The best thing about written English is how malleable it is. Everybody doesn't have to mean everybody.

My current view is that ambiguous language only benefits poets and disingenuous scoundrels (politicians, sleazy marketers, etc.)

That said, I'm open to being talked out of this viewpoint. Being cynical makes me unhappy.

Thomas is definitely a disingenuous scoundrel.

In all seriousness, I laugh at absurd absolutes. If you show me a sentence with "Most people" and the same sentence with "Everybody", I'm going to smile at the second.

But I don't think that means it's ambiguous. "I literally died" makes me laugh but there's no deception.

This is why we can't have nice things.

e.g. remember when "synergy" actually meant something?

I literally remember that.

> Alternatively, the author could adopt a common style used in business communication where the author creates a label...

Yeah no offense but this style of writing makes me go look for something else to read, whereas tptacek's style made me keep reading the (long) post..

If we're being sufficiently pedantic about this, for any person A and belief B, it is perfectly non-paradoxical for A to stop believing B and then start believing B.

If we're being sufficiently pedantic, then after this process person A would be right where they started and would not be "better off", making the original statement false.

It would be easy to adjust the language. I'd just have to give up on people reading any of it.

... because there are no possible improvements, of course, to perfection.

P.S. False dichotomy alert