I don’t think you need to view namedropping as an appeal to authority. The natural way to do it in a scholarly document, including a poster, would be to cite a source. That’s giving the reader valuable information—a way to check out the authority behind it.
Of course, if the reader is familiar with the author cited and knows that their work is invariably strong, they might choose to take it on authority as a shortcut, but they have the info at hand to check into it if they wish.
I think that’s right, but I think that who I cite in this case matters a lot to whether people take it seriously. This is why I chose not to cite Miles or Yudkowsky, though I’m aware that this is academically bad practice. In hindsight, I could have included some quote from Peter Railton but it doesn’t feel right to do this for the sake of adding an authority to the list of citations. Thanks!
I don’t think you need to view namedropping as an appeal to authority. The natural way to do it in a scholarly document, including a poster, would be to cite a source. That’s giving the reader valuable information—a way to check out the authority behind it.
Of course, if the reader is familiar with the author cited and knows that their work is invariably strong, they might choose to take it on authority as a shortcut, but they have the info at hand to check into it if they wish.
I think that’s right, but I think that who I cite in this case matters a lot to whether people take it seriously. This is why I chose not to cite Miles or Yudkowsky, though I’m aware that this is academically bad practice. In hindsight, I could have included some quote from Peter Railton but it doesn’t feel right to do this for the sake of adding an authority to the list of citations. Thanks!