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JohnnyOso said on June 12th, 2009 at 2:29 am

So is the test on this going to be open book, or what?

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I will never understand why commenters come to your blog and write comments that essentially say “How DARE you be liberal!” IT’S A LIBERAL BLOG.
Then again, asking people on the internet to act rational is a bit like herding lolcats.

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Flypaper said on June 12th, 2009 at 3:59 am

+1!

I find it irritating when someone invokes the My First Wikipedia List of Logical Fallacies at the best of times, but people who use “ad hominem” as a synonym for “insult” or “criticism” drive me insane.

…I put them in the same class as people who tell you off whenever you forget to append the magic words “in my opinion…” to every (self-evidently) subjective statement.

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I just want to know one thing.

Now that you’ve made a couple posts about Mark Steyn in your blog in what I can only assume is an attempt to curry favor against this distasteful fellow among your readers, will you then be shocked and dismayed should the subject of your rants appear within your comments section and is then referred to, quite directly, as “a little bitch”?

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Thanks for the lesson, MGK!

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There’s a thing in Australia where a distinguished professor of Geology wrote a book about Climate Change. His opinion is that the whole thing is bollocks, and there’s no problem. He has been going around the usual places writing opinion pieces based on this, where he predicted that “My enemies and opponents will dismiss this with ad hominem”. His critics point out that most of the footnotes point to papers which explicitly say the opposite of what he says they do. His response? “Look: ad hominem! he says I am wrong, which is slander, which is abuse, which is personal, therefore he’s a big meanie and you can ignore him.”

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Meanderthal said on June 12th, 2009 at 7:49 am

So, let me make sure I’ve got this…

Ad hominem: Mark Steyn says the sky is blue. This is wrong, because he is a worthless asshole who shouldn’t be trusted with anything more dangerous than a plastic spork.

NOT ad hominem: Mark Steyn says the sky is blue. This is wrong, because it is nighttime. Also, he is a worthless asshole who shouldn’t be trusted with anything more dangerous than a plastic spork.

More or less correct?

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I’d put it more like

Ad hominem: Mark Steyn says the sky is blue, he’s wrong because he’s a silly doucherat who needs a severe beating about the head and shoulders with a piece of heavy mining equipment.

NOT ad hominem: Mark Steyn is a silly doucherat who needs a severe beating about the head and shoulders with a piece of heavy mining equipment. Also, he’s wrong about the sky being blue, because it’s nighttime.

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My favorite part is how the visitors think Steyn sicking them on you must have drastically inflated your traffic, and yet the number of comments is no higher than any of your modestly popular posts. By his logic, the combined political influence of Betty Cooper and Dark Opal must be terrifying.

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“Mark Steyn: Way less useful for traffic than Boing Boing or /.”

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I hate to be the guy who focuses on the one throwaway comics reference in an otherwise political post…

…Actually, no, I don’t. I love being that guy!

Anyway, Steyn’s “EVIL STAN LEE WAS AN EVIL DEMOCRAT” thing kind of hilariously omits the fact that Kirby was a lifelong FDR Democrat himself. It’s particularly annoying because I agree with some of what he’s saying about Lee and Kirby apportioning the credit.

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wsmcneil said on June 12th, 2009 at 11:50 am

As Lore Sjoberg puts it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyK1LTfLXiM):
“Saying ‘you provide oral pleasure to nutria, thus you’re wrong’, is bad, that’s a fallacy. But saying ‘you provide oral pleasure to nutria AND you’re wrong,’ that’s okey kosher.”

It’s conflating correlation with causation, really. If you’re a racist, callous, douche who cheery-picks or misrepresents facts to support your otherwise insupportable arguments, then that makes you an asshole. The same conditions also make your position on any given issue is likely to be a wrong one. Being an asshole isn’t the *reason* you’re wrong, but your asshole quotient can strongly correlate with your dumb-ass argument quotient, because they are both based on the same underlying ultimate cause.

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I came to this blog for the comics. I stay because of how intelligent the writing is (um… AND the comics!), even though I don’t agree with everything being said. This page is being bookmarked for possibly being the best explanation of ad hominem that I’ve ever read.

You know, for when my lil’ ol’ liberal mind gets all confuzzled in the future…

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Thank you.

I will probably bookmark this to whip it out later.

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Who’s REALLY the hack here?

That would appear to be Cosmo, for continually accusing you of resorting to ad hominems despite a stunning ignorance of what that actually means.

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Well, I think that MGK’s explanation of ad hominem attacks is wrong, because MGK is a moron.

;p

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MGK LESSON #1:

Don’t argue Law with a Law Student.

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(or argumentation, rather)^^^

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The example I was given in class was saying something like, “You know who else was a vegitarian? Adolph Hitler.”

There is no real logical point being made either way about vegetarinism in the statement, only that the idea is associated with someone who killed 6 million Jews, and you, by extention as a vegetarian, are like him. Course, anything involving Hitler is kind of passe when it comes to logic statements or arguments, but I digress…

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The example I was given in class was saying something like, “You know who else was a vegitarian? Adolph Hitler.”

I don’t think that’s an ad hominem, actually. I believe an ad hominem is an attempt to bring up an unrelated trait of the person making the argument. In the case you quoted, it seems like whether vegetarianism is good or not is the topic of debate. An ad hominem in that case might be saying “You can’t be right because you’re a Nazi!”

Or, if you were arguing with the person, you might say “You’re a vegetarian, therefore you’re wrong.” What they eat has no relation to the subject, so if you bring it up as an attempt to “prove” them wrong, that would be ad hominem.

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The example I was given in class was saying something like, “You know who else was a vegitarian? Adolph Hitler.”

That would be an association fallacy. In fact, Hitler’s vegetarianism is the first example given on the fallacy’s Wikipedia entry.

An ad hominem would be something like “My opponent thinks that we shouldn’t raze this forest, but that’s the sort of crazy thing he would think, being a vegetarian.” It works both ways though. “Hitler’s a vegetarian, so perhaps this ‘final solution’ thing isn’t so wrong after all…”

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drmedula said on June 13th, 2009 at 1:11 am

So Cosmo finally gets it?

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Thank you, MGK. I took a logic course in first-year university, and even after my professors supposedly explained ad hominem it still didn’t make sense.

And since then, I’ve clearly constantly been exposed to incorrect uses of the term, which confoozled (to use the technical term) me further.

Now I finally understand.

Now that I think of it, the reason for most of this misuse can probably be narrowed further:

“I need something to bolster my argument, which is weak. I’ve got it! I’ll use this Latin phrase I don’t fully understand to give myself apparent weight, thus cowing people who don’t understand it either and making myself seem important!”

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Bryce (Mouser) said on June 14th, 2009 at 3:27 pm

I read one of his other (most recent) articles because I couldn’t get through his Stan Lee/Jack Kirby one…

I’m going to take a moment to be grateful that he cannot vote in my country. You, sir, are more then welcome to deal with this wingnut – we have enough of our own in the U.S.

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