Every time I read in an article (or more typically in a headline) how some guy X "eviscerated" / "destroyed" some other guy Y and their argument, 9 times out of 10 it just means some guy X had a different opinion.
Very occasionally their opinion may be backed by an actual counterargument, but this is quite rare, and even then the counterarguments tend to be of varying quality.
Rarely is there an actual "evisceration" at play (a term I would have otherwise reserved for someone pointing out basic logical flaws in an argument, which cause it to collapse as completely invalid).
I've seen this kind of language used as clickbait more than anything else so many times by now, that by this point whenever I hear "X destroys Y", my knee jerk reaction is that, despite the usually present controversy surrounding the kind of opinions that attract this kind of reaponses, for Y to merit such a vacuous attack in the first place means they're probably right.
> Every time I read in an article (or more typically in a headline) how some guy X "eviscerated" / "destroyed" some other guy Y and their argument, 9 times out of 10 it just means some guy X had a different opinion.
Neither was said.
> And then he calmly and clearly eviscerated the very foundation of Knuth’s program.
Very occasionally their opinion may be backed by an actual counterargument, but this is quite rare, and even then the counterarguments tend to be of varying quality.
Rarely is there an actual "evisceration" at play (a term I would have otherwise reserved for someone pointing out basic logical flaws in an argument, which cause it to collapse as completely invalid).
I've seen this kind of language used as clickbait more than anything else so many times by now, that by this point whenever I hear "X destroys Y", my knee jerk reaction is that, despite the usually present controversy surrounding the kind of opinions that attract this kind of reaponses, for Y to merit such a vacuous attack in the first place means they're probably right.