I don't think they're unaware of the questions. In fact, in the half-dozen or so cases I have any direct interaction with I'm certain they're aware of such ques

I don't think they're unaware of the questions. In fact, in the half-dozen or so cases I have any direct interaction with I'm certain they're aware of such questions. My point is exactly that they have other forms of incentives and reasoning that cultivate a willingness, or in the worst cases a zealotry, to entertain what their relative out-groups would consider a contradiction simply as open questions that their in-group permits. I used the example as a representative for the kind of issue involved, not as an exhaustively defensible one. :-) Principally I think we're in agreement. There seems to be quite a bit of analysis and consideration about what's going on that's through the lens of a kind of "enlightenment" reasoning wherein it's purportedly obvious that the pursuit of facts is intrinsically valuable, and so people not arriving at that value must be that they just don't know how to get there or are being lead astray. Alternatively, I would suggest that for almost everything that almost everyone deals with in their day-to-day and/or finds reward & incentives for, there's practically no value to facts. Often it's the inverse. "Bullshit" pays. Sometimes socially, sometimes financially, sometimes both. In the case where such "bullshit" has become a subculture of its own, suddenly facts have negative value. For whatever it's worth, this relates to one of my annoyances with the general startup ecosystem as it exists (to bring it around to HN-esque territory) I've been told (more than once) that the fact I have integrity is going to make my life harder as a founder. It makes it harder to sell. It makes it harder to fundraise. Etc. Those people are absolutely right. Because both selling and fundraising have a built-in incentive toward BS. "Fake it 'til you make it." became a social and financial good, and so people do it. Because if they don't, they automatically start out at a significant disadvantage. My personal bet is that my biasing toward integrity approach pays off in the long-term when the builders, not the brokers, get their cyclical day in the sun again, and in the meantime I can still be square with myself. That said, I very well could be wrong, and I unnecessarily made both the short term and the long term harder than they needed to be.