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tomcatfish | 2 years ago

This is not correct. If we want to explain why the sidewalk is wet, and 99% of the time it is because of sprinklers and 1% of the time it is because of rain, then "The sprinklers do not alone explain the wetness", but "The wetness cannot be explained by the sprinklers" is a foolish thing to say.

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Retric|2 years ago

English is tricky around negatives and groups.

“Wetness of all sidewalks globally can be explained by sprinklers.” <- obviously false.

“Wetness of sidewalks can never be explained by sprinklers.” <- also obviously false

The first applies to all sidewalks as a group, the second applies to subsets of the overall group so it’s false if any subset can be explained by sprinklers. Both quotes are using my first example due to being inclusive and including: “on a social level” and “population-level”