Also sincere and thoughtful people are often complex, nuanced, and contradictory; as messy as the world they live in. Cancelling people for not being a true Sc

Also sincere and thoughtful people are often complex, nuanced, and contradictory; as messy as the world they live in. Cancelling people for not being a true Scotsman acts as a filter to either ideological doctrinaires oriented towards a narrow philosophy or more likely image conscious mountebanks selling a theatrical persona to the world. It reminds me of the tech interview practice of brain teasers. Out of the pool of people that service you a correct answer, some already know the answer and fraudulently misrepresent their problem solving skills while others are truly gifted geniuses. Because the number of scammers greatly outnumbers the number of geniuses in society writ large, this process creates a pool of say, 95% fraudsters and 5% prodigies. Therefore, without additional information, it's a statistically sound decision to give someone a hard pass that seems to miraculously come up with the answer. What more, the obvious next step of investigating by interview to find out if they're a phony or not likely gives you no additional information. The genius who had just seen the problem for the first time a few minutes prior would likely be far less able to quickly give articulate responses than the liar who likely came prepared with the common follow-up questions. Or you could be dealing with a truly extraordinarily competent person who really is that good. So now the stakes are higher and you know even less. Great (This is why I don't do this practice and the companies that do seem to have quite a few fast talking phonies)