EPTAd Hominems - Page 2
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
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hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
On November 21 2013 12:09 Jerubaal wrote: My biggest pet peeve with people referring to fallacies is that they almost never explain exactly how the fallacy applies to the situation. How many times have you seen someone say that someone is strawmanning and then never make the connection? (It rather reminds me of The Argument Clinic.) It's usually an attempt to psychologise their way out of having to give an actual argument. Mine is 'Correlation does not imply causation'. Some people seem to think that the appearance of correlation is an argument against the existence of a causal link. A: Drinking and driving is irresponsible. You could get killed, or worse kill someone else. B: That's silly, I drive better after a few beers, it makes me more alert. A: Alcohol increases reaction speed and decreases attention and inhibitions. It's inherrently dangerous. B: People are more careful because they know this. It more than makes up for any physiological change. A: Just two cans of beer makes you 5 times more likely to get into a serious accident, even after controling for age and gender.[1] B: Correlation does not imply causation. I've seen this pattern so many times: One side suggests a causal link and a mechanism that explains it. They are challanged to provide proof for it. They give data that shows there is strong correlation. It's dismissed on the basis that correlation does not imply causation. [1]I made this up. | ||
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MarlieChurphy
United States2065 Posts
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jacevedo
31 Posts
On November 21 2013 15:16 sam!zdat wrote: the problem with your argument is that a lot of people are idiots It's quite hilarious that you just said On November 21 2013 11:17 sam!zdat wrote: Many people (especially on TL and in internet culture more generally) make the mistake of trying to argue about something subjective as though it were objective And then proceed to argue about something subjective as though it were objective. Then again you could just be making a joke. I hope that's the case  Unfortunately most people are serious when they throw around these sort of arrogant assertions. | ||
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
the point is, there are far too many idiots in the world to waste time engaging with the ideas of people who can be reasonably identified as such. It's unavoidable, and unavoidably subjective, and therefore a subjective (really, dialectical) strategy is the only way to attempt to approach reality. | ||
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jacevedo
31 Posts
On November 21 2013 15:33 sam!zdat wrote: i'm being completely serious, and certainly not pretending to be objective. it's not possible to cope with reality, objectively Well don't you see the problem with these sort of arguments? When someone take a subjective issue and treats it objectively, makes the assertion "this just is," it completely shuts down discussion. They are quite useless comments and tend to foster circle jerks. the point is, there are far too many idiots in the world to waste time engaging with the ideas of people who can be reasonably identified as such. It's unavoidable, and unavoidably subjective, and therefore a subjective (really, dialectical) strategy is the only way to attempt to approach reality. Ah, so your close-mindedness is all in the name of pragmatism. I see. | ||
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hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
On November 21 2013 15:33 sam!zdat wrote: i'm being completely serious, and certainly not pretending to be objective. it's not possible to cope with reality, objectively You can argue about subjective stuff objectively. All you need is a small set of statements that both sides agree on. That's what makes moral arguments work. I might not be able to convince someone that homophobia is objectively wrong, but I might be able to convince them that it's inconsistent with their own moral beliefs. | ||
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
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jacevedo
31 Posts
On November 21 2013 15:43 sam!zdat wrote: to be fair, I don't spend a LARGE amount of time talking about how rush limbaugh is an idiot. Sure, but the point that needs to be made here is that even an "idiot" is capable of making a good argument. Which is kinda why you are supposed to, you know.... judge an argument on it's own merits and not resort to ad hominem. | ||
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
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jacevedo
31 Posts
On November 21 2013 16:00 sam!zdat wrote: but it's a computationally intractable problem to think that way about all the arguments in the world. by far. The only solution is to ignore idiots. Speaking of fallacies, this one is called a "false dilemma."  Also a good example of black-and-white thinking. | ||
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
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Jerubaal
United States7684 Posts
The people on the lower rungs are going to participate imperfectly in the discussion. They are going to use poor reasoning and contain many inconsistencies in their thinking and generally be unable to advance the discussion. These people are not interesting interlocutors from an intellectual standpoint. Your efforts should be aimed at the top rungs, where all of the facile issues have been eliminated. On a side note, I really think that a sort of ad hominem is a vexsome problem. Mostly I think that it's a symptom of modernity's almost institutionalized inability to engage with competing views, even competing currents within modernism. All ideologies are, to some extent, self-protecting, but too often the very narrow language of modernism leads it's adherents to say "[I can't understand your argument], your motivations must either be evil or stupid", and this just poisons public discourse. | ||
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radscorpion9
Canada2252 Posts
Ad hominem's can be more logical and less logical. 1st form: You can call someone stupid based on their previous arguments, as based on your history with that person, you could make a probabilistic statement that any future arguments they make are ones that shouldn't be taken seriously. I also like Darkwhite's example of credentials; perhaps where someone isn't hired as a programmer because they have no formal training (even though they may be outstanding self-taught programmers). I think that as a matter of practical necessity, these logical ad hominems are required in the world. You can't formally consider every statement of every person with equal seriousness; sometimes you need to save time by ignoring certain people off of this probabilistic metric. 2nd form: The less logical forms, like dismissing someone's argument based off of their appearance, are ones that people should strive to avoid generally and have no place in the world. So in general, no forms are accepted when making rigorously logical arguments (as in academic journals and maybe some intellectual debates), the first form is accepted in an everyday sense (in order to live as a reasonable person and not waste inordinate amounts of time taking everyone seriously, when some people clearing don't deserve to be), and the second form shouldn't really be accepted anywhere except the local tavern. Also as a side note, it is indeed quite silly when some people call others out on making an ad hominem remark, when they were just sharing their personal opinion and not trying to make a formal logical argument . I have noticed this as well on some boards besides Team Liquid, and its quite irritating!Anyway, this was a nice topic. I think I clarified everything for myself, and hopefully I helped out in a small way! | ||
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ninazerg
United States7291 Posts
On November 21 2013 17:47 radscorpion9 wrote: Ad hominem's can be more logical and less logical. 1st form: You can call someone stupid based on their previous arguments, as based on your history with that person, you could make a probabilistic statement that any future arguments they make are ones that shouldn't be taken seriously. I also like Darkwhite's example of credentials; perhaps where someone isn't hired as a programmer because they have no formal training (even though they may be outstanding self-taught programmers). I disagree with your definition of acceptable ad hominems because I really can't take the opinion of someone who uses an apostrophe for a plural serious. | ||
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zulu_nation8
China26351 Posts
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CosmicSpiral
United States15275 Posts
On November 21 2013 15:13 jacevedo wrote: What people think terms mean and what they actually mean is at some point synonymous. Once a degree of consensus is reached the meaning has simply changed no matter how stubborn a vocal minority chooses to be. I'm referring to people who don't realize that discussion of semantics is vital to proper discussion, especially when said people contradict their own arguments by how they choose to define phrases. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7032 Posts
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Poffel
471 Posts
On the one hand, there's a tendency to conflate facts and personal competence. For instance, when I say "Smoing is unhealthy, so you shouldn't smoke," it is only sensible to challenge my moral competence - I'm a smoker myself, so my statement is hypocritical. However, that doesn't make me factually wrong: Smoking is unhealthy, no matter who claims that it is. Then, there is a tendency to mistake cause and effect. If somebody says that "All muslims are terrorists," then that person is an idiot because the statement is idiotic; however, an 'ad hominem' reply paints the inverse picture and fallaciously claims that a statement is idiotic because the speaker is an idiot. Third, often people scream 'ad hominem' when a counterargument is legitimately challenging their own abuse of authority. If somebody says that "According to Nobel prize winner Shockley, dumb afro-americans should be neutered," then the reply "Well, Shockley was a racist scumbag who didn't know what he was talking about," is perfectly fine because the original statement was itself fallaciously referencing authority (Shockley may have been knowledgable about transistors, but a Nobel prize in physics doesn't make him an expert in ethics/sociology/genetics...). | ||
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Tobberoth
Sweden6375 Posts
On November 21 2013 17:47 radscorpion9 wrote: hmm...this is a thought provoking topic. I want to try to provide some feedback in a simple way Ad hominem's can be more logical and less logical. 1st form: You can call someone stupid based on their previous arguments, as based on your history with that person, you could make a probabilistic statement that any future arguments they make are ones that shouldn't be taken seriously. I also like Darkwhite's example of credentials; perhaps where someone isn't hired as a programmer because they have no formal training (even though they may be outstanding self-taught programmers). I think that as a matter of practical necessity, these logical ad hominems are required in the world. You can't formally consider every statement of every person with equal seriousness; sometimes you need to save time by ignoring certain people off of this probabilistic metric. I disagree, saving time is irrelevant. If I know someone is stupid and unreasonable from experience, I'm not going to get into a discussion with them. That's saving time. Getting into the discussion and then use logical fallacies like Ad Hominem isn't saving time, it's wasting time. Just because someone is an idiot doesn't mean an attack on his character is an argument. Saying "you're stupid" might be stating a fact, but it's not an argument relevant to the discussion. | ||
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