how do you distinguish between writers who may often be mistaken from writers who are disingenuous and perhaps not worth bothering with?
@Phil@freeatlantis.com@interfluidity Why is a writer who is often mistaken worth bothering with?
One is sloppy, the other is a liar. my time is to valuable for either.
@Phil i think there are lots of ways to be mistaken that don’t reduce to sloppiness. the space of things to consider or fail to consider is infinite. tradeoffs must be weighted and can be misweighted. i think nearly all writers on complicated subjects are often mistaken, but i don’t think nearly all are disingenuous.
@interfluidity I interpreted your question incorrectly it seems. If a writer makes an occaisional mistake, that's one thing. but somebody that is trying to deceive will twist stuff alot and thus be interpreted as disingenuous. Since the question was how to tell the difference, I took it that a writer was mistaken enough to be usually wrong. Somebody that is usually right but sometimes wrong, is wortth considering, somebody that is most often wrong, seems to me to be a waste of time.