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Notes -
Consider a creationist, posting to a creationist forum. “Just learned about the Piltdown man. Forty years to figure it out! I don’t want to believe my outgroup were such misguided fools. Please, won’t anyone prove that it was real?”
Even if said poster had the best of intentions, there’s only one answer to the question, because he chose to ask about a hoax. And he’s asking to an audience which shares his preconception. And he’s saying, up front, how bad it looks for his outgroup if this suspicion is correct. What answer does he expect?
I have a lot more faith in Nara than in most posters. No doubt he would actually feel relieved to find a sane explanation for this scholarship. I will note that I answered his question, did not report it, and did not chime in until I thought I could add an alternative to @Gdanning’s position.
But in general, how do you know if the intentions are good?
We saw this with JB and his questions about child liberation. Show up, pick the least defensible parts of the school system, and ask if there’s any defense for them. He wasn’t booing an outgroup. But he was asking questions to which he already had prepared answers, fully intending to catapult into his pet topic. That’s not in the spirit of testing one’s ideas.
Yeah, I’m not really satisfied with the situation, either. If there is any place for actually just asking questions, it should be here.
My reaction was instinct. I think @naraburns could have warded it off by really focusing on the question, and cutting out the commentary on what it could mean. None of gwern’s leprechauns give me that feeling, because he’s clearly signaling “quirky research” rather than “possible partisan.”
But that’s a rather isolated demand for rigor. After all, this forum does allow hot takes, so long as they’re backed up—and nara wasn’t wrong.
Shrug. One of many, many reasons I’m not a mod.
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