I don’t know what the definition of rational discourse is, but I think part of the idea is that you try to argue without using ad hominem arguments. My experience has been that ad hominem arguments — interpreted broadly — are the most useful type of arguments in terms of understanding what the other person is really getting at. People come to conclusions based on their own psychology, not on anything to do with facts (to the extent that there is such a thing as facts), so why is it considered a virtue to pretend otherwise?
I know it’s considered rude to say “you’re just a global warming skeptic because you enjoy being contrarian” or “you want to scrap the social safety net because you want the poor to suffer” or “you just want to bomb these people because you get off on the idea of violence and force” but the truth is that’s probably a lot more accurate than “you arrived at this conclusion by a careful examination of the existing literature blah blah blah”.
Nowadays, in part because of the internets, people can just make up their own facts. You can find some country somewhere where they eliminated all social services and the economy boomed or where the temperature went down the last ten years or where a long period of bombings and shootings was followed by a period of peace and stability.
So why should anyone have to argue against the Estonian miracle or the Pax Pol Pot given the knowledge that someone who likes Randism or genocide or increased carbon emissions can probably find some example about how Randism or genocide or increased carbon emissions worked somewhere, given enough time and access to google?
I think this is where liberals screw up. Nobody — not even the most hardcore tote bagger — is that convinced by an Ezra Klein piece about CBO estimates given that they can find some Tyler Cowen piece about CBO estimates that says the opposite.
Bobby Thomson
Your examples of arguments ad hominem are not.
WereBear
There are irrefutable truths.
But, sadly, I cannot prove that.
Baud
Fuck you, asshole.
Redshirt
Ur all fuckin high.
cathyx
@Redshirt: No, you have to be high to understand Doug J’s posts.
Comrade Jake
Some time ago Jon Stewart had on that crazy lady who has campaigned against any and all health care legislation. You know, the one who carries around a binder containing all of the ACA’s 4000+ pages and who apparently can’t read, because she’s convinced death panels are in there.
Anyway, I’ll never forget Stewart pointing out to her that many people had said that there were no death panels, and that FactCheck.org had too. To this, she replied “Fact Check? More like Spot Check, hah!” Pretty clever, actually. With one fell swoop she dismissed any attempt at an objective effort at the truth.
So, my friends, what color is the sky in your world today?
Redshirt
@cathyx: Far out, man.
WereBear
@Comrade Jake: But in your example, she could get at the truth. She just doesn’t want to.
anthrosciguy
Bobby Thompson is right. A lot of people mess up on the subject of ad hominems. Your examples are of pop psych insults, which may or may not be accurate. An hominem is, for instance, your argument is wrong because you are a libertarian. But saying your argument is wrong and the reason you use that wrong argument is that you are a libertarian is not an ad hominem.
People also tend to think any insult made during the course of an argument is an ad hominem, but that’s not so. In fact you can even construct a flattering ad hominem.
Joel
Tyler Cowen is a smug, sanctimonious, worthless sack of donkey shit.
eemom
MUCH better. Great song.
eta: dayum but I’d like a joint, also too. It’s been YEARS.
Comrade Jake
@WereBear: yes, I thought that was what we were talking about. Excluding the ad hominems, of course.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader?
Stop banning me asshole!
different-church-lady
You’re only saying this because you’re an idiot.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Kind of on-topic, Tweety ended his show pimping his new book: “Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked”. Thirty years ago, when Billy Tauzin, Phil Graham and Dick Shelby were Democrats, and Jim Jeffords, Bill Roth and Elizabeth Warren were Republicans, Tip O’Neil got a debt limit bill passed by asking Reagan to write a letter requesting they vote for it. He didn’t say it, but the implication is that darn Obama doesn’t know how to schmooze. And Tweety’s been better than most of his brethren and sistren on calling out the Republicans as destructive nihilists.
raven
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m glad there is football on.
Baud
Liberals screw up in a lot of ways. I often find myself hating arguments that are made in support of conclusions I agree with.
Baud
@raven:
Oh, I forgot. Thanks.
Redshirt
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader?: You can’t smoke your way past Cole’s screenings.
greennotGreen
Something I think a lot of the people who want to create their own version-of-reality-affirming truth miss is preponderance of evidence. In science, you don’t get to publish a single experiment unless you can replicate it, sometimes with many iterations. And it doesn’t become a building block of future work (or at least not a reliable one) until it has been replicated by other labs. If nine labs find one thing and one lab finds something else, the one lab is not necessarily discounted until other labs fail to reproduce those results. I am not a climatologist and I don’t play one on the web, but I think we’re at the nine labs point in global warming, and the one lab can’t repeat its results. People who won’t accept that are being willfully ignorant, and they deserve ridicule.
raven
@Baud: NFL and college.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Nah, not until Saturday. I’ll be spending a nice afternoon at the Rose Bowl.
piratedan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This pretty much confirms the fact that Chris Matthews lives in a bubble if he is this ignorant of the political temperature on Capitol Hill. All of these guys sit around tut tutting and harumphing while our erstwhile representatives are using words like traitor, communist, nazi, racial slander and these guys just act as if people talk like this to each other in the normal course of doing business with each other.
Tell you what Chris, when I see a Republican stand up and state that Obama isn’t a racist war mongering sekrit muzlim and that he is, in fact, the President of the United States and deserves a modicum of respect for holding the office, regardless of how anyone feels about his policies and agenda and can sit down and argue their points without all of this hyperbole, then Chris, you might have a point. The thing is,, that hasn’t happened yet, he’s invited them to the White House, they’ve refused to attend, he’s made numerous attempts to reach out and find common ground and they’ve done everything but spit at his feet. So please, fucking give it a rest and wake up to the fact that these guys are no longer the party of Reagan, they are the Party of Rush Limbaugh.
rikyrah
zizi has written another wonderful post about the President and his moves on the foreign policy chessboard.
……………………
Can Y’all smell What Pres Obama’s cooking?
By zizi2
No I’m not talking about the acrid smell of Boehner’s singeing flesh as he roasts in PBO’s Veto threats as well as the bonfire that is Congress. That is subject for another diary. No, I’m talking about PBO’s Foreign Policy chestnuts roasting beautifully.
The Burma Blueprint a Model for Iran Detente
Prez Obama really works best when there’s a melee brewing all around him. And so it was in 2011 when the GOP debt ceiling hostage taking was underway, he moved swiftly to accelerate the diplomatic thaw between the US and Burma. DC was clueless about how that happened and predictably gave PBO very little credit.
In his speech in Rangoon, PBO said:
“When I took office as President, I sent a message to those governments who ruled by fear: We will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. So today I’ve come to keep my promise and extend the hand of friendship.”
He lived up to his promise as Times reported:
“Shortly after taking office, Obama eased American foreign policy toward greater engagement with Burma’s generals. Naysayers predicted that the clutch of xenophobic generals would not respond. But for whatever reason, Burma’s opening soon followed. For an American leader who calls himself the country’s “first Pacific President” and has pivoted U.S. foreign policy toward Asia in an effort to hedge China, the good news coming out of Burma couldn’t have occurred at a more opportune time.”
A fledgling but empowered Burmese government proceeded to enact reforms, following which President Obama quickly reinforced support by first sending then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton there, followed by his own visit 2 weeks after reelection.
“Thein Sein’s government has introduced a raft of substantive reforms, allowing opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy to participate in April polls that resulted in her becoming an elected member of parliament, hacking away at press censorship, releasing political prisoners and signing cease-fires with some of the ethnic militias that had been battling the central government for decades. In return, the U.S., like many other Western nations, has eased the economic sanctions that had further isolated an already reclusive regime and pushed it into China’s economic embrace. Just a few months ago, the Rangoon airport where Obama landed was decorated with advertisements for local instant-coffee brands and jewelry companies owned by the regime’s cronies. Now, the biggest sign in baggage claim is a Coca-Cola advertisement: “Cola Welcome to Myanmar.””
****
Burma was a blueprint for how PBO quickly seizes unexpected openings to propel stakeholders (even those with with unsavory records) otherwise paralyzed by fear, to just go for it. He showed the Burmese military junta that he was more interested in the real goal of reversing Burma’s isolation from the world and restoring democracy, than justifiably punishing them their horrendous record of repression.
So he encouraged them to reverse political repression, lift house arrest on Aung San Suu Kyi and allow her buy-in into the transforming political system. In a perverse way that action brought Suu Kyi down from her long standing perch as political martyr to the realm of mortal politician member of parliament. While these moves risked appearing to have prematurely validated the Burmese leaders’ feeble steps toward democracy. But it worked, And now Burma is no longer outcast but grappling with the mundane task of governance and succeeding or failing at it.
read the rest of this terrific piece:
http://theobamadiary.com/2013/09/19/can-yall-smell-what-pres-obamas-cooking/#comment-832876
greennotGreen
@eemom: I’m an olds and I swore off dope almost forty years ago (really, it’s been that long?) but several years ago I was cleaning out a sofa in preparation for donating it, and I found a roach…and I smoked it! Meh, no buzz. Ah well.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T, but I’m not sure where else to post this.
Someone on my FB feed — someone I generally admire and agree with, BTW — has shared a thing I’ve seen before about a woman (Polish, I think, would have to go back and look) who smuggled thousands of Jewish babies and children to safety during WWII, under the very noses of the Nazis.
So far, so good. But the otherwise great piece ends with a really snarky comment (paraphrasing, I really don’t feel like scrolling around looking for it again) to the effect “This great woman was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize but she lost out to Al Gore and his stupid slide show on global warming.”
jo6pac
WOW. thanks.
Dr. Omed
The philosopher John Gray says, “For those who live inside a myth, it seems a self-evident fact.” Most everything on the Innertubes is a fact of this kind. We all live inside myths, and ad hominem arguments are just one the rocks we throw at each other’s windows.
SiubhanDuinne
@greennotGreen:
Someone neglected to check the sell-by date, I’m thinking.
WereBear
@SiubhanDuinne: Is it even true?
Because it usually isn’t.
John O
I agree totally, DougMJ. A person’s background and character and beliefs are as integral to the debate at hand as any set of “facts.”
The next level of debate is pointing out which facts are useful and which are not. I was in one recently where someone was arguing that “percentage of GDP” was the determining factor on who spends more on their military in real terms, after I said we spend more than the next several countries combined. This person pointed out some central American countries who happen to beat us on the % of GDP score. Needless to say, he was abused appropriately.
Keith G
No. Objective truth exists. You are confusing a certain slice of our population with the whole entity. One of my complaints about your writing (and of others) is that you seem to be so fast at sticking on a label and then…case closed.
The case is not closed. This is one discrete moment in time, but still part of the larger flow of the evolution of this society. Everything is fluid and nothing is finite. So, we have an obligation to be “happy warriors” instead of snarky polemicists.
I am curious though…
Implicit in that statement is the idea that you know how liberals can avoid screwing up.
Give us a few suggestions.
RaflW
Maybe I’m a dolt, but I don’t think “you’re just a global warming skeptic because you enjoy being contrarian” is an ad hominem attack. We have to be careful when we go to motive, as it can look like it’s going to character attack.
Though “you’re just a global warming skeptic because you’re a stupid, selfish dick-knob” is surely ad hominem. (And possibly also true…)
raven
@greennotGreen: I quit 20 years ago but when I sold all my vinyl there were a good many seeds in the double album covers!
beltane
@WereBear: I was thinking the same thing. There seems to be a giant, centrally located ass from which conservatives pull their facts from.
PurpleGirl
@Comrade Jake: You mean Betsy McCaughey Ross, a former Lieutenant Governor of NYS. She became infamous when stood behind George Pataki during one of his state of state speeches. (She stood for the whole speech.) She another of the experts who live off of wing-nut welfare.
ETAS: My sky was a great blue today, sunny yet cool with just a little breeze.
srv
I was going to reply, but then I thought I’d just watch The Big Lebowski again.
Doug Milhous J
@srv:
New shit has come to light.
Patrick
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
By any chance, did Tweety have any comment regarding Chuck Todd’s comment that it is not the media’s role/duty to fact-check the Republican lies regarding the ACA etc?
WereBear
@beltane: And it is named Rush Limbaugh.
Bobby Thomson
@WereBear: It’s true.
geg6
Thank FSM for a Penguins preseason game!
I can’t stand another minute of trying to decipher what goes through wingnuts heads. They have so lost the thread that all their arguments are ad hominem. Fuck it. I’m an old but I still partake in alternative medicines, if you know what I mean and I think you do. Did that about a half hour ago, mellowed out. About to eat a turkey burger and drink some wine. Crazy shit from GOPers will not be allowed to harsh my mellow.
trollhattan
@RaflW:
DougJ’s just being ironic, “Like rain on his wedding day.”
Oh, wait….
raven
@Patrick: They are pretty careful not to address each other on MSNBC when they disagree.
WereBear
@Bobby Thomson: Yes, there was such a woman. I know of her (and admire her.) But since, as Snopes points out, nominations are held as confidential, this has to go into the same drawer as the Jerry Lewis nomination.
The Other Chuck
ad hominem is a fallacy all right, but specifically, it’s an informal fallacy of relevance in the area of logical argument. As with all the other informal fallacies, it simply fails to set up a logical form of an assertion, a middle, and conclusion. Arguing that your opponent is a lobbyist paid by Koch Industries doesn’t pertain to a shred of evidence supporting anthropogenic global warming — as a logical argument goes, it is in fact completely unsound.
However, in rhetoric, which goes to fuzzy areas such as likelihood of truth, it might be perfectly appropriate. Arguing that a climate-denier beats his wife doesn’t say much, but pointing out an obvious conflict of interest certainly does. In fact, there’s even a rhetorical fallacy for when one argues on logical form alone: ad logicam
So yeah, when someone starts screaming “ad hominem” in their defense, you can be pretty sure they never took logic, let alone rhetoric.
ktron
I just dropped in . . .
. . . to see what condition my condition was in . . .
You’re fine on the “ad hominem” front, but I’m not sure there is such a thing as a “liberal”
raven
@The Other Chuck: wow
Marc in MD
@Baud: Just spit out my after- dinner wine laughing.
jeffreyw
Anybody else have the munchies?
ricky
Who needs ad hominem arguments when a trusty peace maker will do.
http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/09/road_rage-related_shootout_lea.html
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Uh, why was she not nominated until 2007 if she was such an awesome humanitarian? Not saying that she didn’t do an amazing, awe-inspiring thing, but why is it not a bigger problem that she had to wait 60+ years to even be nominated?
(slightly edited for clarity)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Fightin’ words!
and
From TPM
jheartney
My impression of what ad hominem means is it’s less about insulting your opponent than it is about discounting evidence based on irrelevant qualities of the presenter. “Global warming is a myth because Al Gore is fat” is a pretty good example. “Arguments against climate change from Koch-sponsored sources are unreliable due to conflict of interest and a long history of dishonesty from those sources” is not an ad hominem. Also, note that the ad hominem is shorter and snappier.
beltane
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Do these teabaggers like anyone at all? They are starting to remind me of the gerbils my aunt once owned who, out of nowhere, went on a horrific spree of cannibalism and infanticide. When Steve King talks, I hear squeals and hissing instead of words.
eemom
@greennotGreen:
That’s depressing.
Last Thxgiving my nephew (age 25) asked me nonchalantly, “Wanna smoke a joint?” I was like, omg….but the kids…..omg…….ok! We agreed it would be “later.”
And THEN, the little shit forgot all about me when later came.
: (
YoohooCthulhu
DougJ, ad hominem attacks are of the form “Al Gore is wrong because he’s fat and uses lots of electricity!” rather than “Al Gore supports liberal policies because he’s a privileged elitist that wants to keep average people down”; you’re confusing “personal attacks” with ad hominem. Ad hominem arguments are normally non sequitur.
raven
@eemom:You just need to know the right people!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@efgoldman: word was that Ted Cruz didn’t think he could win the Senate primary against IIRC Kay BH (? ETA: Against Lt Guv Dewhurst for KBH’s retired seat). He was using the primary to set himself up for governor’s race. If that’s true, I wonder if Cruz started out like Palin, letting people talk about a presidential race to boost his profile and fund-raising, and like Gingrich and Cain in the last go ’round, has convinced himself he might actually have a shot at the Big Chair.
Chris
True.
Dealing with wingnuts = I’ve pretty much come to assume from the outset that the arguments are made in bad faith, that the facts are made up or at, to be very charitable, stripped of vital context, and that the motives are malicious. Why? Experience. Years and years of experience. Which is why I don’t bother to argue with them anymore and haven’t in years. There’s nothing to say.
schrodinger's cat
@jeffreyw: How is our Homer kitteh?
The Other Chuck
@jheartney: In logic it’s still ad hominem any time the argument is “against the man”, which is all the term means. Logic doesn’t admit any areas of relevance except for directly connected propositions, or necessary arguments as they’re technically known.
The word “rhetoric” has itself has gotten a bad rap due to phrases like “rhetorical question”, “empty rhetoric”, and so on. But rhetoric is really just about any argument that properly directs inquiry to an end, which is preferably the truth … or in ancient Athens, conviction or acquittal ;) In the political sphere, one’s motivation to lie, and certainly one’s demonstrated past behavior of lying is more than a little relevant, even if it doesn’t make up part of a logical syllogism. If it’s admissible in court, it’s probably admissible as argument.
Damn, I’ve gotten to use both my Comp Sci and Philosophy learnin’ in one week :)
Comrade Jake
@PurpleGirl: she’s the one! Nutjob extraordinaire.
raven
@The Other Chuck:I really enjoyed the refresher.
jeffreyw
@schrodinger’s cat: Homer’s fine. Jack’s on the shit list now. Bunny killer.
Mandalay
@rikyrah:
The writer should move with the times and refer to “Yangon” and “Myanmar” rather than “Rangoon” and “Burma”. The IOC, the UN, most of the rest of the world have shed the colonial terms, and it’s high time the United States did as well.
Even President Obama has started doing it.
glasnost
This is like a case study in how to construct destroy liberalism through nihilism.
Nobody — not even the most hardcore tote bagger — is that convinced by an Ezra Klein piece about CBO estimates given that they can find some Tyler Cowen piece about CBO estimates that says the opposite.
What is also not convincing: When you respond to a Tyler Cowen piece “this is wrong because ur fat”. There’s a reason why this level of quality of argument is widely mocked on this very site: because it is both stupid and ineffective.
It’s not that there’s no room for mockery, but John Stewart made a lot of conversions on the daily show because he makes logical and factual arguments. He mixes that with funny and insulting mockery, and that works great. But one thing he does not do is take an argument, say, “only one problem: you’re a stupid asslicker”, continue on for five solid minutes about how the guy is really just a retard troll ha ha ha and then change the subject.
Arguments on motive have their place, but a political movement with nothing to offer beyond arguments about people’s motives is kind of like the modern republican party – wildly unconvincing and bankrupt.
Seriously, Doug, either you troll your base better than JC, or you need help. Seriously, and with no malicious intent at all, you would benefit from professional help. This is the post of someone who is clinically depressed.
schrodinger's cat
@Mandalay: What do they call Mandalay now?
raven
@schrodinger’s cat: Pie
gussie
@glasnost: Disagree. To the extent that Jon Stewart ‘converts’ anyone, it’s because his subtext is almost always ‘Republicans are asslickers’ (with some ‘both sides lick ass!’ thrown in there). The logical arguments are just the canvas on which he paints the asslicking.
schrodinger's cat
@raven: Did you see my post on the Ganesh festival?
Doug Milhous J
@glasnost:
Not a Jon Stewart fan personally.
raven
@schrodinger’s cat: I posted one early this morning, was it different?
mai naem
I was listening to the Michael Smerconish show today and he mentioned the disrespect shown to this president. He said he was at some social event and there was a well known current military person made an offhand comment to him about how he had worked for Dems and Repubs but this, this guy was the worst. Smerc mentioned how this guy was well aware of who Smerc was, yet had no problem dissing his C in C. BTW, he said he was in full military regalia when he said this to him. I dunno, how do you deal with people like this? I would have thought catching OBL would automatically grant Obama some semblance of respect at least in the military.
Mike in NC
@schrodinger’s cat: No idea, but here is Kipling:
By the old Moulmein Pagoda,
Lookin’ eastward to the sea,
There’s a Burma girl a-settin’,
And I know she thinks o’ me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees,
And the temple-bells they say:
“Come you back, you British soldier;
Come you back to Mandalay!”
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can’t you ‘ear their paddles chunkin’
From Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin’-fishes play,
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder
Outer China ‘crost the Bay!
Punchy
Can I get the Cliff’s Notes version of this post? Also too a DougJ translator app so I know what the fuck it’s supposed to say?
cathyx
@Punchy: If you smoke a joint first, it all comes together.
schrodinger's cat
@raven: Your comment inspired me to write a post about it on my blog.
Punchy
@Punchy: I realize that comment came off as dickish. But seriously, why cant all BJ posts deal with dogs and Johnny Beohner
schrodinger's cat
@Mike in NC: The Brits use to send Indian freedom fighters to Mandalay after they convicted them for sedition and plotting against the British rule.
Prominent political prisoners imprisoned in Burma, were Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal Emperor and later Tilak in the teens, around WW I.
Jewish Steel
Ad mominem
bows deeply
burnspbesq
The notion that you get to have your own facts is incredibly pernicious, and anyone who says that is nothing but a big poopy-head.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I really doubt that
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I really doubt that
Chris
@efgoldman:
I think TeaHadis truly believe in the rightness of their cause, and they always have, but that also means they’re willing to bullshit in the service of that cause.
When teabaggers tell you that they think the deficit is the single greatest concern of our time, you believe them? If you asked them why they yawned through eight years of record deficits under Bush without lifting a pinky (and the same before that with Reagan), will you get an honest answer? If you ask them “since you think the deficit is the GREATEST concern of our time, would you be willing to raise taxes? Cut defense? Cut [insert whatever program they like]?” do you think they’ll say “yes?” If you show them evidence that the deficit has actually gone down under Obama, do you think they’ll take that into account? The next time a Republican sits in the Oval Office, do you think they’ll still give a shit about the deficit no matter how high he racks it up? I’m guessing not, and that’s because they themselves don’t care about the deficit, and are bullshitting you when they say otherwise. All they care about is that it gives them a hammer to hit Obama with.
(And it’s far from being the only case where they do that).
condorcet runner up
@efgoldman: I would add that those options are not mutually exclusive. “All of the above” seems to apply more often than not.
Hawes
I think this is why I fundamentally disagree with Doug J on a lot of things. To say that we’re losing the argument because we stick to the fact and they resort to lies, so we should just embrace the politics of personal destruction is to ignore the fact that we are winning – in the long and short run.
Gerrymandering aside, we’re winning, precisely because we insist on sticking to the facts.
Chris
@mai naem:
This was a thing under Clinton, too, I believe.
When my grandfather was in the military, he refused to register under either political party, as he thought that would violate his duty as an officer to remain apolitical. Some officers in those days, I’m told, went one further and refused to even vote.
How times have changed.
Yatsuno
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good Lawd. Popcorn futures just keep going up and up. Where’s mah stockbroker?
kindness
Yes but Tyler Cowan is frequently an idiot.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Utterly bewildering to me that anyone, especially a career military officer, could believe that Obama is “the worst” after Iraq
Walker
That is not an ad hominem. When a person makes an argument of authority, then arguments that address that person’s authority are logically valid.
Please read any undergraduate text on informal logic and rhetoric. The term ad hominem is one of the most abused terms on the internet.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
You didn’t ask me, but you know my answer. The deficit became the singe greatest concern of our time at 8PM PST on 4 November 2008.
Something else happened about that time, by an amazing coincidence.
Matt McIrvin
When a person produces bad-faith bullshit over and over and over, there’s a point at which it’s no longer worthwhile to take anything this individual says seriously.
Unfortunately, there are people who are very good at doing this while sounding like sane, sober, Very Serious People. And the other key thing about them is that they bring the same arguments up over and over without acknowledging how they were ripped apart the last time they came up.
So if you’re coming into the discussion for the first time, someone like, say, George Will will sound like a pretty intelligent guy who likes reasoned argument. And the people who just start shouting “Oh God, don’t pay any attention to him, he just spews bullshit all the time” sound like knee-jerk partisans who aren’t paying attention to his argument just because it’s him saying it. Ad hominem!
Yet they’re right; he is just bullshitting all the time.
These folks drive me crazy when they’re, say, physics crackpots on the Internet talking about how the speed of gravity is infinite. But a large fraction of newspaper op-ed columnists operate in exactly the same way. William Saletan on abortion, David Brooks about anything.
Matt McIrvin
More generally: A number of things that are fallacies when applied to logical deductive reasoning become perfectly reasonable heuristics when one is trying to gauge the probability that a statement is true given imperfect information and limited resources.
For instance, affirming the consequent is a logical fallacy: if A implies B, and B is true, that does not imply that A is true. But under the proper circumstances, B can constitute valid statistical evidence for A (Bayes’ Theorem describes this in terms of conditional probability).
Similarly, argumentum ad hominem is a deductive fallacy, but sometimes discounting statements on the grounds that they come from known bullshitters is the only way to defend oneself against a kind of rhetorical DDoS attack.
dww44
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Not if the military guy is judging based on style and not substance. Otherwise how did BHO’s predecessor become President? I’m curious, though, on what basis some of these sorts of judgements are made. Guess I need to take a peek at the Richard Wolfe book, although I disdain that sort of “tell-all” book.
jl
There was an Estonian economic miracle. The foundation was Scandinavian and Finnish tourists coming over for cheap booze.
Then you add in huge higher education capacity left by the Russians, lots of Estonians who took advantage of the opportunity, and Scandinavian investment bucks, You have some success.
But my friends in Estonia who got two fricken years extended maternity leave, to encourage population growth, and talk like U.S. soccer moms carting their kids around to subsidized sports, music and outdoor camping and nature activities, it doesn’t sound very Randian to me.
Of course, it is a middle income country and you see some nasty poverty, but whenever I’ve been there, has been a very familiar working to middle class U.S. or Nordic vibe to the place.
I’d say about as Randian and your average Finn or Swede.
Ahh says fywp
Ad homs are an example of fallacious reasoning and their use cuts off the possibility of persuasion. However, theycan be very persuasive sophistry for your side (preaching to the choir). Ridicule is highly persuasive in a way facts are not.
Anyway, anytheory of knowledge is going to tel you that you judge the reliability of the interlocutor based on external corroboration, eg facts. Its also fallacious reasoning to take something on authority, by popularity, and very weak to go by testimony, that is, anecdata. Insincere debaters ar fond of all of these tactics. In addition they will attempt to bring in their own facts, fallacy of authority by proxy, and lalala not listen when more robust data is brought into it.
Ahh says fywp
@Matt McIrvin: Wow. Bingo. Thats why these people need to be exposed in front of everyone in a way ppl will never forget: Tucker Carlson. Nixon. Petr Popoff (sadly, hes back).
Ahh says fywp
SiubhanDuinne: Arent gentiles who saved Jews during the Shoah remembered at Yad Vashem?
Also, the Nobel PP is a lot of trendy crap sand the jury isn’t American… Tge prize tends to be current or anticipatory or even intended to sway events… Like when they awarded Suu Kyi… Or Obama.
Radio One
Let’s look at this culturally. If you’re worried about perception beating objective reality, conservatives still think that Adam Carolla is the funniest guy in America. I’m pretty sure that Dennis Miller is a close second,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw3rncE_YO0
Look! Adam Carolla want’s to sell books and juice, and he wants a liberal boycott. And he has a pirate ship! And he w ants to stay afloat!
cokane
hear hear. ad hominem is fine when it relates directly to your argument. it becomes a problem when ppl bring up irrelevant personal flaws.