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What marknutter says ("do not make it impossible to lose weight, just more difficult") is tautologically true. What you say ("For all you know she's already tried everything") can not possibly be true.



This is irrelevant pedantry. When people say "... already tried everything." they don't mean everything. This isn't first-order logic, it's conversation!

They mean that the subject has tried many things, to the point of frustration.

Unless we accept that losing weight is the highest possible priority, then it will necessarily be balanced against other priorities. These will be generally inconsistently pursued, because people are not rational.

In part, people who are calling for acceptance of a wider range of body weights are arguing that there is too high a priority placed on a person's weight.


> This isn't first-order logic, it's conversation!

Thank you for that eloquent retort. Though I've been on both sides of a pedant's argument (often the wrong side), it's helpful to set the context that a conversation is happening in. Some folks will grab onto anything if it allows them to say, "I'm right, and you're wrong!"


Actually, my premise is based on a universal predicate, which should be falsifiable (it can be true if she did indeed try everything). And his statement is not a tautology in logic, though perhaps in rhetoric it may well be.


One needs to take grammar lessons to understand HN comments...


Just a book in discrete mathematics :-) sorry, the comment I responded to was quite pedantic, but unfortunately wrong which I find to be the worst form of pedantry.

I really shouldn't engage in these sort of back and forths, but sometimes I just can't resist...




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