Beliefs can be evaluated independently of people. If an incontrovertibly evil man says that a piece of good stock advice is to buy low and sell high, that does not make the stock advice incontrovertibly evil. It might induce an element of skepticism, encouraging one to seek out a more authoritative source for stock advice.
Communication relies on the authority of the speaker and the validity of what is spoken. Trust is what you get when a speaker consistently speaks truth. A speaker with a lot of authority has a higher starting point of trust than a speaker without authority, but consistent truth can lead to equally trustworthy communicators.
Evaluating whether or not a statement is true relies on a value judgement of the person receiving the communication. The person’s value judgement begins with the authority of the speaker, and is adjusted by their biases for what they are saying.
For example: A person with high authority (A subject matter expert) says that good stock advice is to buy low sell high. I recognize the authority of the speaker, and have heard this advice elsewhere, so the authority of the speaker is given to this advice.
I, a person with low authority, say that good stock advice is to buy low sell high. A person with whom I don’t get along hears what I have to say. They do not acknowledge my authority, and so the advice is discounted, and they happen to believe the stock market is intrinsically evil, so the advice is discounted further.
This nemesis then goes and hears a person they admire, who they perceive as having high authority, making the claim that a good bit of stock advice is to buy low and sell high. This is a claim they have already discounted extremely. The high authority of the speaker is not enough to offset the bias in this regard, but perhaps in the eyes of the nemesis the stock trading maxim has gone from “A false statement” to “A misguided judgement”.
Evaluating the authority of people is not something that can be generalized, because there as many ways to do it as there are people. We all have a way peculiar to ourselves for determining who we trust and who we do not.
So when someone makes a claim, their own authority doesn’t make it credible, but the validity of the claim itself determines its credibility.
Persuasion is the talent for making people either accept your authority or accept the validity of your claim. Persuasive writing, for example, asserts some claim and then supports it to show that it is true, presuming that the reader does not know the claim or does not know the evidence. Persuasive writing is usually limited to formal debates or business pitches, because in every day life most people know something about any given topic and usually will have an opinion on it. When two parties know the claim but have different evidence for it, that is argumentation. Both sides have to be looking to trying to establish that their claim is the true one, and simultaneously be willing to admit that, given specific evidence, their claim is not true.
AMDG
Times-Dispatch of Vichy Earth 