“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

If John Carmack says there is an exciting breakthrough in 3D rendering that will give 8k 120fps ray tracing on commodity hardware, that’s noteworthy, and his reputation is evidence that there is substance to the claim.

HN would be super boring if only topics that had been conclusively proven could be discussed.

No it isn't. The guy's reputation is reason to give the benefit of the doubt, but either his claims are proven sound or else they are just as bullshit if Joe blow himself made them.

The concept of the benefit of the doubt still relies on this form of evidence. That doesn’t imply that this is sufficient.

Regarding Hersh vs. Joe Blow, there is still a meaningful difference in them getting things wrong.

When it’s Joe, you don’t care to begin with, and the revelation of wrongness doesn’t change your opinion of Joe.

When it’s someone like Hersh, such a revelation brings reputational harm, and raises more questions about how he became so convinced of this information to begin with.

Judging how incredulous one should be of an author’s writing based on their reputation is something else.

No.

Especially in stories involving classified information it's very rare to get unequivocal proof at first. For better or worse leaks are how stories break, and the leakers are careful about how they do it so to avoid criminal charges.

Given this, all you have is the reputation of the person doing the reporting. Historically have they shown good judgement in discarding the crackpots and do many of their breaking stories from unnamed stories subsequently turn out to be true?

In this case I think Hersh's reputation isn't what it used to be. This century only one of his major claimed stories (the Abu Ghraib prison story - which I don't think he broke anyway?) has turned out to be true, while most (all?) of his other major claims have turned out to be either false or completely unverified after many years.

Hersh is 85 and in the past decade he has already done quite a bit of damage to his prior reputation

>Especially in stories involving classified information it's very rare to get unequivocal proof at first. For better or worse leaks are how stories break, and the leakers are careful about how they do it so to avoid criminal charges.

>Given this, all you have is the reputation of the person doing the reporting. Historically have they shown good judgement in discarding the crackpots and do many of their breaking stories from unnamed stories subsequently turn out to be true?

I think we're back to an Appeal to Authority.

No one is claiming that a journalist’s reputation removes the burden of proof.

If you read what I said, it's the opposite ("In this case I think Hersh's reputation isn't what it used to be") but the point is that reputation is a signal that something is worth paying attention to in the absence of any other useful information.

I often think "false appeals to a logical fallacy without understanding nuanced argument" should be a fallacy itself. Nothing wrong with understanding logical fallacies of course - but often people just mindlessly use them without understanding what the fallacy says.

Expert witness in legal trials is a good counter-example to this fallacy for example. Expert witness testimony is given extra weight because of their reputation in the field. Sometimes this is wrong, but often it is not.

Which seems little different to an appeal to authority. Maybe you better understand the nuance between an appeal to authority and an appeal to someone's reputation as an authority.