Free rider
A formulation that includes or excludes a case without an independently argued standard. Debby’s rule: after steelmanning, ask in the same cycle whether the wording lets a favoured instance in, or a disfavoured one out, for free. The check runs on Eastern Orthodoxy’s own claims as hard as on a rival’s.
A free rider, in Debby's use, is a case that gets included or excluded without an independently argued standard. Sher stipulates Nazi values as "inhuman" before the argument that was supposed to earn the exclusion. Bahnsen's "borrowed capital" points at murder and the Holocaust for rhetorical undeniability, then never independently defeats the conventionalist who grants the condemnation as a convention. The same shape, both directions.
The founder rule (2026-07-31) is that the check is not a later pass. If you steelman a holism claim, you immediately ask whether that holism lets a favoured instance in for free. Orthodoxy's own interconnection claims get the identical treatment. Ananias inventories "intelligibility, science, logic, experience, and morality" as co-preconditions; the morality slot still lacks a separate retorsive proof (OTC-022 Finding B).
The mistaken everyday reading is the economic free-rider of public-goods theory, or "someone who didn't pay." Here it is a defect in an argument's exclusions and inclusions.
Where this comes up
Sources
- Founder directive 2026-07-31, persisted in Debby core; packets OTC-001 (Sher exclusion) and OTC-022 (moral retorsion)