On 3/20/24 12:54 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
Everyday as I am listening to CNN I say, "There are no degrees of uniqueness," multiple times.
I'm hung up on the usage of qualified "uniqueness" as well, but in perhaps the opposite sense.
I agree with the premise that "unique" in it's purest, simplest form does seem to be inherently singular. On the other hand, this mal(icious) propensity of qualifying uniqueness (uniqueish?) is so common, that I have to believe there is a concept there which people who use those terms are reaching for. They are not wrong to reach for it, just annoying in the label they choose?
I had a round with GPT4 trying to discuss this, not because I think LLMs are the authority on *anything* but rather because the discussions I have with them can help me brainstorm my way around ideas with the LLM nominally representing "what a lot of people say" (if not think). Careful prompting seems to be able to help narrow down *all people* (in the training data) to different/interesting subsets of *lots of people* with certain characteristics.
GPT4 definitely wanted to allow for a wide range of gradated, speciated, spectral uses of "unique" and gave me plenty of commonly used examples which validates my position that "for something so obviously/technically incorrect, it sure is used a lot!"
We discussed uniqueness in the context of evolutionary biology and cladistics and homology and homoplasy. We discussed it in terms of cluster analysis. We discussed the distinction between objective and subjective, absolute and relative.
The closest thing to a conclusion I have at the moment is: 1. Most people do and will continue to treat "uniqueness" as a relative/spectral/subjective qualifier. 2. Many people like Frank and myself (half the time) will have an allergic reaction to this usage. 3. The common (mis)usage might be attributable to conflating "unique" with "distinct"? - Steve
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