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It is also completely irrelevant to the correctness or incorrectness of the argument, which is often what gets missed. Authority is a heuristic, nothing more.

It is also completely irrelevant to the correctness or incorrectness of the argument, which is often what gets missed. Authority is a heuristic, nothing more. The evaluation of P -> Q happens independently of the speaker. If you're trying to refute P -> Q by mentioning an attribute of the speaker, you're necessarily answering some other question entirely, while making an excuse to ignore the original question. You can say that someone making such an argument is more likely to be incorrect based on their beliefs, but that's still an untested hypothesis (more bluntly, a rationalization) until you actually sit down, stop making excuses, and verify it yourself. Excuses aren't logic. You can say you don't have time, and that's valid, you can say you don't want to, and that's valid, but don't say you're doing logic. You're coming up with reasons to avoid doing logic.

aeorgnoieang 9y ago
It's not clear what you mean by "logic", but weighing the evidence of a statement conditional on the person that made it is not inherently illogical. Yes, of course untrustworthy people can make truthful claims! But you would still be wise to discount their claims (sometimes, under some conditions). Evaluating arguments is, like everything else, subject to opportunity costs, so discussing the credibility of people making 'extreme' claims is certainly valuable.
- Karunamon 9y ago
  >Evaluating arguments is, like everything else, subject to opportunity costs But when you're on an internet board spending more time shouting down an argument for its source when it would take equal or less time to just figure it out - that is an excuse. It's also terribly non-conducive to a discussion. "This guy says P -> Q, but he's not an expert on the matter of P, so I'll ignore anything he has to say on the matter" is not a logical argument. Correctness or incorrectness of the statement is being willfully ignored in this case.
  - aeorgnoieang 9y ago
    > But when you're on an internet board spending more time shouting down an argument for its source when it would take equal or less time to just figure it out - that is an excuse. You're right but the condition you mention doesn't apply here. This discussion is relevant to claims about therapies for reversing brain damage in people that (nearly) drowned. 'Just figuring it out' seems pretty difficult. It's perfectly reasonable to discuss the credibility of people and there's no reason why that can't be conducive to discussion. > ... is not a logical argument. Correctness or incorrectness of the statement is being willfully ignored in this case. This is a little confusing and doesn't seem to match very closely to this specific subject. But whether or not dismissing someone's claim is a logical argument is just begging the question – why are you assuming that it's right or fair or proper for every claim or argument to be refuted logically? Are you literally demanding that everyone either (a) refute an argument logically; or (b) refrain from commenting at all?
    - Karunamon 9y ago
      >'Just figuring it out' seems pretty difficult. Bad papers often have facially bad bookkeeping. Things like tiny sample sizes, no blinding, insignificant p-values held up as definitive, unlabeled graphs, conclusions that merely repeat the abstract... red flags that can be caught in a minute or two by anyone who knows how to interpret an academic paper, not necessarily a domain expert in the field. Rather, people go to great pains to explain and rationalize away their lack of interest, rather than investing that same or less amount of time in actually looking at the paper (and probably learning something as a result - even if that "something" is better bullshit-detection skills) It's reasonable to "discuss", sure, so long as all parties involved understand that the discussion is something unrelated to the thing being put forward. But that is usually not the case. Instead, those meta arguments are used to dance around pointing at any kind of concrete issues. >Are you literally demanding that everyone either (a) refute an argument logically; or (b) refrain from commenting at all? In a perfect world? Yes. "Authority" arguments are only one step removed from the bottom of the hierarchy [1] because they don't even attempt to touch on the central point. A serious, healthy discussion should never go any lower than the top three tiers, and discussion as a whole would be better for it if people strived to do that rather than reaching for the easy dismissal. "This is crap because the author's conclusion has a sample size of one" is completely reasonable and logical. "This is crap because of the author's credentials" may or may not be true (unsubstantiated conclusion! red flags going off!), but at that point, you've ceased talking about "this" and started talking about the author. Hence, fallacious ad hominem. Diversion. Excuses. Whatever word you'd use to describe willful avoidance of the central point. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_D...
dvt 9y ago
You're confused. The original argument is not a deductive one, it's abductive. Material implication, e.g., P -> Q, is a deductive move. In non-deductive arguments, like we have here, any claim (be it conditional or otherwise) certainly does not happen independently of the speaker or of what logicians call the knowledge base (KB).
- dang 9y ago
  > You're confused. Please don't make personal comments even when someone else has been uncivil. Your reply would be just fine without this.
  - dvt 9y ago
    Erm, what? How is calling someone confused a personal comment (I assume you mean attack?). If someone mixes up two things that are commonly mixed up, it's perfectly civil to point out that they are confused. Please elaborate. Feel free to tell me I'm confused. Because I am.
    - Karunamon 9y ago
      As the person that was supposedly attacked, so am I. "You're confused" is so far off that standard I don't even know how to respond to this.
dang 9y ago
> You're coming up with reasons to avoid doing logic. This crosses into incivility. Please don't do that here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14814687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14814687 and marked it off-topic.
- Karunamon 9y ago
  ?! That was in no way incivil or a personal attack. There is a hard line in the sand between making a logical argument and making another kind of an argument, and I just explained where that line is in a very objective way, and in a hypothetical no less. If you are making arguments to authority, you are not doing a logical argument, period. You are making excuses to avoid doing logic. Is also not a personal attack, it is a statement of objective truth when you ignore correctness in favor of anything else. That was a general statement and was not directed at tpatacek, and now this thread makes no sense.

aeorgnoieang 9y ago

It's not clear what you mean by "logic", but weighing the evidence of a statement conditional on the person that made it is not inherently illogical. Yes, of course untrustworthy people can make truthful claims! But you would still be wise to discount their claims (sometimes, under some conditions). Evaluating arguments is, like everything else, subject to opportunity costs, so discussing the credibility of people making 'extreme' claims is certainly valuable.

Karunamon 9y ago
>Evaluating arguments is, like everything else, subject to opportunity costs But when you're on an internet board spending more time shouting down an argument for its source when it would take equal or less time to just figure it out - that is an excuse. It's also terribly non-conducive to a discussion. "This guy says P -> Q, but he's not an expert on the matter of P, so I'll ignore anything he has to say on the matter" is not a logical argument. Correctness or incorrectness of the statement is being willfully ignored in this case.
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago
  > But when you're on an internet board spending more time shouting down an argument for its source when it would take equal or less time to just figure it out - that is an excuse. You're right but the condition you mention doesn't apply here. This discussion is relevant to claims about therapies for reversing brain damage in people that (nearly) drowned. 'Just figuring it out' seems pretty difficult. It's perfectly reasonable to discuss the credibility of people and there's no reason why that can't be conducive to discussion. > ... is not a logical argument. Correctness or incorrectness of the statement is being willfully ignored in this case. This is a little confusing and doesn't seem to match very closely to this specific subject. But whether or not dismissing someone's claim is a logical argument is just begging the question – why are you assuming that it's right or fair or proper for every claim or argument to be refuted logically? Are you literally demanding that everyone either (a) refute an argument logically; or (b) refrain from commenting at all?
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    >'Just figuring it out' seems pretty difficult. Bad papers often have facially bad bookkeeping. Things like tiny sample sizes, no blinding, insignificant p-values held up as definitive, unlabeled graphs, conclusions that merely repeat the abstract... red flags that can be caught in a minute or two by anyone who knows how to interpret an academic paper, not necessarily a domain expert in the field. Rather, people go to great pains to explain and rationalize away their lack of interest, rather than investing that same or less amount of time in actually looking at the paper (and probably learning something as a result - even if that "something" is better bullshit-detection skills) It's reasonable to "discuss", sure, so long as all parties involved understand that the discussion is something unrelated to the thing being put forward. But that is usually not the case. Instead, those meta arguments are used to dance around pointing at any kind of concrete issues. >Are you literally demanding that everyone either (a) refute an argument logically; or (b) refrain from commenting at all? In a perfect world? Yes. "Authority" arguments are only one step removed from the bottom of the hierarchy [1] because they don't even attempt to touch on the central point. A serious, healthy discussion should never go any lower than the top three tiers, and discussion as a whole would be better for it if people strived to do that rather than reaching for the easy dismissal. "This is crap because the author's conclusion has a sample size of one" is completely reasonable and logical. "This is crap because of the author's credentials" may or may not be true (unsubstantiated conclusion! red flags going off!), but at that point, you've ceased talking about "this" and started talking about the author. Hence, fallacious ad hominem. Diversion. Excuses. Whatever word you'd use to describe willful avoidance of the central point. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_D...

dvt 9y ago

You're confused. The original argument is not a deductive one, it's abductive. Material implication, e.g., P -> Q, is a deductive move. In non-deductive arguments, like we have here, any claim (be it conditional or otherwise) certainly does not happen independently of the speaker or of what logicians call the knowledge base (KB).

dang 9y ago
> You're confused. Please don't make personal comments even when someone else has been uncivil. Your reply would be just fine without this.
- dvt 9y ago
  Erm, what? How is calling someone confused a personal comment (I assume you mean attack?). If someone mixes up two things that are commonly mixed up, it's perfectly civil to point out that they are confused. Please elaborate. Feel free to tell me I'm confused. Because I am.
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    As the person that was supposedly attacked, so am I. "You're confused" is so far off that standard I don't even know how to respond to this.

dang 9y ago

> You're coming up with reasons to avoid doing logic. This crosses into incivility. Please don't do that here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14814687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14814687 and marked it off-topic.

Karunamon 9y ago
?! That was in no way incivil or a personal attack. There is a hard line in the sand between making a logical argument and making another kind of an argument, and I just explained where that line is in a very objective way, and in a hypothetical no less. If you are making arguments to authority, you are not doing a logical argument, period. You are making excuses to avoid doing logic. Is also not a personal attack, it is a statement of objective truth when you ignore correctness in favor of anything else. That was a general statement and was not directed at tpatacek, and now this thread makes no sense.