Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

livescience.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–135 of 135 posts

Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#131

Post by xdavidliu »

mmooss wrote: post #111
xdavidliu wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We agree. I don't grasp your point? your original comment didn't refute the quote, but one needs to squint hard to see that you didn't refute it.

I wasn't trying to refute it; I was adding information: The quote didn't mention or imply that there are also single-cell eukaryotes, so I added that detail. Not everything is an argument or attack.

I know that you weren't trying to refute it, and I know that it's not an argument or attack.

> with eukarya containing all multicellular organisms

Single cell eukaryotes also exist

My point is that your statement here looks like a refutation to most, even though I know you did not intend it to be.

Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#132

Post by mmooss »

bbor wrote: post #120
calibas wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing that animal isn't a useful term, but if you're dividing eukaryotes into the major groups, it's not one of them. > More personally speaking: what am I missing out by using the four kingdoms? Like, how could that possibly ever backfire in a way that slightly impacts my life negatively, or impedes the scientists studying genetic lineages? Sure, where does kelp fit in? How about slime molds? Also, I'm not…

Interesting, thanks for elaborating! Still not sure I understand sadly, but maybe it’s just different worldviews on how to play language games. Like, you say we don’t need to teach nuance, and that animal is a useful term — but then what does it denote, if not a group of creatures? To me, this discussion should center around utility — “objectively wrong” is assumed to apply to basically everything we ever say on some…

> animal vegetable mineral also seems to have held up okay…? It’s a culinary thing

Interesting - Linnaeus (and possibly contemporaries and predecessors) were maybe biased too look at the world through eating: The hunted, the grown, and the mined.

(Completely speculative, of course.)

Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#133

Post by mmooss »

xdavidliu wrote: post #131
mmooss wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't trying to refute it; I was adding information: The quote didn't mention or imply that there are also single-cell eukaryotes, so I added that detail. Not everything is an argument or attack.

I know that you weren't trying to refute it, and I know that it's not an argument or attack. > with eukarya containing all multicellular organisms Single cell eukaryotes also exist My point is that your statement here looks like a refutation to most, even though I know you did not intend it to be.

I see. Communication is tricky.

Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#134

Post by FabHK »

MITSardine wrote: post #75
alexey-salmin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. It's necessary to teach oversimplified things to small minds, even oversimplified to the extent of being incorrect. It's unlikely you understand relativistic mechanics unless you learn and practice Newtonian for a few years, then many people stop there and never go for relativism. It's unlikely you understand Peano axioms without first spending years just working with numbers, completely disregar…

To be fair, "functional analysis is infinite dimensional linear algebra" is a saying for a reason, that's an intuition a good professor should have given you. Mine gave me it so well, I still see no difference between R^n and a Hilbert space! (on the dangers of intuitions) This reminds me of a short lived stretch in French mathematical education, the "Bourbaki years". For those unaware, Nicolas Bourbaki was "a dozen…

A small note on Bourbaki:

Alan Sokal's famous and brilliant hoax Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity had a hilarious footnote that read (my highlighting):

> Miller (1977/78, especially pp. 24-25). This article has become quite influential in film theory: see e.g. Jameson (1982, 27-28) and the references cited there. As Strathausen (1994, 69) indicates, Miller's article is tough going for the reader not well versed in the mathematics of set theory. But it is well worth the effort. For a gentle introduction to set theory, see Bourbaki (1970).

Re: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

#135

Post by wegfawefgawefg »

wegfawefgawefg wrote: post #34
calibas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children can memorize all 50 US state capitals, they can memorize a handful of scientific names. If we really wanted to, we could teach them a much more accurate view of the tree of life. Also, I don't think the four-kingdom system has been taught in schools for a while? I went to high school in the late 90s and it wasn't taught then. It's strange to see people promoting it online in 2025. If adults want to remain ig…

went to school till 2012, highly esteemed US high school, was still taught then

this was voted down, but the poster had expressed doubt that it had still been taught this way, and I was providing information that it was still taught thid eay even at a high end high school tenish years ago.

I thought it reasonable to share.

Post reply on HN