Dave Smith talks about this sometimes, when reflecting on his time at CNN.
He felt like the host of the show he was on would often be thinking "Why should I believe some comedian over this official government appointee?" In his view, that was a perfectly reasonable position to have, until you realize that the comedian (Smith) is trying to tell the truth, while the appointee is a professional liar.
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Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.
Was your daughter using Google or ChatGPT to research her debate topic?
I found this using Brave search ai:
https://search.brave.com/search?q=rent+control+problems&source=goggles&goggles_id=https%253A%252F%252Fraw.githubusercontent.com%252Fallsides-news%252Fbrave-goggles%252Fmain%252Fright.goggles&summary=1&summary_og=27ae652b6786cfc1cd4af5
Pathetic that middle schoolers are being taught that rent control is a great thing.
Talk to any landlord or real estate professional.
I didn't know what rent control was until I started looking for my own place at age 23.
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She was probably using Google. I didn't help her so I'm not really sure. Actually now that I am thinking about it, the debate topic was actually whether government should provide free housing, not simply rent control.
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Even better... "free" housing
It's another term for 'public housing' or HUD section 8
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Trusting sources blindly is lazy
MSM figures and journalists simply quote one another.
Morning Joe: Elon Musk is a fascist.
NYT: According to Morning Joe, Elon Musk is a fascist.
It's 1984 newspeak or Pravda or (insert your favorite metaphor)
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Morning Joe: Elon Musk is a fascist. NYT: According to Morning Joe, Elon Musk is a fascist.
And then someone goes to Wikipedia and adds this with a citation to NYT... and nobody tries to revert the change or even challenge it.
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sources
overlogic
. In debate, if you can't back up your claim withsources
(and the more authoritative the better), you will tend to lose the debate. Even if your arguments are logically sound, unless you can cite an authority to back you up, you still tend to lose..gov
or.edu
..gov
and.edu
over everything else - even their own logic.