Silas, you're making strong arguments but mixing in emotion that makes it harder for your interlocutor to change their mind.
Understood; I've edited the GP comment to be more diplomatic and improve the formatting. Let me know what you think.
However, regarding the other comment, my question "Are you serious?" is an honest question. I don't see how cousin_it could misinterpret the question as "What is X?" when it's clearly asking "How do you know what X is?" So I don't see why his answer of "X is ..." got modded up.
This is our monthly thread for collecting these little gems and pearls of wisdom, rationality-related quotes you've seen recently, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages, and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions.