system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Given our present understanding of molecular phylogenies, isn't taxonomy completely obsolete?

My kid is learning about Linnaean taxonomy in school (Kingdom/Phylum/Class/Order etc). It occurs to me that this is a gross oversimplification of molecular phylogeny, enough so as to be be fairly worthless. Is it still widely used in the scientific community?
gpt
Well, *kind of* is the simple answer. In most cases these classifications actually represent the true relationships. Species are more related to each other species within a genus, genera within families, families within order, and so on. That being said, there are some paraphyletic groupings still around for poorly resolved taxa but taxonomists are working diligently to resolve them properly. So, they're not worthless since they do represent some level of relationships,... but they exist as simple clades with no real context, timing, or (almost always) ancestry. 

The real problem here is our idea of species concepts and what a species actually is. That's something where evolutionary biologists, ecologists, and taxonomists generally disagree on. You may read Coyne and Orr's book on speciation (I think it's called 'Speciation') for more insight here.