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Flame » in reply to Re: It's not a surprise, and thanks for the compliment.

Re: It's not a surprise, and thanks for the compliment.
TB — (archived)

(Edited) It is quite possible to get past terminology issues in a conversation if both sides are willing. A definition can be proposed and agreed on. For complex issues, one can revert back to the concepts under the terms, and backtrack from there, maybe even to different terms.

This isn't hard.

People quote the Federalist Papers (or any other source) for the same reason you quote Orwell, to take advantage of someone who has already done a lot of the intellectual legwork and distilled an idea or concept out for us. Climbing up on the shoulders of giants, as it were.

Of course no source is infallible, but the proper response to that is to point out the fallacy and back it up, not simply declare that since something can't be infallible it therefore can't be true. There's a logic error in that, too.

The flip side of "argument by authority" is where something is discarded without any cause other than it came from someone we don't like.

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