> Few people want to be on the unpopular side of an opinion.
I can't relate to this impulse even a little bit, but believe that it's common. That being said, I don't see how its ubiquity makes it any less a failure of critical thinking ability.
The Internet is a pretty hostile environment for those whose epistemology depends on who's behind the pseudonym: it's not clear to me that shills are going to make these people much worse at thinking and processing information than they already are.
The same goes for those who do have appreciable critical thinking abilities: you shouldn't be credulously consuming the thoughts of any random pseudonym, and the same skeptical habits that inoculate you against dumb ideas from unpaid strangers work roughly as well on shills.
I can't relate to this impulse even a little bit, but believe that it's common. That being said, I don't see how its ubiquity makes it any less a failure of critical thinking ability.
The Internet is a pretty hostile environment for those whose epistemology depends on who's behind the pseudonym: it's not clear to me that shills are going to make these people much worse at thinking and processing information than they already are.
The same goes for those who do have appreciable critical thinking abilities: you shouldn't be credulously consuming the thoughts of any random pseudonym, and the same skeptical habits that inoculate you against dumb ideas from unpaid strangers work roughly as well on shills.