Are we all hopelessly stupid, that we cannot learn to avoid this mistake?
Many of us are, though I wouldn't say it is necessarily only stupid people who do it.
I consider it a good principle that the words in a reply in forums like this stand by themselves. If you or pg or anyone else wants to say something about lisp, you got to back it up. If you have already backed it up in "several hundred blog posts and news.YC comments, posted over several years", it should be easy for you to reference some of this material in support of your views.
You saying that the exact same argument, presented word-for-word the same, is not worth as much as the same thing when it comes out of an authority's keyboard, is an appeal to authority. However, if this other person has already defended this view, all he has to do is reference it to make the post worth more. But then the posts aren't word-for-word identical. Then one contains a reference to a justification and one doesn't.
Your example involves a question of how much to trust a person. This is one of the cases where it matters who's making the comment. It's a straightforward question of whether you want to trust that the person who says "Most of the smart programmers that I've met would rather work in Lisp than in Java" is speaking the truth or not, and it's clear that a habitual liar isn't as trustworthy as someone known for their honesty. It's not even an argument, it's just a truth claim.
However, the moment it becomes an argument (e.g., "lisp is better than java"), trusting it on authority becomes a fallacy. If Paul Graham wrote, "Lisp rocks", his comment is not worth any more than your comment if you wrote the same. But if he wrote, "Lisp rocks, for reasons I have detailed in this essay here: <...>", it would be worth more. But then it would no longer be "exactly the same words".
Many of us are, though I wouldn't say it is necessarily only stupid people who do it.
I consider it a good principle that the words in a reply in forums like this stand by themselves. If you or pg or anyone else wants to say something about lisp, you got to back it up. If you have already backed it up in "several hundred blog posts and news.YC comments, posted over several years", it should be easy for you to reference some of this material in support of your views.
You saying that the exact same argument, presented word-for-word the same, is not worth as much as the same thing when it comes out of an authority's keyboard, is an appeal to authority. However, if this other person has already defended this view, all he has to do is reference it to make the post worth more. But then the posts aren't word-for-word identical. Then one contains a reference to a justification and one doesn't.
Your example involves a question of how much to trust a person. This is one of the cases where it matters who's making the comment. It's a straightforward question of whether you want to trust that the person who says "Most of the smart programmers that I've met would rather work in Lisp than in Java" is speaking the truth or not, and it's clear that a habitual liar isn't as trustworthy as someone known for their honesty. It's not even an argument, it's just a truth claim.
However, the moment it becomes an argument (e.g., "lisp is better than java"), trusting it on authority becomes a fallacy. If Paul Graham wrote, "Lisp rocks", his comment is not worth any more than your comment if you wrote the same. But if he wrote, "Lisp rocks, for reasons I have detailed in this essay here: <...>", it would be worth more. But then it would no longer be "exactly the same words".