this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
57 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

44275 readers
742 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Fruits are the reproductive organs of plants designed to be eaten by other animals in order to spread their seeds.

[โ€“] JackbyDev@programming.dev 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Right, the fruit of the plant is what we consider fruit.

[โ€“] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You'd be surprised how little that definition helps when someone insists a tomato is not a fruit.

[โ€“] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago

I mean, they're clearly thinking about sweet versus not sweet. The discussion isn't really about what a tomato is and isn't, it's about what the words mean and how they're using them. There's no doubt about what a tomato is. Everyone has a clear understanding about it. It's just that people mean different things when they say it is/isn't a fruit. People saying it isn't a fruit say that because it isn't sweet. Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But if they're disagreeing that a tomato is the fruit of a tomato plant then they're being foolish. And I don't think anyone is saying that.

Whenever people are arguing about this it's just so exhausting because they'll hear something like "a tomato is a fruit" or that "all fruits are vegetables" and rather than try to seek understanding about how the other party is using the words they just dig their heels in and insist that's wrong. When the whole reason they're upset is because they're picturing their own usage of the terms and imagining the other person saying a tomato is that.