Are you a lumper or a splitter?

[Nay_Sayer]

Interesting poll. I voted splitter. I think as a general rule, you can learn more about anything specific if you pay attention to small differences and split them up, vs having a more broad view and lumping everything together into the same big group and leaving it that way.

This goes for differences between humans and other animals, as well as differences between dogs and other animals, birds and other animals, snakes and other animals, etc... 

"Splitting" just seems more logical all around. Lumping seems rash.

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Which do you think is more important for shaping what we are as humans today?

A couple examples of how splitting has been important: 

- We have doctors to treat sick people, and vets to treat sick animals, and different types of vets to treat different types of animals. 

- We eat other animals, but it's extremely taboo and unacceptable to eat people, unless in extreme life/death situations and only if the person we eat is already dead. 

- We have different fields of study for different species of animals, including humans in their own category.

- The way we talk to/treat our pets is different from the way we would do so with our human children.

How depressingly unsurprising.  FSM Weaps