4 ms·
An appeal to authority is a good reason to believe something if the authority can be understood to be knowledgeable. It's especially useful in cases where your
by krageon 6y ago
An appeal to authority is a good reason to believe something if the authority can be understood to be knowledgeable. It's especially useful in cases where your readers can't all be expected to understand the nuances of the decision making involved and you want to avoid appealing to emotions (which works better). What basically never works are appeals to logic, frequently even here (a place which explicitly stimulates it). The reasons for why it doesn't work here (miles of text with pedantic arguing, usually not a lot of substance) are different for why it won't work in public (people don't feel like doing that with you, usually) but they are there.
Especially in a case such as this an appeal to authority can be useful, as there is a big bad-faith storm of "discussion" surrounding the subject that really isn't doing anyone any favours.
- dtech 6y agoTrue, but you can never use it to prove that something works, especially in a case like this where governments are acting under time and information constraints.
- TLightful 6y agoUse the force, Luke.
- mbar84 6y agoIt is not enough for the authority to be knowledgeable, their incentives must also be aligned. If people appeal to the authority to do something, then it may do whatever is expedient regardless of merit. With limited knowledge, I'm inclined to go along with measures that are low cost and have a plausible explanation wrt. effectiveness. That being said, if the mask situation has shown us anything, it's that the authorities are neither trustworthy nor competent.
- xg15 6y agoWhat would be an example of misaligned incentives in the case of mask wearing? A fabric maker conspiracy? How did the mask situation show that authorities are not trustworthy or competent?