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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1429 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 1, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Inspired by a Tumblr post I saw:

Is there a term for a cluster of similar, related items connected by shared traits, but where none of the traits are dispositive, nor is there a central example to which the rest are compared?

That is, for example, where one member of the group has relevant traits ABCD, another BCDE, another CDEF, and another ABEF, etc. So that none of the traits ABCDEF are present in all members of the group — so you can't characterize the group as "things with trait[s] [fill in blank]" — nor is there a "type specimen" X with all relevant traits "ABCDEF" — so you can't characterize the group as "X and things closely resembling X." Just a lot of things which resemble one another in a few important ways.

"ABCDEFish", or if you prefer: things that are approximately ABCDEF, or the points near ABCDEF in concept-space?

Wittgenstein calls this “family resemblance”.

From the Wikipedia intro:

[The idea of family resemblance] argues that things which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all of the things.

Thanks, that sounds the most like what I was looking for.

Lesswrong has "cleaving reality at the joints" and "clusters in thingspace" for that concept.

Could you give a concrete example of what you're talking about?

Big tent coalition?

Political beliefs are a bit like this. So is sports team support.

Maybe it's Tribal affiliation, or "mood affiliation" as Tyler Cowen calls it.

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