But obviously, person B either is a lying windbag or he isn't. OK, "windbag" may be in the eye of the beholder, but whether he has a history of lying or not is a matter of public record. So one of the two viewers suffers from either a) ignorance of the public record, or b) a lack of ability to discriminate between lying windbags and honest brokers in the debate.

It's true that it is possible to start out from different assumptions and, using perfectly valid logical syntax, reach widely diverging conclusions. But for that to qualify as reasonable, the assumptions have to be not too divorced from reality.

The key distinction here is whether this divorce from reality is caused by lack of information or by lack of critical thinking skills. The former is a lot easier to cure than the latter.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.