Oh, and something else to add: religious believers have this tendency to not understand that rationalists don’t use quotes as arguments from authority. They quote people’s words because the words make sense independently of the person. People who are “frequently quoted with approval” are quoted because they have frequently said things that make sense, not because anything they say is automatically right; if they shift to sayng things that don’t make sense, the fact that they have been frequently quoted in the past won’t carry over.
Oh, and something else to add: religious believers have this tendency to not understand that rationalists don’t use quotes as arguments from authority. They quote people’s words because the words make sense independently of the person. People who are “frequently quoted with approval” are quoted because they have frequently said things that make sense, not because anything they say is automatically right; if they shift to sayng things that don’t make sense, the fact that they have been frequently quoted in the past won’t carry over.
So they (instinctively) understand the halo effect?