We had a rather silly argument at work today. A co-worker claimed that electronic drums are not drums, but something entirely different. Now, I generally don’t post about all the silly arguments we have at work (there’s a new one every day it seems), but this one just is way over the top in my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My first method of argument was, basically, that the term “electronic” (or electric, I consider those to be the same in this particular context) is simply an adjective that describes something. So, just like all red robins are a subset of robins, electronic drums are a subset of drums. However, this was not satisfactory, and the co-worker brought up the term “straw man”. He stated that a straw man is not actually a man. Fine, I’ll give him this, although it is certainly a rather weak argument since the context must be entirely different for this to be valid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next up was dictionary.com’s definition of a drum<\/a> (his source, not mine, but I’m more than happy to work with that). There are several definitions for drums on that page, but my co-worker decided that the first one must be used (never mind the fact that if we took the first definition of “straw man” would actually mean that “straw man” are a subset of “men”*). Well, electronic drums fit basically the entire definition, with one possible<\/em> exception: with a tightly stretched membrane, or head<\/em>. Now, if you would assume that a drum head must be a tightly stretched membrane, then that definition would exclude electronic drums. However, that’s a rather silly assumption. I suppose that would mean that the drum heads that guitar center sells for electronic drums<\/a> must be imaginary – or something like that. Not to mention that many other drums, such as slit drums<\/a>, log drums<\/a>, etc, would not actually be drums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n