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Comment by fluoridation | Hacker News Reader

Would you mind pointing out in the second post the sentence where that line of reasoning is implied?

The person you're replying to already has answered this question in a post you've already replied to. But to be explicit, consider the first sentence of the follow up post [1]:

> Now that you know what right-half-plane zeros are, in this article I'm going to begin a deep-dive into a control-systems-based analysis of a certain feedback system that is drawing particular public attention today: inflation.

In my mind, this is explicitly drawing a connection between the author's engineering background, particularly in control theory, and the current topic, inflation. To be clear, it would be fine if the author wanted to make a _mathematical_ connection between control theory and inflation. However, since the author does not explain right-half-plane zeros with any meaningful technical detail, the rhetorical effect is an appeal: "just trust me on this." Then the author switches topics _and explicitly connects the two topics_. I cannot speak for the person you're replying to, but this rhetoric is what bothers me.

[1] https://jbconsulting.substack.com/p/on-shelter-futures-part-...

EDIT: Looks like VogonPoetry already replied while I was typing this up.

These:

"Now that you know what right-half-plane zeros are, in this article I'm going to begin a deep-dive into a control-systems-based analysis of a certain feedback system that is drawing particular public attention today: inflation."

And all of the statements made in the walkback "a bit of a preamble" -- basically issuing caveats or disclaiming all of what was said before. A classic "I got you here", but I'm going to disclaim all of that, you are a fool to read anything that follows.

I read that as "now that you know some of the concepts and terminology used in systems theory, I can use them to make an argument in economics, and you can use that knowledge to judge for yourself whether the argument is valid or not". It's literally the opposite of a appeal to authority. As I see it, the only way it could be dishonest would be if the systems theory explanation is incorrect or purposely leaves inconvenient things out (which it might).

It would be an (incompetent) appeal to authority if it said "now that you've seen that I know my stuff when it comes to systems theory, you know that this thing I say about economics is true".

> As I see it, the only way it could be dishonest would be if the systems theory explanation is incorrect or purposely leaves inconvenient things out (which it might).

That should be the default assumption, no? Today’s Control Theory has never been shown to be predictive of the economy or politics, wouldn’t you agree? The article framed the discussion as if control theory is useful, purposely implied it’s utility, and did not state it’s known lack of scientific validity, which is indeed leaving some very inconvenient facts out, right? Saying that they left it open with a ‘judge for yourself’ is not a great counter to the critique of the argument style. There is an intentional framing here that fails to list the alternatives, tries to establish itself as ‘correct’ via implication, and pivots to a separate topic that is unproven to be relevant. Pretending to be unbiased while presenting a one-sided set of “information” is a pretty common type of appeal to authority.

I'm not particularly interested with whether the argument raised by the article is valid or not, which is why I left open several possible ways in which it could be fallacious. My point is solely that it's not an appeal to authority.

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