first half of the post is most important to TRP discussion

Theory versus Maxim

Theory

The ideal theory that describes reality exactly in every situation, would be exactly like reality itself: infinitely complex. No man can ever have great enough a sheer number of experiences in this world to describe it entirely. That's where Theories come in. People try to communicate the main lines of underlying truth they believe to have discovered. In all fields except math (where we can set the axioms ourselves so exactly that all follows through pure logic) a theory will thus always be insufficient. It is the task of the student or even the fiercest critic to accept this and it is unwise to disregard a theory entirely because it has some holes in it – because there always will be.

Now even theories are quite complex and in the field of philosophy and psychology they can only be understood vaguely after reading/hearing a lot of examples and metaphors of many authors. After all, which one passage of which book, or which one TRP post made you understand a philosophical concept entirely at once? Were all previous passages, chapters, books, posts, … unnecessary in acquiring this insight, in hindsight?

Maxim

To communicate the basic insights of a theory, and as a mental note to remind ourselves of what we have learned, we have Maxims. These are short sayings which can be used as a rule of thumb by beginners and even by experienced students in situations of uncertainty; these are catchy metaphors or limiting cases that illustrate some core epiphany of the theory.

For example, there is the maxim “bears kill people”. Indeed it is not true that all bears kill people in every situation, but it is a very useful rule of thumb when in doubt: it is better to lock yourself in your house when there's a tame and shackled bear in your back yard, than to be wrong about this “probably being a harmless one”.

Fallacies

Attacking the maxim

One way to not advance an argument is to attack the maxim. “Not all bears are like that!” Indeed, the theory/reality about bears is that there are ones that are tame, or have no teeth nor claws, or are not hungry at the moment … hell, it may be a pacifist philospher bear with an IQ of 110. But in absence of extra information, it is better to follow the rule of thumb.

Another well-known maxim is “All Women Are Like That (AWALT)”. Again, pointing to exceptions does not discredit the value of the maxim. Aside from attacking the maxim by taking the word all in this example literally, one might also fail to recognize how the metaphor was meant to illustrate the theory. In this case, the maxim means that all women are capable of betrayal, hypergamy, hamstering, solipsism, … – I'm not going to lay out all of TRP theory here – NOT that all women will do these things all the time.

Attacking the maxim does not further the discourse. It can be done by pointing to exceptional cases, taking things literally, or getting lost in the details trying to disprove the veracity of the maxim in itself rather than understanding what theory it supports; and ultimately refuting the underlying theory on these grounds.

Another example (tired readers may skip this part)

One last example of this fallacy: about the maxim “one man can impregnate the whole tribe”. One might contend this for various reasons and moreover make the argument that a tribe with only one man wouldn't survive because men are in fact not replaceable (by women), but that misses the point. This maxim is a limiting case to illustrate a biological reality that takes far longer to explain:

Ancient confrontations weren't super deadly; most fights were limited to making lots of noise and weird faces, and they most of the time resulted in routing after only a few kills or wounds. Some looting and raping might happen, or just a loss of territory which at worst puts some more pressure on the defeated group in trying to feed itself. And when it comes to famine; very, very rarely is there absolutely nothing to eat; people would just be partially starving for a few months with a few deaths or some lifetime underdeveloped kids as a result.

Imagine in any of both scenarios, 10% of the population had to die. Say the group has 20 adult males and 20 adult females. If the casualties were all men, that means you end up with 16 men and 20 females. Guess how many children will be born that year? 20 times some fertility factor. Conversely, if the casualties were equally divided among the sexes, you end up with only 18 (times some fertility factor) births that year. And if all individuals were selfish, since men could almost always out-strong the females, only 16 (x fert factor) would be born. Over time, with enough micro-disasters, these small differences add up and the tribe that puts women first gets way more populous.

Therefore, it is natural for societies to be concerned with women way more than with men, even though men are indispensable too.

Demanding the full theory

Tired readers may skip this part as well because it is less frequent, especially in TRP discourse environments.

A second way to look smart but actually not advance the argument is to Demand the full theory. I see this in discussions about darwinism a lot and it drives me crazy. Someone would ask or answer a question in a discussion about evolution and – God forbid – say something along the lines of: “organisms want to spread there genes as far and wide as possible”. In come the field of biology's very own SJW analogues thinking that they're smart by pointing out for the nth time that “actually, species don't want nothing, genes genes genes, random random random … it is just that organisms with a lot of progyny slight advantage advantage advantage involuntary involuntary involuntary no goal no goal no will no will … just happen to become more prevalent over time logic logic logic …”

They basically don't understand or don't trust that people use this shorthand “organism wants” because it is convenient and so they don't have to explain all the basics about evolution every time again that they're wanting to have a discussion about some specific instance of it. It's like in chemistry we say “the atom wants”, but I've never heard a chemist whine about how atoms aren't sentient beings and that actually, it's electrons and energy energy energy Schrödinger Schrödinger stable stable orbit all that shit. We just say potassium wants to lose its electron and we're fine with it.

tl;dr Autists making a lot of arguments that don't advance the discussion.

Though English is not my native language, I have searched for a lot of synonyms of maxim and found this word to be quite fitting – feel free to suggest other terms.