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Yes, you're right about that, but that still doesn't make it an "ad hominem" argument. When a theoretician refuses to look at a proof because it is written by
by CodeMage 17y ago
Yes, you're right about that, but that still doesn't make it an "ad hominem" argument.
When a theoretician refuses to look at a proof because it is written by an unknown, he/she is implicitly stating his or her belief that the proof is very likely to be wrong. In this case, this belief is used as part of criteria for allocating time and effort.
If the same theoretician was to state that the proof is wrong because it was written by an unknown, this would constitute an argument. Said argument would be fallacious, because ad hominem argument is invalid in this case.
Incidentally, your claim that "PageRank is the biggest ad hominem attack of all time" is false precisely because of this distinction. PageRank does not constitute an argument, it's simply a sorting criterion. It's a value produced by an algorithm to determine approximate relevance of a page within the context of a search query. The value itself does not constitute an argument. However, if I were to claim that "page such-and-such presents false information on such-and-such topic because it's PageRank is bad" that would constitute a fallacious argument. However, it would still not be "ad hominem".
Now can you please repeating the same claim over and over in different comments? Repetition does not make it true.
- amichail 17y agoYou are splitting hairs. We don't need to stick to the precise dictionary meaning of various terms. Sometimes you gain more insight when you don't do that.
- CodeMage 17y agoI find that statement highly ironic. After all, you were insisting on false claims about people whose very job is to split hairs. Your false claims relied on misuse of terminology invented and used by people whose very job is to split hairs. It's like complaining to a network administrator that you don't have access to network because he didn't "debug the router BIOS" and then saying he's splitting hairs when he explains why you're talking nonsense.
- elblanco 17y agoDon't be pedantic.
- andreyf 17y agoYou are splitting hairs. We don't need to stick to the precise dictionary meaning of various terms. Sometimes you gain more insight when you don't do that. It's a pity you're getting down voted, because I believe your concern is genuine and confusion valid. But precise language is very important here, epistemologically speaking - just because we sometime make decisions based on heuristics doesn't mean those heuristics are good models of reality. The distinction between making arguments to collectively determine "what model is representative of reality" and using heuristics to decide what is a convenient way to spend one's time are very different things.