(01-26-2020, 07:41 AM)Last42min Wrote:

(01-25-2020, 10:45 PM)mikesez Wrote: I don't know who you are either.  Not personal.  
Both of you seem to think I should view you as experts even though I have no idea what you do for a living or where you learn things.
I at least give links to what I talk about. Stuff from real journalists and real experts.

How irrelevant, but consistent. It's a messageboard, bro. No one knows who anyone is. I have two degrees in poli sci and international affairs. I have mentioned this before, but the truth is it doesn't matter. My education is unessential in an argument. It's called appeal to authority. This is true whether I appeal to myself or to any other authority. One could use authority as a weight to tip the scales in favor of a position when making a personal evaluation (all other things being equal), but it is not a metric for truth. You don't seem to get this, despite it having been addressed multiple times. 

Your degrees don't necessarily mean you're right about anything or everything, but they do help me understand where you're coming from and add to the conversation.

As for links, we need to bring those in because none of us know anything about any of this firsthand. We have to start from a common set of facts, then we can decide what our various opinions about those facts are.

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