I prepared and discarded a half dozen replies to this post, but I think instead I'll just make a couple points in my defense and then move the rest to private discussions or another thread.
I think that you would be better off sticking to what you know best, rather than staking claim to areas of expertise where you actually have none.
Very well, do you consider yourself an expert on my academic, professional, and extracurricular careers?
ETA: It seems to me that it is always better to stick to the facts instead of trying to start a contest of credentials...
Begging pardon, but I don't believe I started it nor especially advanced it. In
this post,
ergo asked me where I studied law. I did not take the bait.
In
this post
ergo upped the stakes. He suggested that all the foregoing discussion was "personal and unprofessional" opinion, which I interpreted to mean "subjective and uninformed." Once again I did not take the bait. Instead I wrote
this post in which I didn't discuss qualifications or credentials, but stuck to facts and law as I understand them. A number of posters seem to have considered it well written and at least one of the nominated it.
This is my first mention of qualifications and experience. The disclaimer posted by
ozeco41 convinced me to state what my own actual expertise was and where my own knowledge of law was coming from. He clarified that law was not his primary expertise, and I felt it important to give a similar clarification. Under no circumstances did I intend that to "start a contest of credentials" or to imply that my expertise met some external standard.
Finally,
here ergo for the
third time raises the question of qualifications. He directly calls me an "uninformed layman." Further he suggests that he need not respond to statements he styles as subjective and uninformed.
This and
this and
this support the idea that this poster habitually uses this sort of argument as a dodge.
When the argument you're presented with is, "You can't possibly know anything about the subject to justify your opinion, but here's
my opinion which you should take as gospel," then a justifiable response is, "Well, here's how I know what I know. How do
you know what you know, to make your opinion so much more favorable than mine?" I.e., it asks the proponent of a affirmative and congruent counter claim whether he's willing to subject it to the same standard of proof by which he rejected a case in chief. I have to work with the argument I'm given. When that argument is naked assertion based on implied expertise, that's the argument I have to address.
That turnabout rhetoric was my plan. I was trying to call his bluff. I was hoping that if he realized he'd be requested to justify the basis for his opinion, he'd get bored and stop disrupting what would otherwise be a good discussion.
You've made yourself the topic of discussion here when that was neither necessary nor desirable.
And thanks to your post I remain the topic of discussion whether or not I intended to be, whether or not I desire to be, whether or not it would have continued but for your interposition, and whether or not I had an overall plan in my line of questioning.
Now I've become stuck between the rock of going further off-topic by answering your criticism and the hard place of letting that criticism stand unchallenged. I'm shamed either way.
Well played, counselor.
