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0 pointsitistoday213y ago0 comments

If he knew he was making a generality (and, for his sake, I hope so), and yet still made that statement, then that's lying (at least, using boolean, and not fuzzy logic) because his statement was absolute and unqualified. Absolute, unqualified statements are not generalities.

"People are dumb" (absolute, unqualified) vs "Most people are dumb" (absolute, qualified) vs "Most people I've met are dumb" (relative, qualified).

A comment like "people are dumb" is usually assumed not to be taken literally, but when you quote a study and say something like "men don't read online dating profiles", you're now in a very different territory, and the misuse of language could give the impression of a deliberate false statement (i.e., a lie).

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SilentStump13y ago

You do make a good argument. When I read blog posts and they make a statement like that I tend to just read it as "Most X do Y" instead of "All X do Y." It's like the word literally. Everyone that uses the word literally use it instead of figuratively, even though they mean the latter (jokes I make are bad).

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