I think if we’re competent enough to disambiguate ad hominem abuse from logical fallacies, we’re competent enough to extract the signal from the noise. Of cour

I think if we’re competent enough to disambiguate ad hominem abuse from logical fallacies, we’re competent enough to extract the signal from the noise. Of course, some may be swayed one way or the other by the word “pigs.” My guess is that anybody who turns their nose up at the word, or who embraces it for that matter, does so because they have their own built-in biases. In which case, it may end up being neutral, because the kinds of people dismayed by its use may not have been persuaded by the facts either.