...generally being general

What is your number one cop put, spineless, non-commited answer that you hate when taking part in a discussion of any sort?

Here's mine; anything that begins with, or contains a part that has "generally speaking" somewhere in it when making a particular point.

Why?
Because it is next to useless.
What does it even mean? Most of the time it is valid? So does that automatically make it valid for whatever it is you are discussing? OK, perhaps I am being a bit unfair as I do realise that what I am moaning about now, is the modern tendency to avoid commiting yourself to a firm answer for anything; Deliberately Indecisive as it were and giving a general answer is the easiest way to seemingly be taking part in a discussion when in fact, you are offering nothing new.
That's also ignoring that a general answer doesn't help progress any debate as it is by it's nature a response that takes into consideration the average of things; the average being the most likely outcome from a set of many variable outcomes. What that means that the average can actually have within it, both extremes of a debate. The average doesn't negate the existance of all other outcomes.

Just because you are sometimes nice or even nice to just one person doesn't negate the fact that the rest of the time, you might be a shit.

I also see it as the refuge of those who have no opinion, or perhaps a tool to hide their ignorance in the matter at hand but can't decide which is worse. On the one hand, to have no opinion on a matter is no crime in itself because not everyone is interested in all things. How about if that not having an opinion in based on being ignorant of something that perhaps you should know more about? Doesn't that then mean that the "generally" point of argument is a means to mask their ignorance? A pretence of sorts that alludes to them knowing what they're talking about but in fact they don't?

There is a modern disease that has spread which causes people to think that you have to be "nice" all the time. Now this isn't neccessarily a bad thing but the way it seems to have superceded all other common sense is what bugs me.
I have been banned from a martial arts discussion forum because I was deemed to have been an aggressive trouble maker. What did I do that warrented this? I was trying to tell them that the information that another member of that forum was, in short, bollocks. My trying to tell them something that was more true than the rubbish that the other person was saying got me banned. Why? Because they didn't want a bad feeling in the forums so they decided that they rather have what amounts to lies and untruths on their forums than someone who could answer a hell of a lot of their questions.
Nice.

You could put it down to my arrogance I guess but when you have a non chinese speaking person trying to tell me what something in chinese means, I'm sure even you can see why I got more than a little agitated at the lack of common sense in the forum administrators' actions and decisions.
I guess I could've been more diplomatic but what point is there is saying in any other way that someone is wrong or that something they had said was not true, especially if I know the actual truth in the matter?

And once again I've departed from the path I had intended to take so I'll cut this short but I'm sure I'll remember more of the multitudes of threads of thought I have going around my head.

Published: 9th December 2007