"Hard to track down a reliable source" sounds like a perfectly valid reason not to post an idea.

"A BBC radio interview circa 2004 given by the former head of the KGB, General Yevgeni Primakov, as well as a former congressman confirmed that Homeland Security hired Markus Wolf, the architect of the STASI informant program, as a consultant for DHS."

Just hard to find the original interview. You're welcome to search yourself, or perhaps discuss something else?

Probably it's hard to find because there has never been such a person at the head of KGB? There had been 8 chairmen (K in KGB stands for "committee" hence its head's title is "Chairman") in the whole history of this organization and none of them had this or similar name. The only KGB-related person with such name is Yevgeni Maksimovich Primakov, who had been a head of the KGB's 1st Department for a brief period of time in 1991, but he had been a civilian so not the same person as the "General Yevgeni Primakov".

What's the origin of that quote?

Cool. HN timestamps show that took you no more than 5 minutes, maximum!

Would have been happier with a transcript from the BBC.

imagine if there was a place you could ask other people if they had heard this same thing.

oh wait, there is!

That would make it difficult to discuss theories for which reliable sources don't yet exist. A lot of truth first exists as rumor; how would you suggest that rumors be discussed?

And the discussion of too many unsubstantiated rumors gets us to the place where a very significant portion of the population are basically full blown conspiracy theorists. Then we find ourselves in a place where facts and science are transformed into beliefs.

I don't think discussing rumors is inherently bad in moderation, but I guess moderation is a tough problem for us in many parts of society today.

Well, I'm not saying we should jump to the other extreme - though, suppression or denial of rumors doesn't really help them go away. Streisand effect, etc. Rather, I'm just reacting to the parent's claim that we shouldn't discuss anything that doesn't already have substantiative evidence behind it - if we applied that principle more generally, physics would come to a standstill.

The inception of every novel idea begins without a source; to enforce such a restriction is to ban the creation of ideas.

There are no novel ideas without a source. Every human concept and invention is based on some prior idea or knowledge. More importantly, every "idea" that attempts to aspire to fact has to be proven to be considered valid.

The claim "Allegedly they used Markus Wolf (ex-Stasi chief) as a consultant in the formative days" is not merely a "novel idea" but an allegation, in other words, an idea that aspires to fact. The likely validity of this statement depends on its source.

To assert that the above claim requires no source in order to be valid as fact simply because it is an "idea" is to ban the distinction between truth and fiction.

>There are no novel ideas without a source.

All sources are ideas in itself and If all "ideas" under your definition have a source, this means every source also has a source because they are ideas themselves. By induction this leads to the existence of ideas with an infinite chain of sources... Which is impossible.

By logic, the Chain must terminate at an idea without a source. Thus it can be said that:

   All ideas are built from an idea without a source. 

We call this an "axiom" in mathematics.

The exception to this rule is the existence of a cycle in this chain:

   An initial idea that refers to another idea that refers to the initial idea as its source; A closed loop. 

However, we as humans tend to shun these cycles as we call them "paradoxes."

What the poster means by "novel idea" as opposed to "idea" is the terminal idea at the end of these source chains.

In short, the inception of all "novel ideas" begin without a source. Again, we call this "novel idea" The axiom or the assumption.

The strange thing about the axiom itself is an entity that "bans the distinction between truth and fiction" and is ironically the foundation of all human logic.

Another word for this is a "paradox" something we both shun and use as the foundation for all human logic.

When speaking of third hand information reported in the media absolute terms like 'proven', 'fact' and 'valid' seem overly broad. Throw in the contentious nature of a political discussion on the Internet and you have a real mess.