controlled by hormones mainly, and genes only indirectly. This allows things like fathers to experience maternal instincts, which is probably a positive evolutionary development. Plenty of other examples exist.

Right STOP!!!!

STOP STOP STOP

Reverse up a bit, lets consider this done, because I have already given all the information! This was done here and on a closed soap making facebook site. Exactly same type of post but instead of fish I exchange sodium and potassium hydroxide and the term Lye.

So final explanation of what it was about. Then you can stop replying to the thread!!

The link I gave was too a book, now had the others books been wrong this would now be over! But actually it worked too well.

Its was a simple Psychology experiment devised from 3 books, i mixed 3 different experiments up a little. I then used the book I linked too to find trigger words.

I knew that those who had replied to the model or procedural thread, were primed to answer. I had a rough idea from that thread who would react and who wouldnt. I didnt know which way you would fall though.

So the point?

Well the post is actually irrelevant, you pick a subject that relates in a wide way to your audience. In this case ORDER, you then put in words that should trigger negative responses in themselves. For example here everyone jumps to the defense of the notion we should drop classification and tidy boxs. It did your brains in to think of a world where you couldnt drill down and classify to the nth degree.

Had I of not put trigger words in hardly anyone would have replied, so what happened on the soap site?
EVERYONE jumped on the subject matter, no one even mentioned classification and order, it was solely about the content. I was accused of denying people to have the right to be who they wanted to be etc.

I was called homophobic, I even got accused of being biased against pens!! WG picked up on it straight away, but then still couldnt resist defending the right to have order.

So a quick recap.

I read some books, it fascinates me, i see an opportunity to repeat some the stuff from the books, I take it.

I spent over 5 hours picking the words and order (fucked the order up however), I then take a guess who will be on what side. I was expecting more dismissive people, Bert was the key dismissive. Its a fairly rare traignt according to masters and singleton.

So it was a simple experiment, I have nothing against labels, pens, pencils or people. Apart from euglena (thats bit true), the rest of it was simply designed to illicit responses and see if the books are correct.

On a science site you expect the principle to be focused on, and it was, but within that you look for three main types of response.

On the soap site you expect the actual examples and content to be attacked, and it was. But it didnt work so well, I got banned for 24 hours lol. It really upset people, maybe the subject matter was a bit far for those types.

What I didnt actually consider was the soap group was a bad choice. Soap making is part art and part science, I expected a mix of answers, but it seems those that are part science minded and part art minded, are actually pretty aggressive. Thats a worry as I fall into that group!

So its done and dusted, you can keep your labels, I have no problem with the current system. I would have posted it in whimsy, but in some ways it is science. The one I couldnt at all decide how they would respond, didnt respond at all. Shame

I was waiting for aga to reply, that would have been really interesting, i guessed he would be the third type. But we wont know now .

So order is restored, thank you all very much for replying, sorry if anyone was offended by anything said. None of the post contains any strongly held views I have, to do so would have dragged me into it.

I had to pick things I am pretty neutral about, the only one I am not neutral about is the classification euglena but thats not the point at all, please dont focus on that.
The reason for euglena is simply a personal one.

In biology at school we were taught what makes a animal and what makes a plant etc etc, bog standard school stuff about cell walls and so on. My teacher had never even heard of euglena. So i stuck my hand up and asked what is a organism with no cell wall and uses chloroplasts to feed, he replied non existent. The rest is history so to speak.

So there you go, the post was carefully made up just to see who would fall into which group.

Quote: Originally posted by Fulmen

The problem with labels isn't the labels at all but rather those that insist everything must fit into clear and distinct groups. Reality doesn't really care about semantics.

Sorry I missed this reply, its a perfect example.

Fulmen understood what was being attacked (by me) was classification and not labels as such.

If you read the post really carefully (its done so its not obvious BTW), notice I am not attacking labels, but i constantly use the term.

The actual gist of the post is, more about the kingdoms of life, we rarely actually need to talk them, we talk about an apple tree etc, but few conversations need you to mention its a plant.

Apple is good enough, when you need to talk about plants, then you need another layer, hence the whole system of classification we have with taxonomy.

The further down the taxonomic tree you go, the less you actually need to ever mention that part. What I mean is this......

Take a person, any person. How often have you talked about someone in particular and related them to the fact they are a eukaryotic system?

John, man he is a disgrace to eukaryotes. No you might say, John is a total disgrace to mankind, or John is bad person. So if you read carefully I am actually talking about breaking classifications to the point that everything has its own ultimate box.

But reality is you cant do that, it was tried with Protista. But recently attempts are being made to subdivide that.

But dont focus on it at all, I am explaining what the topic was. But the fact everyone debated labels etc, it isnt about labels.

Besides, its not a real post!! It was crafted really carefully, which is why some simply said I dont have a clue what your getting at. Because those people are highly logic based.

They read it and discovered the subject was classification and yet the content was labels using highly charged subjects that people have strong opinions on. So for them it didnt compute.


Right get out my lab now, thank you for taking part lol

Quote: Originally posted by JJay

Quote: Originally posted by Diachrynic   So, really not the labels are at fault but the people misusing them and not being reasonable and logical. People insisting on a simple and clear division into categories will be disappointed by reality. JJay, your example is what I believe a logical fallacy known as post hoc. Event 1: The janitor stole something. Event 2: Now something has been stolen. post hoc: The janitor stole it. I don't think labels are to blame here, but rather people being unreasonable. Actually, that's a different fallacy. I never said the janitor stole anything. Rather, I said that the janitor is a thief.

Quote: Originally posted by NEMO-Chemistry

Seriously stop the labels, except the world is never going to fit neatly into your world view.

Quote: Originally posted by NEMO-Chemistry

If you read the post really carefully (its done so its not obvious BTW), notice I am not attacking labels, but i constantly use the term.

Quote: Originally posted by Diachrynic

Quote: Originally posted by JJay   Quote: Originally posted by Diachrynic   So, really not the labels are at fault but the people misusing them and not being reasonable and logical. People insisting on a simple and clear division into categories will be disappointed by reality. JJay, your example is what I believe a logical fallacy known as post hoc. Event 1: The janitor stole something. Event 2: Now something has been stolen. post hoc: The janitor stole it. I don't think labels are to blame here, but rather people being unreasonable. Actually, that's a different fallacy. I never said the janitor stole anything. Rather, I said that the janitor is a thief. Wait... There are thiefs who didn't steal? Quote: Originally posted by NEMO-Chemistry   Seriously stop the labels, except the world is never going to fit neatly into your world view. Quote: Originally posted by NEMO-Chemistry   If you read the post really carefully (its done so its not obvious BTW), notice I am not attacking labels, but i constantly use the term. Nemo, that turn is contradictory.

Quote: Originally posted by Diachrynic

I have, and now I'm just confused...

LOL, it was a psychology experiment, at its most basic level its designed to see what type of people focus on which aspect of the post.

Most have focused on the term label, I didnt expect it to be so highly triggering. LABEL is a red herring in the entire post, you associate label with the main context of the post. Actually Label was the term used to take focus away from classification.

In the main post the actual classification is Taxonomy. If it had been a 'real' post, I would have spoken directly about the taxonomic system, I would have been direct.

I wouldnt have spoken about labels when describing (what was called box's), its really really interesting to see such a difference between the different groups where I posted it.

But seriously you can let it go, if you want to talk about Taxonomy, my views are actually pretty normal. I am reasonably happy with the current system, considering no system is ever going to be perfect.

But the post in reality wasnt a discussion on this, it was a post to see reaction to certain words etc.

Do you get it now?

on the side....

I assumed Janitors wee given keys to the entire building, what muppet gives keys to thief?


So we know it wasnt the Janitor, so who did nick it? Bet it was the Boss
[Edited on 9-2-2018 by NEMO-Chemistry]

[Edited on 9-2-2018 by NEMO-Chemistry]

Quote: Originally posted by Diachrynic

So you made the post to test how people can get distracted by "trigger words", so they would go rambling about the trigger words but not the content? (I'm sorry if I'm kinda slow at this, English is not my first language, so I probably I didn't got all subtle details.) What did you conclude from this experiment?

Quote: Originally posted by Diachrynic

Ah, I think I got it now. Thank you for your detailed explanation ^^ There is a lucid dreaming forum I'm active in, they are very open-minded and tolerant people. I might try something similar there, it is interesting. [Edited on 9-2-2018 by Diachrynic]

I understand your point. MY point was that if we are to move into the territory that LGBT activists would prefer, our goal really ought to be to do away with labels. Not completely, but the "52 genders" thing that facebook did is absolutely the wrong way to go. We don't label people by their non-sexual interests and preferences. I don't refer to myself as bi-interest to describe my interests in chemistry and programming. (Really, it'd be more like dodeca-interest, but that's beside the point) People should be able to describe themselves sexually in terms of who and what they like, rather than "who they are".

I don't actually think there's any reason to lock this thread, if people want to keep it going. Maybe have a mod split it off into a new one though.

Also, you should know better than to whack a hornet's nest with a stick.

[Edited on 2/10/18 by Melgar]

Quote: Originally posted by Melgar

Also, you should know better than to whack a hornet's nest with a stick. [Edited on 2/9/18 by Melgar]

Quote: Originally posted by Diachrynic

Wait... There are thiefs who didn't steal?

Quote: Originally posted by NEMO-Chemistry

Not if your scientifically evaluating which stick works best lol.

Quote: Originally posted by JJay

You ask as if you think you know the answer. Why do you ask?

so who stole what???

Yeah I didnt plan the experiment past whacking the nest. Funding cuts and all that

Quote: Originally posted by elementcollector1

Supposedly, the reasoning behind this is that referring to a transgender person by their 'deadname' (original name before the change) is hurtful to them, as it implies others' perceptions of their gender have not shifted (which, as far as I'm aware, is the entire point of transgender behavior in the first place).

Quote: Originally posted by elementcollector1

I agree that completely overwriting their history with their prior name is an incorrect use of the label, but referring to them in the present tense with their deadname in a Wikipedia article doesn't seem to be the correct approach either, if only for politeness' sake. Jenner's article seems to cleverly get around this by referring to her as 'Jenner' during her Olympic history instead of 'her', 'Caitlyn' or 'she' - thus retaining a correct label for the time period and avoiding the issue entirely.

Quote: Originally posted by Diachrynic

Quote: Originally posted by JJay   You ask as if you think you know the answer. Why do you ask? I ask because I don't know. There is no other reason behind it. Was my question worded wrong? You used the word thief in a way which lets me think it can also be used to describe any sort of criminal - but I am not sure. Quick recap: In my initial statement I assumed the janitor had stolen something in the past because you said he was a thief. Then you said that you never stated he had stolen something, just that he was a thief. That got me confused 'cause I assumed thiefs are people who steal. You replied by using criminal and thief more or less interchangeably. So I asked again. It's not that I don't understand your point about the janitor being the one who stole just because he had stolen. I get that. The reason I asked is because it confuses me. (As I said, I don't know English as my first language. I don't use it all the time.)

Quote: Originally posted by JJay

I never said the janitor had stolen. You said the janitor had stolen. I said that the janitor is a thief. If I have a stick of dynamite, it is an explosive even if it hasn't blown up yet. A thief who has not yet stolen remains a thief.

Well currently he is a Hominini, or its likely for now your pretty safe with Homo, but for the ultra anal we have Homosapien. I cant see person anywhere so i guess thats just your label .

His title would be janitor, so still no need for labels, mainly because even if you want to stick Pan into Homo, then logic says not many Pan are janitors. So with the title you could get rid of the label altogether and use the proper system.
Dont even need Title, but we like titles, hence we now go straight back full circle, titles are now redundant.

Common use was for Gender specification, seeing as we dont use titles for other Genus on the whole, would make sense to ditch them and reclassify them for use of description.

So thats still a huge pile of labels we dont need.

And still no one has explained, why would you give the entire building keys to a thief? Regardless of his guilt, you get heads sooner or later if you toss the coin.



[Edited on 12-2-2018 by NEMO-Chemistry]