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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (419993)	9/25/2008 7:03:25 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1574727

So your argument is "Bernanke is a Dean at Princeton" (really "was a chairman of the economics department, which may not make him a dean of any sort, and in any case was in the past, its not a present fact, but that's mostly besides the point), and thus an academic. Bernake was wrong about something. Boudreaux is an academic (and more specifically has a very similar position, being the chairman of the economics department at GMU) Therefore we should ignore what he has to say, or pay more attention to what you have to say than his opinion, or consider him very likely to be wrong That's a pretty pathetic argument. If I had said "You must accept what he says, he's a respected economist", then Bernanke's example, and that of many other academics and/or economists would be hightly relevant. Its a good way to refute an argument from authority based on being an economist (or a chairman of an economics department, or an academic) as the authority. But again I was not making an argument from authority, and I just about never do. I posted his points. They aren't automatically correct because he heads an economics department, but the fact that he heads an economic department isn't an argument against his ideas either. Your engaging in a rather unusual ad hominem. Dismissing the ideas because the person presenting the ideas is an academic expert in the field (at least the general field, if not the particular specialty). If the arguments are faulty, then demolish them with counterarguments. Saying "he's an academic" doesn't cut it.