LogFAQs > #966924884

Cacciato posted...

The guy that admitted to selling cars at a place that sells cars, for the guy that owns the place that sells cars isnt a car salesman.

Yes, now we're getting somewhere. Simply performing a job - even with all the context that would normally be present when somebody does that job as a career - does not mean a person has to identify that job as part of their professional identity. That's entirely a matter of what role that job plays in the person's life. It's not even necessarily a time/money thing, the classic example of which being an actor who works full-time at Starbucks because acting can't pay all the bills: They still identify as an actor and not a barista because that's what they're focusing their professional aspirations on. Similarly, identifying as a student and not a fast food worker, even though fast food work accounts for literally 100% of their labour hours and income.

Again, this is going to differ from what's counted for tax purposes. The IRS needs to fit everybody and all of their incomes into boxes for statistical analysis purposes, so that's what they do. In our colloquial conversations, however, we're capable of more nuance than the IRS can muster in trying to fit 300 million people into a drop-down list. We don't need to think in terms of "if you make money doing X then you are an X'er" and can instead just listen to people when they tell us what their vocation is/is not.

And, of course, not a single word of any of this changes the fact that "he's a car salesman so of course he can't be trusted" is a textbook logical fallacy, which is a more salient point than the question of whether or not you got the details of your ad hominem correct.