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It's actually completely compatible with logic:

Source X claims Y.

I know very little about Y.

I know a fair amount about X, and what I know indicates that X is an unreliable source.

Therefore, I will not significantly alter my beliefs about Y until a more reliable source than X comes around.




Fortunately in this year 2015 we have a thing called hyperlinks via which evidence for assertions can be easily provided. If you treat op-eds from 'unreliable' sources as unreliable, fine. If you refuse to even check well-cited articles from 'unreliable' sources, you're probably more interested in ideological correctness than truth.


There is a nonzero cost of verifying, analyzing, and engaging with any text. The more substantial the text, the larger the cost. I don't have to read another Reason article to know that it's got the same systematic blindspots Reason articles have, and I don't think I could convince anyone of that, so I just communicated my stance and went on. There's nothing 'illogical' about it. I did not state my argument; I just stated my position. I think the charge that this violates basic logic is making a poor assumption: that absence of my argument is the same thing as not having an argument.

I don't want to make the argument. I want to snark about Reason. So I did. Shrug.


Cool, then maybe you should go to reddit.com/r/politics?


There was a nonzero cost to making this post. Why did you bother?




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