The Appeal to Authority or Credential Fallacy
A reader comment prompts a quick post. It should not matter if one is "anonymous" or not: ideas should stand or fall on their own, regardless of the identity or credential of the one who speaks them
In a comment reply to one of my recent posts on substack, I recently provided a link to a thinker I greatly admire. He writes under the name Ethical Skeptic; his work can be found on substack, Twitter, and his own website.
There, you will find hundreds of gems: years worth of his writings, including his own encyclopedia of logical fallacies — among them, these.
Few can hold a candle to him with regard to his knowledge of history, science, analytical and data visualization abilities, breadth of knowledge, and reasoning skill.
He is, in my view, a Rennaisance Man—a polymath.
I follow Ethical Skeptic on Twitter and read his website, and I have found his piercing insights into the COVID situation starkly illuminating. His ideas are brilliant and his methods (not necessarily his conclusions!) are impeccable. I sometimes get the chills when I begin to glimpse where he is going with some ideas, because I can spot the sheer brilliance, the rarity of his kind of insight.
Because he writes anonymously, I have no idea who he is. But this doesn’t trouble me in the slightest.
He writes at a high level of complexity, which offends this particular commenter; and he isn’t particularly fond of people asking him to “dumb it down” or “explain it like I’m 5.”
He would rather that his readers take the necessary initiative to raise their competence in order to comprehend complex ideas than for him to puree his points down to level that can be spoonfed to people unable or unwilling to follow him.
He is resistant because he has found, over many years, that doing so causes a loss of meaning when one tries to simplify things below a certain level. He has coined an interesting term on Twitter: he refers to his intellectually-capable sparring partners as “folleagues.” He doesn’t want “followers”; he wants people he can contend, debate, and wrestle with intellectually, because that for him is the genesis of new ideas.
Speaking for myself, I feel like an ant next to an elephant in comparison to him, on an intellectual basis.
The commenter I quote below takes exception to his anonymity (as well as to my own.) While I write under a psuedonym, it is a thin veil; an astute searcher can easily find out my identity.
The reason I write psuedonymously is because I want to remove the temptation for readers to rely on several common fallacies: among them are appeal to authority, and appeal to credential.
You can read what I write, and make up your own mind about whether I have explained something clearly or persuasively or logically; what does it matter than you don’t know my name, title, academic or career achievements, or curriculum vitae? None of those things should make my arguments any more or any less persuasive.
The ideas I share in the posts I write should stand, or fall, on their own merits.
I don’t write the things that I do because I’m looking to gain personal fame or fortune; if I did, I wouldn’t use a pseudonym.
I write in order to share my experiences, perspective and ideas—and also because others have urged me to do so through the years. They value my thoughts and enjoy my way of making complex ideas understandable.
Long ago, there was an author by the name of Samuel Clemens. He wrote under the pseudonym “Mark Twain”. If you read and enjoyed his books, as I did, should that have changed—in any way—if you knew him as “Sam” or as “Mark”? Certainly not.
Similarly, does the fact that someone has a different faith than you (or none at all) mean that you should automatically discount or throw away what they say?
I’m very happy to have found a place like substack where I can dive deeply into new worlds of ideas, and not have to be concerned with who the writers are.
It is refreshing to be here, in today’s world of cancel culture and deplatforming, and I hope you enjoy substack as much as I do.
A reader wrote:
You're right. (Actually it is you I can't identify, IncognitiveCarbon seems apt). In his articles, speeches, debates, etc., he [ed: Ethical Skeptic] claims to have been a born again evangelical Christian, who then became an atheist who now writes under a pseudonym. Scriptures judgement is clear on this: google: I John 2:19 (amplified version)... a real Christian is one to the end. His claim he was once a Christian is false, he has been an atheist the whole time. Next on the readability point that initiated this, he is friendly and speaks in a non-complex fashion (not post-graduate level) during debates. Thus his premise of not being able to write at a more palatable level (per his readers requests) is false per the article you referenced. His readers would be thrilled to see him write in a non-complex fashion like he speaks. Instead he dissed them and that is disrespectful and non-congruent. Best.
As someone who for many years wrote technical articles (and indeed had my own technical column in several cases) for automotive magazines, the issue of simplification was one I dealt with frequently. The reason I was hired by a number of different magazines (some of whom were in direct competition) was that I was good at simplifying the technical subject matter without misleading the readers. Mostly I did that by keeping to basics, by not getting too deep into the tech. The exception would be if a deeper level understanding of the tech involved, was necessary to understanding the subject I was discussing. I find you do a similar thing, though the constraints of print publication, and the state of the internet at the time, left less room for me to directly offer the reader links, and also required me to fit my thoughts into a specific number of words, which you thankfully do not suffer from.
I would never dumb down an idea, I would just not get too deep into it, if I felt doing so would interfere with my delivering on the whole of the subject. Many times folks would email me and ask for reference materials or sources, to get deeper into the tech. I always felt this was a good thing, that this was the way it worked best. Those who cared enough and put out the effort (minimal as it was) to try to find out more, were rewarded with a deeper understanding.
I've felt (ever since grade school in fact) that the best way to learn is to do your own research. So I would share some basics on the technical points, share my ideas on the overall subject, and then let those that wanted to, find out more on their own. My position as a writer was that I am just a guy who has ideas on a subject based on his experience and his study of the subject. That does not make me God, or omnipotent, so someone may come up with a better solution than me. I'm not writing to tell folks THE way, but to get them to study the subject, consider my ideas on it, and then find their own path. In fact I often saw my work as simply a clue for them to follow to find out more.
Having read this article (and others of yours) and discovered the parallels between my approach as a writer and both yours and Ethical Skeptic, I feel like I am in some pretty heady company. It is refreshing to find people on the net who don't respond to a complex-compound sentence by saying TLDR. Thanks!
CC, thanks so much for the vote of confidence in your article!
Regarding the commenter. I disagree with his/her following points:
1. Once one adopts a religious stance as a child, they can never do any further inquiry or doubt any aspect of it ever again - otherwise they are 'not of us'? This is wrong as a line of thinking, actually barbaric. As a strategy, I am sure the 'Anti-Christ' loves this approach, as it runs off more people than it attracts.
2. 1 John 2:18/19 was talking about the Anti-Christ, not people who think and research. No, you are wrong, I am not an/the Anti-Christ. Did you actually read the passage?
3. I have never said that I cannot write at a conversant level, you just made that up because it was convenient to your lie.
4. I never diss my readers. Instead I have the respect for them of not dumbing things down to where I am white-lying, in order to manipulate/gain understanding on their part...
Just as you did in these four points. Your post was a form of falsehood and disrespect in order to gain favor and false understanding - activity which I refuse to participate in with my readers. I call them my 'folleagues', because they can comprehend this - and they are harmed by the sea-lioning of the pretender. It is a term of respect and reasoned commitment to serve.
But technical and specification/legal writing is different from colloquial writing. These are complex subjects I address - and I do this professionally as well. The reason we have the wool pulled over our eyes, is precisely because everyone wants critically incorrect parables and pablum fed to them. Leaving them ill equipped when the wolf arrives wearing fuzzy-wool pretense.
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