D&D 5E 5e and the Cheesecake Factory: Explaining Good Enough

[Ovinomancer]

I'm asserting that an appeal to authority is only as good as the character of the authority.

Appeal to authority exists when you say Person A is an authority on X, and they say Y, so Y is correct because A is an authority. This disregards whether Y is part of X, and the entire argument is that because A said it, it's right, based solely on his authority.

This doesn't apply if you provide the argument said by A, and rely on it's strength, or if Y is a technical issue and A is a legitimate authority on Y. In this case, you've ignored that the argument was presented while being credited and doesn't rely on the author being right solely based on their authority. And, you've also ignored that the author is actually a well-cited authority on this exact subject matter.

What you have done, though, is commit the genetic fallacy, which says that since Person A is horrible in way X, all things Person A says are also horrible.

I mean, if you're going to try to use an informal logical fallacy as a means of argument, do try not to commit a different one yourself in the process.

EDITL: and @PsyzhranV2 beat me to it. It's what I get for opening the reply window and then being called away and not checking before hitting submit.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Appeal to authority only becomes a fallacy if the authority you are quoting is:

1. An expert on the area of knowledge under consideration,
2. Speaking about their area of mastery, and
3. Expressing a view that is in general agreement with other experts in the field (as opposed to some crank's one-off conspiracy theory),

Then that's not a fallacious appeal to authority! That's just citing doing your due diligence with your research and citing your sources!

Not talking about logical fallacy. This is a philosophical point, not a logical one. Opinion is inseparable from character. If someone cites someone of dubious character that dubiousness reflects on the citer.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

What you have done, though, is commit the genetic fallacy, which says that since Person A is horrible in way X, all things Person A says are also horrible.

I would argue that that is truth, not fallacy.

By citing someone, you are showing support for that person. If Hitler wrote a book about fishkeeping, and you cite it as a source for fishkeeping, you are implicitly saying "Hitler is an authority people should pay attention to".

 

[Ovinomancer]

I would argue that that is truth, not fallacy.

Which it may be. Informal fallacies are not like formal fallacies. A formal fallacy is incorrect in conclusion due to the argument. These are fairly rare. Informal fallacies are much more common, and for these the conclusion may well be correct -- the issue is that the argument doesn't support the conclusion at all. In this case, Ruskin may be horrible in the same way in all things they did, but the argument that he was horrible in one area doesn't actually show, in any way, that he was also horrible in a different area. He might have been, but this argument doesn't support that.

Instead, you need to show that Ruskin was also horrible in this case. It's quite possible he is (although I disagree, this statement is well supported by consensus), but that work needs to be done, you can't just leverage it in from other, unrelated areas.

Of course, you might just not care about logical support of arguments, which is fine, but then your leveling of appeal to authority certainly loses a lot of sting.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Even if one doesn't agree with Ruskin, and thinks there's no difference in quality between the Marvel Cinematic Universe films and (say) The Seventh Seal - indeed that the former must be better, because more people paid to see them! - still there is no denying his point that producers shape the market, and taste, as much as satisfy it.

The MCU movies are, despite my loathing of most of them, quite well made as mass-market entertainment products. Not only did people enjoy them, but success built on success in a way that many movie franchises failed to, whether we're talking about Lethal Weapon, DCU, or Star Trek. Denying that they're doing anything particularly well because film critics will never regard them the way they do some cult film from almost 70 years ago seems to be missing the point.

Nor, to pick another contemporaneous example, does the history of rock and cave art. This was not created for "consumption", or as part of a process of generating demand for "product". Whatever one might want to say about the quality of such works, the idea that the consumer is the final judge of quality has no work to do in that respect.

Presumably, cave painters painted paintings for others to look at for some reason or another, and could be considered bad at their craft if others felt they had failed in some purpose, whatever that was. Something that is poor quality is something that isn't very good at doing whatever it is that it's supposed to do, and in the case of consumer products, it's to be used by the consumer for some purpose. So, who's the judge of whether or not a consumer product actually does what it's supposed to? If it's not the consumer, who is it?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In this case, Ruskin may be horrible in the same way in all things they did, but the argument that he was horrible in one area doesn't actually show, in any way, that he was also horrible in a different area. He might have been, but this argument doesn't support that.

My point is that being that being horrible in any area taints everything a person does. Maybe what they said about something was right, maybe it was wrong, but either way we should disregard it and look for a different source.

 

[Campbell]

@fearsomepirate

I think we should acknowledge what Marvel films do well, especially standouts like the Winter Soldier. We should also engage in criticism. That some critics are overly critical of material made for the mass is true, but that's not evidence that criticism is worthless. It's evidence that sometimes the biases of critics get in their way of properly evaluating a piece of art/film.

I often see the reverse as well though. Some people have a disdain for anything not made for the mass market or them specifically. The make an aesthetic judgement based on what they think something is like with absolute confidence. Not talking about just not being interested or satisfied with the media you like here, but like making emphatic judgements or relative comparisons based on pretty much no evidence. If you talk to them about an independent movie you just saw they will assume the worst at every point. Maybe even argue with you about a movie they have never seen.

That's really what feels off to the tenor of discussion on much of this site. The sort of aesthetic judgement without effort I see. I get good enough. I have watched John Wick about 20 times probably. I just do not see why people need to go from this suits my purpose fine and I don't feel need to look outside of it to actually here's why it's better than all this other stuff I have no real knowledge or experience of.

 

[Ovinomancer]

My point is that being that being horrible in any area taints everything a person does. Maybe what they said about something was right, maybe it was wrong, but either way we should disregard it and look for a different source.

There's a difference between not allowing the good someone did to counteract the evil and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I won't justify Ruskin, but I'm not going to say that nothing he did should be considered as valid just because he had some rather unpleasant viewpoints. I'm savvy enough to say that I strongly disagree and have strong distaste for some of Ruskin's ideas, but that he was also perceptive in other areas and should be considered.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Well, I'm not saying things that aren't made for the mass market are bad. I'm saying saying the ultimate judge of whether something is fit for its purpose and does the job well is the person who uses it. So the first question is really what the purpose of something is, and whom it's for.

I recently had a painting framed. The frame cost close to a thousand dollars. It's a high-quality frame. The lady who framed it is fairly well-known and regarded as a producer of high-quality frames. Her frames are anything but mass-market products. Who the hell pays a grand for a rectangle of wood?

 

[fearsomepirate]

My point is that being that being horrible in any area taints everything a person does. Maybe what they said about something was right, maybe it was wrong, but either way we should disregard it and look for a different source.

We would have to reboot human knowledge if we actually did this.