[gfodor]

If you read my comment and assumed I was making an argument of absolutism, ie, that you should never consider the speaker in any way, you should re-read it and consider how it may have led you there.

In any case, a person’s background should be fair to consider when an argument by that person is raised. The anti-pattern is to use that, among other things, at the exclusion of any direct engagement of the argument, as was done by the comment I was replying to.

We are not living in a world plagued by people ignoring the background of authors or the subtext of writing they disagree with, and blindly focusing on arguments. We are living in a world where arguments themselves are routinely ignored by focusing exclusively on their authors and presumed subtext.

Unlike the former scenario, which doesn’t exist from my vantage point, the latter scenario seems more difficult to unwind since it terminates in unfalsifiability. If you stand firm that a certain phrase signals some kind of latent subtext, and that can be used to discredit the whole thing, then that tactic basically results in an equilibrium where arguments can not stand on their own under any circumstance since a clever reframing, which cannot be disproven, is fatal to them.