"the person i'm arguing with doesn't understand" or "the person I'm arguing with is stupid" are lazy arguments no matter how you shake them, because it's your responsibility to either be more clear or realize the argument is a sunk cost and walk away
in the sense that being not privileged doesn't make you omniscient, yes
but the personal anecdote thing goes both ways on the ideological spectrum, just look at the gun control debate. how many times do you hear personal stories about some dude with a gun thwarting a crime, even though statistically they've been proven anomalous?
deletedalmost 9 years
so when people are like, "you dont understand because youre privileged" what they mean to say is, "I dont understand because Im not privileged"
a) because personal anecdotes serve to humanize very nonhuman, stat-based issues b) because the average person is painfully inward thinking and thinks their reality is either everyone's reality or relatably close enough to everyone's reality c) because people are stupid
like there's an interesting debate to be had about how much unfairness the system should actively try to remove but you're not gonna start that debate with some facebook likebait
deletedalmost 9 years
so why do people use their personal anecdotes about life being unfair as reason to change the system?
