I Know What You Mean, Even When I Don't

how simplification makes things worse

If you are amused by how people are wrong, you will never want for entertainment. If you are amused by how you are wrong, you will never stop learning. (I’d rather be right tomorrow than have been right yesterday.)

I am currently amused by a specific way that people are wrong: in treating the ambiguous as obvious, and in how I might sometimes be wrong in the same way.

black lives matter

The Texas State Bar President calls Black Lives Matter a political organization. His detractors—even those who in private conversation explicitly recognize that the organization is political but that the organization is not the movement is not the slogan—treat Larry as though he believes that Black lives do not matter.

You should be familiar with one manifestation of treating the ambiguous as obvious: the motte-and-bailey fallacy. From Wikipedia:

The motte-and-bailey fallacy (named after the motte-and-bailey castle) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions which…