So people should ignore a counterargument that makes sense to them because Terry Gross has more experience? We should blindly follow authority in spite of our own reasoning abilities?
I'm always disappointed when these dismissive appeal to authority ad-hominems [1] are not only posted on HN comments but voted to the very top. These types of comments take no effort and don't add any information to the discussion. Isn't HN supposed to be better than that?
Why not instead respond to the actual specific arguments people have put up in objection to Terry Gross's advice? Then the insufficiency of her experience is plain to see: She has 40+ years of experience indeed, but in a relatively narrow form of conversational interview, and commenters here are rightfully pointing out that her advice doesn't generalize.
> "DH1. Ad Hominem. ... Saying that an author lacks the authority to write about a topic is a variant of ad hominem—and a particularly useless sort, because good ideas often come from outsiders. The question is whether the author is correct or not. If his lack of authority caused him to make mistakes, point those out. And if it didn't, it's not a problem."
I'm always disappointed when these dismissive appeal to authority ad-hominems [1] are not only posted on HN comments but voted to the very top. These types of comments take no effort and don't add any information to the discussion. Isn't HN supposed to be better than that?
Why not instead respond to the actual specific arguments people have put up in objection to Terry Gross's advice? Then the insufficiency of her experience is plain to see: She has 40+ years of experience indeed, but in a relatively narrow form of conversational interview, and commenters here are rightfully pointing out that her advice doesn't generalize.
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
> "DH1. Ad Hominem. ... Saying that an author lacks the authority to write about a topic is a variant of ad hominem—and a particularly useless sort, because good ideas often come from outsiders. The question is whether the author is correct or not. If his lack of authority caused him to make mistakes, point those out. And if it didn't, it's not a problem."