askchapo

I just think it's important for people to remember the limits of their knowledge. Sometimes misconceptions that spread online are trivial BS that doesn't matter in the vast majority of situations, like what kind of word 'the' is — but if you go around saying "eh, this other comment says this, which is probably close enough, I'm not going to bother checking, it's just a single-sentence comment on the Internet, anyways" enough times... one of those times the misconception is going to be something important, and you might not even realize it before that misconception spreads to yet another person. This is why it's important to be vigilant and not be too confident in what you know. I just don't think it's good that so many people feel entitled to "play expert" in whatever field they want nowadays, so I think it's best to just nip that sort of thinking in the bud whenever even a hint of it shows up, before it can take root.

So yes, you can answer the original question without knowing what kind of word 'the' is, and you can talk about cats without knowing their taxonomy. But you also don't randomly bring up cats' taxonomy when it's irrelevant and something you're unsure of, just as you shouldn't randomly bring up what kind of word 'the' is if it's irrelevant and something you're unsure of, just as you shouldn't bring up anything irrelevant that you're unsure of in any situation. And if you have to bring up something you're unsure of, then you should always make it clear that you're unsure of it, and ask for confirmation. Am I being a hard-ass, annoying pedant about this? Yes. But I think this is an important point.