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Comment by tbirrell | Hacker News Reader

This is not an example of Appeal to Authority because Ben Franklin is an accepted authority. If all parties agree on the reliability of an authority in the given context it becomes a valid inductive argument. Otherwise every Citation or Source or Bibliography would be a "logical fallacy". An Appeal to Authority would be if the quote was attributed to someone like James Polk. Sure he was president, but he has no authority on this sort of subject.

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>This is not an example of Appeal to Authority because Ben Franklin is an accepted authority.

...huh?

>If all parties agree on the reliability of an authority in the given context it becomes a valid inductive argument.

No, it doesn't. Why do you believe that? How do you feel about quantum mechanics? Do you realize that Einstein fought tooth and nail against it for years?

>Otherwise every Citation or Source or Bibliography would be a "logical fallacy".

Citations link to works, not authorities. A citation may link to, say, an academic paper which provides evidence to support its assertions. No one is linking to random comments made by so-called authorities, that would never be accepted (unless the citation was to literally show that a quote is legitimate, i.e., made by the person claimed to have made it.)

But given a hypothetical question like “What play should a football team run when they are on 2nd down and 3 with 2:19 in the 3rd Quarter while leading by 3 points” — wouldn’t a professional NFL coach’s opinion be given more credence than mine? Einstein may have been wrong on quantum mechanics but if you had 1000 physics question it would be hard to think of a better person to ask.

You're proving my point. When examining an argument you should do so based on the merits of said argument. That's literally the basis of Appeal to Authority. It doesn't get more clear cut than this.

I'd also like to point out you have yet to provide a single fact in support of anything you're saying.

I’m not the person you’ve been talking to earlier

Sorry, lost track. Doesn't change my point though.

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