Polymeron comments on The Genetic Fallacy - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 11 July 2008 05:47AM

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Comment author: Polymeron 26 June 2011 03:01:59PM 11 points [-]

I actually had a long-time close friend who turned out to be something of a compulsive liar.

These days I place almost zero weight on him having stated anything as fact... But a strange thing happened: Some of these things entered my head as cached thoughts and I didn't remember their source at all - just that they were "true". This has managed to cause me some embarrassment in the past.

These days I often take care to mention what my source is for claims I make, so it's no longer a problem... But the general principle remains that most people don't always know where their "knowledge" came from.