When someone else makes an argument that doesn’t seem right to you, your estimation of whether it’s they or you who’re making a mistake should vary widely depending on whether the argument is coming from someone with an established history of predictive expertise in contentious cases, or from Bob the Biased Bozo.
I didn’t say it was fallacious, I said it was a waste of bandwidth. There are almost always other, better clues about whether some statement is right or wrong. And even for filtering attention, it’s not the best heuristic. if someone is just telling you things you already know, it doesn’t really matter if they’re being rational or just parrots, they’re not worth paying attention to.
Ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious.
When someone else makes an argument that doesn’t seem right to you, your estimation of whether it’s they or you who’re making a mistake should vary widely depending on whether the argument is coming from someone with an established history of predictive expertise in contentious cases, or from Bob the Biased Bozo.
I didn’t say it was fallacious, I said it was a waste of bandwidth. There are almost always other, better clues about whether some statement is right or wrong. And even for filtering attention, it’s not the best heuristic. if someone is just telling you things you already know, it doesn’t really matter if they’re being rational or just parrots, they’re not worth paying attention to.