Billionaire philanthropist and author MacKenzie Scott announced Tuesday she is giving $640 million to 361 small nonprofits that responded to an open call for applications.
Yield Giving’s first round of donations is more than double what Scott had initially pledged to give away through the application process. Since she began giving away billions in 2019, Scott and her team have researched and selected organizations without an application process and provided them with large, unrestricted gifts.
In a brief note on her website, Scott wrote she was grateful to Lever for Change, the organization that managed the open call, and the evaluators for “their roles in creating this pathway to support for people working to improve access to foundational resources in their communities. They are vital agents of change.”
I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with any usage of that phrase, correct or incorrect. People just use it to dismiss counter-evidence to their pet theories.
Because she is simply an “exception.” Use of the phrase would require there to be a general understanding that “billionaires are bad except when…”, but the prevailing notion is simply that “billionaires are bad.” Therefore, she is an “exception”, and a good one at that, not an “exception that proves the rule”.
edit Oops, replied to the wrong one, but leaving this here because I’m lazy. I am the rule.
I’m not sure what the tone/intention was here but I’ll take it as a normal question. I disagree because I think people use it as an easy way to improperly dismiss evidence that disagrees with their views, even when they use it correctly in a sentence.
Iirc, the word “prove” in this context is the archaic definition “test” e.g. the proving ground. This would imply the original meaning of the phrase is in fact the opposite of how it is normally used today: "the exception proves the rule "means ‘an exception tests [whether or not it is] a rule.’ As you say, people now use it in this strange fashion where the existence of counter evidence somehow proves the point
