> I'm not "appealing to authority," I'm appealing to basic reasoning at this point.
No, what you wrote in that paragraph is a further appeal to authority. It's what the cool kids call doubling down.
> You immediately begin appealing to authority, lol.
I'll explain what an appeal to authority is again for those who think they're too cool for school.
Most informal logical fallacies, when made, are fallacies of relevance as they do not address the logic of a statement or line of reasoning (else, necessarily, they are a failing of the logic, but mostly people make fallacies of relevance). As you pointed out, a maths teacher is less likely to teach bad mathematics but that isn't a valid or sound defence of any particular mathematical statement that a maths teacher makes. In order to defend a particular statement a mathematician has to do what maths teachers tell their students to do, show the working.
To state someone's expertise in an area is not a fallacy of relevance unless it sits in place of reasoning, otherwise it only provides context. If the reasoning is supplied then look at the reasoning.
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy[1]:
> 9. The ad verecundiam fallacy concerns appeals to authority or expertise. Fundamentally, the fallacy involves accepting as evidence for a proposition the pronouncement of someone who is taken to be an authority but is not really an authority. This can happen when non-experts parade as experts in fields in which they have no special competence—when, for example, celebrities endorse commercial products or social movements. Similarly, when there is controversy, and authorities are divided, it is an error to base one’s view on the authority of just some of them.
So, look at the information, weigh it up, and come to what you think is right. Try to avoid making glaringly obvious mistakes along the way, like the ones you have repeatedly made.
> Big fan of herd immunity? So was Sweden. The only upside is now we can at least point at them and say "well, it was said this strategy wouldn't work, and as we can see, it didn't."
Firstly, who isn't a fan of herd immunity? Do you even understand what it is?
Lastly, because what else needs to be said about Sweden after this, the data[2] shows that Sweden did not make a horrible mistake with their approach.
I can skip the rest, sifting out substantive argument from the conspiracy theories and ad hominem from that is surely a waste of time, but this caught my eye and gave me a good chuckle:
> But this is a lot of words for what I think is really happening here: You're some form of conservative (maybe in your country you call it "libertarianism"), conservatives identify alongside covid denialism, so you do too. Your weird ideas about nazi political ideology and minimizing of their destructive actions by comparing it to, lol, vaccine mandates, illustrates this further. It never mattered what the science said, Your People said COVID is fake so you do too.
Cognitive dissonance often requires that you create some evil character, an other, for those you disagree with. (ironically, something Soviets, Mao, and Nazis did). Suffering from it certainly hasn't helped with the accuracy of those guesses, I'd suggest you give it up as soon as possible.
Do try though to pick up a history book in future, at the very least.
That's a blessing.
> I'm not "appealing to authority," I'm appealing to basic reasoning at this point.
No, what you wrote in that paragraph is a further appeal to authority. It's what the cool kids call doubling down.
> You immediately begin appealing to authority, lol.
I'll explain what an appeal to authority is again for those who think they're too cool for school.
Most informal logical fallacies, when made, are fallacies of relevance as they do not address the logic of a statement or line of reasoning (else, necessarily, they are a failing of the logic, but mostly people make fallacies of relevance). As you pointed out, a maths teacher is less likely to teach bad mathematics but that isn't a valid or sound defence of any particular mathematical statement that a maths teacher makes. In order to defend a particular statement a mathematician has to do what maths teachers tell their students to do, show the working.
To state someone's expertise in an area is not a fallacy of relevance unless it sits in place of reasoning, otherwise it only provides context. If the reasoning is supplied then look at the reasoning.
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy[1]:
> 9. The ad verecundiam fallacy concerns appeals to authority or expertise. Fundamentally, the fallacy involves accepting as evidence for a proposition the pronouncement of someone who is taken to be an authority but is not really an authority. This can happen when non-experts parade as experts in fields in which they have no special competence—when, for example, celebrities endorse commercial products or social movements. Similarly, when there is controversy, and authorities are divided, it is an error to base one’s view on the authority of just some of them.
So, look at the information, weigh it up, and come to what you think is right. Try to avoid making glaringly obvious mistakes along the way, like the ones you have repeatedly made.
> Big fan of herd immunity? So was Sweden. The only upside is now we can at least point at them and say "well, it was said this strategy wouldn't work, and as we can see, it didn't."
Firstly, who isn't a fan of herd immunity? Do you even understand what it is?
Lastly, because what else needs to be said about Sweden after this, the data[2] shows that Sweden did not make a horrible mistake with their approach.
I can skip the rest, sifting out substantive argument from the conspiracy theories and ad hominem from that is surely a waste of time, but this caught my eye and gave me a good chuckle:
> But this is a lot of words for what I think is really happening here: You're some form of conservative (maybe in your country you call it "libertarianism"), conservatives identify alongside covid denialism, so you do too. Your weird ideas about nazi political ideology and minimizing of their destructive actions by comparing it to, lol, vaccine mandates, illustrates this further. It never mattered what the science said, Your People said COVID is fake so you do too.
Cognitive dissonance often requires that you create some evil character, an other, for those you disagree with. (ironically, something Soviets, Mao, and Nazis did). Suffering from it certainly hasn't helped with the accuracy of those guesses, I'd suggest you give it up as soon as possible.
Do try though to pick up a history book in future, at the very least.
[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...