

Ad Hominem Is More Important Than You Recognize - jxcole
http://www.zideck.com/blog/article.php?id=4

======
cchooper
There is a world of difference between the _ad hominem_ fallacy and an insult.
The _ad hominem_ fallacy is bad reasoning. But insults are the spice of life
and cathartic for the soul.

 _Lady Nancy Astor: If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee!

Winston Churchill: And if I were your husband I would drink it!_

~~~
andreyf
"Yes, I am drunk. But you are ugly. And in the morning, I will be sober."

~~~
ratsbane
He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.

------
potatolicious
There's something missing from this: SoSerious made ad hominem attacks on
DCurtis _because_ that was the point - he was pointing out DCurtis' lack of
tact and how his presumptuous tone in the end helped nobody (and got someone
fired). The _point_ to be made was to question DCurtis' character, ad hominem
attacks are entirely expected.

What most people have against ad hominem attacks is where the character of the
speaker is called into question in order to discredit a point that has no
relation to it. I don't think I'm the only one who opposes this.

Some people need to have their character and human flaws called out - but not
when it has no relations to the argument being made.

~~~
billswift
Attacking someone's character are NOT ad hominem. Ad hominem is when you
attack an argument BY attacking the person who made it, eg His argument is
wrong because he is a conservative (which I see on HN fairly often).

------
nostrademons
Is anyone else depressed that this article is currently #3 on the front page,
and yet his "good idea" (which I think is misguided, but at least is thought-
provoking) got _zero_ views? It's like the HN community has collectively
proved his point.

Anyway, I'm going to respond to the technical article and not the meta-
discussion (I guess these paragraphs would be meta-meta discussion then ;-)):

Lots of programming languages have run up against the problem of combining
interfaces, with various solutions. In type theory, this is called "structural
subtyping": inferring the type of an object from the methods it must support.
Ocaml's object system supports it directly. C++ supports it through "concepts"
and "models", which are the foundation of the STL. Python, Ruby, and
JavaScript call it "duck typing". Go has it built into its interfaces. Dylan
added explicit union and intersection types to the language.

I don't really like the proposed syntax, because it requires that you name all
of your concepts. Also, the verbose intersection type-name needs to be carried
down to all callers of foo() - so if you had a method bar() that called foo(),
it would also need its parameter declared as ReversibleIterator &
RemovableIterator. And if you had a method baz() that might call foo() or
might do something with a RandomAccessIterator, its type signature would have
to be RandomAccessIterator | ReversibleIterator & RemovableIterator. You can
see where this is going.

I'd much rather stick to simple structural subtyping, where you can specify
(ideally, it'd be compiler-inferred) that iterator must support the previous()
and remove() methods, and any type that provides those may be passed in.

------
zby
I don't think the author uses ad hominem in the traditional sense:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem> . Most probably the author really
meant 'insulting' but used 'ad hominem' because it sounds more sophisticated,
but there is no equality between those two.

------
csmeder
Errata? "Recently Paul Graham wrote an article about the merits of logical
argument." Is March of 2008 recently?

Shouldn't it be: "In 2008 Paul Graham wrote an article about the merits of
logical argument."

~~~
KirinDave
Not only does he get this wrong, but in general he seemed to not understand
what Ad Hominem is.

He mentions several examples of mean people getting hits and nice people
(presumably the author is nice? I will be charitable) being overlooked. He
mentions Zero Punctuation, which is a deliberately aggressive but generally
insightful video game reviewer.

In other words, he lauds forceful language and linkbaiting but doesn't
actually give any examples of people engaging in Ad Hominem. The article is,
at the very least, poorly researched.

~~~
lionhearted
This is spot on:

> Not only does he get this wrong, but in general he seemed to not understand
> what Ad Hominem is.

For instance:

> He mentions Zero Punctuation, which is a deliberately aggressive but
> generally insightful video game reviewer.

The ZP reviewer fellow, very entertaining, mentions the flaws of something -
bad pace, unoriginal story, repetitive gameplay - but that's NOT ad hominem.

Saying, "The New Mario Brothers isn't very innovative" isn't ad hominem.
Saying, "The New Mario Brothers is a boring suckfest" also isn't ad hominem.
Ad hominem is, "Mario Brothers? Why even bother playing it? Nintendo couldn't
make a good game to save their life."

I think the author is saying that you can disagree, but he doesn't exactly
know what ad hominem is. Ad hominem would be saying, "Look, he's a Christian.
No way his chemistry research could be any good." --> Attacks the person, not
their argument/viewpoint/science/work. Sometimes it's valid, but very rarely,
and most of the time you'd be better off just refuting their points instead of
slinging mud at them as a person.

~~~
bitdiddle
Exactly, there's another form of it also that I find equally off putting, .eg.
"well every boolean algebra must be isomorphic to a field of sets because
Marshall Stone thinks so.....". In this case it's true but the argument is
hardly convincing.

~~~
KirinDave
That's called "Argument from Authority" (latin: _argumentum ad verecundiam_ ).
It's not exactly isomorphic to the Ad Hominem fallacy, but it's close.

------
whatwhat
Ad hominem was originally a rhetorical technique used to undermine a person's
ethos (their moral character).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethos#Rhetoric>

It was used to undermine a person's character so the audience was less likely
to take what they say seriously (the same technique is used in courts when
dodgy witnesses are presented, it's also used everywhere in
political/religious arguments, even by the supposed "rationalist" crowd).

Something I hate about the internet is how amateurs "rediscover the wheel" in
article after article. This is the difference between professional writers and
amateurs. Pros at least sometimes do their research.

------
DanielBMarkham
Yikes! The reeducation camps must continue!

 _I am telling you this not because I want you to feel sorry for me, but
because I want you to understand the danger of writing a well reasoned,
logical argument. If you aren't willing to insult and cheat, nobody will ever
read what you have to say._

Okay, let's not confuse a bunch of topics.

Topic 1: Rants sell -- just take a look at cable news. People like to watch
other people get angry. It's easier than having actual feelings yourself, and
there's always the angry-mob "hell yeah!" post you can make at the end.

Topic 2: Insults are spicy. I've found when dealing with the HN news crowd
over the years to say "bullshit" instead of "crap" and "hell" instead of
"heck". As a former marine, I can curse the chrome off a trailer hitch but
learned in my 30s to tone down my language. But, base words sell more than
safer words. People love to hear me call you an asshole, even if they like
you! But if I respect who you are and ask for clarification of your point? Not
so amusing. Better to watch fireworks than not.

Topic 3: If I insult you enough, I don't have to listen to your argument. This
is where we cross the line from "how to write for the mob" to "how to shut
down reasonable debate". The problem here is that you have entertained us so
much we are starting to miss valuable content. For examples of this also see
cable news, and some talk radio. This is the Ad Hominem, not the insult. The
Ad Hominem is when I am using insult as a tool to prevent you from being
heard.

Topic 4: Sometimes it's the people you hate the most that have the most to add
to a discussion. This is where you really start screwing over the rest of us.
You've done a great job of writing a spicy, insult-laden rant. We're all
smiling and nodding with vacant stares as we drool over the keyboard awaiting
our Pavlovian response queue. Have we learned anything? Hell no! Have we
considered any new points of view? Hell no! Have we done much of all except
waste our time? Hell no!

Good writers present both sides of the discussion as fairly as they can and
then proceed to make a case. They have a thesis and work towards proving it.
And guess what? That's not easy to do in a way that people like. It takes
thought, a good vocabulary, a perspicacious terseness.

I read your whole article and it sounded to me like this "I can't write very
well, I'm not patient enough to build up a following, I'm frustrated at the
capricious nature of HN, and I can't help but notice how much people like to
read other people writing smack"

Sure! We can all just fling poo.

But count me out on the poo flinging, at least until I join the rest of the
primates at the zoo.

~~~
zby
In other words ranting is entertaining but it does not move us ahead.

~~~
dbz
The article was suggesting ranting was very pleasant to read- and it is very
helpful when correct. The point he made about the game review was that he
rants, and he is 100% correct.

"No better way to get your point across than to say it and call the person a
dumb shit at the same time!" (Although you look ridiculous if you are
incorrect, +irony of being the dumb shit)

~~~
zby
The problem is not that you look ridiculous - but that nobody would notice
that you are incorrect. If someone is always 100% correct that this is a moot
point - but I don't think this is a reasonable assumption.

------
slapshot
Wait, we're still talking about DCurtis and SoSerious? How about a New Year's
resolution to move past this bit of Hacker-News-meets-RealityTV?

~~~
DougBTX
Up voted, but I expect more of the same. Happy new year HN.

------
arnorhs
To be accurate, one of the articles was yet another boring article about java
types and stuff like that (personally I've never used or understood why I
should use java)

and the other article is about a topic that is cross-server-side platform
(java, ruby, python, php, etc...) and a much more interesting article.

~~~
arnorhs
Not only that, but most people can understand an article about HTML pretty
easily, but type systems is not an easy read (imo)

------
Mz
As someone who is still relatively new here and doesn't recognize all the
handles, the article sounds like insider gossip that only other insiders might
care about, or can even follow. Kind of like the HN version of a rag that
gives you the run down on who wore what, said what, and whom they showed up
with at the latest gala Hollywood event.

~~~
potatolicious
As unbiased as I can put it:

\- Dustin Curtis, a freelance (?) designer, posted a spec redesign of the
American Airlines main page, along with a scathing blog post about how bad the
existing site is, accusing AA's online team of gross incompetence, and calling
for their mass firing. HN reacts overall negatively to what is perceived as a
presumptuous attitude, along with several potentially major shortcomings in
his own redesign.

\- A member of AA's online team contacted Dustin directly to defend himself
and his team - and offer insight as to why things are the way they are. This
individual permitted Dustin to post his response, which he did. This resulted
in the individual's firing from AA.

\- A few equally scathing blog posts were written about Mr. Curtis'
professionalism in this matter - IIRC mostly concentrating on the combative,
aggressive tone of the original post, the lack of understanding of enterprise-
level web design, and his cavalier attitude when it came to the responses to
his original post. These, in turn, generate more controversy.

~~~
Mz
Stuff like that has a tendency to become a persistent fly in the ointment of a
forum. Attacks and criticisms beget more attacks and criticisms. Often, later
attacks are done with some intention of stopping the cycle. But fighting
against the fighting is still fighting.

Thanks for the run down.

------
codahale
From TFA: _And then some fool calling himself SoSerious posted _an article_
about how much he feels DC was an idiot._

From his link: _Joshua Blankenship is a designer living in Anderson, SC._

------
allenbrunson
eh. i'm calling this a specious argument.

it's like saying: i tried to get a job, but the best i could do was
mcdonald's. forget that, from now on i'm going to steal.

------
DaniFong
Screw civility?

The members whose contributions I most enjoy have been voting with their feet.

------
gojomo
Ad hominem argumentation can draw attention, sure. If that, or entertaining
your readers with drama, is the goal, it works -- and that's why it's so often
used.

But if your goal is discovering the truth through iterative discussion, or
achieving mutual respect, ad hominem is poison.

~~~
anovaskulk
And this is the crux of it right here. The author is confusing the two goals
of making a point, and having that point heard. Surely there are better ways
to market yourself than by spewing ad hominems, which just go to diminish your
supposedly more important goal of actually making a solid point.

------
kssreeram
People seem to prefer entertainment over enlightenment.

------
teeja
Ad hominem is the last resort of a lazy mind.

------
chrischen
Somebody's a Machiavelli fan.

