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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jkmcf 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	simpaticoder 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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vacuity 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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?