For emotion: “If I say it this way – is it now true, or not? Can I change the past just by changing my tone of voice?” For the follow-on “you are unreliable/volatile/loose cannon”, “have I nullified the existence of the problem by my emotional reaction?”
For criticism of a claimed mismatch of emotion with your audience: “Can you see into their hearts? If not, prior to the reaction, how do you know they wouldn’t react the same way I do? Instead of me trying to manipulate my audience with no reliable hint of their emotional desires, I put the effort to more productive use.”
For credibility by “your report is too emotional/you’re not emotional enough in the report”: “Emotion doesn’t change the facts. Does the mother of her slain son deny his death by screaming and wailing in court? If she stays silent, does her son wake from the dead? No matter which standard, too emotional or not emotional enough, you arbitrarily pick to assess the witness, you will deny the facts.”
For credibility/personal reputation for the lack of emotional reaction, or emotional overreaction to a serious issue e.g. crime: “Emotions and intrinsic value are not something a person chooses to have. But, if you could choose to tamp them down or display them, you clearly would choose to suppress their display, as the pain of negative emotion causes health declines such as a decrease in memory. At the same time, (event X) is (event X), an outrageous event, and to say a person can’t be outraged by an outrageous event or circumstance is absurd.”
For credibility by deeds or lack thereof: “A reporter (or adviser, as the case may be) reports; a technical work-doer performs work. If I were performing work only, I could not be reporting on the situation, the same way I cannot be performing technical work while I’m reporting. So to evaluate my report on the volume of non-reporting actions I’ve taken is exactly the reverse of what you would want to build confidence in the accuracy and completeness of reports.”
For credibility by credentials, depending:
– Do the laws of physics and logic not work when I’m around, because I haven’t gotten a certificate?
– Do my eyes and ears betray me for lack of education?
– If I repeat the same conclusion as a credentialed expert, does that make the expert’s conclusion less likely? If I recount the results of experiments, does that change the results of those experiments?
For credibility by suffering: “Is the Holocaust not a catastrophic tragedy because some Jews survived to tell the tale? What about the Jews that fled? Were their reports and fears incredible?”
For any general smear, in particular for one-off events like being a victim of a significant crime: “Have you observed me long enough to know how I react when something happens to me? How many times have you observed me and (event X)? You don’t have any indication of the relationship between my manner of reporting (or advising), and the events I have observed. You destroy your credibility with this unfounded criticism.”
Thanks to Melanie Sloan for the inspiration.