Without due speculation we could only talk about fully established facts. That would make a very infertile conversation.

Also you should have more trust for your fellows in dialogue here, that they do have some immune function against misinformation viruses.

My experience in the software industry is that engineers are just as susceptible to misinformation as everyone else. It is the exact same process which reinforces beliefs in flat-earth, anti-vax, chiropractic, homeopathy, the stolen-election narrative, and other such nonsense.

A number of folks are asking the question, "why does the HN consensus appear to be so far away from my experience?" I think the answer is really that noise is being amplified and echoed above the signal.

If you know you're just guessing based on what "seems reasonable" and "matches what other people are saying" you need to stop and re-evaluate the validity of your beliefs. That's an important part of critical thinking which is sorely lacking in this forum right now.

Thanks for your input regarding critical thinking skills. Below are my suggestions for you, inspired from CBT skills. Normally it is a faux pas to point out cognitive distortions in other people's thinking, but looks like you're up for a direct conversation so I'll reciprocate;

- don't read minds; dialectic can only happen if we allow the flow of conversation back and forth. Cutting that flow prematurely happens for example when we assert that we know what the other person is thinking.

- don't use should statements; don't enter the scene with imperatives and normativities. At best it is insulting to fellow adults you're talking to, at worst it again kills the dialectic. Conversation requires trust in the other person being able to unpack and reality test what is being said. It requires an assumption of good enough character. Talking down to people is a self fulfilling prophecy; when you show you have very little expectation in having a good faith conversation you have already created it.

- let go of black and white thinking; simple categories are useful but have serious precision errors. I invite you to consider "truth", "knowledge", "validity" as shades of gray instead of discrete categories while talking to people, because it allows parties of a dialogue to puzzle together the subsets of truths they have.

- don't overgeneralize; don't take a comment and overgeneralize that to a person's essence e.g "they are a person who always does this". Don't take a few comments and overgeneralize that to the entire forum. Don't use labels.

- don't discount the positives and filter in only the negatives; instead of focusing where people might have missed your expectations in critical thinking, see if you're downplaying or outright ignoring when they are in fact demonstrating it.

Hope it helps.

I hope you see the irony in this. Many of your comments, including this one I'm replying to, have "I think ..." which is really just speculation.

I mean, you say "It is the exact same process which reinforces beliefs in flat-earth, anti-vax, chiropractic, homeopathy, the stolen-election narrative, and other such nonsense.". But is that true? How do you know? Do you have all the facts? I'm sure it seems reasonable and matches what others think...

Many comments in this thread are speculation/conjecture, I was honest enough to label mine as such. We're not running studies or experiments here, this is a place to converse. My comment allows others to provide additional evidence for or against my theory.

> . Speculation doesn't add to the conversation. In the absence of evidence

This is an interesting claim. Do you have evidence for it?

I listened to a Cartalk or maybe This American Life segment many years ago that asked the question “Are two people talking about something they do not know anything about better or worse off after talking about it?”

The consensus was that the downside risk is the two people coming to various conclusions even though they knew nothing about it simply due to our cognitive biases and how we interact with each other. Therefore, two people talking about something they do not know anything about might very well be worse off than had they not talked about it at all.

I hate every time this mandate is slinged around as if this is the only way humans can operate intelligently.

Humans are deductive creatures and we're not terrible at constructing and testing hypotheses. A lot of value can be derived from discussing inconclusive topics, and an understanding of new subject matter can be established for those unfamiliar. It's a valuable exercise to walk through supporting facts.

I wish we didn't cry every time we conjecture.