The Ignorance Assumption isn’t always wrong; sometimes our ideological adversaries don’t know the facts. But it isn’t always right, either. For starters, ignorance isn’t necessarily a vacuum waiting to be filled; just as often, it is a wall, actively maintained. More to the point, though, the Ignorance Assumption can be wrong because we can be wrong: the facts might contradict our own beliefs, not those of our adversaries. Alternatively, the facts might be sufficiently ambiguous to support multiple interpretations. That we generally ignore this possibility speaks to the powerful asymmetry of
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