[arianvanp]

I'm not going to change the way I speak based on who I am speaking to. fine, accuse me of speaking wrongly by telling me why and i'll accept it. I made a bit of a bold statement, an I appreciate people correcting me appropiatly by giving me valid reasons why my statement is wrong. But basing your argument on an appeal to authority is just a logical falacy and is annoying.

[rdtsc]

> But basing your argument on an appeal to authority is just a logical falacy(sic) and is annoying.

But you are also making statements full of adjectives and subjective descriptions such "makes me cringe" and "probably doing it wrong". That is quite a bit of flair for someone expecting logical and nice refutation of their own statements.

If you jump in the middle of the discussion, throwing around "you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong" at everyone then don't be surprised you get replies that are equally accusatory and harsh.

BTW I still don't see what is really so cringe-worthy in calling it an operator. It is just syntactic sugar. Call it green tomatoes if you want. Joe calls it an operator. I understand what Joe means. It is like yelling at someone talking about function default arguments and saying "ha! bit it is all assembler underneath, all this is wrong, it is just registers and pointers!".

[evilduck]

And when someone says that the original author of Erlang is speaking wrong about a basic mechanism of... Erlang, I don't think there's going to be many objective responses, probably more pointing and laughing.

[davidw]

It's not a basic mechanism of Erlang, but Elixir.

[evilduck]

I'm not well versed in either language, but from the examples provided in the TFA it looks to me like the capability/mechanism of the operator appears to exist in Erlang and Prolog, while the operator syntax itself is only in Elixir.

[saraid216]

> basing your argument on an appeal to authority is just a logical falacy

This is incorrect. An appeal to an authority is a valid argument. The fallacy is an appeal to a false authority.

When you make a statement like "it makes me cringe", you are making an appeal to your own authority. Cringe-worthiness has nothing to do with reasoning or logic: it's only relevant if your opinion matters, and your opinion only matters if you're (1) the audience of the argument or (2) an authority. If you do not claim to be an authority, you are dismissing your own argument: you acknowledge its own fallaciousness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

[arianvanp]

I have to disagree on this one. Even if you appeal to a True authority, you're just moving the onus to the one you're arguing with. You're not giving a valid argument, but ask your opponent to go find a counterargument himself. I think many eod consider that a fallacy.

[saraid216]

> Even if you appeal to a True authority, you're just moving the onus to the one you're arguing with. You're not giving a valid argument, but ask your opponent to go find a counterargument himself.

This is always the case, though. If I say, "Fish need water, fish are good, so we should provide water," you have to independently verify my claims yourself or choose to accept the assertion.

No claim is exempt from this.

> I think many eod consider that a fallacy.

Sorry, I don't know what an "eod" is.

Unless you mean "end of day", in which case you're making an argument from popularity which, I'm sure you know, is a fallacious argument because popularity isn't a valid authority for determining whether or not something is a fallacy.

[abraininavat]

Blah blah blah. Knowing about logical fallacies can be instructive for the skeptical among us, but often bringing them in every-day discussions is pedantic.

Regardless of whether the statement was an appeal to authority, regardless of whether Joe Armstrong or arianvanp are "true authorities" or if that's even objectively determinable, regardless of whether we consider inductive arguments as persuasive... regardless of all that.. we have brains. You can see what Joe Armstrong wrote. You can pick up Erlang and Elixir and use them yourself. You can see what arianvanp wrote. Some of us (excepting jacquesm, of course) have the capacity to use our own brains to consider the validity of the arguments at hand without having to resort to the lazy inductive argument that Joe Armstrong is smart about Erlang and therefore is probably right.

If you have a brain, use it instead of checking it in at the door.

[saraid216]

> Knowing about logical fallacies can be instructive for the skeptical among us, but often bringing them in every-day discussions is pedantic.

That's why I wrote the comment. arianvanp brought them up, was pedantic, and also wrong about their usage.

[jasonwocky]

It's not an appeal to authority. It's Bayesian probability.

P(author_doing_fp_wrong) < P(author_doing_fp_wrong | author_invented_erlang)

[chc]

Not sure if you got your sign backwards or if this is a really nerdy burn on Erlang.

[jasonwocky]

damn! sign backwards! /blush

[abraininavat]

Even with your operator fixed, this is still bull. This only only instructive if you have zero external knowledge regarding the context. Since we can read Joe Armstrong's words, and since we can read arianvanp's objection, and since most of us have brains, we can and should do a lot better than "bayesian probability".

[jacquesm]

When in a hole, stop digging.