[kstrauser]

All I know about the recent Matt and WordPress kerfuffle is what I've read here on HN. Based solely on what I've seen of his own comments here on these stories, I think you're right. What I meant in that sentence was "Matt's lawyers do, too", even if Matt might not think so.

One time a friend of mine was showing me a bunch of fancy camera gear he'd bought for his wife's ghost hunting business. I pulled him aside and asked him if he really believe in the spirits and apparitions she talked about. He replied, "oh, for tax purposes I completely believe this bullshit."

By analogy, even if Matt's lawyers privately agreed that a lawsuit over the meaning of "affiliation" is silly and doomed to lose, I can imagine them replying "oh, for billable hours I completely believe it."

[JumpCrisscross]

The red flag I keep an eye out for is redemptive rejection: treating rejection of one's arguments, whether by a person or the evidence, as evidence for it.

Most commonly this comes in the form of false victimhood, e.g. look at how hard they are trying to shut me down. Other times it manifests like this. The problem is it's a logical attractor; whatever belief it first attaches to, it monotonically increases faith in.