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I am not trying to refute your point. You selectively quoted a part of an article without acknowledging that the original author changed his mind later, which I

• lmm 10y ago
  I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Either the article has valid arguments or it doesn't - whether the author agrees with it today or not.
  • junke 10y ago
    It is true that arguments don't change and should be examined from their own qualities, but people are generally irrational and attach importance, implicitly, to meta-data. If I am an author and I put a note saying "this is not my point of view anymore", and you cherry-pick a quote like nothing changed, this is misleading because, willingly or not, this is an appeal to authority. Just as if someone was on your side saying "I approve what you say". The subtext is different if that person actually says "I once thought the same thing as you, but this was wrong and naive". I would expect a simple "take this blog post (note: author changed his mind since then) and replace...". Or maybe just write down your own version of the argument, with your own words.
    • lmm 10y ago
      > this is misleading because, willingly or not, this is an appeal to authority. Interesting. To my mind it's the appeal to what the author thinks today that's the appeal to authority, because there's no explanation given for that, whereas the argument as written stands on its merits as an argument.