#1a) Self-proclaimed Experts: Despite the presence of someone else with substantial education, years of expertise and even some level of acclaim in the topic of discussion, people who repeatedly preface their objections and arguments with phrases like "I don't understand why you just can't..." or "I don't even know what that means, but it seems to me like..." Such admission of a total lack of qualifications should clearly negate the validity of such a person's argument, and cause them to close their mouths, but that never seems to happen. That's not to say that experts\authority should not be challenged, or that speculation does not have a place, but one needs to be able to back it up with solid evidence or equally authoritative opinion from another source, or be able to clearly demonstrate that room exists for doubt in the conclusiveness of the actual expertise.

#1b) Actual experts in a field who obtained their professional stature and acclaim by utilizing methodology and emphasizing proof of concept, but upon reaching a pinnacle of success abandon that methodology and start making pronouncements contrary to the professional body of knowledge and actual documentation and evidence, and prefaced such proclamations with statements such as "I think it unlikely that..." Thinking something unlikely is a proof of nothing. This is an illusion that frequently accompanies fame\notoriety, overconfidence, narcissism, and occasionally a Juris Doctorate. Winning an argument doesn't make you right. It just means you are adept at arguing. Winning arguments (outside of a court case or legal negotiation) is almost never a "likeable" characteristic from the perspective of anyone other than yourself.

#2) A failure to learn from one catastrophic error after another. (i.e., "compulsive stupidity disorder")

#3) Executives who retain the individuals exemplifying #1 in the same position of responsibility for more than a single year.

#4) Drivers who need to come to a complete stop, before starting to turn the steering wheel for a same-side-of-the-street turn onto a side street. Really?

#5) People who simply cannot understand that a lack of substantiated evidence is simply a failure to prove a hypothesis or theory, not disproof of a theory, premise, method, etc.

#6) This oft-repeated motivational comment\justification: "You have to increase the base of a pyramid to increase the peak." This statement demonstrates a complete ignorance of geometry and an addiction to poorly-conceived cliches. Increasing the base of the pyramid only flattens the angle of the sides. The peak only increases in size, when the total proportionate area contained at the peak is also enlarged. Adding at the bottom of a pyramid actually decreases the percentage of the amounts at the peak relative to the whole. The justification for adding to the base of the pyramid should just be that every amount helps, or that additions at the base of the pyramid represent a brand new contribution to the whole, which in the case of sales or donations might hopefully be cultivated to produce larger, future contributions.

#7) People who presume to know your motivations without having ever spoken with you about the relevant subject, or in some cases without having even met you. This practice is called "imagination."

#8) Dogmatists: People who "know" the Truth, the absolute truth, and nothing but the truth. ( Religious dogmatists please see:1 Corinthians 8:2, John 1:10. Absolute knowledge is by definition incompatible with the concept of faith. Other dogmatists: Go away.)

#9) Telemarketers.

#10) Squash (the gourd, not the game). I think it is actually a really fat weed, but maybe during the Great Depression, somebody got it reclassified as marginally edible, and afterwards, no one ever got around to revising that classification.


(If you are wondering, only #10 was meant to be funny)