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A fallacy that uses an extreme, often [hypothetical] exception to dismiss a general rule or pattern. "There are exceptions, therefore the rule is invalid." The fallacy treats the existence of any counterexample—no matter how rare, how marginal, how [irrelevant]—as proof that a generalization is worthless. It's the logic of "some smokers live to 100, so smoking doesn't cause cancer," of "one minority succeeded, so [discrimination] doesn't exist." The Fallacy of the Absolute Exception is beloved of those who want to deny patterns they find inconvenient, who would rather focus on the exception than address the rule. It ignores that generalizations describe tendencies, not absolutes, and that exceptions prove the rule only in the sense of testing it—not disproving it.
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