That example seems to be more in the realm of “not very good thinking” than thought gone wrong. The thoughts are coherent, just not well justified. it isn’t like the sort of thing that is quoted in the example essay where thought gone wrong seems to mean something closer to “not even wrong because it is incoherent.”
Ok, OB certainly isn’t the sort of word salad that Stove is attacking, so that wasn’t a good comparison. But there does seem to me to be something systematically wrong with OB. There is the man-with-a-hammer thing, but I don’t have a problem with people having their hobbyhorses, I know I have some of my own. I’m more put off by the way that speculations get tacitly upgraded to background assumptions, the join-the-dots use of evidence, and all those “X is Y” titles.
That example seems to be more in the realm of “not very good thinking” than thought gone wrong. The thoughts are coherent, just not well justified. it isn’t like the sort of thing that is quoted in the example essay where thought gone wrong seems to mean something closer to “not even wrong because it is incoherent.”
Ok, OB certainly isn’t the sort of word salad that Stove is attacking, so that wasn’t a good comparison. But there does seem to me to be something systematically wrong with OB. There is the man-with-a-hammer thing, but I don’t have a problem with people having their hobbyhorses, I know I have some of my own. I’m more put off by the way that speculations get tacitly upgraded to background assumptions, the join-the-dots use of evidence, and all those “X is Y” titles.