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Comment by bobabooey02 | Hacker News Reader

The problem is acting like definitions are fluid when we're not. If I write a huge paragraph about how black people are violent, but mention in one sentence that I'm talking about black people as a symbol for power and not as a race, that doesn't change the fact that I just talked about an entire race as a whole. It's still ignorant, and blurring the line between race and culture is a dangerous rabbit hole.

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Definitions are pretty fluid and the top level poster did take time to try to qualify the definition for the purposes of discussion. The problem is that fully qualify a definition often results in a long essay that nobody wants or has time to read, and trying to come up with a new label that's both accurate and accessible to the casual reader is a very slow and difficult process.

Since HN is a well-educated community, on the whole, it's not unreasonable to expect a little more work on the part of potential readers than for the same comment posted on a broader platform like Facebook. Unless I know from prior experience where a particular poster stands, when I read a comment I find attitudinally startling on HN I try out a few different interpretations before making assumptions about what was meant.

Personally, I agree that unclear or shifting definitions are bad for discourse.

And in this case, I would agree that there are better ways to express the idea.

I used a stronger tone than necessary about your original reading, I didn't mean to be hostile. But I did think it was clear that the poster was not generalizing as broadly as you took it.

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