Comment by bruce511
5 hours ago
I understand that it can feel like you're having to make the same point over and over (I certainly feel like that sometimes) but personally I'm more inclined to give the person the benefit of the doubt when it comes to good faith.
Out in the world there are common misconceptions which are propagated by vested interests and believed by many at first glance.
Having the opportunity to see those arguments, and rebuff them , (over and over again) is key to balancing the public discourse.
I agree, some argue in bad faith, that's going to be true in some cases. But I think most times it's honest misconceptions.
As a personal policy, that can work: you can always choose which conversations to engage in and which to ignore.
As a site policy, it cannot. If you demand that everyone coming there in good faith treat everyone else as also operating in good faith, even when they open with arguments that are very common when sealioning people, you are telling every troll, every bad actor, everyone paid by a massive corporation or a foreign government to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about particular political or economic positions that this site is ripe for their use.
I've seen far too many people even on here "just asking questions", or using the Gish Gallop, or other techniques of bad faith debate, to believe that it can possibly be a good idea to treat everyone as if they are good-faith rational actors seeking open debate for the sake of finding the truth.
If you're still not convinced, do some research on Brandolini's Law [0], also known as the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. It really does take massively more effort to refute bullshit with truth than it does to spin bullshit everywhere.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law