Peter C. McCluskey <pcm@rahul.net> Wrote:
>I would support a zero-tolerance policy towards ad hominem attacks.
>If the rule were clearly restricted to dealing with arguments of the
>type "X is stupid, therefore the policy he is advocating is wrong",
Ok, but what about "the policy X is advocating is stupid, very very stupid,
therefore X is stupid". There is a threshold, if you say things that are
stupid enough there is only one logical conclusion one can make. I mean,
how else can you judge the intelligence of a person other than what they
say or do?
>Zero-tolerance policies are often good because the costs of judging
>each individual case are much higher than the benefits of granting
>exceptions,
That's nothing compared to the cost of post after post debating the
zero-tolerance policy, and posts such as this one commenting on posts
debating the zero-tolerance policy. In the last few months more stuff has
been written about the evils of ad hominem attacks and how they waste
bandwidth than any other topic, well, it's in the top ten anyway.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:32 MDT