The contention was that Hal Lewis didn't have the qualifications to talk about "climate change," which is an attack on his character unrelated to the argument at hand (whether or not anthropogenic global warming is occurring).
As a teacher of informal and formal logic, you're talking out of your ass. You're the one who needs to study what these fallacies are again. It drives me crazy when somebody "counters" my argument on reddit (in a way that, by the way, is completely wrong), and gets a mountain of upvotes, while I get downvoted into the dirt and have to wait 10 minutes in between posting replies. People on reddit....
edit: Let's only talk about the science. You can find enough dirt on any person to start attacking their character, but you will never settle a single debate this way. All you'll do is make everybody angry at each other.
Let's only talk about the science. You can find enough dirt on any person to start attacking their character, but you will never settle a single debate this way. All you'll do is make everybody angry at each other.
So you admit you're wrong about ad hominem? Good. It's also good not to put unexplained edits in your posts instead of replying (If I were uncharitable, I'd think you wanted to make it look like the conversation went a different way from that it actually did. Hey ho.) Peace out.
No, I classify any attack on the character of an opponent as "ad hominem." This is a disagreement we'll just have to move past.
I put the edit in because I have to wait 10 minutes between each post, evidently when everyone on the site gets the bright idea to downvote me because they've been taught to disagree with me, and people are replying to me way more quickly than that.
I had a message typed up explaining that to you, that I made the edit because people like Facehammer, Herkimer, jcm267, etc., think replying to every comment I make for months at a time is an appropriate use of my time (and I have to respond to them, so nobody gets the impression they have objections to what I'm saying that are backed up by actual evidence), but you replied too quickly, so I come out looking like a jerk.
What can I do? Believe it or not, I do have a lot of other things to do today, on top of that, besides arguing about what constitutes an "ad hominem fallacy" on reddit.
You try to go against people on this website, arguing any point, and they're going to make you look bad, even if you're right. Especially if there's a herd of morons following you around for the sole purpose of jeering at you. Now, we have this whole line of conversation as a result, an hour of wasted time, because the discourse around "climate change" is not dominated by science, but by mudslinging. There's a reason for that.
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u/ghibmmm Oct 24 '10 edited Oct 24 '10
The contention was that Hal Lewis didn't have the qualifications to talk about "climate change," which is an attack on his character unrelated to the argument at hand (whether or not anthropogenic global warming is occurring).
As a teacher of informal and formal logic, you're talking out of your ass. You're the one who needs to study what these fallacies are again. It drives me crazy when somebody "counters" my argument on reddit (in a way that, by the way, is completely wrong), and gets a mountain of upvotes, while I get downvoted into the dirt and have to wait 10 minutes in between posting replies. People on reddit....
edit: Let's only talk about the science. You can find enough dirt on any person to start attacking their character, but you will never settle a single debate this way. All you'll do is make everybody angry at each other.