> Only searching for reasons why you are right is a fishing expedition.

Not to be mean, but aren't you being a little hypercritical here, bringing up your bespoke example of YouTube?

I think you mean hypocritical.

To answer: no, and even if it was a “yes” it wouldn’t affect the argument I was making. I’ll explain.

I was wondering how long it would take for this kind of meta-critique would pop up. Meta critiques are interesting: some people use them as zingers, hoping to dismantle someone else’s entire position. But they almost never accomplish that because they are at a different level of argument: they aren’t engaging with the argument itself.

Meta-critiques are more like an argument against the person crafting the argument. In this sense, they function not unlike ad hominem attacks while sneakily remaining fair game.

Lastly, even if I was a hypocrite, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that I was wrong — it would simply make me inconsistent in the application of a principle.

I don’t interpret the above as mean-spirited comment, but it does miss the point of the example I gave; namely, people second-guessing a market (or information heavily influenced by markets, like a new funding round) tend to lose. (Of course there are examples in the other direction, but they are less common and do not deserve equal emphasis.)

In general, a market synthesizes more information than any one individual, and when they operate well it is unlikely for an individual is going to beat them.

This is a well known general pattern, so if someone wants to argue in the other direction, they need to be ready to offer very strong evidence and reasoning why the market is wrong — and even when they do, they’re still probably going to be wrong.