Obviously I'm not defending ANY kind of discussion, so points about public opinion in general are irrelevant.

Quite. Because you've clearly demonstrated that your discourse is superior to the discourse among the rest of the uninformed public.

Note the word "here" and deal with particular points made rather than yet more generalisations

That doesn't help you at all. This subthread got started when you opined that Ardin's removal of some material in her name from the internet cast reasonable suspicion on her motives and credibility.

Removing statements from the internet which could be used to form the basis for character assassination is absolutely bog-standard practise for anybody involved in a court case. Any lawyer who does not advise his client to go to Google her own name and purge everything she can in the first three or so pages that might possibly be construed as damaging to her case should be fired for rank incompetence.

You're contributing to ill-informed and irresponsible speculation, based on pretending that the commonplace is somehow suspicious. That ill-informed and irresponsible speculation may happen to be accurate. But if it is it will be purely by the power of random chance, not because you've contributed any decent minimum of critical thinking to the problem.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.