people can be wrong, regardless of their previous reputation
Still, it’s incorrect to argue from existence of examples. You have to argue from likelihood. You’d expect more correctness from a person with reputation for being right than from a person with reputation for being wrong.
People can also go crazy, regardless of their previous reputation, but it’s improbable, and not an adequate argument for their craziness.
And you need to know what fact you are trying to convince people about, not just search for soldier-arguments pointing in the preferred direction. If you believe that the fact is that a person is crazy, you too have to recognize that “people can be crazy” is inadequate argument for this fact you wish to communicate, and that you shouldn’t name this argument in good faith.
(Craziness is introduced as a less-likely condition than wrongness to stress the structure of my argument, not to suggest that wrongness is as unlikely.)
Still, it’s incorrect to argue from existence of examples. You have to argue from likelihood. You’d expect more correctness from a person with reputation for being right than from a person with reputation for being wrong.
People can also go crazy, regardless of their previous reputation, but it’s improbable, and not an adequate argument for their craziness.
And you need to know what fact you are trying to convince people about, not just search for soldier-arguments pointing in the preferred direction. If you believe that the fact is that a person is crazy, you too have to recognize that “people can be crazy” is inadequate argument for this fact you wish to communicate, and that you shouldn’t name this argument in good faith.
(Craziness is introduced as a less-likely condition than wrongness to stress the structure of my argument, not to suggest that wrongness is as unlikely.)