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Comment by mikepurvis | Hacker News Reader

Indeed, and an articulate, confident defense can also be that much more insidious. I never found it hard to ignore obviously bad-faith talking heads on cable news, but when someone is on a podcast conversation with a host I like, it's much easier to nod along until that moment where they say something demonstrably false and I have to rewind my brain a minute or two to be like... wait a sec, what? How did you get to that position?

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They were called Sophists in Ancient Greece and were despised by Socrates because their arguments were based, not on truth or facts, but whatever rhetoric would convince the audience.

Yes, and the antithesis of rhetoric is reason.

The quality I value in myself (and others when I find it) is a bias to doubt evidence of things I already believe, and to accept proof of things I do not believe. The bias isn't strong (that way lies madness!), but it makes your mental model of the world stronger. It's also a much better filter than "intelligent", "polite" or "articulate", which are all orthogonal to the kind of rational, open skepticism I advocate. The big downside is that such qualities are subtle and hard to judge. Tribal affiliation is, for all its faults, easy to measure.

Another point of optimism: being a persecuted (or neglected) minority can have some positive effects, if you can find your people.

And in a classic stroke of Gell-Mann amnesia, if you're questioning what you just heard, how much should you trust what you were hearing five minutes ago?

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