If someone asks why you believe in something your response hopefully shouldn’t be based on “because that’s what all Blue/Grey/Red tribe members believe”

In a lot of cases the response should be “I’m not sure, I’m not educated on this topic so I can’t offer an opinion”

> Most problematically, his site was a place which encouraged people who were not educated in a topic to repeatedly offer opinions on things they did not understand, and often did not want to understand.

In other words, this little place called "the Internet"?

Seriously, what you're describing applies to all gatherings of humans since the dawn of civilization.

It is reassuring to me that someone who uses thought terminating cliche dog-whistle terms like “problematic” and “entitled” feels the need to use a throwaway account.

I mean, it's definitely very similar to HN in that way, at least. Watching people here talk about econ or finance makes me want to smash my head against a wall - because econ is just politics, right, and you're entitled to confidently shout your opinion even if you have very little background in the field, right? And then we look around and think that this is "enlightened conversation;" nah, it's just a bunch of techies who think they are much smarter and more informed than they actually are.

The problem of entitled people re-interpreting facts to suit their worldview predates the internet by many millennia. Whether your penultimate "whataboutism" is more or less insightful than this ultimate observation is not an interesting question.

Critical thinking is most especially not polemical thinking aimed at rationalizing a desired conclusion.