4 ms·
I believe the phrase is used to mean something like "the fact that you found something that is obviously an exception proves that the rule normally applies." F
by dataflow 5mo ago
I believe the phrase is used to mean something like "the fact that you found something that is obviously an exception proves that the rule normally applies."
For example, imagine if your skydiving instructor said "if your parachute doesn't open when you jump out of the airplane, you're gonna die", and you replied with "well actually that's not true, Vesna Vulović survived a fall from high altitude." Yeah, okay. The fact that you had to be smarty-pants about it and dig up a random exception really proves the point they were trying to make.
- anonymars 5mo agoFair enough, I can buy that. I feel like in most cases where I've heard it it wasn't nearly so clear cut, so that logic wasn't obvious and it sounded like nonsense (Also that story is nuts! https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87 https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87)
- stackghost 5mo agoThis exactly. People on this website are so fucking pedantic and argumentative over the most obvious or inconsequential minutiae it drives me nuts.
- anonymars 5mo agoComparing the tone of your message with its parent, do you not see the irony?
- stackghost 5mo agoYeah, better to be passive aggressive and faux-intellectual so as not to throw off the usual HN vibe.
- anonymars 5mo agoOkay, I'll be directly aggressive. They were helpful and added thoughtful discussion, while your response added nothing but bitterness That they were responding to someone else who couldn't see how it worked means it wasn't just pedantic nitpicking
- ryan_j_naughton 5mo agoI concur. I found this discussion on the phrase very enlightening and aided both my understanding of the idiom and how I should use it in the future.
- dataflow 5mo agoI'm not really 100% certain this is the correct or only meaning, for what it's worth, so don't take me as authority. It's just the common thread I've been able to gather from context over time. If you're gonna use it (I rarely do) it'd be worth researching it to make sure you're using it correctly...
- parasubvert 5mo ago[flagged]
- stackghost 5mo ago>It's not personal. I didn't say it was personal, I said it was irritating.
- adastra22 5mo agoOk but I’m not sure the relevance here? Everyone has unique needs, if they want to get specific enough. The promise of AI here is that anyone can get as absurdly specific as they want, instead of accepting whatever advertising bucket they’d be traditionally sorted into.
- irpap 5mo agoIn this example the “exception” that proves the rule though was not a smarty-pants special circumstance. Using AI for shopping is just one of its many normal usages and if anything proves it is used by normal people doing normal things. It’s not like the rare example that happens once in a hundred years.