The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
I wondered what google might have to say about that well-known line. Google's answer reveals a now common mind-set: "Anyone with some knowledge of Spain knows that this is not true - the plains there are parched and most rainfall tends to land in the north of the country"
Google went on to say the “lie” in this rain-in-Spain line might really be a hidden warning not to make assumptions about rainfall.
I went to google because I was curious about where the line came from. Most people researching the line are likely looking for something the same.
Googles answer was more interested in the truth of the statement and, bizarrely, the same entry posits a hidden warning about assumptions.
Reading further it is disclosed that the line came from a song in the musical: My fair Lady. Why wasn't that bit of information told first, and why wasn't the verity of the line treated as a footnote?
Google's skewing of things-important and things-secondary is weirdly common. So too, is an obsession with exceptions over-generalities; an insistence that what is generally true must always be challenged by every possible exception.
What a waste of intellect.
Exceptions generally prove the rule made apparent by the generality.
Despite the obvious truth that generalities are generally true, righteous quibblers are driven to expose the exceptions. This is only useful when the number of exceptions prove the generality wasn't really the rule after all.
That is rarely the case.
The problem has always been around, but less so than now. The modern agon between common-sense and theory begin in the rebellious questioning that was considered de reguer in the universities of the 1960's.
It became a habit.
Many, then and since, have a knee-jerk reaction to clear, simple statements. "What does that really mean"? "What are the hidden implications"? "What about the exceptions"? What about . . . what about . . . what about . . ."?
None of which keeps the questioner from imagining a disguised message in what the clear simple statement clearly said. The idea that a clear, simple statement might mean exactly what it said seems unacceptiable to those habituated to academic skepticism.
How dreary, how sad. how suffocating - how pointless.
The World is complex. It shouldn't be made more complex by circuitous excursions into exceptions and imaginings.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.