If it were true that: “A return shows tax positions, not conflicts, and the disclosure form already lists assets, income sources, liabilities and positions in categories built for conflict screening”, it would significantly weaken the conclusion that: “Requiring the president and members of Congress to publish their tax returns would reduce the use of public office for private gain” 0.50

Type: Argument · Direction: Weakens · Used on: Requiring the president and members of Congress to publish their tax returns would reduce the use of public office for private gain.

Argument X	A return shows tax positions, not conflicts, and the disclosure form already lists assets, income sources, liabilities and positions in categories built for conflict screening.	Truth 0.50
Conclusion Y (or the interest, when Type is Interest)	Requiring the president and members of Congress to publish their tax returns would reduce the use of public office for private gain.	Truth 0.50

Linkage ArgumentsLinkage scores →

Reasons to agree that X bears on Y

#	Reason (pattern)	Truth	Conf	Link	Imp	Uniq	Score
1	NecessityIf the disclosure form already carries the conflict-relevant content, the belief's first component is false.	0.50	0.00	1.00	0.50	1.00	+0.00
2	Scope fitBoth documents cover the same officials and the same finances.	0.50	0.00	1.00	0.50	1.00	+0.00

Reasons to disagree that X bears on Y

#	Reason (pattern)	Truth	Conf	Link	Imp	Uniq	Score
1	Missing stepThe two documents can be compared directly, and the 2022 release showed content in the return that the form does not carry.	0.50	0.00	1.00	0.50	1.00	-0.00

Total agree 0.00 · total disagree 0.00 · linkage score 0.50

Every reason here is about whether X bears on Y, never about whether X or Y is true (each has its own page for that). The Pattern column names the shape of the reason; the four per side are starters, not fixed content.

Check table

1	Exact wording of Y, read from its page	Requiring the president and members of Congress to publish their tax returns would reduce the use of public office for private gain.
2	Exact wording of X, read from its page	A return shows tax positions, not conflicts, and the disclosure form already lists assets, income sources, liabilities and positions in categories built for conflict screening.
3	How X bears on Y, in one sentence	If the existing form shows what a return would show, publication adds nothing.
4	Computed linkage score	0.50 from 2 reason(s) to agree and 1 to disagree
5	Flag if below 0.7 (a working rule of thumb)	Flagged: the action is to find better evidence for Y, not to reach with X.
6	Bottom line, typed by the author after the tables above	High linkage and directly checkable, which is unusual and good.

The five steps, answered from the pages above. Only the one-sentence bridge and the bottom line are typed.

DefinitionsThe full explanation →

Linkage score: this page's truth score, the agree share of the scored weight here. Y's page reads it as the Link multiplier on X's row. The wiki's (A - D) / (A + D) form is 2 x this score - 1.
The Type field changes the question. Prediction asks "if it were observed" (diagnosticity: a result both sides expect scores low). Interest makes this a bearing page: whether the row really speaks to an interest listed on its importance page. Media asks whether a work supports the conclusion at all.
A relevance fallacy (straw man, whataboutism, ad hominem) is a reason to disagree on this page, scored like any other row. An accusation with no support changes nothing.

Where This Page Is Used

Page	Table	As	Its truth
Requiring the president and members of Congress to publish their tax returns would reduce the use of public office for private gain.	reasons	the linkage of a row	0.50

Every page that reads this one. One claim, one home, every use visible.

Scoring EngineTruth scores →

Quantity	Value	How
Reasons to agree, total	0.00	sum of the agree side
Reasons to disagree, total	0.00	sum of the disagree side
Linkage score	0.50	(agree + weight x starting point) / (agree + disagree + weight), starting point 0.50, weight 1.00
ReasonRank	0.0000	how much of the site depends on this page: rank 1927 of 2173. The share of a walk that starts at the 162 beliefs and steps to the pages they read, with a 0.85 chance of stepping on each time
Work value	0.0000	ReasonRank x (1 - confidence): how much settling this page would be worth to everything above it
Completeness	yes	at least one scored reason on each side (an importance page: at least one interest; an interest page: both readings filled)

Cite this page If it were true that: “A return shows tax positions, not conflicts, and the disclosure form already lists assets, income sources, liabilities and positions in categories built for conflict screening”, it would significantly weaken the conclusion that: “Requiring the president and members of Congress to publish their tax returns would reduce the use of public office for private gain”. Idea Stock Exchange, linkage page argu-return-shows-tax-requiring-president, truth 0.50, confidence 28%, revision 42c8344 of 2026-10-04. The revision is what makes this quotable: these numbers move as the argument is worked on, and rebuilding that revision reproduces them exactly.

Every number on this page as data: argu-return-shows-tax-requiring-president.json. Constants: K = 1 · UNARG = 0.5 · DEFLINK = 1 · DEFIMP = 0.5 · DEFUNIQ = 1. A reason placed under a conclusion is presumed relevant until a linkage page says otherwise; the burden is on the challenger. The neutral start for importance, the wiki's own rule.

Every value here is computed from the tables above at build time. Nothing is typed.