People getting paid to post disinformation

[Sal Santamaura]

...You need help.

A reasoned, point-by-point response draws an ad hominem attack. No sense investing further effort answering your posts.

[BrianShaw]

At least he seeks help for you from a qualified authority!

[Sal Santamaura]

At least he seeks help for you from a qualified authority!

Qualified in whose opinion?

I'll not report his post for violating the forum rule against religion.

[jnantz]

hi brian

yes, i do believe that ...

if i asked my plumber what he thought of
gursky's latest, or cindy sherman's latest, or a marcel duchamp or man ray piece
i would respect his opinion as much as a professional photographer's opinion.

it's just an opinion.

[Brian K]

The Greek philosophers called the kind of argument you're describing "appeal to authority." It's one of the oldest recognized logical fallacies. It's the fllipside of "ad hominem," which is to try to invalidate someone's argument by attacking their character. Neither is a strong argument.

To be precise, these are both considered "informal" fallacies, in the sense that they do not represent formal, mathematical logic where an argument is either valid or not. Informal fallacies involve inductive reasoning where arguments can be any degree of strong or weak. Appeals to authority can have some weight ... just not very much.

For example, to argue an idea about physics because Einstein says it's true isn't entirely unfounded. Einstein WAS an authority on the topic. His opinion has more weight than my 10 year old nephew's opinion. But it doesn't mean that he's right—an argument based on actual evidence and deductive reasoning is fundamentally stronger.

Witness that Einstein could be wrong. He argued with Heisenberg, appealing to no less an authority than God. We saw how valid that argument was in the end.

Einstein was a theorist. And even in that in most cases he was right. What gets considered equally of value according to some people here, is assumption (which is theory at best, bull shit at worst) versus empirical evidence in the form of firsthand, real life, consistently repeatable practices.

And BTW Einstein was most likely an Atheist or at most a Deist and his use of the word "God" was a reference to the laws of the universe, such as in the phrase "God does not play dice" when referring to the Uncertainty Principle which is what i assume by your mention of Heisenberg that you are referring to. So I rather doubt he was appealing to God in regards to Heisenberg. But then again remember, they are talking in theory about things not visible and that had never been witnessed at that point. Very different from stating a contradictory opinion to someone who has witnessed, measured, recorded and analyzed the phenomena countless times.

[Brian K]

hi brian

yes, i do believe that ...

if i asked my plumber what he thought of
gursky's latest, or cindy sherman's latest, or a marcel duchamp or man ray piece
i would respect his opinion as much as a professional photographer's opinion.

it's just an opinion.

Well, I guess we have access to different people. When i want the opinion of someone on a given topic, I make it a point to seek out people who actually know something about it. Silly me.

But I'm curious. Why do you even hire a plumber? Surely a baker or a dental hygienist would be just as qualified to fix those leaky pipes by your philosophy? Because if you do actually hire anyone with specialty knowledge then you pretty much state that you do not actually live by your philosophy and or at least make convenient exceptions.

[Sevo]

Well, I guess we have access to different people. When i want the opinion of someone on a given topic, I make it a point to seek out people who actually know something about it.

Well, being a professional photographer does not automatically qualify you to make better comments about art than a plumber. Some professionals have gone through art school, but they are in a minority, and the same goes for amateurs. Even here in LFP where there is a quite unusual density of photographing artists (or artist photographers), the recent threads on Gursky and Cindy Sherman had some contributors that displayed exactly the kind of opinionated ignorance on the subject of art I'd expect from a plumber's forum - and most other photo related forums I frequent performed even worse on that occasion...

[IanG]

Has every one lost the plot of this thread we've a newbie suddenly claiming to have reinvented Pyro Staining developers, who needs to read the Modern uses of Pyro articles printed before he was born advocating the use of similar developers to those we have now like PMK and Pyrocat (exteremely close).

The stirrer from the West Coast knows who I mean and as usual adds nothing but what's more important is a group arguing cross purpose against each other when in reality they hold quite similar views overall.

The reality is it's about sharing information & skills , there are different approachs, we all follow differnt paths and in the end it's the images that count.

Ian

[Ken Lee]

Perhaps this would be a good time to close the thread.

Even though the discussion has strayed from the original topic, many excellent points have been made over the last 128 posts.

Several issues have been examined rather thoroughly from multiple angles, with... "pointed enthusiasm".

[Richard Mahoney]

... Several issues have been examined rather thoroughly from multiple angles, with... "pointed enthusiasm". ...

Yes, I've often wondered what it would be like if a good number of the protagonists could somehow get themselves to sit down to table together. It would be an interesting and stimulating dinner, but one would have to have the stomach for it. Still, I'm sure it would be fun so if it ever looks like it's going to come to pass please give me a call -- I'd be happy to stand by as a balanced and impartial observer ...


Kind regards,

Richard