IMO the author wrote a list of reasons to avoid the real intellectual discussion around debating ideas. In fact, I don’t think there’s ever a “dumb idea”, it’s

IMO the author wrote a list of reasons to avoid the real intellectual discussion around debating ideas. In fact, I don’t think there’s ever a “dumb idea”, it’s really poor reasoning or lack of information that I see as the issue. For instance, take the “moon deniers” that is the idea being dismissed by “correct” people. When in reality there a whole range of arguments — “we landed on the moon, recordings were faked” to “aliens told us to tell everyone we landed”, etc it’s the reasoning that matters. Quite often “smart” people have the same information as everyone else. That’s also why IMO “smart” people are equally likely to believe in conspiracies as anyone else, they have the same info.