> Your default assumption about an unknown person seems to be that he or she is not intelligent and doesn't have anything worthwhile to say.

My default assumption is that the person is of average intelligence. Jobs is of substantially above average intelligence, as demonstrated by having founded and run an extremely successful technology company. That puts him ahead.

> why should I be interested in convincing you that I have something worthwhile to say? What is in it for me?

I've addressed this before as well, when I said "if you want to be taken seriously". If you don't care about the opinions of people who read your posts, that's fine. If you do care, cite your sources so people can tell that what you're saying corresponds to reality. Still, if you really aren't concerned about what people think when they read your comments, why not just write them in a text file? Why publish things on the net if you don't want people to think you're saying something worthwhile?

I'd say the notion that providing lots of citations leads to people taking me more serious needs at least a citation. I don't think it works that way in general.

It is also not as easy: how does pointing to another random person on the internet (my citation) make me a more credible random person? Even studies by actual scientists can be bogus. How am I to know which sources you trust?

Also, I made a claim that was very easy to verify ("there are lots of studies on topic x"). Should I also provide sources if I claim "the sky is blue"?