And, to be clear, my point isn’t that you should just trust me but that to a first approximation the average person has no way to distinguish between two random people on the internet. Telling them to do more work seems futile since nobody has time to do that for more than a small number of topics in the news.
I think both of you guys are partially correct, which was my original point.
I never said the Google guy was correct or wrong. In fact, parts of it makes sense and parts of it doesn't.
What irritates me is that people are making a huge fallacy. For example two people can have a whole set of arguments that conflict with one another. Let's assume we can absolutely measure whether a statement is absolutely correct or not. And two people each make their own set of statements about a topic.
Person A: Right - wrong - wrong - Right
Person B: Wrong - Right - Right - Wrong
Instead of A and B sharing their ideas and coming to a conclusion which will be
Right - Right - Right - Right
They keep fighting over small details and say "Because you have this little part that's wrong, your entire argument is wrong" to one another. This will never resolve because they each have errors in their arguments for a fact.
Any humble person would agree that he/she is not a perfect being therefore prone to errors, especially when it comes to complex topics like politics.
My point wasn't that there's no value in listening to disagreements but that it's not useful to add unqualified or malicious viewpoints just for the sake of “listening to both sides”. Damore had no relevant expertise or experience, had conducted no research, and a huge ideological axe to grind.
Giving someone like that your attention is simply increasing the distraction level. It would be much better to get someone qualified — in this case, say, a neuroscientist or cognitive psychologist — who can do a better job representing that position.
