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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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this is only true if the argument includes no personal observations or other claims that might be false.

A person arguing for a claim they genuinely believe in is at least equally capable of (if not more capable of) making up false anecdotes, or exaggerating true ones. In general, personal anecdotes should get very little weight as evidence of anything.

If you're an actual human, you don't want to bother with someone who's likely to make a lot of invalid arguments

A person arguing for a position they truly believe is at least equally (if not more) likely to make invalid arguments, due to blind spots or confirmation bias or a simple desire to win the argument.

My experience is that humans don't behave that way.

Humans don't behave what way? They don't make false statements and/or invalid arguments in support of positions they sincerely hold?

They do those things, but they don't do them in the proportions that you imply. Someone insincerely arguing for a position is much more likely to be telling you BS, even if every human will probably be telling you some BS.