Never Rely on Any Buddy's Personal Qualifications

If there were some post on this forum where we were discussing the legality of some drug, and I popped in with a reply where I gave my opinion and then added, "... and I should know what I'm talking about because I'm a practicing lawyer and have years of experience defending people accused of such crimes," you know, I suppose there would be a lot of buddies who would nod their heads and say, "Oh, well, if an experienced criminal defense lawyer says that, I guess we can believe it."

But the problem is that you have no idea whether I really am a lawyer, much less an experienced criminal defense lawyer. For that matter, even though I say I'm a male, you can't really know if that's true. I might be a female. You really don't know anything about me, and you're not supposed to know, because on this forum we are supposed to be anonymous. There are good reasons for that anonymity, but one of the drawbacks is that we cannot rely on anyone's personal expertise, even if they actually have such expertise, because we cannot verify it.

For that reason, we should never believe statements of fact that require us to trust the poster's personal qualifications or expertise. Nor should we ever make statements of fact that would require others to trust our personal qualifications or expertise. The only statements of fact we should discuss are those that are verifiable without trusting or relying on the personal qualities or qualifications of the speaker.

In short, if someone says Take my word for it - don't.

Good advice redevan… 👍🏻

I’m a professional gigolo by the way…

I’m a professional gigolo by the way…

Oh man, I could really use your advice.

Are you a licensed professional gigolo?