"The NYPD is completely without morals" is a problematic statement
I'd be happy to agree with a statement like, "Too much of the NYPD is completely without morals."
"The ocean is responsible for coastal erosion."
"Oh no, that's incorrect. Surely there are vast numbers of water molecules that have never come anywhere near dry land."
Both statements are correct, but the person who makes the second comes across as being deliberately snarky.
While I realize it's an unpopular concept during the current social climate, generally speaking it is
valid to conceptualize group entities as singular without accounting for the individual behaviors of every discrete entity within the group. As the example above, it's
valid to say
"the ocean is responsible for coastal erosion" without accounting for the behavior of individual water molecules. It's
valid to say that "humans eat meat" despite the fact that some individuals do not.
If one is interested in
communicating rather than derailling discussion by selectively insisting on literal accuracy whenever someone makes an uncomfortable statement, then nitpicking as you are is unlikely to be productive.
Look at the original exchange you're commenting on:
The only way this could be a problem is if the NYPD had funding for a
satellite laser and a complete and utter lack of morality.
They've pretty well shown the second one so far
Making blanket statements about an entire police force is the kind
of thing I'd expect from a poorly educated pothead.
The way I read that, MetalSlimeHunt was not intending to convey that "every individual police officer is completely lacking morality." It was clearly a general statement, and in fact,
not even his own general statement. He was loosely agreeing with a
hypothetical scenario proposed sarcastically by Vester.
To respond to a loosely worded reply to a hypothetical statement by...
* misinterpreting "complete" to mean
every single one rather than as a general emphatic
* completely missing that the person being corrected isn't even the person to use the word "complete"
* insulting the person in question
...comes across as either deliberate trolling, topic derailment...or, as I suspect, is indicative of a mindset engendered by years and years of having been trained to ignore the bigger picture in favor of exceptions and minutia. To hop onboard with your corrections comes across about as well.
"Why no, armies don't kill people. Surely there are many cooks, administrators and mechanics within armies who've never shot a single person. Only some individuals within armies actually kill anyone."
"Why no, humans don't breath air. Surely over the course of an entire lifetime any individual human only breathes a very small minority of the sum total particles that could be described as air."
Do you see how this way of thinking isn't always conducive to clear thought?
Author
Topic: Occupying Wallstreet (Read 294949 times)