Exactly, it also helps to ignore the facts, like Apple and Google having been cooperating with LEAs and their legally obtained court orders to help "unlock" a small number of phones / devices for years, with apparently no loss of "privacy" by average citizens, nor any compunctions of such "possibility" or likelihood, nor worries about loss of Apple / Google phones' secrets.
The company's attitude should not have changed with the changes in technology, especially with FBI being very accommodating to Apple's [unfortunately public] demands. Yet, all of a sudden, now they decided to make a very unnecessary and public "populist" stand... Fortunately, the FBI seems to be stepping into the middle, as an intermediator, to facilitate needed "access" for local and state agencies and to draw the heat off NSA.
... they try to present themselves as an "expert" in the topic, and they hope that the listener will be "awed" by their supposed command of the material, and just stop arguing with them.
Well, when someone states that "Certificates are registered. ... Those enterprise certificates are guarded like the crown jewels for obvious reasons." (Well, duh!) or that "Fake certificates will not work. ... A fake one will fail the registration test." — it will certainly put nobody in "awe" of their "expertise" — we all know that faked and stolen CAs have been used in cybercrimes (including very recent cases) and particularly via MITM type of attacks. Certainly, CheckPoint guys are not dummies and didn't present this as a "theoretical" vulnerability, yet the reaction from Apple was stunningly dismissive.
The reason I usually stop arguing the issue at some point is when:
1. I hope that by that time, the other readers, who really want to know and educate themselves on the issue, will have been provided enough factual material and references so that they can easily understand what the real issues are, without belaboring the point and beating the dead horse by keeping to talk past each other and getting off on tangents.
2. When it becomes obvious that it's useless to try and convince someone, because of his/her obvious bias, ego, rudeness and/or being "invested" in the specific outcome of the argument, I don't mind letting them "win" and have the last word:
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink"
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it" - Upton Sinclair
"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength" - Eric Hoffer
And I have long suspected that this sentiment is what underpins a lot of the resistance to the truth that we keep seeing.