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Douglas_Knight comments on Open thread, 9-15 June 2014 - Less Wrong
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You seem to be missing the point, which is about its political subordination to a larger entity. What I was attempting to correct was (possible) ignorance of the existence of the UAE.
Here are the first two sentences of my link (emphasis added):
For all that an "emirate" may be similar to a "principality" (or, dare I say, a "count-y"), the fact remains that the political status of Dubai is different from that of e.g. the principality of Monaco, in the sense that Monaco is an independent country, and Dubai isn't.
Dimensions along which Dubai is more similar to Singapore than Istanbul aren't relevant to this point. (If someone pointed out that California was part of the United States, you wouldn't argue with them by saying that it's the seventh largest economy in the world [or whatever] and therefore "empirically clusters" with countries rather than states.)
Belgium is more subordinate to the EU than Dubai is to the UAE.
So what? Dubai is still more subordinate to the UAE than you would have thought if you didn't know the UAE existed.
If you follow your definition, rather than intellectually dishonestly changing definitions in every comment, you should stop calling Belgium a country. Or start calling Dubai one. If your point is merely to point out the existence of UAE and its small effect on the relative country-ness of Dubai, your original statement should not have been absolute.
You appear to be using as your definition of country "member of the UN." If you want a canonical list of countries, that's about all you can do. But I don't trust authority to list countries just as I don't trust authority to list poisons.
We differ on that point, then. The concept of "country" as I intend it here is more or less entirely a matter of what authorities list (in contrast to the concept of "poison", which involves the question of whether something kills you). The authorities here aren't epistemic ones pointing to empirical facts, but are rather political ones making declarations that they intend to enforce.
"Member of the UN" is at least a sufficient condition for countryhood, and the sense of my original comment is approximately the same as if it read: