“You deserve this spoon cake,” said the headline on the LifeHacker website. I wondered what this implied about the quality of the spoon cake, given that I’d accomplished nothing worthwhile that week. But then I remembered that LifeHacker had no means to assess my degree of merit — it didn’t even know who I was. The headline was meant to suggest that everybody deserves this spoon cake (and, by implication, that the spoon cake is delicious).

Here’s the problem: To “deserve” something generally means that one has done something to earn the thing (or at least has done nothing to forfeit the privilege of having it). The word’s purpose is to distinguish those who are deserving from those who aren’t. But if everyone deserves something, the word becomes meaningless.

I first encountered this problem many years ago when McDonald’s began running commercials saying “You deserve a break today.” I was a teenager when this slogan came into being, and even then, I found it insulting. Clearly, McDonald’s was trying to flatter me, to contrast me with those sluggards who hadn’t been doing their work and therefore were unworthy of getting a break. But McDonald’s had no way to know that I wasn’t a sluggard, and therefore their claim was disingenuous.

“Why would anybody take those commercials seriously?” I asked my father.

“Those ads are intended for people who aren’t going to think about them too much,” he said. “You’re not one of those people.”

I’m reminded of this, oddly enough, because I recently encountered a young woman wearing extremely torn jeans. When I say “extremely,” I mean that pretty much the entire front of each pants leg was missing, from the lower thigh to the upper calf.

Now, I can think of two practical reasons to wear pants: One is to protect your legs from rain, cold, or sun; the other is to cover your legs for the sake of modesty or dignity. Clearly, these jeans served neither purpose, so the only other reason I could imagine for her choice of wardrobe was to make a statement.

But what sort of statement? Did she mean to communicate that she was a rebel, too cool to care what people like me thought? Did she wish to demonstrate that she was too spiritual and idealistic to concern herself with material things? Did she simply want to fit in, because all of her friends were wearing extremely torn jeans?

I suppose you could say that — as with the McDonald’s ads — my failure to understand her message means that I was not part of her intended audience. She was wearing those jeans solely to appeal to people who, unlike me, would understand why she was wearing them. As for me, I’m presumed to just continue along my way: Nothing to see here!

But something about that conclusion feels a little too facile — too close to the logical fallacy known as “no true Scotsman.” For those of you who aren’t acquainted with the catalog of logical fallacies, the traditional illustration is this: One man states a rule or generalization, such as “No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.” Another objects, “Well, I’m a Scotsman, and I put sugar on my porridge.” To which the first one responds, “Well, no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.” In other words, the first person contrives to make his rule unfalsifiable by specifically excluding any counterexamples, thereby making the initial statement pointless.[1]

To say that “if you don’t understand the message, then it wasn’t intended for you” has a similar effect: It automatically excludes the possibility that the message is incompletely thought out, or badly expressed. If “you deserve this spoon cake” is meaningful only to people who already believe that they deserve that spoon cake, it’s not a very useful assertion. There are plenty of people who don’t feel worthy of spoon cake, but would likely still enjoy it if it were offered to them.

Imagine how much more effective our political discourse would be if we could find ways to express things that are clear to everyone, regardless of their preconceptions. (Perhaps something along the lines of “Lots of people think this spoon cake is really yummy!” or “If fast food is a treat for you, consider getting it at McDonald’s!”) People would still disagree, but at least they would have a shared understanding of what they’re disagreeing about.

[1] For another example of “no true Scotsman” — this one involving concealed gold — see Atmosphere (3).