[extropy-chat] On categories and classification

[Jef Allbright]

I've noticed a lot of discussion recently revolve around categories, 
labels, classification and the like.  Attempts to categorize the 
fundamental areas of human knowledge as the path to a grand theory of 
everything, discussions of things or actions being moral or immoral as 
if they could be independent of their context, biological vs. 
non-biological  or alive vs. not alive, or conscious vs. not conscious, 
or positing absolute and assumedly intrinsic natural classifications of 
animal species. I thought it might be both fun and useful to share one 
of my passages from Jorge Luis Borges:

[From the] 'Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge'. In its remote 
pages it is written that the animals are divided into: (a) belonging to 
the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) 
fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, 
(i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair 
brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that 
from a long way off look like flies.

- Jef
http://www.jefallbright.net