It would be not more accurate but perhaps more clear to say “Well-known author and activist wins case against Equifax.”
Such an underrated role in the community.
In that sense I suppose this phenomenon is called "understatement."
The same is true of Dennis Ritchie: he’s just a programmer—because the word “programmer” was originally invented to describe people like Ritchie. But by that same historical standard, most modern “programmers” aren’t; they’re just code-monkeys.
The Usain Bolt example is different—Bolt really is an exceptional runner, rather than being a denotationally-central example of what it means to be a runner. When the word “runner” was invented, it referred to the lesser thing, with plenty of central examples; and by that yard-stick, Bolt is more like a “super-runner” or some such. (Similar to how the word “food” developed to refer to a category where the central examples were nutritionally merely-adequate, so now we’ve had to invent the word “superfood” for foods that are, like, really dang good at being food.)
In my experience (working in an academic library and interacting a lot with employees of other academic libraries), most actual present-day academic librarians do not suck at being a librarian. They're not as high-profile as Jessamyn West, but neither are they "computer literate old ladies" -- they use computers constantly in their daily work and are at least aware of issues with digital privacy, copyright law overreaches, etc. I suspect anyone who thinks "computer literate old lady" is still the normative example of a librarian, hasn't interacted with many librarians lately (or perhaps has limited experience e.g. in a small town library).
"Martin Luther King Jr was a criminal! Taxation is theft! Capital punishment is murder! Abortion is murder!", etc are examples of that sort of misrepresentation.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...
The noncentral fallacy is somewhat opposite to that—MLK is certainly not a “criminal’s criminal”—the reason people don’t identify him as a criminal certainly isn’t because he’s too much of a criminal.
"MLK is just a criminal!" and "Jeffrey Dahmer is just a criminal!" are both non-central attempts to use extreme outliers.
>"X is in a category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction. Therefore, we should apply that emotional reaction to X, even though it is not a central category member."
The difference between calling MLK a minister and calling him a criminal is that being a minister isn't as negative. Nonetheless, calling him only a minister does evoke an emotional reaction that doesn't quite capture the power of MLK's role in society. Introducing him as a minister is an example of the non-central fallacy, but it's played for ironic effect.
Oh wait, that actually happened: https://twitter.com/MSalt69/status/476684833221926912
All my book needs were digitised long before our local library caught up, and then of course Amazon happened
The subject of the book was the machine itself (the so-called "bag on the side of the Eclipse", IIRC).
it would be more accurate if people stopped believing in stereotypes.