An Appeal to Authority is not always an invalid tactic. (Although it
often is.)
Agreed. This is a common confusion. People tend to refute Ad Hominen or Appeal to Authority, but they are often valid.
If you claim that I am sick, I'll trust you more if you are a doctor.
This is appeal to authority, and valid.
If somebody claims something in a web forum, someone else may respond by saying: "this guy is a troll, he has copy-pasted this thing into a dozen mailing lists, and even though people have rebutted his false claims again and again, he still does it. I think he is doing it only for fun. Don't answer him."
This is Ad Hominen, and valid.
Note: I don't take sides on the "Is Debian Ubuntu issue?". Nor do I claim that Ian Murdock has enough expertise to decide this. Being the first does not automatically make him the greatest expert on Debian.
And why are you arguing whether Debian is Ubuntu anyway?
--
Kent
--
Kent West
http://kentwest.blogspot.com <http://kentwest.blogspot.com/>
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