Comment by KennyBlanken
10 months ago
> You can literally shove facts in someone's face, and they won't admit to being wrong or misunderstand, and instead continue to argue against some points whose premise isn't even true.
It's called a strawman fallacy, and like all fallacies, it's used because the user is either intellectually lazy and can't be bothered to come up with a proper argument, or there isn't a proper argument and the person they're using it against is right.
If an honest alien says "we don't want to convert humans to our religion" that means you can have whatever religion you want. If a dishonest alien says it, it might mean "we don't want to convert humans because we are going to kill all humans", it's selectively true - they aren't going to convert us - and leaves us to imagine that we can have our own religion. But it's not the whole truth and we actually won't be able to[1].
An honest "no one will be forced to use Rust in the Kernel" would be exactly what it says. A paltering reading could be "we want to make Rust the only language used in the Kernel but you won't be forced to use it because you can quit". i.e. if you are "literally shoving facts in someone's face" and they don't change then they might think you are not telling the whole truth, or are simply lying about your goals.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paltering
And yet, you are bringing made-up analogy that suits you to the discussion.