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Hot take: I started writing down every claim that got repeated in a debate, and the count surprised me
I kept a tally for two weeks on a notepad by my computer, and 31 of 40 arguments in one thread came from the same three links being passed around. The thing I learned is that a lot of fights are just people reusing someone else's homework without checking it. Does anyone here keep track of where a claim comes from before they jump in?
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miawalker1mo ago
Man, I have to say I see it the other way around. I get why the numbers look bad, but if 31 of 40 replies trace back to three links, that does not always mean folks are lazy. Sometimes it means there are really only a few good sources on that topic, and everyone found the same ones. I have been in threads where I went and read the full article before posting, and it turned out the people yelling about "nobody reads the source" were the ones who had not read past the headline themselves. Counting where a claim comes from is a good habit, but it can also turn into a way to dodge the actual point being made. If a claim is true, it is still true whether ten people or ten thousand people linked the same page for it. What I care about more is whether the person can explain the idea in their own words and answer a follow up question about it. That tells you way more than a tally of links.
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