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by flashman14 hours ago |
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upvoteby kibibu14 hours ago|
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I didn't really know what they meant by it. Sounds like "the fact that you do this proves that nobody does it".
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upvoteby dataflow12 hours ago|
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I believe the phrase is used to mean something like "the fact that you found something that is obviously an exception proves that the rule normally applies."

For example, imagine if your skydiving instructor said "if your parachute doesn't open when you jump out of the airplane, you're gonna die", and you replied with "well actually that's not true, Vesna Vulović survived a fall from high altitude." Yeah, okay. The fact that you had to be smarty-pants about it and dig up a random exception really proves the point they were trying to make.

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upvoteby irpap5 hours ago|
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In this example the “exception” that proves the rule though was not a smarty-pants special circumstance. Using AI for shopping is just one of its many normal usages and if anything proves it is used by normal people doing normal things. It’s not like the rare example that happens once in a hundred years.
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upvoteby adastra227 hours ago|
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Ok but I’m not sure the relevance here? Everyone has unique needs, if they want to get specific enough. The promise of AI here is that anyone can get as absurdly specific as they want, instead of accepting whatever advertising bucket they’d be traditionally sorted into.
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upvoteby anonymars11 hours ago|
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Fair enough, I can buy that. I feel like in most cases where I've heard it it wasn't nearly so clear cut, so that logic wasn't obvious and it sounded like nonsense

(Also that story is nuts! https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87)

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upvoteby stackghost11 hours ago|
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This exactly.

People on this website are so fucking pedantic and argumentative over the most obvious or inconsequential minutiae it drives me nuts.

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upvoteby anonymars11 hours ago|
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Comparing the tone of your message with its parent, do you not see the irony?
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upvoteby stackghost10 hours ago|
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Yeah, better to be passive aggressive and faux-intellectual so as not to throw off the usual HN vibe.
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upvoteby anonymars10 hours ago|
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Okay, I'll be directly aggressive. They were helpful and added thoughtful discussion, while your response added nothing but bitterness

That they were responding to someone else who couldn't see how it worked means it wasn't just pedantic nitpicking

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upvoteby ryan_j_naughton9 hours ago|
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I concur. I found this discussion on the phrase very enlightening and aided both my understanding of the idiom and how I should use it in the future.
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upvoteby dataflow8 hours ago|
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I'm not really 100% certain this is the correct or only meaning, for what it's worth, so don't take me as authority. It's just the common thread I've been able to gather from context over time. If you're gonna use it (I rarely do) it'd be worth researching it to make sure you're using it correctly...
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upvoteby parasubvert9 hours ago|
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[flagged]
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upvoteby stackghost8 hours ago|
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>It's not personal.

I didn't say it was personal, I said it was irritating.

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upvoteby tommit5 hours ago|
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I knew what he meant and still thought it spawned an interesting discussion. Mainly because I've never quite intuitively understood that saying. So, I did not take it as OP being tedious about it at all.
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upvoteby tehnub11 hours ago|
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It's a common rhetorical technique that never convinces me. I'm not convinced this guy's anecdote is an exception to some rule.
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upvoteby reilly300014 hours ago|
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That’s why we’re all here together friend.
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