Re: Name Calling vs. Ad Hominem

From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Wed May 07 2003 - 11:16:25 MDT

  • Next message: Keith Elis: "RE: Name Calling vs. Ad Hominem"

    One of the problems with name calling is that it can backfire. If they
    turn out to be right about something that you said made them an "idiot",
    then it makes people think that they might be right about more than that,
    and you wrong.

    On February 22, John Clark wrote:

    > "Samantha Atkins" <samantha@objectent.com>
    >
    > >We had no real evidence of any "weapons program"
    > >when we started this little charade. We have no real
    > >evidence now.
    >
    > Samantha you amaze me, don't you realize how incredibly foolish that remark
    > of yours will sound in less than a month? And disk drives are cheap,
    > messages like that get saved.

    On February 16, he wrote, also quoting her:

    > >and conducted bombing runs on various manufacturing centers
    > >on the grounds that perhaps they could somehow be used for
    > >producing weapons.
    >
    > Perhaps? For good or bad very soon now we are going to know for sure if
    > Saddam has weapons of mass destruction or not, you seem to be predicting
    > he does not, I'm predicting he does.

    So far, no WMD have been found. None were used in the war. There's been
    some paperwork, some rumors, but no actual chemicals. Maybe there will
    be some found eventually, I don't know.

    But in the vitriolic exchange between John and Samantha, one of the
    issues was John's prediction that WMD would be found. At this point,
    it looks like that may well be incorrect. Fine; we all make mistakes.
    Certainly the war did not go as I expected, either.

    Here is where the name-calling comes in. Making a mistake is one thing.
    But calling your opponent an "idiot" for taking a position opposite to
    yours raises the stakes. As John said, messages get saved. When we go
    back and see that John was wrong (so far) on such a high-stakes issue, it
    makes him look extremely unreasonable to have called Samantha an idiot.

    It makes it look like Samantha is not an idiot at all. And maybe John
    was not only wrong on this issue, but was resorting to name-calling as
    an excuse to cover up weak arguments.

    That's how things look when you call people names and then turn out to
    be wrong.

    Name-calling is not a good idea, no matter how sure you are. This is
    email, not a hasty and shouted argument. There's always time to be
    polite.

    Hal



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed May 07 2003 - 11:27:57 MDT