If I look at a living animal with feathers and a flat bill and yellow webbed feet, making quacking noises and wearing a bright blue nametag with "DUCK" engraved on it, I'm going to begin to suspect that I see a duck.
In fact, since everything I see fairly shouts that what I'm looking at is an embodiment of the very concept of duckness, I will crawl way out on a limb and in my mind and I'll file what I see under the heading "Animal/Spinal cord/Warm blood/Birds/Waterfowl/Duck". Because I live in a world where conservation of energy and conservation of mass hold, a world where I can expect that an object at rest tends to remain at rest, I build an expectation that the aforementioned duck will stay a duck until it dies, and at that point it will become a dead duck.
Let's say that somehow I'm introduced to a self identified duck in a non-traditional way; during a phone conversation, or maybe on facebook. I dip into my file and get a mental picture to use, and all I've ever learned about ducks is at my fingertips. I know what to expect.
But this duck persists in making non-waterfoul noises, noises of a kind that I've come to expect from carnivores. And I'm faced with the oddness of a duck exclaiming that the taste of freshly killed chickens is to die for, that howling at the moon is as good as foreplay gets, and other coyote-like noises.
I'm not going to file this in my Duck slot just yet. In fact, since all the clues are based on what my "duck" claims, and there is a conflict in my recognition circuitry, I am forced to evaluate each and every clue until I can decide which parts of the conflict can be explained or rejected to allow the whole animal to make sense. Until all my uncertainties are resolved, this duck goes into my Odd Duck file.
This is very much the mode of operation on forums considering posters who claim to be moderate in all things, and then insist on making decidedly left-wing pronouncements. If a self-proclaimed moderate or even a conservative says that a single payer government program is the only way to solve our healthcare "crisis", or supports fully the government takeover of General Motors and the gift of Chrysler to the President's cronies in the UAW, that poster gets kicked into my Odd Duck file.
It's not that I don't want to believe what the poster claims, it's that I can't believe what the poster claims without a little more understanding.
It may be that the poster was scared badly by a for-profit health insurance salesman as a child. Or maybe he owns a lot of Ford stock and wants GM and Chrysler to founder in a sea of clueless management, leaving the way clear for Ford to prosper. Or, it could be that the poster has absorbed the MSM line or believes in his union and hasn't realized that some amount of critical thought just might be required.
There may be perfectly good reasons for my duck to make coyote noises. But, come to think of it, there may be good reasons for a coyote to claim to be a duck.
I guess there's always the possibility that ducks have been hiding these tendencies all along, and I just need to update my file.