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That had occurred to me, and I was going to suggest that it is semantically equivalent to claiming that John's mother wears army boots. Possibly true, possibly
by raganwald 16y ago
That had occurred to me, and I was going to suggest that it is semantically equivalent to claiming that John's mother wears army boots. Possibly true, possibly false, but irrelevant and off-topic.
However, I assumed (possibly incorrectly) that somebody would suggest that insulting the author in a thread purportedly discussing the author's words is an indirect way of discrediting the words.
I could be wrong, in which case I would suggest that such a comment is not contributing to the discussion.
- baddox 16y agoIf a comment is not contributing to the discussion, then down-vote it. A non-contributing comment is not the same thing as an ad hominem argument. Also, an attack on someone's character is not the same as an ad hominem argument.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- bugsy 16y agoThe entirety subthread about "is it ad hominem or not" is useless meta noise that has nothing at all to do with the main post. Folks, please just say no before creating such a subthread, or responding in one. The original very brief comment was related to the main topic and was a fine, if possibly cynical remark. It represented a view that had not been expressed. It was conversational in nature, such as someone might observe during any reasonable discussion of this topic. It did not need several pages of deconstruction. Comment deconstruction and analysis belongs in an academic literary journal, not here. Thanks.