This comment was originally written as a response to an r/Skepticism discussion (see here). I thought it was well enough written and relevant to the AnCap community (we are after all an anti-assertion), that I thought I'd crosspost it here. I left the comment in it's original form, but as a "universal concept" which speaks about how to think, not what to think, no edits are really necessary for r/Ancap to run with it.

I have had major success using the following technique(s) help in streamlining communication, learning, and avoiding the defensive argumentative communication dynamic.

Promoting Ideologies, not Truth

Many of the world's greatest crimes against truth are because people who don't know preach ideologies based on their general philosophy (i.e. republican, democrat, socialist, christian), rather than based on any empirical or logical understanding of how the world really works. This is especially obvious to me as someone who has come to realize that financial markets and the entire concept of politics is a massive fraud against humanity (perhaps I'll explain some other time).

SKepticism's Advantage

The main advantage skepticism has is that it is an anti-assertion, and as such, the burden of proof is not on the skeptic, but rather the person making the assertion.

• Assertions: The philosophic burden of proof is the obligation on a party in an epistemic dispute to provide sufficient warrant for their position. When debating any issue, there is an implicit burden of proof on the person asserting a claim.

The easiest way to wrap your head around this is, it is easy to make an arbutrary or random claim that is not easily or immediately falsifiable. If I claim to be the messiah for the benevolent flying spaghetti monster and that if you do not obey his law (authority) that is given through me, his messiah, that you will perish for eternity in some place nasty. Because no real-world evidence exists for this claim, and it relies on no real world evidence, it us unfalsifiable. Just as easily as I can make this claim, 7-billion other people can make other arbitrary claims. Therefore, it is not only impossible, but also extremely impractical to disprove any and every random assertion.

Therefore all you really need to know about Apocalyptic Global Warming is that it has not adequately proven itself, "cried wolf" far many times, and evidence seems to indicate that it may even be highly fraudulent.

Conclusion?

• Shut up: Consistent with the first section, if you are unfamiliar with a topic, in the pursuit of truth it may be better to simply keep your mouth shut rather than perpetuating what could be bad ideas. You may inadvertently become part of the problem suppressing truth, while thinking you are part of the solution (i.e. like most of skepticism's opponents).
• Proof: Consistent with the second section, you are in no way obligated to prove a disbelief in any random assertion, even if more than 1- billion people believe it.
• Don't know: It is ok to not know, and even to admit not knowing. Chances are the other guy doesn't know (and can't know) either, but is unwilling to see or admit it. That pretty much is sketpicism's point on most everything.
• Assertions: If you don't know or lack evidence, do not make assertions.