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

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

#51

Post by TeMPOraL »

ivell wrote: post #33
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…

People gain understanding when we relate things to their frame of reference. Kids have very limited life experience and their frame of reference is very low. Introducing new concepts that are not relatable would create huge gaps in real understanding. For example, explaining encryption as a lock to prevent thieves from stealing data is much more understandable to kids than going into actual definition of encryption.…

Except encryption is nothing like a lock, and "stealing data" is a problematic term, as it's stretching the concept of theft way past its common meaning - it's using the term "stealing" in the exact same way people saying "software piracy is stealing" are. So that's already providing completely twisted mental model to kids. And it stems in big part from trying to pass one specific application as an answer to what the thing is.

(What is a car? It's like extra legs for your butt, that can run very fast and carry multiple butts.)

You can get much closer to the truth by explaining encryption as a trick to make words understandable only to those who know the trick. You can play a substitution game with your kids, explain how you and them could agree that when one says "snake" it means "I", etc. and so "snake eats green grass" means "I am very hungry", and that you'll understand them but no one else will, etc.

At any given age, kids are as likely to understand secrecy as they're to understand why locks exist, so it's really just a choice of not using a bad and confusing analogy.

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

#53

Post by dvdkon »

calibas wrote: post #16
mmooss wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The exact list is up for debate, and currently undergoing change. My strong impression is that even the roots of the tree are debated, with competing models that often change. > The four-kingdom system should have died out decades ago First, hopefully not! :) Second, I think it's used because it's the last stable model. Third, it's a model that the public can understand - theres no point in even trying to use "Arch…

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…

The four kingdoms system is taught because it is useful; not for science, but for everyday communication.

We use a similarly flawed model every day: fruit and vegetables. What's in one group or the other is based on vague similarities and is mostly arbitrary, but it's still useful to split the huge category of "edible plant parts" into more manageable chunks.

Anyone familiar with apples and pears will likely see an orange and say it's a fruit. Likewise anyone familiar with cats and dogs will see a boar and think "animal", not "plant" or "fungus". A genetics-based assessment would be more "correct", yes, but impossible on a walk or in the store.

Primary school teachers, from my experience, have a tendency to present things as "the truth" and accept no deviation from their own word. I think changing that would be a good step in fostering creativity in children, much more than skipping less-accurate models.

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

#54

Post by verisimi »

intsunny wrote: post #52

The article about the study writes: `The study has not yet been peer-reviewed.` We should just stop reading the article then and there. This is a major method of how a single study can perpetuate fake science and fake news.

> This is a major method of how a single study can perpetuate fake science and fake news.

It's a feature, not a bug.

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

#55

Post by TeMPOraL »

9dev wrote: post #26
sashank_1509 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not go the other way, what are you missing if you don’t learnt four kingdoms. Why should that be taught at all. One obvious reason it should not be taught, if it is wrong then it kills curiosity and imagination by giving us a neat story we think is true. In a way it has the same negative effect religion can have but to a smaller degree. Why does the earth exist, because god made it kills all spirit of enquiry. Th…

Well in very practical terms, it gives you a way to name things you see in the forest, to figure out what is edible, and to understand what has a sentience of its own, similar to yours. I don’t mean to be snarky, but it seems like you’re very removed from the reality of normal people and parents out there.

The reality of normal people and parents is that a different basic classification is warranted:

- Humans are what they are;

- Animals are what they are;

- Plants and fungi of the kind you can gather in the forest, and anything else that is macro-scale but doesn't run or swim around, are just "plants";

- Bacteria, viruses, fungi of the other kind, archaea and even single-cellular organisms that could have negative impact on you, are all just "bacteria" or "microorganisms" or "pathogens";

- "Plants" breaks down into "trees", "grasses", "bushes", "shrooms", "flowers", and that's about it;

- "Animals" breaks down into "fish", "reptiles", "birds", "mammals";

That covers about all the biology regular people see, to the extent they care about.

Now, if you're teaching people the biological categorization, any one you will pick will be different from the daily experience of an ordinary person. Like, for practical reasons, whales and dolphins are fish (they look like every other fish and swim in water, and you hunt them with ships), and tomato is a vegetable (you don't put it into a fruit salad), and all that looks like grass is grass (despite genetics telling that some grasses are really just very tiny trees, or some trees are genetically just really big grass, etc.).

Point being, if you're going to teach them a biological categorization, that's already distinct from "normie everyday life" categorization, so you may just as well pick one that's current and useful in biology.

(And once again, this is another case of a non-issue that turns into issue only because people are unable to comprehend and teach the distinction between "is" and "can be thought of as"; the fact that categories are invented by people, are not facts of nature; that their only job is to be useful, and you can have many classification systems for the same thing, useful in different contexts.)

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

#56

Post by bregma »

danmur wrote: post #46
adrian_b wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When classifying living beings, a single classification criterion is not good enough. One classification criterion is descendance from a common ancestor, i.e. cladistic classification. In many cases this is the most useful classification criterion, because the living beings grouped in a class defined by having a common ancestor share a lot of characteristics inherited from their common ancestor, so when using a name…

Glad to see diamond inheritance being a problem in other fields

They should rewrite biology in Rust.

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

#57

Post by TeMPOraL »

danmur wrote: post #46
adrian_b wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When classifying living beings, a single classification criterion is not good enough. One classification criterion is descendance from a common ancestor, i.e. cladistic classification. In many cases this is the most useful classification criterion, because the living beings grouped in a class defined by having a common ancestor share a lot of characteristics inherited from their common ancestor, so when using a name…

Glad to see diamond inheritance being a problem in other fields

It's not a problem, it's a feature.

Or rather, it's only a problem when you insist on rigid perspective that makes it a problem.

(The real problem is that so many people insist on viewing things as trees, when their natural shape is directed graph.)

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

#60

Post by ivell »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #51
ivell wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People gain understanding when we relate things to their frame of reference. Kids have very limited life experience and their frame of reference is very low. Introducing new concepts that are not relatable would create huge gaps in real understanding. For example, explaining encryption as a lock to prevent thieves from stealing data is much more understandable to kids than going into actual definition of encryption.…

Except encryption is nothing like a lock, and "stealing data" is a problematic term, as it's stretching the concept of theft way past its common meaning - it's using the term "stealing" in the exact same way people saying "software piracy is stealing" are. So that's already providing completely twisted mental model to kids. And it stems in big part from trying to pass one specific application as an answer to what the…

Substitution is a new concept for kids. Not something they can readily understand. So you need to explain that in terms of a game. Kids know what secrets are. But from their point of view, why even talk about it if it is secret? Why can't we go to another place and talk secretly? Why do we need to talk secrets in public using substitution? Since they do not see obvious need for it in their daily life and there are workarounds for it, they do not get why there is a need for substitution.

By the time we explain all these to them, they would have already lost interest, or context and would easily forget the whole thing.

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