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Comment by animal_spirits | Hacker News Reader

I got into a slightly heated argument with my mother when she claimed that "China had manufactured the virus in a lab" - I didn't even consider the possibility of virus manufacture for study and a possible leak happening, I just assumed she was being fed propaganda that this was the beginning of some kind of bio-war being started by China. So that is my failing, and after reading more about the lab-leak hypothesis I learned to hold my tongue and be curious about such left-field claims instead of judgemental

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One of my favorite fallacies is the fallacy fallacy. Just because one used fallacious reasoning, doesn't mean they're wrong. e.g. I can give a bad reason for why 16/64 = 1/4, just cross out the 6's, but just because the reason is bad doesn't mean the result is wrong.

In this case the fallacy was (US perspective)-- just because the Orange-Haired Man said it, doesn't make it wrong.

Admitting this fallacy would be too much to expect from political partisans. The guy is not a very stable genius, but he's not always 100% wrong either.

> the Orange-Haired Man

Carrot Top?

Not sure why downvoted. Trump is the orange-face man, not hair.

Jeff McKissack, a mail carrier in Houston, Texas, transformed a small suburban lot near his wood frame house into The Orange Show in honor of his favorite fruit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orange_Show

Yes, this case has generated an amount of "Hitler was a vegetarian" cases.

More "shockingly", some perceived in certain circles that an amount of "odd actors" acted to throw gasoline on every spark, enticing savage gut reactions. Another blow to civilization, opinion benders encouraging towards the dismissal of clean evaluation, mining the pillar that after "He said we walk using feet!!!" the response should be "Actually, ", not "Boo!".

I super appreciate your willingness to share a small moment of intellectual humility - they are too rare and I hope that it will inspire at least one other person to approach at least one other issue with a similar spirit.

I know that my thinking and behavior has benefited from the small subset of people who have been willing to do so publicly in the past.

I hope you looped your mother into your new insights!

Indeed. one of my favorite learnings in life is the power of admitting when I'm wrong (which is often enough). Quite an empowering decision and also relationahip building.

However there are times when people find it so unusual that they see it as weakness and instead of admitting their own wrong, try to capitalise on an opprtunity (perceived weakness).

One exception though is playing chess online, where my ego is yet to be mastered.

We can find strength from being vulnerable

I use self-deprecating humor a lot. And some people, usually the ones who don't pick up on the irony, also use it as an opportunity to attack. It's quite sad when you think about it :)

The problem with this is that it could very well be the case that she was being fed propaganda or just repeating something written on facebook by a randomer before more details were known. The fact that it could turn out to be true makes it very difficult to know how to take future similar statements because they probably have a higher likelihood of being wrong if they come from similar sources.

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