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Topic: Reference

Definition: Definitions, statistics and quotations the other topics rest on.

📁 Sub-topics

Topic	Beliefs beneath	What it covers
Dictionaries	2	How dictionaries decide which words and meanings to include, and whether their job is to describe how people use words or to set a standard for correct use.
Quotations	2	How quotations are attributed, checked and used as authority in argument and in reference works.
Statistics	2	How statistics are produced, reported and used in public argument, and how much trust they deserve compared with other ways of knowing.

📋 Beliefs filed beneath this topic

Under	Belief	Truth	Belief score
Statistics	Public decisions should generally rest on measured statistics rather than on personal experience and anecdote.	0.50	+0.00
Statistics	Statistics quoted in public debate tend to mislead more often than they inform.	0.50	+0.00
Quotations	Quoting a famous person generally adds little to whether a claim is true.	0.50	+0.00
Quotations	Reference works should generally refuse to print a quotation whose original source cannot be found.	0.50	+0.00
Dictionaries	Dictionaries should generally record how people actually use words rather than rule on which uses are correct.	0.50	+0.00
Dictionaries	A dictionary should generally refuse to list a widespread misuse of a word as a legitimate meaning until careful writers have accepted it.	0.50	+0.00

📬 Contribute

Once a belief is filed here, this page takes the full topic layout: where each belief sits, what it assumes, what the two sides value, and the evidence beneath it all.

If you would rather use git, every cell here is a row in the repository: a belief is a page row with the topic reference.

Built from revision 42c8344, committed 2026-10-04. 2173 pages. Every number above is computed from the two tables in that revision, so a reader who fetches it gets these numbers and not different ones.