Quote:
Joseph Arriola wrote:
I usually judge the veracity of a man's statements by his lifestyle, his occupation, his successes in life. But, I guess this is secret knowledge. If we were in court he would be asked "to swear under penalty of perjury". Sadly, this is the wild west internet where people can say anything they want and not back it up.
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Well we certainly aren't in court, but aikiweb isn't exactly the wild west of the internet either. This isn't 4chan. People here post under their real names and many people have met and trained together in real life. Mike's met up with a lot of people on this forum and demonstrated his skills in person. Read through the archives.
In a court of law, jurors who are not domain experts have to judge conflicting testimony based on relatively brief exposure to a witness, so lifestyle issues often become a easy rule-of-thumb for credibility. Psychologists call this the fundamental attribution error. On the internet, you can actually judge someone's level of knowledge by the strengths of that person's arguments and counterarguments in a forum populated by domain experts.
I consider Mike a knowledgable source on taiji because the more I have learned about the art, the more I have been able to verify that his opinions are accurate. In contrast, I do not consider him a credible source on politics because I do not find his arguments on that subject at all compelling compared to what I have encountered elsewhere. However, neither of these judgements have anything to do with his lifestyle, personality, or choice of career. I have never met him and have no idea what he does for a living, nor do I consider that a particularly relevent matter in formulating these assessments.