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I've already given a reason in a sibling comment why I thought the phrase "ignoring context" was bad—it's a straw man: it acts like it's refuting a particular argument, but it's actually refuting something else. > Advice always depends on the context It's not clear to me whether that's true, or what it means exactly. It seems to mix at least two senses together, one (A) where it's self-evidently true, one (B) where it's not true. (I believe that's called equivocation, and it's a very common way of going astray, in philosophy, informal arguments etc) (A) Yes, when someone tells you something, you should take into consideration who is telling you, like when you assess the credibility/reliability of what an unfamiliar website says. Not doing that would be very foolish. (B) The sense of the original "quality of advice" quote: You can read a quote somewhere, not knowing where it came from, or it's some author you know nothing about, or anonymous etc, and think it's good advice, and follow it. Where it came from doesn't really matter, i.e. the quality of the advice is separate from its source. Good advice can come from a "bad" source, or bad from a "good" source. |