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6/7/2018 3:38:05 AM
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[quote] And my final point is that the chance of dying in a school shooting in the U.S is less than 000.0000000001%[/quote] 1 in 10 billion? There haven't even been 10 billion Americans in the history of the USA. I'd be interested in where you got your statistics.
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  • Yeah there's this wonderful thing called hyperbole, this would be an example of that.

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  • Edited by LahDsai: 6/9/2018 2:05:51 AM
    Hyperbole is an appeal to emotion, not reason. If I said, "Half of all deaths are in mass shootings these days," would you take me seriously?

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  • Actually hyperbole is a literary device that just happens to be frequently used in appeals to emotion. That does not mean that is what it is used for predominantly.

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  • I'm familiar with hyperbole and it's uses. Notice you, yourself, pointed out it's a [i]literary[/i] device, not an [i]argumentative[/i] one. In a debate or when trying to plead a case it's only effective assuming your opponent or audience doesn't call you out on it. That's why fact-checking is a thing. Saying "It seems nearly all men in Hollywood have been accused of sexual abuse," is effective because the words "seem" and "nearly" make the argument difficult to quantify. It could be 90% or 1 in 3 (a significantly lower statistic that still [i]sounds[/i] alarmingly high). The moment you say "90%" or "1 in 3", you open yourself to scrutiny. Just like you can't pull a gun on someone and then say, "it's just a prank, bro" when the cops show up, you can't make a statement and say, "it's hyperbole" when someones calls it out for being bullshit.

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  • At the end of the day he made a blatantly hyperbolic statement that is obviously not the actual statistic nor the one he likely supports. You're interpreting his statement in the most literal manner possible ignoring context (an emotional vent session). All OP did was rant about poor conditions at his school, it doesn't mean they actually believe in the absurd statistic. Not only do you ignore context of the statement but you also conflate illegal action with a emotional statement. Pulling a gun on someone is a crime unless it is in self defense, making a meaningless statement that's deliberately extreme is not. To compare the two is grossly inaccurate.

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  • At the end of the day I made a blatantly sarcastic and ironic statement that was obviously not asking for an actual source nor the argument itself to be taken seriously. Nor was I comparing a statement to a physical crime. I was merely pointing out that if you wish to be taken seriously (in this case, the OPs claim that their school's actions are ludicrous and unfounded, not their claim that you have a 1:10b chance of dying in a school shooting), you can't claim you weren't being serious when it goes south. ... however... If I WAS making such a comparison, it would be a pretty exaggerated statement or claim clearly not meant to be taken literally as a the two being exactly equivalent offenses. ... if only there was a [url=https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/hyperbole]word for that[/url].

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  • Ten billion is less than the current population of the Earth.

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  • True, but I was pointing out that by that statistic we should have had, at most, one person die in an American school shooting since 1776, which is clearly not the case.

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  • Yeah, I don’t buy those odds

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  • [quote]Yeah, I don’t buy those odds[/quote] Kind of reminded me of [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxKFUKHYi78]this scene[/url].

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