jake200

This whole thread does have me questioning my understanding of cited sources behind paywalls.

A contrived example I have in my head "My friend has more definitive proof in HIS book that <claim>, it only costs $1 trillion. Go read it yourself." For this particular thread its a bit disingenuous, but in a general case how does one go about understanding / disproving arguments made like this?

Maybe try this heuristic: If the content is something you understand well or are passionate about, give merit to its core idea and expand upon it. If the content is something you do not understand well, ask questions that address what you believe is your fundamental gap in understanding the core idea. Not everyone writes perfectly, so be charitable and assume that other parts of the content may not be as thorough.

> People know communism isn't the solution, but they will still vote for it because at least it pretends to stand for equality.

Genuinely curious - why isn't communism the solution? And in your opinion, what are some better solutions? I haven't studied much about political/economic ideologies and at this point don't even know where to start. I do agree with some of what you are saying, but I don't understand why communism wouldn't be be a step in the right direction.

I fail to see how that is helpful. Is the statement untrue without the [US] annotation? The author explicitly mentions that a user is the best judge of their country when deciding on whether to use that country's ccTLD. That's pretty implicit to me that the author is considering a larger audience than the US.

You can take it even further by dropping the pen and paper and use a chisel and stone tablet. </s> While I agree about removing distractions, I would suggest using whatever your most efficient way of communicating is to get the idea or concept out of your head.