I have just finished reading Why Fish Don't Exist. It is a book rich in narrative tension, yet riddled with logical contradictions.

The book's dramatic shifts are superb. The portrayal of David Starr Jordan undergoes three or four significant twists, a narrative structure that is truly unique. The reversals and surprises this book delivered were no less compelling than those of the best suspense thrillers. I thank the author for telling me such a magnificent story, and for introducing me to Jordan—a figure so successful, multifaceted, and complex.

Overall Verdict: An absolute page-turner, provided you read it with a critical mind. Whether a dandelion is a cure or a poison depends entirely on the malady.

The author is able to sing the praises of chaos only because she stands on a foundation of order built by predecessors. If the world were truly to regress to the primitive state of primordial chaos she desires—without classification, without hierarchy, without selection—her fragile, sentimental soul wouldn't survive the first episode. She enjoys the dividends of order, yet peddles the thrill of shattering it within her pages.

I have always been someone with "positive illusions," striving to establish order with confidence, perhaps even narcissism. I believe in what Westaby said: humility and introspection are useless, even harmful. The author wants to embrace chaos because she went through a breakup and the collapse of her life; without acceptance, she faced continued depression or suicide. This is her self-salvation. But for me, having not experienced her specific trauma, resisting chaos and establishing order is my weapon against depression, and an effective one at that. If I were to force myself to embrace uncertainty without being in the existential crisis the author faced, it could lead to a terrifying disintegration of the self.

Likewise, I detest the forcing of historical figures and events to align with one’s personal views, especially through cherry-picked examples. The fact that the author embraces chaos because she can accept it does not make it rational, nor does it mean everyone can enjoy it. Jordan resisted chaos, and at least from his personal perspective, he achieved a confident, narcissistic, and self-consistent life. And a fascinating one at that—educator, ichthyologist, and murder suspect.

Because the old order hurt her, and because she could not control it, she deemed the old order hypocritical and harmful, proceeding to negate the rationality of order itself. This is absurd—a typical victim narrative. If everyone simply drifted with the tide, true, there would be no eugenics, but there would absolutely be no Stanford University either.

The author believes that categories and the desire to order the world cause incredible harm. Bullshit. This is textbook slave morality. The author attempts to force a slippery slope argument: Classification = Hierarchy = Eugenics = Nazis/Harm. There is a flaw in her attribution logic; using Jordan as a single data point to prove that establishing order brings harm is preposterous. The essence of language and classification is to lower cognitive costs. In restaurants, on fishing boats, and even in laboratories, the word "fish" is useful and efficient. Lulu throwing away the word "fish" to dissolve meaning is as childish as throwing a credit card in the trash to prove money is a fiction. By Lulu’s logic, since "sunrise" doesn't exist astronomically (it is the Earth rotating), must we stop saying "sunrise" and say "earth-turn" instead? Dissolving the referential function of everyday language isn't profound; it's anti-intellectual. She wrote a book opposing order using rigorous grammar, precise vocabulary, and structured arguments. This is the ultimate hypocrisy. She ought to be rendered intellectually aphasic, unable to write a single word.

To oppose taxonomic systems simply because they categorize and marginalize groups, and to believe this is an inevitability of such systems, is ridiculous. It possesses a kind of politically correct beauty, the aesthetic of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy — painting the bullseye around the arrow after it lands.

The book devotes a large number of pages to hinting that Jordan might be involved in the murder of Jane Stanford, yet fails to produce a shred of hard evidence. This precisely corroborates the hypocrisy of the author's logic: in scientific classification, she cites vast literature and experts, demanding extreme rigor (albeit selectively), but when convicting a man, she embraces groundless chaos. As long as it fits her narrative of toppling the old order, truth can make way for emotion.

Regarding eugenics: in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, eugenics was a mainstream philosophy in Western intellectual circles, even considered a sign of "progress." Many left-wing progressives of the time supported it, believing it could reduce suffering. Today, eugenics is naturally indefensible, but at the time, given the limitations of technology, it is difficult to judge harshly with modern eyes and morals. Jordan was certainly wrong to promote eugenics, but Lulu’s attempt to pin the errors of human historical process entirely on Jordan is erecting a straw man.

I enjoy confidence, even narcissism; they are my primary long-term sources of dopamine. If one is humble, one easily becomes fragile. I do not deny leaning towards libertarianism. If anyone accuses me of harboring traces of elitism or even Social Darwinism in my thinking (since many people love to radicalize opposing views and slap labels like "Nazi" or "Darwinist" on them), I accept it fully and can’t be bothered to refute it.

Of course, I have no desire to change others. Changing the long-held values of others is unprofitable, exhausting, and thankless. Likewise, I refuse to be changed by others; change must come from within. Fortunately, I am growing and constantly changing; unfortunately for them, how I change is basically up to me.

Jordan's tragedy lies not in attempting to establish order, but in trying to use pre-Darwinian Essentialism—believing that all things have a perfect, immutable essence, and that differences are imperfections, errors, or deformities. He tried to find the perfect holotype for every species, and even tried to "improve" humanity through eugenics. However, in the population thinking introduced by Darwin and popularized by Mayr, variation is the fundamental property of nature. Variation is what makes evolution possible.

Lulu clearly commits the opposite error—the Naturalistic Fallacy. That is, attempting to define "good" or moral attributes using natural properties, a concept close to Hume's Is-Ought problem. She attempts to use changes in biological classification to guide sociological ethics, which is extremely absurd.

The author even gives off a whiff of pseudoscience. Although not explicitly stated, she reveals a nihilistic attitude towards proven facts. The scientific statement "fish don't exist" means that this specific monophyletic group does not exist. The author forcibly elevates a biological fact into a sociological concept—implying that since fish don't exist, social hierarchies shouldn't exist either, and we shouldn't be defined.

Ironically, science has never denied the existence of fish; it merely changed the concept from a monophyletic group to a paraphyletic one. Even more ironically, the cladistics that helps Lulu break "order" is based on genetics and evolution, pursuing an order that is more precise and extreme than traditional Linnaean taxonomy. Most ironically, Lulu selectively ignores one of its sister conclusions—"Humans are also fish." If we follow her own logic, humans are nailed firmly to the "fish" spot on the evolutionary tree, and her story falls apart completely. If she were being scientifically accurate, Lulu Miller is also a fish—specifically a descendant of the Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish) superclass within the Osteichthyes (bony fish) megaclass. In that case, her book should have been titled "No, Fish Exist, and We Are All Fish."

Lulu seems to misunderstand the cornerstone of modern taxonomy. The so-called non-existence of fish stems not from the collapse of order, but from the victory of Cladistics (Phylogenetic Systematics) proposed by Willi Hennig in the mid-20th century. Hennigians do not oppose order; on the contrary, they pursue a more extreme and precise order—only evolutionary trees built on synapomorphies are recognized. This strict scrutiny has nothing to do with the "anything goes" chaos Lulu desires.

A monophyletic group is a complete evolutionary branch containing a common ancestor and all its descendants. A paraphyletic group is a monophyletic group with some descendants removed. A polyphyletic group implies species from different ancestors, which is not recognized by taxonomists (e.g., one cannot group harpy eagles, bats, and flies together just because they fly).

It is important to highlight the two superclasses under Osteichthyes (bony fish). Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish) have fins with muscles, connected to the body by bone, suitable for supporting the body and crawling. The Sarcopterygii superclass has few members, containing only four classes and subclasses, including Coelacanths and Dipnotetrapodomorpha (lungfish and tetrapods). Actinopterygii (ray-finned fish) have fins made of webs of skin supported by bony spines (rays), suitable for precise control in water. The Actinopterygii class is thriving, covering over 99% of distinct fish species.

In old taxonomy, Osteichthyes did not include tetrapod land vertebrates. However, since tetrapods evolved from Sarcopterygii, from a cladistic perspective, the traditional definition of Osteichthyes became a paraphyletic group. Meanwhile, bony vertebrates (including Actinopterygii and Sarcopterygii descendants) constitute a monophyletic group. To solve this, some taxonomists extended the scope of Osteichthyes to cover all tetrapods, making it a monophyletic group synonymous with Euteleostomi (bony vertebrates).

To serve her emotional healing needs, Lulu forcibly distorts the spirit of science. Because she hates Jordan's "artificially imposed order," she dresses up modern evolutionary biology—which is cold, rational, and emphasizes genetic determinism even more than the old order—as a tender, shackle-breaking freedom fighter. Wielding the knife of genetic order to cut the Gordian knot of social order—displaced and absurd.

Lulu wants to use the non-existence of fish to dissolve meaning, but she crashes into the iron wall of science—Fish not only exist, but they wrote this book, and they wrote this blog post. Her citation of taxonomy is a classic case of professing love for dragons only to flee when a real one appears (Ye Gong Hao Long).

Perhaps this is the common ailment of popular non-fiction writing: Storytelling comes first, logic second, and science is just an accident.

The problem with this book is that Lulu attempts to package a medicine that worked for her—but for which the [Contraindications], [Adverse Reactions], and [Precautions] are unknown—as a universal panacea for her readers, saying with tender affection: "Come now, drink the medicine. It's good for you."

It is actually quite interesting. Lulu and I are both trying to control order; we are both deconstructing something. I am attempting to control a certain order; she is attempting to create an order she can control. She deconstructed fish; I deconstructed her.