> then how do you reason about classes of people? In my experience: By using a "defensive approach" when formulating such statements. Like "The majority of boo

> then how do you reason about classes of people? In my experience: By using a "defensive approach" when formulating such statements. Like "The majority of boomers are very chiefly to blame.", even if you think 99% are responsible. Yes, this has the "risk" that people who should feel called out are telling themselves "oh, but they don't mean me!". In the end, you probably will never win the hearts and minds of those people anyway with such statements, so it doesn't matter. But you prevent offending and driving away people who are not "guilty", boomers who don't show the behavior you described, who tried to prevent this whole desaster in the 70s and 80s, those that no one listened to, the (at that time) poor. Ostracization is one of our primal fears, our brains are very boolean in that regard and emotions are often not processed with the highest precision. IMO that's an okay tradeoff and more effective than to only weaken a generalisation with additional statements afterwards. What do you think? I agree with your text, btw, and am in almost the exact same situation you described except that I live one country to the north-east, have a used laptop instead of a PC and only have to walk 1.5km to get food :)