The Appeal to Authority or Credential Fallacy

by Cognitive Carbon

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

CognitiveCarbonFeb 25

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 including 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: 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 and 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 deep 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.