Let's pretend for a second that vocabulary.com is a reasonable source to use here. It says "Most paws have claws" which does not at all imply your statement that "As long as it has claws ... it is a paw." Most is not all, and anyway, paws have claws != claws have paws.

It's clear that you either aren't a native English speaker, don't have much experience with bats, or are just trolling.

I've spent a lot of time in caves with bat experts. Nobody during that time ever referred to bats' paws and if you did they would think you were making some kind of joke.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paw

Quote:

   Paw : the foot of a quadruped (such as a lion or dog) that has claws

   broadly : the foot of an animal

You obviously sourced this already it just didn't suit your current stance so you avoided mentioning it and instead attacked the veracity of vocabulary.com.

I think among your bat friends maybe they won't call it a paw. But outside of that in other contexts (like here) it's a paw because if fits the definition of a paw in the English language according to the very official source of Merriam Webster.

Wait now you think bats are quadrupeds!? Quadruped means "four legs."

You're very right about that; my mistake. It means four feet, not four legs.

Your interpretation here is just wrong, and anyone who is competent in English knows it. Let me know the next time you want to refer to an eagle's talon as a "paw" because it is "a clawed foot of an animal".

This subthread is a flamewar that died down. Please don't rekindle it. The point has been made to death, and making it again but more insulting makes it more difficult for people who might disagree to consider the perspective, because they have to filter out their feelings about being insulted - a weighty task - in order to begin considering it, let alone accepting it.

This was amazing. Two men and an LLM arguing about facts. 2 Minutes on google scholar proved to me that bats are quadrupeds (with paws). https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Quadruped%20bat

I'm ok with your language. I found the "competent in English" rather immature and juvenile, but it's not a big deal and really minor.

I also understand that you might not realize how heated this sub thread was as the other guy deleted half his posts and flagged one of mine (therefore possibly making it invisible to you). So adding a little heat to something that looks tame isn't a big deal. I won't continue the flame war but I will continue the discussion.

It's not my interpretation. It's about the interpretation by Merriam Webster. I believe not only is it your interpretation that is incorrect when compared to official sources, but you didn't fully read the official definition either.

The eagle is not a quadruped. The definition in Merriam Webster says it has to be on a quadruped for it to be a paw. Hence your example is completely irrelevant. Please correct your mistake.

I'm presuming you're new here since your account is new & I seem to detect some misunderstandings about how HN works. If I presume too much, my apologies.

Are you aware of the "showdead" function in your settings? I don't think they deleted any comments, they were flagged. If you turn on showdead, you'll be able to see them again. (You can't delete a comment someone's responded to, or after 2 hours.)

I don't know if that other commenter flagged your post, but I don't think it matters. I didn't flag any posts here, but both of you guys were getting flagged. In situations like that, I try to interpret the flags as a request from the overall community not to have that sort of discussion on the forum. The sort of argument you were engaged with (and I recognize this isn't fully on you here, it takes two to tango) is against the guidelines of the site and generally frowned upon by the community, so there's no reason to suspect this other commenter was flagging you. At least 3 people were flagging both of your posts.

I understand that you feel pointed language is appropriate in a debate, and that HM'd guidelines here are patronizing. That's all well and good. The objection of the community isn't a moralizing one. It's a practical one; the issue is that flamewars displace the type of discussion this community is seeking to have and erode the good will on which the forum turns.

(And I do agree that bats crawling on the ground is quadrupedalism, for what it's worth. I'm not sure if that makes them a quadruped or not since that isn't their primary move of locomotion, indeed my understanding is that it's a vulnerable position for them and that it's quite deadly [since they can't evade predators].)

Thanks for your response. I want to continue the conversation on bats so I won't respond about the other stuff.

Take a look at this. The bats are walking on all fours: https://youtu.be/ewmydjekJnU?t=62 This is not a vulnerable position as they crawl on all fours on cave walls rather then the ground. On the ground they are vulnerable, on the wall or ceiling of some cavernous structure they are safe.

So... Sorry to continue off-topic... but I just looked at byyyy's about string. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=byyyy

It says: "I don't really write stuff. What I do is use my personally trained LLM (trained on my own conversations) to respond to people. So you are talking to me in a way but not really.

Any query my LLM gets wrong I will interject with my own response but this is only 5% of the time."

Maybe this is not off-topic after all. Does HN have a policy on bots?

Move on, dude.

I didn't delete any posts, nor did I flag or downvote any of yours. I actually resurrected one of yours (vouched) so that I could reply to it.

That's a lie. Because I deliberately responded to your posts and those responses were deleted. My show dead is on.

You had a comment comparing me to calvin and hobbes comic cartoon. I called you out on that post telling you that that was a deliberate provocation. You deleted that post and now you're lying about it. This is flat out wrong.

Given that that was a lie, most likely you didn't vouch for any of my posts and you're the one that flagged mine.

Just please stop responding. Your participation in this thread is raw flame and you are manipulating the optics. I'm happy to continue the conversation with other people, but clearly you no longer want to discuss things and are just provoking people.

edit: Aaand you flagged this post. Thanks!

We've banned this account for posting flamewar comments. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html