When in the discussion under the well-written page created by a third party the first party openly admits registering the domain in order to use it as argumentum ad verecundiam, the whole thing loses much of its power.
If I debate with someone, he tells me something like “abortion is murder”, I point him to http://worstargumentintheworld.com/ and he takes the pain to read the article AND the discussion and sees why/how the domain was registered, I would claim victory in “raising the sanity waterline”.
The argument authority of having a domain pointing to may (I hope it’ll) increase the chance the person does at least read a bit of the page instead of discarding it, but I doubt it’ll do anything into making him/her accepting that the argument is wrong behind that.
Anyone who visits this page can judge the merits themselves: there’s no argument from authority involved. No one is claiming this form of argument is invalid because it’s on LW, or because Yvain wrote it, or because it has a catchy name that’s published on a website, or because it now has an easy-to-remember URL. I made a simpler citation, nothing more.
Providing a pre-existing URL that links to a well-written page created by a third-party is a form of evidence that shifts “Worst Argument in the World” from something that feels like an opinion to the title of a logical fallacy.
What other role, if not one of authority, play a pre-existing URL and the page being written by a third party, in shifting the status of the argument to a logical fallacy?
To clarify: I understood your comment as saying that when you encounter the “worst argument” somewhere on the internet, you would link to this article with the connotation “look, what you’ve just done is an officially recognised fallacy—a neutral party has written a nice article about it and there is even a domain for that”. Which may work fine until your opponent sees who has registered the domain and for what purpose.
The point of the argument from authority here is to catch the opponent’s attention. If he goes as far as looking up who registered the domain, we can be confident he has read the article as well. The argument from authority won’t work any more, but we don’t care: it has served its purpose.
“Argumentum ad verecundiam” translates to “argument from authority” in sounding-smart-speak (saving effort of googling for those who come after me)
And he doesn’t appeal to authority, he’s correctly addressing the points made by the theoretical opponent: “you just made that up...” and “that’s just your opinion...”
When in the discussion under the well-written page created by a third party the first party openly admits registering the domain in order to use it as argumentum ad verecundiam, the whole thing loses much of its power.
If I debate with someone, he tells me something like “abortion is murder”, I point him to http://worstargumentintheworld.com/ and he takes the pain to read the article AND the discussion and sees why/how the domain was registered, I would claim victory in “raising the sanity waterline”.
The argument authority of having a domain pointing to may (I hope it’ll) increase the chance the person does at least read a bit of the page instead of discarding it, but I doubt it’ll do anything into making him/her accepting that the argument is wrong behind that.
OK, that sounds reasonable.
Anyone who visits this page can judge the merits themselves: there’s no argument from authority involved. No one is claiming this form of argument is invalid because it’s on LW, or because Yvain wrote it, or because it has a catchy name that’s published on a website, or because it now has an easy-to-remember URL. I made a simpler citation, nothing more.
What other role, if not one of authority, play a pre-existing URL and the page being written by a third party, in shifting the status of the argument to a logical fallacy?
To clarify: I understood your comment as saying that when you encounter the “worst argument” somewhere on the internet, you would link to this article with the connotation “look, what you’ve just done is an officially recognised fallacy—a neutral party has written a nice article about it and there is even a domain for that”. Which may work fine until your opponent sees who has registered the domain and for what purpose.
The point of the argument from authority here is to catch the opponent’s attention. If he goes as far as looking up who registered the domain, we can be confident he has read the article as well. The argument from authority won’t work any more, but we don’t care: it has served its purpose.
“Argumentum ad verecundiam” translates to “argument from authority” in sounding-smart-speak (saving effort of googling for those who come after me)
And he doesn’t appeal to authority, he’s correctly addressing the points made by the theoretical opponent: “you just made that up...” and “that’s just your opinion...”