I was reading this piece and it reminded me of a theory I had been concocting. This piece, however, promoted it to "fully realized and understood thought in the frontal lobes so now I can write about it" status.
There is only a certain, finite amount of time you, me, and everybody else on this planet has. And a natural, engrained, darwinistic response you get when behind someone in traffic, or the vile and contemptible person who pulls out an order for her entire office in the line at Subway or Chipolte, is one of anger.
The reason why is they're killing you.
Oh, admittedly, not ending your life at that moment, but forcing you to waste precious seconds, and delaying your life by those precious seconds. Seconds that add up over the years to be at least by my estimation a month of extra life.
Now while we can all exchange stories about idiots in line or rush hour caused by three old people, there is another stalling or delaying in our lives and that is bad conversation.
For example, my girlfriend will accidentally send me from zero to "About to murder the Eastern Seaboard" in barely a microsecond as she unconsciously asks me the same question three times. Women do this not because they actually want your answer to something, but they think in merely rephrasing the question, you'll give them the answer they're looking for.
"Do you want to go to the movies?"
"No."
"Well aren't there any movies you want to see though?"
"No."
"Well, I thought you said you wanted to see Movie X."
"FOR THE THIRD BLEEPING TIME WOMAN!!! NO!!!!"
But this is actually an endearing eccentricity of women. One I really have no choice in accepting. But another example of how bad conversation delays things is when you are in debate. And it is here I have no patience whatsoever. Ergo, why I bring up NAWALT.
What if we didn't ever have to bring up NAWALT again? What if people got it the first time, and would then save us the hours of arguing, "well, I know most women are like that, but you see, this one girl, blah blah blah blah blah...."
And not just NAWALT, but what if every fount and bit of knowledge, wisdom, concept and fact was agreed upon and never questioned again?
Could you imagine how much faster our philosophical understanding would advance? Could you imagine the intellectual epiphanies and observations we'd come to realize?
It's akin to "if the Roman empire didn't collapse, we'd have made it to the moon by 1617."
Except I'm not asking the Roman Empire to not collapse. I'm merely asking (both men and women) to acknowledge and incorporate previous knowledge and information so that we may advance the freaking conversation instead of having to constantly revisit and reaffirm things we already know to be true.
Imagine the speed and clarity debates and conversation would have.
But no. Oh, no.
I gotta deal with people playing semantic games, asking me "what is racism?" I gotta deal with women who insist that though my empirical chart shows women earn the majority of easy degrees, they know this ONE person (at band camp) who majored in engineering. I gotta deal with some schmutz who purposely chooses to ignore my larger point and barf all over the technicalities to prove he's smart and that technically my point was only 98% correct. All of which, sapping out my finite life by the second to address these petty and intellectually dishonest contentions.
So I want to come up with a new acronym. Something that says, "We Fucking Covered That Already and All Agreed Upon It Now Can We Move On for the Sake of Future Generations?"
But "WFCTAAAAUINCWMOFTSOFG" seems a bit unwieldy. Perhaps, "It's Been Settled." IBS. Or "Say, Have U Talked to Us about this Previously?" SHUTUP?
I don't know. I just know it would be nice to move a lightning speed while talking about different topics instead of holding up for the NAWALT/technicality/semantics short bus.
19 comments:
How about, "Your anecdotal evidence does not refute the trend." - YAEDNRT - A bit catchier, perhaps.
This is basically the argument they are making when they say NAWALT. They're cherry picking certain instances where the trend doesn't hold.
Been covered already: RTFM
Something like, EOL "Excepting outliers". Mostly just programmers (like me) will see EOL and thing "end of line" first. =)
If EOL is too short maybe add to it, AEOL. "Always excepting outliers". Maybe not good but maybe it'll inspire better ideas.
My other idea was, "Exceptions don't break the rule" which is EDBTR.
FOR THE THIRD BLEEPING TIME WOMAN!!! NO!!!!"
Honestly, sometimes we just want to hear you say "WOMAN!". ;)
I'm merely asking (both men and women) to acknowledge and incorporate previous knowledge and information so that we may advance the freaking conversation instead of having to constantly revisit and reaffirm things we already know to be true.
Well . . . . Feelings.
"if the Roman empire didn't collapse, we'd have made it to the moon by 1617."
No. I have spent many hours Playing Civ 1, 3, and 5. Even as the Romans. I have never made it to the moon before 1980.
--Hale
"the exceptions prove the rule" sometimes applies to NAWALT rebuttal. sometimes i say "not all rattlesnakes are like that". though i truly know lots of women that aren't "like that", NAWALT is always, ALWAYS, used as a deflection to a point.
"the exception that proves the rule". this is a concept that people who use NAWALT all the time, will have no chance of grasping. so, sometimes i just say "not all rattlesnakes are like that". though, i know that many women aren't "like that", NAWALT is a retarded deflection. NAFALT is even worse.
MWALT usually gets the job done.
"ODDP".
Outliers Don't Disprove Patterns.
"Imagine the speed and clarity debates and conversation would have."
I imagine many, and possibly most, NAWALT comments are made precisely to prevent that.
Most people who use NAWALT on me are using it as a logical fallacy in an attempt to dismiss my entire position. They're essentially saying "Since I know this ONE GIRL OUT OF THREE BILLION WHO DOESN'T FIT THE PATTERN, then none of them do."
It's just like how leftists will find that single person who might actually come out on top in ObamessiahCare, to dismiss all of our criticisms of it.
SUbject COvered (or SUfficiently COvered)- SUCO has a nice twist to it
("Hey, you SUCO")
OK, here is more:
TWAC - This Was Already Covered
TWAEC - This Was Already Extensively Covered
TICK - This Is Common Knowledge
KYAETY - Keep Your Anecdotal Evidence To Yourself
I couldn't agree more. We waste lots of time justifying outliers, rather than understanding that in almost all cases - unless we are speaking about a specific person/situation - we are speaking "in general".
How about "We Covered That Already, Now Shut The Fuck Up" -- WCTANSTFU
We debate the outliers, not the important stuff. As you say, that's a waste of time. Everyone can come up with an individual case that doesn't "fit" - but who the hell cares - that's not an argument that invalidates the premise - it's must a statistical outlier.
It's like the teacher having to continually stop class and tell ONE student...We already covered that (while thinking, now sit down and shut the fuck up).
My mother's way of saying this was "Don't generalize". WTF? Without generalizing, one cannot discern rules, patterns, and relationships in any subject. A million real-life examples lead to no conclusion.
Imagine a world without acronyms! The newspaper would be a horrible place.
How about "Shut up, Meg"?
Except by definition generalizations have to apply for all not the majority and if that's the case then it's just becomes a stereotype... And even then...but the fact of the matter is AWALT so we can put the NAWALT fallacy to rest.....
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