Engage facts and interpretations

There's a fully-general counterargument widely used in online discussions that I think is pretty weak.

It goes like this:

1.  Jane shares article from Goodtown Daily Journal to support her argument, or just merely to share some information.
2.   Larry who disagrees with the gist or conclusion of Jane's article says "oh that's from Goodtown Daily Journal, you can't get accurate information from there".

Larry may or may not be right.  But the problem is that this argument can be used against anything Larry doesn't like.  If Larry has a point of disagreement with the article, Larry needs to engage that point of disagreement.

Let's take political ideology here:

In the US, this fully-general counterargument is used against Fox News, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc.  The problem is that not every single thing these places post is subject to whatever your accusations of bias are getting at.  Every single thing in the NYT isn't a lie or a subtly slanted piece of propaganda designed to further the liberal agenda.  Every single thing Fox publishes isn't a lie or a subtly slanted piece of propaganda designed to further the conservative agenda.

Now, maybe there's The Journal of Some Political Ideology's Propaganda that publishes nothing but things designed to further an nefarious agenda.  The problem is that, I'm just not going to listen to you when you use the fully-general counterargument I discussed in this post because the fully-general counterargument is mostly used by lazy ideologues.

  1. ugh this article is from +Dustin Wyatt, you cant trust that guy for anything!

  2. Agreed, with a caveat: People only have so much time on their hands, and it's disingenuous to expect everyone to review everything other people post, especially when the source's credibility is consistently horrible.
    I recommend that people post a short excerpt making their point, and then also link to the source.

  3. Yes, people only have so much time on their hands, but I expect people to acknowledge that and avoid commenting or participating int the discussion and argument since they don't have the time to argue from an informed position.

  4. Perspective appreciated and well received, Cuzzin.

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