The smartest people in the world find it hard to predict Microsoft’s stock price, so you won’t be able to.
Wouldn’t the argument-from-authority version of this instead be “The smartest people in the world say it’s hard for anyone to predict Microsoft’s stock price, so you won’t be able to”?
“Smart people can’t do X, therefore average people can’t do X either” seems less fallacious than “Smart people say average people can’t do X, and they must be right because they’re smart.”
Actually, I think the example I wanted to choose was ‘professionals say it’s hard to predict the stock price’. Like, the appeal to authority is most commonly made with respect to supposed experts in the field, not with generally smart people. What Yang said isn’t even a central example of appeal to authority.
I think ‘smart people say average people can’t do X, they must be right because they’re smart’ is probably also not central? Also not sure it’s all that fallacious, probably depends on how you define ‘smart’.
Wouldn’t the argument-from-authority version of this instead be “The smartest people in the world say it’s hard for anyone to predict Microsoft’s stock price, so you won’t be able to”?
“Smart people can’t do X, therefore average people can’t do X either” seems less fallacious than “Smart people say average people can’t do X, and they must be right because they’re smart.”
Actually, I think the example I wanted to choose was ‘professionals say it’s hard to predict the stock price’. Like, the appeal to authority is most commonly made with respect to supposed experts in the field, not with generally smart people. What Yang said isn’t even a central example of appeal to authority.
I think ‘smart people say average people can’t do X, they must be right because they’re smart’ is probably also not central? Also not sure it’s all that fallacious, probably depends on how you define ‘smart’.