I honestly don’t understand what that thing is, actually.
This was also my first response when reading the article, but on second glance I don’t think that is entirely fair. The argument I want to convey with “Everything is chemicals!” is something along the lines of “The concept that you use the word chemicals for is ill-defined and possibly incoherent and I suspect that the negative connotations you associate with it are largely undeserved.”, but that is not what I’m actually communicating.
Suppose I successfully convince people that everything is, in fact, chemicals, people start using the word chemicals in a strictly technical sense and use the word blorps for what is currently the common sense definition of chemicals. In this situation “Everything is chemicals!” stops being a valid counterargument, but blorps is still just as ill-defined and incoherent a concept as it was before. People correctly addressed the concern I raised, but not the concern I had, which suggest that I did not properly communicate my concern in the first place.
This was also my first response when reading the article, but on second glance I don’t think that is entirely fair. The argument I want to convey with “Everything is chemicals!” is something along the lines of “The concept that you use the word chemicals for is ill-defined and possibly incoherent and I suspect that the negative connotations you associate with it are largely undeserved.”, but that is not what I’m actually communicating.
Suppose I successfully convince people that everything is, in fact, chemicals, people start using the word chemicals in a strictly technical sense and use the word blorps for what is currently the common sense definition of chemicals. In this situation “Everything is chemicals!” stops being a valid counterargument, but blorps is still just as ill-defined and incoherent a concept as it was before. People correctly addressed the concern I raised, but not the concern I had, which suggest that I did not properly communicate my concern in the first place.