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kevin_thibedeau • yesterday at 11:18 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

The backlash was all just populist ignorance on display. There were multiple concrete measures of planetness constructed and Pluto is an outlier in all of them. One of these things is not like the others.


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zamadatix • yesterday at 11:40 PM

I think the backlash was fed by insistence dwarf planets are not just a subtype of planets, it's such a "well ackchyually" type thing to choose that name for it regardless of how valid it was to break out the category that I'm not sure it'll ever stop being talked about.

Even something as simple as "planets" contains "major planets" and "minor planets" would have avoided 20 years of people arguing about the names instead of caring to learn what's different about them. But you never hear people explaining why the IAU insists "dwarf planets" aren't "planets" even when "dwarf planets" has several subcategories which don't share the "planet" moniker, you just hear people argue about missing Pluto or call other people ignorant of the technical details of the categories.

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