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by braythwayt
2350 days ago
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> How can you distinguish between x calling y a fraud because x is a hater, and because y is a fraud? The very premise of this question is broken. What matters is whether y is a fraud, not why x is calling them a fraud. The way to discover whether y is a fraud is to look at any evidence x provides, and/or think about any questions x proposes. If x is correct, what does it matter if they’re a hater? If x is incorrect, what does it matter whether neutral opinion agrees with x? Imagine we applied this logic to barristers. The defence rises to argue that the police exceeded their authority by searching the accused’s home without a warrant. “Your honour,” the district attorney/crown attorney drawls, “My friend acting for the defence is a notorious police hater. Day after day, all they do is nitpick and question the actions of the police and the conclusions we the prosecution draw from the evidence.” |
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If x is a hater, they may indeed bring forward useful evidence. Even their silence can be useful evidence: if a Courtney Cobain hater doesn't think she killed Kurt, that's pretty good evidence that there isn't even the flimsiest case that she did, since if there was, the hater would have obsessively investigated it and presented the best case.
However, the existence of a hater, or many haters, doesn't provide any real evidence that y is a fraud. It's just evidence that y is famous. In the same way, a defense attorney questioning the actions of the police doesn't in itself provide any real evidence that the police acted questionably. It provides evidence that they are a defense attorney.
It probably isn't a good strategy for finding the truth to carefully consider all the claims that y is a fraud if they are famous. That's because any famous person will have many thousands of haters, and so there will be many thousands of such claims to review. Maybe if a friend of yours is such a hater, talking to them is worthwhile. Or maybe it's worth reading one or two antifan diatribes. But at some point you probably want to plow your attention into more fertile fields.
Speaking of which, I have appreciated and admired your thinking for many years, having learned a great deal from you, and I even thought of you as a friend. So it came as a shock when you blocked me on Twitter. What did I do?