Textbooks must die

Re:Textbooks must die by sofal on Sunday June 14, 2009 @06:49PM (#657670)

I see this come up again and again on HN and this kind of logic keeps getting voted up:

"You're complaining about [lesser evil] when there is [bigger unrelated evil]. Therefore what you say is irrelevant."

Sometimes it takes on this flavor:

"You're worried about the well-being of [one person] when millions are starving every day. Therefore what you say is irrelevant."

Is there some sort of fallacy name for this? This kind of argument says nothing.

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Re:Textbooks must die by petercooper on Sunday June 14, 2009 @08:33PM (#657744)

Red Herring: also called a "fallacy of relevance." This occurs when the speaker is trying to distract the audience by arguing some new topic, or just generally going off topic with an argument.

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