The Obsession with Exceptions is Killing Common Sense
How pedantry is destroying communication and sanity.
“It is best for a child to have a mother and father…”
“Well, I was raised by a single mother and I turned out fine!”
“I can’t believe you said that. What about same-sex couples?”
“But what if the father is an alcoholic abuser who beats his wife!?”
“Humans have ten fingers and ten toes…”
“That’s not true! I have a friend with only 9 fingers.”
“Define ‘toes’.”
“Ugh… this is so ableist. I can’t even.”
Have you ever had a conversation like this, or been privy to one?
I’ve had countless, particularly online. It gets annoying quickly.
I call this phenomenon the ‘obsession with exceptions’ and it’s a particular illness that plagues modern discourse and politics.
This pedantry goes beyond making conversations irritating, it extends into public policy, media, and even corrupts the language itself.
When we focus obsessively on exceptions and outliers, it becomes easy to lose the forest for the trees. Instead of being able to have useful conversations about important issues, people get bogged down with endless caveats, overwrought explanations, and long-winded acknowledgements.
When we try to accommodate every single exception in our speech and thinking, it’s often the norms that suffer. Whilst I understand wanting to avoid offence and seeking to include those who may be atypical, it can go too far.
If I say, “Men are stronger than women”, it should be clear that I’m making a generally true observation, based on averages. It is not a misogynistic attack, statement of supremacy, or failure to acknowledge that there are women in this world who can outlift me.
Needing to explain every exception and caveat to make a general statement weakens communication. It also suggests the audience is too stupid, ignorant, or disingenuous to acknowledge exceptions implicitly.
None of this is conducive to effective communication.
There are indeed people who think constantly pointing out exceptions and edge cases makes them appear intelligent, but in reality, it makes them sound pedantic and ridiculous.
In virtually all things, exceptions exist. When reasonably intelligent people are communicating in good faith, this fact is assumed. It allows us to discuss patterns, trends, and data in an efficient manner, so we can get to the bottom of things without unnecessary distraction.
When we obsess over exceptions, the conversation gets derailed and we are unlikely to reach any form of diagnosis or solution.
Are there times when it is important to focus on exceptions? Absolutely.
As I said, there are always exceptions. That applies here too.
We cannot have conversations about anything interesting without there being some degree of generalisation. Whilst it can be inaccurate, misleading, or even offensive when people over-generalise too much on sensitive issues, it can be equally so when we get lost in banality.
The obsession with exceptions is how we end up with infinite genders, men competing in women’s sports, and the notion that obesity is not caused from overconsumption (“Some people have thyroid issues!”).
It’s hard to find a pertinent social issue where the public conversation isn’t derailed by this phenomenon.
We must be sophisticated and courageous enough to speak without second-guessing every word. Will there be somebody out there who chooses to take offence when it is clearly not intended? Perhaps. But they are the exception, and we should not cater to them.
As a society, we need to stop getting lost in the weeds on everything. Once we’ve achieved that, we can have some serious conversations and perhaps even solve some of our problems.
Have you noticed the obsession with exceptions in your own conversations? Let me know in the comments.
1,
Zuby
Agree. I suspect that people who love to remind us of exceptions aren’t really concerned about the exceptions; they just want to demonstrate that they are more enlightened than the rest of us. It’s virtue signaling. If we could stop putting ourselves on the pedestal and showing off our enlightenment, then we could begin to actually listen and communicate. It all comes down to pride.
Holy shit, reading this was cathartic. This is one of the most frustrating aspects of communication today. The preemptive (and often futile) statements people make reminding their audience of what should just be assumed when presenting any kind of argument is particularly exhausting. Every conversation or presentation on an issue inevitably gets bogged down in these braindead preambles.
I wish there was a way to filter these idiots out somehow; normally I’d advocate for the creation of some way to ruthlessly mock these people, but I reckon there are too few of us and too many of them for this to get off the ground and be effective.
If this is indeed a simple matter of intelligence, then this problem really was inevitable once the internet expanded to include more and more of society — inevitably the idiots will outnumber the non-idiots and public discourse will descend to the level of the majority. Worse yet, because the internet allows idiots to network with one another (creating a kind of positive feedback loop of stupidity), I believe it has emboldened them and made their behavior extra obnoxious, both online and IRL.