Hacker News Reader

Skepticism is not "expressing some contrary opinion". It is a rationalist discipline, very much rooted in logic. A true skeptic will do one of two things:

- put forward sound arguments why a specific viewpoint or presented fact could be wrong

- reserve judgement altogether

Expressing a contrary opinion is not in the skeptic's playbook, because it would be self-defeating: they would be making the same categorical error as they're arguing against.

That isn't a viable critique. You have to prepare the right answers and bad faith questions are easy to counter. Or maybe not, but you still have to be able to do that. I have seen much more instances where no answers could be provided when people asked legitimate questions that weren't in bad faith at all.

Yes, they are different, but it’s extremely easy to conflate them if the skepticism is contrary to the interests of the powerful and you hold the power to censor.