On the 2 vs 8 things... It's clear what this was meant to convey by your mentor, and I'm glad it worked for you, but those aren't the same kind of thing. Things in your refrigerator which are white only happen to be white, but things in the entire world that are white are white by definition.
I can honestly admit that I was trying to follow the subtlety of that statement, but yet I don't follow.
I guess my question is how are things in my refrigerator only white by happen-stance and not by definition? As everything that I see (regardless of where I see it at) is a product of my own definition, so that should not be of matter. What should be of matter is how quickly I am able to recall the things that are only defined by the scope I place them in (be in everywhere or in my refrigerator)
Sorry I didn't get back to you earlier. Below, swombat intuited what I meant: when you think of things that are white in the entire world, it would likely not occur to you to mention a specific white Toyota Corolla five blocks from where you are, or to round off to X million white cars to start the list. The question seems to ask for kinds of things that are white, so answers will tend to be "milk", "snow", "whitecaps"... but even that last raises the question of whether things with "white" in the name or description are valid? If so, then "white X" where X is nearly anything is one good answer, making the question meaningless.
In contrast, when thinking of white things in your fridge, you can answer "eggs" if the eggs in your fridge are white, even though eggs may or may not be white in general, so they are arguably not valid for the list of things in the world.
I'm not saying you consciously went through this line of reasoning; I'm saying that the question frames different kinds of answers, entirely apart from your mentor's intended lesson of "reducing scope allows you to think more deeply about what's left in scope".
I hopefully now understand what you mean and I appreciate you taking the time to respond. Since I was not able to even classify things as x million white y's probably lends itself more to the value of the question bc my scope was so broad...but if you were able to do that within 15 seconds and write down more than 8 things, then you would be better at this game than I was! :)
There's a difference between "prototypical objects" and "specific objects". For instance, apples are red, but that specific apple you have in your hand might be green. Likewise, people have 10 fingers, but my grandmother only has 9. I suspect the parent thought this distinction was hidden in the question?
But I don't see any reason you couldn't name a specific object in response to the "everything in the world" question. I also can't think of many objects that are white but not prototypically white. So maybe I've misunderstood too.
To give an example of this... When answering the first question, I found myself thinking only of things which are pure white almost all the time. So I thought of snow, clouds, white sails - and even with those I felt they were arguable (snow can be grey; clouds too; sails can be multi-coloured). Arguably the only thing that's prototypically white in the world is sunlight - and that looks yellow! :-P
On the other hand, when considering my fridge, I only thought of what is white-looking in there... Milk is prototypically white, but cheese, eggs, bread, mold on some old sausages, etc... are just kinda sorta white sometimes. But within the limits of a fridge they're acceptable examples of white.
I think that's what the GP was arguing: when asked for "white things in the world" you naturally place the bar for "white" much higher than when asked for "white things in your fridge".
