I just lost my wallet on the way home from work

> If email worked this way, the whole thing would collapse, because much of the time, you really do want to receive messages from new people.

Of course. But Facebook isn't e-mail. A closed system that thrives on heavily weighted social graphs is just nothing like an open standard for arbitrary message exchange.

> Wrong, it's designed to help people get in contact with each other.

Based on what? Have you used Facebook? Everything they do is about building and establishing communities, that's their business and they know it. They do almost nothing to help strangers communicate one-off. We are literally in the middle of a discussion about how Facebook gives low priority to messages from strangers, which is evidence that they have this mentality.

I feel pleased reading the stories on the comments here.

Two years ago, I was in a mountain ski resort in Big Sur with some friends and found an iPhone (with no emergency contact) with a wallet case containing an ID card on the floor. They were afraid of taking it from the floor. Still, I had just been past the security office, took it without thinking at all, and went straight to it while trying to find the girl who lost if on Facebook to send her a message.

When I arrived there, I was holding the ID to copy the person's name in the Facebook search. There was a queue with some people talking with the security officer there. Once it was my time, I was putting back the ID.

The officer was such an asshole, I thought he might call the cops to question me about it.

I said I found the phone on the floor. The officer kept me asking why I went through someone's else things. Multiple times like I was doing something evil.

I got upset really quick and told something like 'look, I found this on the ground full of snow and am trying to find the owner' and left the office immediately.

I told my friends (all Brazilians, like myself), and they told me the culture there was different, and probably I should have asked someone to come over to retrieve the object instead of taking it there on my own, as I didn't want to be accused of anything. I never bought this explanation.

Despite what happened, I'd have done the same again.

It's not so strange. Many debit cards in the UK have the sort code and account number printed on them, which is all the information you need to send money to that account.

> If somebody tells me a story about their day, and I respond “well, it’s possible that you made all that up, and this is all a ruse to trick me”, I’ve not accused them of making it up, I’ve just pointed out it’s possible. But I’ve implied an accusation, otherwise I’d not have gone out of my way to announce this “possibility”.

Except your example is not very compatible.

First, by making it a direct accusation, instead of 2 third parties discussing someone else. If I said it directly to you, you'd be correct in the accusation bit. Situations will make the same words have very different interpretations.

Second, and most importantly, your example has no reason. It's just doubt for doubts sake. That's the definition of reflexive. floatrock isn't just saying 'it's possible you made it up'. But, 'hey look, climate deniers are funded by big oil, maybe they are biased/not honest'. Conflict of interest is a REASON for doubting.

floatrock did provide reason for his doubt in the form of the exposure of a conflict of interest. Which is why I felt his comment was good. He even showed the doubt in a conscientious, non aggressive way. I actually don't agree that it was a PR stunt. But putting out relevant information, like conflicts of interest, should be relevant to all thinking people.

Next, you are welcome to provide a REASON for why it isn't a PR stunt. Personally, I think such a PR stunt would have marginal benefits toward the KPIs for transfer wise. Their small team would probably be better served on other things than this PR thing, if it was that. So I personally don't think it was a PR stunt. But that's beside the point. The point I was making: Reflexive statements suck, whether reflexively cynical, or reflexively sheepish, and I felt the person making the 'reflexive' accusation was unintentionally ironic.

The fact that you are ignoring the 'reasoning' element, makes the word 'reflexive' not seem relevant, when it is.

You can't prove anything definitively, but you can provide evidence to further an idea or not.

Evidence, reasoning... that's where the in-depth comes from. I would hope that's required on both sides.