this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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Fish do not exist because of pedantic technicalities? Reality isn't real
It's more that biological classification is tricky and linear, and vertebrates went in and out of the ocean a few times
Aha okay. That makes me feel better, thank you.
Have you heard about birds?
It's worse.
Birds also don't exist, it's all government drones.
I mean they're just dinosaurs, which are also reptiles, which are also fish.
Birds, surprisingly, are just air fish.
Birds are the fish of the sky soup.
This is like bemoaning the fact that doctors don't treat "the humors" anymore. We gained knowledge that invalidated what we thought we knew, so we've updated our understanding. Unless you're a taxonomical marine biologist, it's really very unimportant anyway, I wouldn't worry about it.
At least I can stop worrying about the fishmen abducting me in my sleep, they don't exist anymore because of this classification revelation
Yeah, they never existed to begin with, sowwy
Please.
Please daddy.
FTFY
Papacito
I'd say that since all men are fish-men your worries should be increasing.
That Innsmouth look.
No no, it's that humans are technically in the fish group of evolution, even though it happened a LONG time ago. That's what they mean by "cladistically", there is no "clade" of fish. Look up "humans are hagfish by Clint's Reptiles". He explains it wonderfully
Wow. This video was great. Thank you!!
Just because we lack a definition, doesn't mean something doesn't exist.
It's not even that we lack a way to define fish, it's more that we lack a definition that isn't arbitrary. One can define them as something like "vertebrates, except for all these ones that we don't want to include", but then there's not really a clear reason to exclude all the amphibians and reptiles and mammals and such, other than that they don't traditionally get called fish. Some of them even live in water, and a handful of fish can leave the water to a limited extent, so it isn't even that.
So you are saying Pluto is a fish?
When it's a grouping that we lack the definition for, then the group doesn't really exist, even if it's members do and we all gave a good idea of what are, for instance, fish. Basically the group 'fish' contains all the things you think are fish, which is problematic as someone else may have a different idea of which things belong in the group, and while that's fine when talking coloquially, you can't really use it when trying to discuss things in a rigerous fashion.
The vast majority of language is not "rigorous". Colloquial definitions are incredibly important.
Which is fine as long as you don't try to make rigid distinctions out of your arbitrary colloquia and claim to be acting logically.
You can make distinctions based on similar "fuzzy" definitions, as long as you allow room for inevitable exceptions.
Yes.
We don't lack a definition, we actually just have so many narrower definitions that we don't need one for "fish" anymore. The old, broad definitions become archaic and often inaccurate as we gain more knowledge.
Yeah I disagree with the idea that there is no such thing as a fish.
It's like saying that there are no striped animals because both zebras and snakes can have stripes.
Sure, there is no common ancestor for hundreds of millions of years but that doesn't mean that they aren't a thing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Scientists said the oceans would run out of fish by 2048. In fact, fish stopped existing today. Sick burn.