When I say "people like ice cream" and you say "not all people like ice cream" I reply "I didn't say all."
"All" is a modifier for a reason.
For example, people are demanding that the SATs should not be used to evaluate students academic ability, because it's unfair that some students do better on the test than others.
Have you ever seen anyone advocate this sort of thing for the school sports program? How about it being unfair and inequitable that top athletes have a leg up on college admissions?
Did any PE teacher shower attention on me or the other inept students to bring us up to speed? Nope. The attention was all on the top 2 or 3 athletic students. The rest of us were just an annoyance. (I'm not saying this to complain, as my interests were elsewhere, just illustrating an example.)
Using the term "people" or "men" or "women" without a quantifier is misleading. I could say "people think the earth is flat" and it doesn't matter if it's one person or one billion people but the difference is very important.
> Using the term "people" or "men" or "women" without a quantifier is misleading
If I say "people have two legs" and you reply saying what about amputees, that's a debate tactic, not a misinterpretation. If I say "people are amputees" that would be a false statement.
> I could say "people think the earth is flat" and it doesn't matter if it's one person or one billion people but the difference is very important.
The term "people" by itself means people in general. Not all people, and not one person in a billion.
English is neither a mathematics nor a programming language, and should not be treated as such.
Seems like you moved the goal posts a bit there. Your first comment indicates "people" could be any quantity, now it seems you mean that "people" means people in general, which indicates a majority of people? It's important to be precise in language if you want your thoughts understood.
