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by Nevermark
788 days ago
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> The IAU vote happened 18 years ago, yet you can’t let it go. The IAU happened 18 years ago but the vast public hasn’t cottened on to the whole new “cleared orbital debris” concept tacked on to a word that already has widespread use and understanding. Mistakes don’t become not mistakes because of 18 years. The mistake was that it’s predictable that two definitions for “planet” will still be jostling each other 50 years from now - for no good reason when distinctions could be made without attempts at universal redefinition by a minority of people who use the word for highly specialized reasons. Instead of just coining a new phrase such as “major planets” for their brand new definition. What are regular people supposed to say now when they want to say what planet meant which includes Mercury and Pluto? “Planetary like things?”??? It’s a completely avoidable mess. |
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The vast public doesn't generally cotton to anything. People don't routinely specify that they're talking about non-avian dinosaurs, or non-tetrapod fishes.
Which doesn't matter, because nobody expects the general public to actually be precise, so nobody gives a shit.
> a word that already has widespread use and understanding.
An enumeration is not an understanding. There is no understanding where Pluto is a planet and Eris is not.
> without attempts at universal redefinition by a minority of people who use the word for highly specialized reasons.
You mean the people who actually use the words as if they meant something?
> What are regular people supposed to say now when they want to say what planet meant which includes Mercury and Pluto? “Planetary like things?”???
That scenario occurs about as often as regular people wanting to say planet excluding pluto before the vote: they're never precise enough that it matters, and in the zero cases where it happens, they can just specify "incuding pluto" or "excluding pluto".