Quote from: AsymmetricInformation on March 08, 2013, 03:19:38 PM

Quote from: hazek on March 08, 2013, 03:12:57 AM

Fallacy: Appeal to authority

Satoshi although brilliant is a mere man and not in anyway infallible and has been shown to have made many mistakes.

His words while carrying some merit are absolutely irrelevant when they are not supported by sound arguments using logic and current empirical evidence when faced with the current problems at hand. Put simply, if he isn't coming back to address the situation we have found ourselves in it doesn't matter what he thought 2-3 years ago.

It's not well known that the fallacy is actually "Appeal to Irrelevant Authority".

Surely you don't plan to argue against the proposition that "Satoshi's statements 2-3 years ago are positively correlated with accurate statements about today's effective cryptocurrency protocols"?

Yes, and a man's words are irrelevant authority. And I would indeed argue that what Satoshi said 2-3 years ago regarding cryptographic protocols was irrelevant if it wasn't based in logic and empirical evidence - the only relevant authority.