Yeah, I didnt get that either.
Mind you, I am in favor of changing the common name where it is no longer acceptable, like squawfish. It’s just that after the official change and making sure all the literature uses the new name, people will still use the old name for a generation.
Now, I can see changing the name of the beetle, as morons are killing if off, so as to protect it. But it will not be easy.
See, that is working. Good.
And if we wait a generation, then people will still be using the old name in two generations.
And if we wait two generations, then people will still be using the old name in three generations.
It’s very complicated, but if you think it through carefully and check your results using differential calculus, I think you will find that if we want an offensive name to disappear from use as soon as possible, we should change it now.
Yep!
BTW, I hear people call it the Northern pikeminnow now. I’m sure there are still some that use the old name, but not the folks I interact with. Name was changed 25 years ago so I’m glad to see that “generation” has passed us by.
The vanity is in giving the discoverer the right to create a fanciful name. It doesn’t matter how many species there are, they’ll have no valid scientific name until someone arrives at one and a consensus forms that it’s a scientifically valuable description. There’s a place to note the discoverer when it’s a factual matter of history. Science is about the accurate measurement of the universe and arbitrary naming adds nothing to the process or the results.
All names, including all scientific names, are arbitrary, and the current naming system is the one that has had a consensus form as scientifically valuable. It’s doesn’t need to be a description, it just needs to be a shorthand that allows us to agree on what exactly we’re talking about. I’m not even sure the current system could be descriptive of every species - you have one to two words, it must be unique, and there are tens if not hundreds of millions of species on earth. At a certain point you just run out of possible two-word descriptions and start naming them whatever. It sounds like you want the “name” to be a more in-depth description, which sounds great until your species “name” is twenty words long and nobody says the whole thing and people start getting confused. If anything it would probably make sense to be even more arbitrary and just start using an alphanumeric code, the way they do for stars and planets.
Yep. You can read the article archived on Time’s website. I remember someone calling it “practically a hit piece” and the second paragraph is
The cover is a wheel (I’m told a St. Catherine’s wheel) with corpses draped on it.
I do think, however, we have to acknowledge that any given time there may be figures greatly admired by one group while hated by another - one man’s terrorist, another man’s freedom fighter, as the slogan goes. So for the offensiveness of names after particular individual - do we base it on the personal beliefs of the one who chose the name? National attitudes (where it was named) when towards the namee when the name was chosen? Global attitudes then? Global attitudes now? Does it matter if new facts were discovered after the naming or if the namee totally changed as a person or public figure yeas later? Are we going to take a poll to see if the majority find the name offensive or just leave to the smaller bodies to decide (and which bodies - are we actually getting a representative sample people from different nations/religions/ethnicity/political views or not)?
Holy fuck. It’s Hitler. Can’t we at least agree on that one? Anyone who wants to make a slippery slope argument here is just being a dick.
Wait a generation for what?
which is exactly what I proposed. Do try to keep up.
Currently just under 2 Million named species, Scientists have hypothesized anywhere from 3 M to 100M species.
Right. There are people wanting to take Geo Washington’s name off things as he owned slaves. etc.
A non-arbitrary alphanumeric like that used in stars and planets would make more sense, after that system is changed to remove constellation names and is based solely on their relative position to some selected celestial body like our sun, with the addition of information necessary to adjust for their movement over time.
At the same time there’s nothing wrong with the informal use of arbitrary or fanciful names, which should be changed if found to be offensive. And that should not create any controversy because those names have no scientific value.
Only for obscure stars and planets. All the planets in our solar system have names, and so are the brighter stars.
Moderating:
I’m honestly not sure who you’re attacking. The context is unclear, but please do not attack other posters in GD. This is not the pit.
ETA: So not even a modnote here as it was raging against a non-board member.
I think you’d have enormous difficulty in supporting the claim that “most of the world admired Hitler” in 1933, or at any other time.
As for the decision to hold the Olympics in Berlin in 1936, that vote by the IOC occurred in 1931, two years before Hitler came to power. Unless there were a bunch of Nazi sympathizers on the Committee who had a crystal ball foreseeing the end of the Weimar Republic, they didn’t vote in favor of Berlin out of admiration for Hitler.
I was attacking the scientist who made the quote cited directly above. Not anyone posting
OK, please, please, try and make that a little clearer next time.
Though this was not a warning. I will clarify my note also.
It should be renamed to Anophthalmus ironii. Except, wiping out an entire … “We commit both types of genocide: intentional and unwitting.”
News story today that the powers that be are renaming birds with offensive names.
Apparently it goes beyond just offensive names.
The society plans to remove all human names from the common names for birds within its jurisdiction
[ my bold ]
Wow. I totally approve of this, but I really didn’t think they’d go this far.
Although the project was initiated in part “to address past wrongs” over links to historical figures known for their support of slavery or genocide of Indigenous peoples, the Society plans to remove all honorific human names. A committee that considered the recommendations noted the blanket removal would avoid potentially contentious value judgments about the character and morality of individuals from the past.
The next step, of course, is to let the wise ornithological public vote on candidate names. Look forward to Hammond’s flycatcher soon becoming Birdy McBirdface.
It’s a great approach and it kills the inevitable whataboutism arguments from dimwits and racists who would say things like “where do you draw the line?”