Several informal names were suggested. @Measure_for_Measure posted a Wiki article titled Trivial Objections and suggested it would be a good topic for this forum.
I agree, in fact, if there was ever a game made for Dopers it would be nitpicking an argument, claim, or simple fact to death.
So let’s play a game. The object is, in a single thread, nitpick the OP so hard that the original topic is completely forgotten, that posters who agreed at the beginning ended up disagreeing and vice versa, and that we don’t stop until our pets beg us to be fed, taken out, or let back in.
Violet isn’t really a colour; in fact there are only 6 in the rainbow - the ancient Greeks thought 7 was the perfect number so added a colour to the rainbow that wasn’t really there.
You can actually trademark a color. That ugly brown color UPS uses on its trucks is a unique shade that has no functional purpose, and thus is eligible for trademark.
So if Microsoft’s azure color scheme is trademarked, then it can’t really be azure. And if it’s really azure, then it can’t be trademarked.
fwiw, @Wesley_Clark was the “Is there a name for the logical fallacy where you obsess over pedantic details to invalidate the opinions of others” asker, not @Wesley
Well, that wasn’t exactly what I meant. You’re assuming the original point was lost due to the nitpicking.
What I’m describing is when someone obsesses over pedantic details and says if someone can’t score a perfect score in understanding those pedantic details, then all their opinions are invalid and wrong.
‘You called an AR-15 an assault rifle? The M16 is an assault rifle since that is fully automatic while the AR-15 is semi automatic. Therefore your opinions on red flag laws, bans on large capacity magazines and concealed carry permits are invalid’
Thats more what I meant. You don’t lose the original topic of conversation. You just assume nothing the other person says is valid because they didn’t answer the pedantic details correctly.
I once said fully automatic weapons were mostly banned in 1934 due to the national firearms act. Then people got mad and said it was actually the firearm owners protection act of 1986 that truly counted. This was their response to me asking about assault weapons bans and red flag laws.
Also they’d get mad if you said ‘banned’ instead of ‘harder to get’. You can still get fully automatic firearms, they’re just way more expensive than the semi automatic ones and you need to do a lot more paperwork.
The whole notion of “The Sky” is flawed. “The Sky” doesn’t actually exist, it’s merely an optical illusion, where we perceive a kind of “lid” on the world, due to our limited optical abilities. We see this at night, and during solar eclipses, when what we think of as “The Sky” utterly changes.
But we are in the Dope which is run by an oligarchy of mods and which in no way resembles anything even approximating a democracy. So the majority means squat.
