In commenting on Paul Krugman's column I used the term "stuff". There's lots of it around. I think the recent controversies over Summers by the left and Krugman by the right point to some lessons about proper interpretation of writings.
I think it's true that people discussing Summers speech and Krugman's column both make the same mistakes. Daniel Drezner says "Krugman mistakenly attributes the attitudes of some Republicans about evolution to all Republicans". Now the truth is that we don't know what Krugman believes, but we do know he never wrote all. Drezner inserts the word when he reads, and makes it explicit in his comment. Similarly, feminists who reacted to Summers inserted mental "alls" into his statements.
Unfortunately English, spoken and written, lacks simple means for qualifying statement, so we need to rely on our common sense.
I would offer Harshaw's rule of interpretation: any noun used in a serious discussion should be considered as qualified by the terms "majority of", "modal", "median" as appropriate (at least when the noun has a normal distribution curve. In other words, "conservatives don't believe in evolution" would convert to the phrase "[most] conservatives don't believe in evolution". This is the principle, but appropriate modifications would have to be made in other discussions; sometimes it's the verb that should be modified.
46 years ago in Psychology 101 I learned about the "fight or flight" reaction to the new. I take it as meaning today we all immediately [mis]interpret what we read to make it either more threatening or safer--we're uncomfortable with the middle ground of difference. (Although my misinterpretation could be a sign of age.) If we don't apply Harshaw's rule, we indulge in polemics without sense and without possibility of resolution.
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