To be fair, knowing 10000 things is far from knowing everything.
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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So in Chinese traditions "10000" is just a stand in for "really big number". Kind of like how, at least here in the states, well say "there's a million of them". Not that there is literally 1,000,000 of the thing, but more there is just a lot of them.
there's a myriad of phrases like that
Just to spell it out for people: myriad means 10,000 but has been used as a stand in for "huge variety" for so long that people don't know that anymore.
Yeah, a ton
Still pretty impressive for an owl.
If words count as things, then most people know way more than that.
Even concepts can easily surpass that
I know at least 8356 numbers alone
Wow, I only know 8355 numbers. That's very impressive.
I can do ya one better...
Well, this local mushroom is either the Taste Scrumptiouspuff, which is amazing is stews, roasts and stirfry..... or the murderkilldeathshroom. Would you say this fringe is curved with a swirl, or swirled with a curve?
Can't tell if my back hurts because random millennial moment after mushroom foraging, or because my kidneys are failing.
Or both!
Well it's a white mushroom with gills so that narrows the possibility space to 1 mildly tasty shroom and eight gorillion super deadly poisonous liver failure shrooms
So you're saying there's a chance...
In my part of the world, there are at least a dozen+ culinary and/or medicinal mushrooms that are distinctive and easy to identify (even by casuals like me). These don't really have any dangerous look-a-likes that also grow in the same area. I stick to those and those alone. Granted, even at 12 or so species that I can ID, that's probably like a tiny fraction of the number of different species that exist in this area.
Some areas have mushrooms that are so similar the only reliable way to identify them is using a spore print.
Plants and animals tend to have more distinct identifying features like leaf patterns, bark texture or hair color.
I'm the opposite, I can tell some really difficult mushrooms apart due to good ol' hyperfixation but I still know jack about plants and trees.