alt Hacker NewsThe "battle" for Pluto is an interesting case study in indoctrination. A few generations of children grew up being taught a specific fact, saw it in textbooks, learned mnemonics about it, had memorable cartoon characters named after it, and then one day they were told – with sound reasoning and plenty of scientific evidence – that they should now update their views on the topic.
You would think this group of well educated, critically thinking adults would go "sure", but something fundamental in their brains just refuses to let them accept this meaningless change to their lives.
Now scale this up to actual impactful topics like religion, politics, relationships, race and more and most conflicts around the world start to make sense.
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The thing is, there is no real evidence to back up the classification. The assignment between words and objects is arbitrary. A consistent definition for "planet" can be given and immediately after define the Solar System as being comprised of nine planets, with the understanding that a "planet" and a "planet of the Solar System" are similar but distinct concepts. The same is already done in biology with paraphyletic groups, with for example "reptiles" not including birds.
(I say this as someone who doesn't care either way whether Pluto is a planet or not.)
It's a definition. That is not a matter of scientific inquiry or fact, the definition is whatever people want it to be. You're belittling people for ignoring scientific evidence, but there's no scientific evidence to ignore, and cannot be.