Comment by nosianu

Nobody "waved it away"?

What is at work is that you cannot treat it like electrical charges and say that the sum is neutral (and even there distance matters, such a statement would only be within a very small distance).

What happens elsewhere is elsewhere. If you get sick, do you want to be sent home because the public health statistically educated doctor tells you that overall health has increased worldwide (just using it as an example, I make no statement about actual worldwide health)?

There is this public discussion phenomenon that in every discussion somebody will inevitably use such a "neutralization" method to "balance" somebody's statement. I find this less than helpful for any discussion.

If we talk about too few good bakeries in the state of Idaho, there is no point in saying that New York has more than enough of them.

Similarly bad discussion phenomena: We cannot even talk about problem X, never mind do anything about it, as long as completely unrelated problem Z exists elsewhere. Or, we should not spend money on X as long as there is Z.

It's like some people assume a Single Global Lock mechanism exists, and the lock is set whenever somebody somewhere attempts to deal with some problem, preventing others from doing anything about theirs.