nonspeak

Of all the sins you can commit in this world, the one that aggravates me the most (or at least in my top 5) is talking without saying anything.

The main culprit of this that I've been seeing lately is people who disagree with something, but they're not willing to say it, so they say that it "needs more study" or it's a "very serious issue with lots of hard questions".

Take for example, human cloning. Conservatives come at it from the God angle, and they're pretty much done. Liberals who oppose it, however, are usually coming from the anti-science camp. They like to say that we need "strict reviews" and that we should "consider all the consequences", etc.

Anyone with a brain would agree that we should consider consequences when we do something. What bothers me about sentences like this is that they don't suggest a course of action. No review will ever be strict enough, and we will have never considered all the possible consequences thoroughly enough, because what they're really saying is "I don't want you to do this."

I've ranted on here before that if you don't have constructive criticism, you should shut your goddamn mouth, but this is one of the sneakier forms of nonconstructive criticism. When you assert something, your words should suggest a course of action. If you're talking, and you're not saying anything that can be acted on, you're wasting my time.