4 ms·

All of which is an ad hominem: their arguments stand or fall regardless of who funds them.

• tasty_freeze 8y ago
  That is one of those sentiments that sounds good but really isn't useful. Say, hypothetically, President Trump said, "There was no collusion!" Would you say that there is no utility in inspecting Trump's motives and his history of telling whoppers, because, after all, the statement "There was no collusion" stands or falls on its own no matter who said it? In the real world, as individuals we don't have the expertise nor the time to develop the expertise to evaluate fully what we read, and it is rare that we personally have firsthand knowledge of the facts in question. So we can't determine if the claims of the article stand on their own and we rely on the reputation of the author of the article to help decide the likelihood that it is true. The person you replied to was very careful not to claim that there is anything wrong about the article.