This article seems to a lot of fluff, but one thing I generally dislike in arguments is pulling some historical period, quoting similar complaints from that time, and using this to imply that because a problem has existed before it's the norm.

History has had many ups and down, and instead of saying that anything is "normal", you should ask if those periods really were downturns that needed solutions.

Societies have always had issues, but that doesn't mean that the issues we have right now are not something to be addressed.

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JKCalhoun 8 months ago | parent [-]

Agree.

Right out of the gate, "When it comes to friendship, this isn’t the first time that authorities have cried wolf."

Not a great analogy since ultimately in the fable there did appear a wolf.

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slylockfoxsocks 8 months ago | parent [-]

Parable notwithstanding, your comment is a critique of the standard usage of the expression "cried wolf". To cry wolf specifically means to sound a [false] alarm when there isn't a need for it.

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Retric 8 months ago | parent [-]

Raising a false alarm doesn’t mean the underlying issue isn’t there.

It just means the cause of the alarm is unrelated to the issue.

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quickslowdown 8 months ago | parent [-]

Sure, but people don't split hairs this hard in everyday conversation. Everyone will knoe what you mean when you say someone "cried wolf," it means they raised an alarm about nothing.

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soco 8 months ago | parent [-]

Since we're splitting the hairs already, all what the metaphor says is that false positives are bad for the system.

	▲	mihaic 8 months ago \| parent [-]
		You're right on this. The problem is that in real life it's sometimes harmful to have false positives (putting innocent people in prison) and sometimes you should side with caution and accept some false positives to make sure you identify the problems (better postpone a space launch if something might be bad until you've verified it's actually ok). If you can't think for yourself, your only option is to always use one of these modes.