Unbelievable Ignorance of Some Posters

[yemenmocha]

Problem is often Millennials who have no clue about history, even recent decades in men's tennis. Just like themselves, they assume the current generation is the best.

[swordtennis]

However its not good to live in the past either.

[NonP]

Originally Posted by bonga77

His argument that most past greats and tennis analysts consider Federer GOAT so Federer is GOAT is not logically false unless you dont consider them experts in the field of tennis. If you don't then who do you consider "expert" in determining GOAT debate? just asking

It's not even an argument, or at most a very incoherent one. Like I said, his references to the "experts" are all but empty appeals to authority. Also note that these "experts" comprise a very small subset of the population. Since they're the ones most visible in the mass media their punditry gets more exposure than that of the rest of the population, which may well be more valuable. I pointed out these fallacies to him several times, but obviously to no avail. And it should be self-evident that no appeal to authority is necessary to analyze Federer's or any other player's records. The illogic of his "argument" is staggering.

And last but not least, it's very unwise to take the pundits' GOAT talk at face value, as they tend to hype up the present over the past for the reasons I listed upthread. Just see what they were saying about Borg, McEnroe, Sampras and now Federer (Lendl is an interesting exception), and that's only the Open era. None of this is to say Federer doesn't belong in the GOAT discussion, he certainly does. He just doesn't need specious reasoning and outright fallacies for that.

But your question is fair. What prevents me from being patient and civil with this guy isn't just his illogic, but his endless p!ssing over any GOAT not named Federer--like calling the smaller events of yesteryear "Mickey Mouse tournaments" and bringing up Sampras' resume out of the blue to put it down while predictably extolling the virtues of his hero (I actually called him out on this once, if not directly). Laver is the only past GOAT he seems to respect. Of course he's not the only member of this board who does this, but he's one of the few who frequent this "Former Pro" forum so I just advised a fellow poster against debating him. I have no problem with those who are genuinely interested in debate.