Re:'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's...
by dang on Friday May 17, 2019 @12:30AM
(#19936294)
Sorry I didn't see this sooner, but thanks for the excellent reply. It's a really good point about canned responses, and this is gold:
You can make the "this is a fallacious ad hominem" argument, if you really know what you're talking about, without using the words "ad hominem", and that'll always be a better comment.
https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html
... and to say that most instances in which ad-hom is invoked on HN result in stupid debates about whether an argument is (a) actually ad-hom and (b) fallaciously ad-hom (a subtlety most invokers on HN don't really grok).
I think we already have a culture that rejects personalized arguments, and "ad hominem", which gets deployed because people have long ago pulled it out of one of those Internet "fallacy lists", virtually always just clouds discussions. It's certainly more corrosive than "whataboutism".
Honestly, I think it's possible that all "canned" fallacy arguments --- ad hom, whataboutism, argument from authority, straw-man --- basically contravene the "principle of charity" guideline, and that it'd be worth having the guidelines ask people not to deploy pre-canned responses to other people's arguments. You can make the "this is a fallacious ad hominem" argument, if you really know what you're talking about, without using the words "ad hominem", and that'll always be a better comment.
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