Conversation is a lost art nowadays, but when it was still a thing, a part of it was making general statements, and extrapolating general trends -- even if a statement was only factually correct for just a large (or small but increasing) number the people and not absolutely everybody down to the last person
In those days, counter-arguments involved argumentation on why something is not the case in general, as opposed to just saying something analogous to "speak for yourself".
Heck, in those days, the "that's according to my opinion" part didn't have to be declared either, as it was implicitly obvious to everybody.
People expect more from conversation, as opposed to sloppy thinking where the author projects their own biases out to the world and expects people will agree with them or be polite enough to be silenced. Being "polite" like that was never a good idea, and it's, happily, becoming less common, in this era when physically forcing conformity is on the wane.
>People expect more from conversation, as opposed to sloppy thinking where the author projects their own biases out to the world and expects people will agree with them or be polite enough to be silenced
Yes. They expect people to be able to freely share their opinions and observations without others knee-jerk calling them "biases" and without demanding citations for things people can judge for themselves, as if every talk has to be mediated through some (often crappy, but just formal) statistic.
I didn't say anything about being "polite enough to be silenced" (heck, I'm not that polite myself) -- just to engage with counter-arguments and that "You've made a general observation but it doesn't hold for me specifically or my friend Jack thus it is invalid" is not really an argument.
