And you’re getting even more off-topic—it doesn’t matter what you call it, you have to either make your case on an object level or shut up. Complaining that people aren’t listening to you doesn’t work.
Wikipedia lists several types of ad hominems among them is the Ad hominem abusive.
“involve pointing out factual but ostensible character flaws or actions which are irrelevant to the opponent’s argument.”
In this sense I meant ad hominem attack.
Edit: note that I didn’t write ad hominem argument.
Yes, but there’s no ad hominem in explaining to someone that historical comments were downvoted because of specific flaws. Incidentally, the ad hominem abusive is only a fallacy in the limited sense that there’s an implicit “and therefore the argument is wrong” attached to it. That’s more due to general human convention. Consider for example if one said to someone “you’re a drunk idiot who couldn’t factor a 2 digit integer given a caculator and your statement X is correct.” That would be an ad hominem abusive but wouldn’t in any way be an ad hominem in a logically rude fashion. So this seems to miss the point at two levels.
Yes, but there’s no ad hominem in explaining to someone that historical comments were downvoted because of specific flaws.
Sigh, I’ll have to quote myself again: “involve pointing out factual but ostensible character flaws or actions which are irrelevant to the opponent’s argument.”(emphasis mine)
It is ad hominem because it is completely irrelevant to my arguments. I might have been downvoted years ago by making wrong claims about Teddy Bear, so what? Why would you want to bring that up in a discussion?
How come you even knew about my other comments in the past? Is it because you are a long time member here and remember past discussions and remember what I wrote in them? Maybe this is what caused you to argue based on the past history, based on what you knew about me and my past comments instead of sticking to the present comment and facts stated therein. If you argued based on what you knew about me, e.g. past comments, other than the one that was specifically mentioned this constitutes an ad hominem in the latin sense (meaning directed towards the person). You didn’t manage to stick to what was written but brought in your personal judgment about me about other comments I have written in the past. And that is totally irrelevant to my point. I’ve never claimed that all my comments in the past were correct. So other comments of mine in the past, be they correct or wrong are totally irrelevant to the point in question. I was very careful in choosing one specific comment which doesn’t even contain a single word of mine. I said this 3 times at least now. I was making my point with this comment, why couldn’t you stick to that one? We are now writing a lot of words that have nothing to do with my argument.
Btw, to make it simpler imagine that the Roland of today is another person than the Roland who wrote the past comments, lets call him “RolandPast”. Now I’ll paraphrase you: “RolandPast got downvoted repeatedly because RolandPast made claims that were demonstrably extremely unlikely and hist attempts to marshal evidence for his claims relied on very poor fact checking. Downvoting for such reasons isn’t “scientific fraud.”
I hope this makes things clearer. If not, I’ll paraphrase again this time using “X”:
“X got downvoted repeatedly because X made claims that were demonstrably extremely unlikely and his attempts to marshal evidence for hist claims relied on very poor fact checking. Downvoting for such reasons isn’t “scientific fraud.”
ad hominem abusive is only a fallacy in the limited sense that there’s an implicit “and therefore the argument is wrong” attached to it.
No, on the contrary, read the wikipedia section.: “This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and even true negative facts about the opponent’s personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent’s arguments or assertions.”
So it seems that you are the one who missed it in two levels at least.
The ad hominem abusive would be a problem if I were trying to explain why your comment as you’ve said it is wrong. That’s not what has been happening. What has happened is that I’ve explained that your comments were downvoted because they were wrong.
Btw, to make it simpler imagine that the Roland of today is another person than
the Roland who wrote the past comments, lets call him “RolandPast”. Now I’ll
paraphrase you: “RolandPast got downvoted repeatedly because RolandPast
made claims that were demonstrably extremely unlikely and hist attempts to
marshal evidence for his claims relied on very poor fact checking. Downvoting for > such reasons isn’t “scientific fraud.”
Right. And if Roland made a claim about why RolandPast got downvoted then giving an alternative explanation for why RolandPast gotdownvoted (essentially exactly what you said above) isn’t an ad hominem of any form.
If you want people to believe your claims, you’re going about it the wrong way. Everyone would have believed the Wright brothers had built a successful heavier-than-air plane* if they just brought it to DC and buzzed the Mall, but that’s not what they did.
* No lie, I actually have this photograph as my desktop right now.
You’re not having a good day today.
And you’re getting even more off-topic—it doesn’t matter what you call it, you have to either make your case on an object level or shut up. Complaining that people aren’t listening to you doesn’t work.
Wikipedia lists several types of ad hominems among them is the Ad hominem abusive. “involve pointing out factual but ostensible character flaws or actions which are irrelevant to the opponent’s argument.”
In this sense I meant ad hominem attack. Edit: note that I didn’t write ad hominem argument.
Yes, but there’s no ad hominem in explaining to someone that historical comments were downvoted because of specific flaws. Incidentally, the ad hominem abusive is only a fallacy in the limited sense that there’s an implicit “and therefore the argument is wrong” attached to it. That’s more due to general human convention. Consider for example if one said to someone “you’re a drunk idiot who couldn’t factor a 2 digit integer given a caculator and your statement X is correct.” That would be an ad hominem abusive but wouldn’t in any way be an ad hominem in a logically rude fashion. So this seems to miss the point at two levels.
Sigh, I’ll have to quote myself again: “involve pointing out factual but ostensible character flaws or actions which are irrelevant to the opponent’s argument.”(emphasis mine)
It is ad hominem because it is completely irrelevant to my arguments. I might have been downvoted years ago by making wrong claims about Teddy Bear, so what? Why would you want to bring that up in a discussion?
How come you even knew about my other comments in the past? Is it because you are a long time member here and remember past discussions and remember what I wrote in them? Maybe this is what caused you to argue based on the past history, based on what you knew about me and my past comments instead of sticking to the present comment and facts stated therein. If you argued based on what you knew about me, e.g. past comments, other than the one that was specifically mentioned this constitutes an ad hominem in the latin sense (meaning directed towards the person). You didn’t manage to stick to what was written but brought in your personal judgment about me about other comments I have written in the past. And that is totally irrelevant to my point. I’ve never claimed that all my comments in the past were correct. So other comments of mine in the past, be they correct or wrong are totally irrelevant to the point in question. I was very careful in choosing one specific comment which doesn’t even contain a single word of mine. I said this 3 times at least now. I was making my point with this comment, why couldn’t you stick to that one? We are now writing a lot of words that have nothing to do with my argument.
Btw, to make it simpler imagine that the Roland of today is another person than the Roland who wrote the past comments, lets call him “RolandPast”. Now I’ll paraphrase you: “RolandPast got downvoted repeatedly because RolandPast made claims that were demonstrably extremely unlikely and hist attempts to marshal evidence for his claims relied on very poor fact checking. Downvoting for such reasons isn’t “scientific fraud.”
I hope this makes things clearer. If not, I’ll paraphrase again this time using “X”:
“X got downvoted repeatedly because X made claims that were demonstrably extremely unlikely and his attempts to marshal evidence for hist claims relied on very poor fact checking. Downvoting for such reasons isn’t “scientific fraud.”
No, on the contrary, read the wikipedia section.: “This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and even true negative facts about the opponent’s personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent’s arguments or assertions.”
So it seems that you are the one who missed it in two levels at least.
The ad hominem abusive would be a problem if I were trying to explain why your comment as you’ve said it is wrong. That’s not what has been happening. What has happened is that I’ve explained that your comments were downvoted because they were wrong.
Right. And if Roland made a claim about why RolandPast got downvoted then giving an alternative explanation for why RolandPast gotdownvoted (essentially exactly what you said above) isn’t an ad hominem of any form.
I just finished writing a long reply were I address the ad hominem claim:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/218/what_is_missing_from_rationality/1xn4
I’m answering the comments, please stop reading if you consider it off-topic.
If you want people to believe your claims, you’re going about it the wrong way. Everyone would have believed the Wright brothers had built a successful heavier-than-air plane* if they just brought it to DC and buzzed the Mall, but that’s not what they did.
* No lie, I actually have this photograph as my desktop right now.