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It's "flesh out"--like filling out a figure that began only as bones (i.e. in outline).
Sure, if you get caught in the wrong jurisdiction. But violating a custody order doesn't even have to be willful; often it is the result of a misunderstanding, or an emergency, or just panic. Even responsible adults can panic! That doesn't mean they aren't generally sufficiently responsible to care for a child.
Again: only if it doesn't work out for you. Which it often won't! But there are literally times when your choice is "break the law now, and it will be bad, or don't break the law now, and it will be worse." In that case, it's not irrational or irresponsible to decide that "bad" beats "worse." That's the unfortunate nature of reality. The police are not invincible, the courts are not infallible, the law is not incontestable. I wouldn't, as an attorney, encourage a client to ever violate a custody order! But I can imagine, as a parent, circumstances that might demand it of me.
It doesn't mean that in the sense of being sufficient, but surely it's at least a few bits of information in that direction.
Well, if it often won't work out then, on the balance we ought to advise people against it.
Sure, but I still wouldn't advise anyone about to be caught with a few grams of drugs to escalate it into a shootout with the police. Sure, some fraction of people that do so get away with it (that is, agreeing the police are not invincible) but on the median
Of course not. But the fallible courts have fairly-reliable armed men that, if you decide to contest their possible-mistakes via physical force, will enforce them against you.
This isn't a normative statement.
Sure. What you said was:
This was false. You now seem to admit that it was strictly false, and that what you really meant was something much more reasonable, like "it's an extremely bad idea to violate a custody order." I don't know why you made such an obviously false statement to begin with, unless maybe you were trying to pick a fight. The comment improved substantially when you fleshed it out, but did so by retreating from your original claim.
If you want people to write plainly, you ought to read plainly too.
Moreover, it's not false (let alone obviously false), any more than any statement that has an exception, no matter how non central & inconsequential, is false. Applying this level of pedantic precision requires also rejecting as false the statement that "smoking causes cancer" because it not every smoker gets cancer or "summers are hotter than winters" because one July was January. Or if you want an SSC example, to object to "criminals harm society" by pointing out that MLK was a criminal.
If you want to consider this a "retraction" rather than "a clarification that in most polite conversation it would be considered peevish of a listener to insist upon" that's fine. But it's probably among the least enjoyable aspects of discussion on the internet when readers do that.
No--it would reject as false the statements "smoking always causes cancer" and "at no point during summer is it ever cooler than at any point in winter." Remember, you did not say "Violating a custody order is itself a sign of irresponsibility," but "no responsible adult would violate a custody order." Pedantic precision is a virtue, here.
The larger problem, though, as was already explained, was your lack of effort to explain and engage. If you want to talk about the "least enjoyable aspects of discussion on the internet" then "people who drop a low effort, single-sentence sneer instead of engaging the substance of your comment with a thoughtful and amicable reply" is not only high on the list, it's high enough that we have rules against it. This was explained to you, and you largely rectified the situation, which really would have been the end of it had you not also continued to defend your overstatement to multiple commenters, in persistently dismissive tone.
This kind of nitpicking desire for pedantic precision is at odds with speaking plainly. Otherwise every possible statement has to be qualified with a bunch of extra drivel.
This seems far less plain nor does it add much information to my ear that wouldn't be covered by a plain reading.
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