Taxacom: demystifying gender agreement ( was Re: Removals of offending scientific names)

[John Grehan]

'Consensus' sounds fine, but consensus means agreement by everyone. Not
just a majority. And for a taxonomic list, a consensus of who? I find that
usually what happens is that some 'authorities' are taken to be
'authorities' and if agreement is reached among them, then their will tends
to either be imposed or accepted by the 'influencers' of taxonomy (one sees
this in the false claim of the human-chimp clade being the consensus
classification when it is not a consensus view at all). I suspect that for
many groups the majority of 'authorities' will not be in a problematic
situation, but I get hints that in some vertebrate groups for example, the
subject is quite contentious (making no judgement here). In 'my' group, the
Hepialidae, the much vaunted catalogue (no doubt with its own burden of
errors) represents a consensus of its authors, nothing more. What others do
with it or not is not preordained. And I doubt there would be consensus
agreement that nothing in our list is protected from the possibility of
different outcomes.

When it comes to AI, any computer, even a calculator, is a sort of
artificial 'intelligence'. I presume that 'intelligence' is given a more
restricted boundary in  the AI world. If it means comprehension as well as
computing ability, then we are looking for some level of 'awareness' by the
computer. Right now, I am sure someone could write a program that would
have generated our Hepialidae catalogue within a few minutes once provided
with the literature and the Code rules. But that is not AI as I think of
it, as computers do not yet have comprehension of the data (at least as
far as we know - some paranoia there). As one commentator on the subject
said, current 'AI' just reads and strings words together.

On Mon, Jun 26, 2023 at 12:02 PM Douglas Yanega via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

> On 6/23/23 7:39 PM, John Grehan wrote:
> > By keeping things simple I was only referring to the specific
> > question, not to solve nomenclatural issues in general. As for a
> > single master list, that is fine, if 'everyone' could agree on that.
> > But human nature being what it is, I doubt any such list will have
> > absolute hegemony. Happy to be wrong, but I doubt it will happen in my
> > lifetime.
>
> Actually, there are a large number of groups for which we already have a
> central authoritative list of names. That ranges from a majority of
> vertebrates down to rotifers, and all sorts of things in between,
> especially among the insects.
>
> There is, for example, a set of "Species Files", alluded to by George
> Beccaloni, and those are all *very* close to the model that I've been
> talking about. They cover Aphididae, Blattodea, Coleorrhyncha,
> Coreoidea, Dermaptera, Embioptera, Lygaeoidea, Mantodea, Orthoptera,
> Phasmida, Plecoptera, and Psocodea.
>
> Other authoritative lists managed by individuals exist for Diptera,
> Mecoptera, Neuroptera, Odonata, bees, ants, sphecoid wasps, scale
> insects, Cerambycidae, Auchenorrhyncha, Chalcidoidea, Ichneumonoidea,
> and several more.
>
> If there is no single list yet for Lepidoptera, then this is a
> surprising exception within the Insecta. I am less familiar with such
> resources for arachnids, crustaceans, or molluscs, but I expect they
> also exist.
>
> The point is, we are far closer than you might imagine to having single
> centralized lists for all described taxa, and taxonomists in MANY
> disciplines are *already* used to going to a single resource to look up
> names. If those single resources added the functionality of listing
> genders of genera (according to the Code, not according to "tradition"),
> and indicating which epithets are declinable adjectives (according to
> the Code, not according to "tradition"), then that would largely
> accomplish the purpose I've outlined during this discussion. At least
> one of these lists already HAS those functionalities, so the "proof of
> concept" is already established.
>
> I will add, to reinforce the point, that a few of these taxa have
> multiple lists in existence, and *every* time there are multiple lists
> that overlap in content, they contain a small but significant number of
> discrepancies between them. That also demonstrates the NEED for there to
> be single lists, as well as the NEED for them to be built by genuine
> consensus of relevant taxonomists, as is done by the Code's LAN
> mechanism; lists built by single individuals will never be as
> authoritative - or promote stability as effectively - as lists built
> through consultation and *permanently resolved debate*.
>
> It doesn't take an AI to do something simple like informing you that the
> spelling of an adjective has to change if you move a species from, say,
> the genus Flataloides (feminine) to Flatoides (masculine) or vice-versa.
> The part that isn't simple is recognizing that Flataloides and Flatoides
> are different genders in the first place (despite the latter being
> treated as feminine "by tradition"), and *building that into the master
> list*. The idea is to get the lists built, and built only once
> (thereafter not subject to revision).
>
> Peace,
>
> --
> Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
> Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
> phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
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