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Comment by rs186 | Hacker News Reader

Reminder: "appeal to authority" is a classical logical fallacy.

For me, I don't know this person, which means that all the words are completely meaningless.

Which is exactly the point.

I don't think it's really an appeal to authority. No one is saying it must be true because this guy says its true. However, when a very respected figure in software engineer culture like Steve Yegge gives an opinion, that is more noteworthy than when random joe schmo gives his opinion. The fact that you don't know who he is means it's not interesting to you. Clearly, it's noteworthy to others.

Exception: Be very careful not to confuse "deferring to an authority on the issue" with the appeal to authority fallacy. Remember, a fallacy is an error in reasoning. Dismissing the council of legitimate experts and authorities turns good skepticism into denialism. The appeal to authority is a fallacy in argumentation, but deferring to an authority is a reliable heuristic that we all use virtually every day on issues of relatively little importance. There is always a chance that any authority can be wrong, that’s why the critical thinker accepts facts provisionally. It is not at all unreasonable (or an error in reasoning) to accept information as provisionally true by credible authorities. Of course, the reasonableness is moderated by the claim being made (i.e., how extraordinary, how important) and the authority (how credible, how relevant to the claim).

Quotation from https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-...

Where are you going with this? The authority provided no evidence so noting the logical fallacy is correct here. In this scenario, people are appealing to authority because there's nothing else to count on.

The tweet is a domain expert talking about his experiences using a product.

If (hyperbole) Picasso wrote a tweet saying certain canvases work great for certain tasks, and some random internet dude counters with A single tweet with lots of analogy, with no images/painting examples whatsoever. These are just words. Are we just discussing art based on vibe? ...

I will read that comment in the comic book guy voice.

When Karpathy and Yegge speak, I listen. When they say approximately the same things, I listen carefully.

I agree with you that the tweet is basically useless but what they have done there is not an appeal to authority fallacy. They have only explained why it’s popular. Arguably your response is a genetic fallacy.

> For me, I don't know this person, which means that all the words are completely meaningless.

Because you don't know who Yegge is, the words are meaningless to you? So a body of text is meaningful only if you know who the author is? That's...lame.

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