The Plutocracy

[Dark Jaguar]

So there are a lot of things in the news these days about a big vote about what defines "planetness". One proposed rule set was "if it revolves around a star and is not revolving around another satellite (the gravity "barycenter" is not inside that other satellite, meaning they are revolving around each other more or less), and if it is massive enough that it's gravity overcomes it's own shape to make it spherical, it's a planet. The one they actually voted on was another set of rules saying, if I remember right, it has to orbit the sun, have cleared out it's "surrounding neighborhood", and some others, whatever.

There are a few things I have to say about this. First of all, as many scientists are saying, this really is pointless. Whether you call Pluto a planet or not, it is what it is. Call it a whale, as in redefine whale to mean "marine mammal or icy rock beyond the orbit of Neptune". This also doesn't help science at all as far as I can tell. This isn't a new discovery. They didn't find out something new about Pluto making them reconsider. They are changing the definition, the data hasn't yet changed.

There is no "planetness" somewhere "out there". It's a word. It is merely us saying "this idea represents this", instantiating a class to help us deal with the stream of otherwise meaningless information that is the universe. I know this is all obvious to anyone who's ever even had a passing thought about language, but the news doesn't seem to get that. If we wanted, we could, instead of defining the rock itself, define a carved out shape of the rock and some space to the west of it as a thing we call Pluto. At any rate, this won't change anything about the object, it'll just change what we call it. And so, why is it that big a deal if we call it something else? The only real reason is to make information easier to manage. Somehow I'm not sure this'll do anything of the sort. I'm fine with a rough definition of planet that is pretty much arbitrary myself.

That said, there's an easy solution to this. Leave the science to the scientists, but in cases like "what do we call it?", why not start up a new craze in the form of "name that celestial object!", the new hit show translated into every language where everyone on the planet gets to vote on a selection of names, and whether or not something is a planet or a star or whatever. Since it won't affect the science or anything (if they call a moon-like object a "star" it won't change the fact that it orbits other things and isn't a nuclear inferno), it seems fine by me. Also, it'll get people into science in a more hands-on way. Make people feel like idiots if they don't care about it too, that helps.

[A Black Falcon]

The problem is the definition of planet... without one almost anything orbiting a sun could be called a planet. So what's better, dozens of planets with a limited definition, pretending nothing has changed even though we now know Pluto isn't alone in the Kuiper Belt, or dropping one and setting a size and orbit limit for planetness...

[Dark Jaguar]

Why can't we just define planet as "the 9 things we learned about in grade school, plus whatever orbits other stars"? There's no reason we can't, it's just a word.

[A Black Falcon]

But "The planets are these nine arbitrarially decided ones and not those other one that are equally as good as some of the listed planets, but we're leaving out" works better? I know that demoting Pluto sounds bad, but there needs to be some kind of consistent definition, either to add the spherical large Kuiper Belt objects as planets or to only count the eight main ones.

[Dark Jaguar]

Nope, you are missing the point. The point is, it doesn't matter!

[Great Rumbler]

Names are just words we humans come up with to tag natural/unnatural phenomena that we observe in the universe. They can mean whatever the heck we want them to mean. *Pluto forever*

[Dark Jaguar]

Yep. Now without being able to seperate things into different ideas we wouldn't be able to think at all, but at the same time language is basically arbitrary by nature. Useful, but arbitrary. That's why it doesn't matter. Define it as you will, just make sure it's fairly static.

[N-Man]

Of course it matters. If you do that, generations of future-children will ask why Pluto is a planet and rock #634 isn't, and the only answer you'll have is gonna be "because that's just the way it is! rar!" which is totally unsatisfactory.

[Dark Jaguar]

No, the answer can say basically just this "it's totally arbitrary and meaningless". Then explain what arbitrary means. Perfectly satisfactory explanation.

[A Black Falcon]

No, it's not. A definition based on some logical basis makes a lot more sense than something completely arbitrary like "the first rock we find is a planet and the others aren't just becuase I said so"...

[Dark Jaguar]

That still doesn't tell me why that even matters. It won't change the science just because we call that rock something different. The definition of "planet" has always been arbitrary, there's really no way to fix that so we shouldn't even bother.

[A Black Falcon]

If it's going to be arbitrary, it should be an arbitrary that actually follows some rules. Calling Pluto a planet but those other ones not planets doesn't follow any consistent rules, and that was a problem...

[Dark Jaguar]

Why?