Tonight I had a great discussion with Paddy about speaking in absolutes, and indeed how dangerous that can be. Speaking in absolutes often assumes a VAST amount of knowledge that the speaker can in no way prove. What the person should be doing is generalizing. Here are some excerpts from various conversations (edited for length):
paddy: more detail is allways more mesmorizing
nathan: not always
nathan: take poetry for example
nathan: most poetry takes only a few lines to say what it wants. but according to your logic, a poem that is 9412840124 pages long would always be better
nathan: or a 4120482048 min long description of a sunset would be better than a 10 min description
paddy: ok
nathan: every baseball player owns a baseball glove
nathan: that’s an absolute. i said EVERY baseball player owns a baseball glove
paddy: ok
nathan: while it sounds correct…..for me to know that, I would then have to account for every baseball player in existence and prove that they have a baseball glove, something I haven’t done
nathan: it’s one thing to say “all christians are good people” (an absolute) and to say “most christians are good people” (a generalization)
Kevin actually said a lot more than that, but if he wants to post what he said he can. 
Here’s what my sister had to say:
denise: we’re cognitively programmed to generalize-
denise: we absolutely cannot prevent ourselves from generalizing
denise: exactly-wisdom has everything to do with applying generalizations-ie when do they or do they not work in specific instances
denise: cognitively speaking, we are very bad at dealing with many details at once-generalizations are shortcuts for helping us make sense of life
Unfortunately I think Paddy took me to mean that absolutes are NEVER right (which is an absolute in itself, and already wrong).
nathan: absolutes aren’t always dangerous. for example, there is one blue cup on my desk. that’s an absolute that is entirely true haha
amy: you should tell him that
amy: haha
Food for thought. Eat up!
