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Comment by aeleos | Hacker News Reader

Treating Alex Jones as a serious media outlet is honestly the worst offense here. This guy has stated on multiple occasions in great detail that he believes that the Newtown shooting was faked and everyone was hired actors, that there is some great deep state conspiracy and other fear mongering shit about how the various politicians are the devil and will destroy the world.

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The thing that bugs me most about your comment is that it introduces fallacious groupthink (argument based on authority I guess) that makes it difficult for anyone with a different opinion to speak out: "if you trust such and so (i.c. Alex Jones), you're a moron a priori." This type of reasoning should be discouraged on HN in the same way that "did you even read"-type comments should be (and are) discouraged, because I think that both stifle civil and open discussion. And both of these things can be said in better, less excluding, and less hostile ways.

> "if you trust such and so (i.c. Alex Jones), you're a moron a priori." This type of reasoning should be discouraged

A fine position on its face in the general case, but let's be real here: if you trust Alex Jones specifically, you really are a moron.

This is getting off topic, but Popehat calls this the "Nazi Exception"[0]

> Yes, rights are important, and we must offer them generously. But surely we can agree that Nazis don't have rights?

[0]: https://www.popehat.com/2017/04/18/the-seductive-appeal-of-t...

Well, in this particular case, it seems "Nazis" do have rights, because Alex Jones is apparently having a profitable business and nobody's throwing him into jail.

We don't have time to dissect everyone's arguments on merit and perform deep analysis. It helps sometimes to filter based on obvious criteria. Like if someone is a young earth creationist or believes the moon landing was faked. This belief so clearly denotes a lack of critical thinking that dissecting the rest of their arguments that follow is not worth the effort.

The world is so massively full of such low hanging fruit that you can often save a massive amount of time this way as it turns out the majority of people aren't worth listening to outside of narrow areas of knowledge they directly interact with. Its a completely valid strategy. The danger of course is that you risk ignoring useful proof if what you assumed was obvious was incorrect.

I suppose so, but I'm biased against Alex Jones now only because of hearing so that so many dubious people like him.

Yet, I don't know anything about Alex Jones himself. It'd be nice if that were included in the critique.

Given his history of incendiary garbage-spewing, if you trust Alex Jones, you're a moron.

If there's something you hear from Alex Jones that seems like it might be true, double-check it with knowledgeable sources before you adopt it as a fact.

Better yet, go find more reliable sources for your information.

In fact the time required to vet anything he says against more objective sources is such that listening to him entirely wasted effort. I know no more after hearing him speak than I did before. If he says its raining outside I necessarily must spend just as much time opening a window and looking outside as if he hadn't spoken. To be clear I'm agreeing with you.

This would make a nice template text.

Alex Jones literally thinks that alien Satanist lizardmen run the world. That's not hyperbolic mockery; he has actually expressed those opinions.

I absolutely agree that automatically dismissing anyone whose news sources don't completely agree with yours is a big problem. But I think intelligent people can agree that some people have proven themselves utterly unworthy of trust.

Wright Brothers thought they could fly.

Have you ever looked into his claims or reasons why he believes that?

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