I've noticed this form of anti-intellectualism is becoming more prominent in recent years. It is almost as if people are being taught it. When presented with

I've noticed this form of anti-intellectualism is becoming more prominent in recent years. It is almost as if people are being taught it. When presented with an argument that they cannot debate, people will demand a "citation" or "credentials". In both cases, they are pretending like you have made a logical fallacy. Saying "I've got a degree in auto-body repair from West Alameda Tech, therefore, java is a terrible language" is obviously pointless. You can see how the degree has no bearing on computer science. But if the degree were in computer science, the argument would still be argument from authority. But the debators then switch to debating whose degree is better. You find this a lot in political debates whereby somehow, politicians (who often do not have very useful degrees, as they tend to be lawyers rather than engineers or scientists) somewow are magically transmorgrified into "authorities" on whatever subject they have an opinion about. And you-- as an engineer, or scientist or economist, are expected to somehow cite credentials that are superior to theirs.... as a politician? Any credential would be superior to what amounts to being a paid liar, but of course this is letting your debate opponent set the terms anyway, and thus your PhD in computer science with Donald Knuth as your thesis advisor means nothing compared to the authority of some ex-TV comedian who managed to parlay that fame into a senate position. Another variation of this is the demand for a "citation", invariably from opponents whose citations, if you can drag one out of them, are to blog posts, which are themselves essentially another variation of the argument from authority. The real problem here is, these are tactics whose effect, of not their purpose, is to eliminate reasoning and thought from debate. They are excuses to ignore the quality of an argument and thus ignore the need to address that argument, or make a counter argument. Instead, they jump to the position of arguing from a logical fallacy, which precludes from possibility the idea that their opponent might be making a good, logical, rational argument. If you find yourself asking people for citations or for their credentials, check to see if you've narrowed your objection to a particular fact, or if you can argue against the logic they are using. Otherwise, they should rightly consider you to have conceded by trying to move the debate onto a false basis, where, at best your position rests on a logical fallacy.