If I had declared categorically that the leak is wrong because it came from aDrive that would indeed be an ad hominem fallacy, but that is not what I am saying. I was declaring that in general it is not worth the time to consider rumors reported by aDrive as anything more than entertaining possibilities because he has proven to be a poor filter of pre-release rumors; i.e., he is not a reliable source of information because he does not set a high standard of credibility for which rumors he reports on. This is an entirely fair and non-fallacious argument to make.
It's not. You're still assessing the leak's credibility based on your past experiences with aDrive, and this is still wrong, because aDrive and your past experiences with him have nothing to do with the leak.
(Seriously, no one was associating this with aDrive
until you brought his track record into it -
tim rocket even corrected him on something he got wrong. The video was just a convenient way to share the leak, not a testament to its reliability.)
Pretend aDrive never posted it. Pretend you heard about it from the original source.
If you still wouldn't believe it, that's totally fine!
R_N has already given a
perfectly sound reason not to consider it credible, and it's totally fair to judge it based on that. And if you just wouldn't care either way, that's fine, too - being right or wrong about this leak itself isn't the point here (honestly, I would object just as much to your reasoning even if I also thought it was fake, and I will still object to this reasoning even if this specific leak turns out to be fake in the future).
But it has nothing to do with aDrive, and you just need to remove him from the equation. You may well be right that the leak is fake, but you'd be right for the wrong reason, and I stand by that even after your explanation.
any dismissal of arguments or information based on the reporter or source
These are VERY different things.
The reporter's credibility has nothing to do with the original post's credibility except to the extent that they may have lied about the original post. Like, if you were saying aDrive had a habit of conveniently editing the "leaks" he uncovered to make them look more reliable, that would be a perfectly valid reason to disregard anything aDrive covers in his videos. But you're just saying that he has poor judgment - and instead of using that as a reason to
use your own judgment instead of relying on his, you're using it as a reason to
contradict him while doing no research of your own.
This is the rough equivalent of hearing someone you don't trust saying that the planet is round and concluding that - since they're often wrong - it may well be flat after all.
That's what you call a "fair and non-fallacious argument?"
Incidentally:
A credible news site or youtube channel that wishes to report on these leaks would judge each of them on their merits and available information and would only report on those that have passed a high degree of scrutiny. Because such a news source rarely reports on rumors unless they have passed this bar, that would be reason to invest time into looking into those particular rumors.
If the extent of your information filter is straight-up "did it make it through someone else's information filter or not," you should not be criticizing anyone else for their judgment in the first place...
On the other hand, the
source's credibility, given that one can be identified,
can be used to discern their post's credibility.
They're the one whose word anyone is taking for the leak. If we had some proof that they were unreliable (including if they got something wrong on this list), you could easily use that to dispel the leak, and you would probably be right to do so.
Right now, there isn't any identifiable source because the leaker is anonymous, and no one here is saying "believe this because it comes from someone we trust" (let alone "believe this because it comes from 4chan") any more than they're saying "believe this because it comes from aDrive" - they're saying "consider this
because it's been right so far."
Anyway, the fact that you don't distinguish between the reporter and the source here makes it even harder to believe that you understand the problem...
Regardless, this has nothing to do with someone "learning about a fallacy and overcorrecting"
(and wow, what a condescending and dismissive interpretation of my response).
No, no one had to
tell me that someone unreliable citing a source doesn't make the original source unreliable.
No one had to
tell me to judge a primary source by its own merits and not by the merits of the people who link me to it.
I came to these conclusions on my own - mostly because the alternative simply doesn't make any sense.
And no one had to
tell me that doing the opposite of that is called an "ad hominem" and that that label is the reason why it's wrong.
(It's not. I love that you just decided that this was my argument and then explained yourself why it wasn't relevant. Maybe the fact that it didn't apply is why I never mentioned it in the first place...)
If you think someone didn't think something through enough to meet your standards, that's not a reason to
contradict them by default - it's a reason to
think it through yourself and come to your own conclusion on your own terms.
The fact that aDrive made a video about a leak is not a reason
not to believe it - it's no less credible than it would have been if he ignored it or if you heard about it from someone else, and it is absolutely not "a fair and non-fallacious argument" to dismiss it for that reason. How is this much even a point of contention?
If you make this kind of argument often, no wonder people call you out on it all the time. The fact that you dismiss it so readily just tells me that you don't actually listen when they do.
As you point out, because of the rare true leaks everyone and their cousin posts fake text leaks to 4chan and any actual leaks get lost in the noise. Therefore, I can assert with high confidence that any given "leak" on 4chan is likely to be false; sure, one of them might turn out to be true and if I happen to look at it I might judge it to be potentially credible, but the problem is there are so many that I am not going to check every one of those posts/videos to judge whether they are believable or not.
This is fine. But it's not a reason to
tell other people not to entertain them, either.
If your attitude is "there are too many leaks for me to look at every one that someone points out," you're
totally free not to look at every one that someone points out! The problem is that you're now imposing this on everyone else - saying you think aDrive's standards are too low is not a good reason to
tell someone else not to fact-check it and come to their own conclusion.
Yeah, just ignore the leak and move on if giving it a proper look isn't worth your time! But
learn the difference between "not worth your time to verify" and "actually unreliable," because you're currently using that opinion of yours to dismiss the leak
without fact-checking it or coming to your own conclusion, and you're implicitly dismissing everyone else as gullible if they put the slightest bit more effort into it.
Something blatantly obvious that you seem to be ignoring: aDrive is not the one who showed this leak to you -
tim rocket is. aDrive's standards may be low, but this already passed through a second set of eyes before it even reached yours; this isn't a "post every leak aDrive acknowledges" thread, and the fact that this made it here anyway - and it was posted by someone who has no such incentive to post every leak they see for views and money - suggests that it's at
least gone through a more rigorous filter than his own.
This is not an example of an ad hominem fallacy because the judgement is not that the rumor must be incorrect because so-and-so has reported on it, but that the odds of it being true, in the absence of additional information to suggest otherwise, are low
I want to reiterate that
you're the only one here who is judging it based on aDrive without looking for additional information to confirm one way or the other.
Everyone but you has brought in their own evidence, done their own research and come to their own conclusion.
tim rocket has openly stated that they started with the same skepticism as you, but they cross-referenced with the existing confirmed list, personally verified it and even actively corrected aDrive on something he missed; those are not the actions of a blind follower who only cares because aDrive posted it. In other words,
there is no absence of additional information backing up the leak, and they are not just taking aDrive's word for it.
Meanwhile,
R_N found a legitimate and valid reason
not to take this at face value... not
because aDrive posted it but because they did the research, looked into the datamine and cross-referenced with
that, proving that the prediction wasn't as wild or impressive as it seemed.
You act like you have such high, rigorous standards for a plausible leak, but you've actually exercised less independent thought than anyone on
either side of this debate so far, and you somehow expect that to supersede what anyone else has to say about it. There's a
massive difference between that and the healthy level of skepticism you seem to think you have.
All of that is why you shouldn't be arguing this based on your opinion of aDrive.
Some of your newer points are fine! Again,
R_N has already given a much more compelling reason not to believe this (actually, I'm not as confident in it myself now that they rightly pointed out the dependence on known information), and your stock scam argument is actually relevant. And again, I really, truly don't care if you personally believe the leak or if it turns out to be true - I'm not at all trying to convince you of that.
But I
do still believe that this specific point of yours is a superficial one and a bad one, and to be honest, I think you're only using it to make yourself look like the voice of reason without realizing that everyone here has done more research and exercised better judgment than this on their own.
Saying "YouTubers aren't credible sources" and "4chan has fake leaks, too" adds nothing to a discussion in which no one else is using YouTubers as sources and no one is believing it on the basis that it comes from 4chan. All it does is shut down conversation that could go in a more productive direction.
You say that you cut down your original post because you didn't want it to be long - and that, with the benefit of hindsight, you would have written more; I'm going to go a step further and say that your original post is exactly what you should have chosen to cut in the first place, while your subsequent contributions are the substance that would have been valuable up front.
