(May 24, 2013 at 3:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: The appeal to authority doesn't really work at any level when trying to establish absolute truth. I could just as easily lie about the ethics of hacking as Rayaan could do some good research and write an accurate essay on the subject.
Appeal to authority seems to me to be a fallacy when you are trying to make absolute truth claims, but if all you are trying to do is establish trust in a claim, then it's fine. Saying "Tiberius is a hacker so what he says about hacking is true" is a clear fallacy. Saying "Tiberius is a hacker so he likely knows more about hacking than Rayaan" isn't.
That's true as long as your authority is fallible. If you have an infallible authority then you can appeal to it all day long.
