this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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In this case, being more accurate would have distracted from the overall point.
Granted, attracting the dismissive comments of insufferable pedants and the wilfully obtuse isn't ideal either, but here we are ๐คท
How would being more accurate distract from the point? I agree with what the post is saying, but making up statistics doesn't really help IMO and takes away from the credibility
Expressing the number of people shot as a tiny fraction of 400 million people would raise at least as many questions about accuracy and make it EASIER for people like you to distract from the point by obsessing over an unimportant (to the point being made) detail.
Analogies and third decimal-accurate statistics just don't fit together.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'people like me'. To be 100% clear, I agree with the point of the post but I just don't think they've gone about explaining it in the best way. To somewhat agree with what you're saying, I'd say yes, analogies and accurate statistics don't fit well together, but neither do analogies and statistics in general. Either stick to written analogies/hyperbole OR use actual statistics.
Pedants, the easily sidetracked, those who will jump at the opportunity to distract from the message itself by hyperfocusing on an insignificant technical detail.
Take your pick.
You seem to have a very binary view of things though. Is it not possible for someone to agree with a message, but think we can improve on how we tell it? If we want to convince people of something, is it not best to provide as convincing an argument as possible? I'm not trying to distract from the message, I'm wondering how we can tell it better.
Of distracting from the actual topic by needlessly fixating on an only tangentially relevant detail? Yeah, I'm kooky like that.
Sure, but that's not what you're doing. You're, deliberately or not, pulling all attention away from the message by demanding a fix to something that, in the specific case, is unimportant.
As I said before, being more exact would invite MORE distracting arguments about it, not fewer.
You're also not trying to NOT distract from the message either, though. Or you are and you're doing a piss-poor job of it.
It was told just fine. You're actively obscuring the salient point with your pedantry.
Ok my friend. If I have distracted from the message, that is genuinely not my intention. I'll leave things here.
Fair. Have a nice day ๐
Ok so you're saying that you need to outright lie to get people to side with you?
That makes you sound like a politician, not a human rights advocate, but sure
Burning Man called. They want their gigantic strawman back.
How about you address the fact that you're saying that telling the truth would distract from the point instead of pulling up distractions? Sounds like whataboutism to me
Let me put it another way.
There's 4,947,3842.562 kinds of people in the world: those who obsess over needless numeral exactitude when faced with a rhetorical argument, and those who don't.