5 ms·

There not what ad hominem means. Ad hominem is irrelevant attacks on character, not putting statements in context to assess credibility.

travisoneill1 6y ago
There is no general "character". There is nothing stopping a nobel prize winning physicist from also being a pedophile. These things are just not related.
- selfishgene 6y ago
  Are you suggesting that we should administer IQ tests to everyone currently serving time in prison in order to identify which "geniuses" should be released so that they can pursue nobel-prize winning careers in physics instead? "Punishment usually serves no noble purpose" is something that Martin Nowak has argued with members of the press, at a time when Mr. Epstein was scared that he could be re-indicted on the felony sex-trafficking charges, which in his case given the egregiousness of his misconduct would have almost certainly led to serving a life sentence in federal prison. From your comment, I'm now starting to wonder if the word "noble" was accidentally misspelled in the Science magazine interview quoted above.
  - imgabe 6y ago
    You realize people are more than just one thing right? If someone won a Nobel prize for physics, and then murdered someone, the murder doesn't make the physics wrong. You understand that, right? Like, if we discovered tomorrow that Isaac Newton was a pedophile, the theory of gravity is still something important and still works. You can hold people accountable for one action and still recognize that other things they did may have been correct. You don't have to hold an all-or-nothing approach like releasing murderers who might be physics geniuses.
    - selfishgene 6y ago
      Mr. Nowak is no Isaac Newton ... not even close! The best way to cancel a person like Nowak is to cite his work by replacing his name with initials only ... after firing him of course and denying him future funding. Personally I don't think the scientific community would miss him all that much anyway. There are plenty of more decent scientists out there who can fill his size shoes. I believe that scientific discovery is inevitable ... even if someone like Isaac Newton had died in the plague and not have worked out calculus there were other contemporaries of his caliber like Leibnitz to keep the field moving forward. Thus I don't think that we need as a society to ignore the cruel behavior of child rapists, or their abettors, in the name of advancing science.
      - imgabe 6y ago
        You're missing the point. You don't have to ignore their behavior. The behavior and the work are two separate things, and can be regarded separately. If you require everyone to be a saint to learn anything from them, you'll never learn anything.
        selfishgene 6y ago
        A speeding ticket or a disorderly conduct charge is very different from aiding and abetting sex-trafficking of minors. Epstein was facing a life sentence in federal prison and forfeiture of an estimated $500 million estate for his crimes if you need help understanding the seriousness of them. The law views aiding and abetting sex-trafficking just as seriously as the crime itself. Some of us are still holding out hope that Prof. Nowak will serve some hard time behind bars for what he did. He has no shame, but apparently still quite a few apologists.
        imgabe 6y ago
        > A speeding ticket or a disorderly conduct charge is very different from aiding and abetting sex-trafficking of minors. You're missing the point. The crimes and the research are unrelated. The fact that you consider this some kind of apologia for Nowak demonstrates that you are either unable or unwilling to understand. If Nowak tells you 2+2=4, are you going to say "No that must not be right, because you hung out with Epstein"?
imgabe 6y ago
Logical arguments don't depend on credibility. If I say All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal, I'm not asking you to trust me. It's a logical argument and you can defend or attack its validity based on the argument itself, not whether I have a vested interest in Socrates being mortal.

travisoneill1 6y ago

There is no general "character". There is nothing stopping a nobel prize winning physicist from also being a pedophile. These things are just not related.

selfishgene 6y ago
Are you suggesting that we should administer IQ tests to everyone currently serving time in prison in order to identify which "geniuses" should be released so that they can pursue nobel-prize winning careers in physics instead? "Punishment usually serves no noble purpose" is something that Martin Nowak has argued with members of the press, at a time when Mr. Epstein was scared that he could be re-indicted on the felony sex-trafficking charges, which in his case given the egregiousness of his misconduct would have almost certainly led to serving a life sentence in federal prison. From your comment, I'm now starting to wonder if the word "noble" was accidentally misspelled in the Science magazine interview quoted above.
- imgabe 6y ago
  You realize people are more than just one thing right? If someone won a Nobel prize for physics, and then murdered someone, the murder doesn't make the physics wrong. You understand that, right? Like, if we discovered tomorrow that Isaac Newton was a pedophile, the theory of gravity is still something important and still works. You can hold people accountable for one action and still recognize that other things they did may have been correct. You don't have to hold an all-or-nothing approach like releasing murderers who might be physics geniuses.
  - selfishgene 6y ago
    Mr. Nowak is no Isaac Newton ... not even close! The best way to cancel a person like Nowak is to cite his work by replacing his name with initials only ... after firing him of course and denying him future funding. Personally I don't think the scientific community would miss him all that much anyway. There are plenty of more decent scientists out there who can fill his size shoes. I believe that scientific discovery is inevitable ... even if someone like Isaac Newton had died in the plague and not have worked out calculus there were other contemporaries of his caliber like Leibnitz to keep the field moving forward. Thus I don't think that we need as a society to ignore the cruel behavior of child rapists, or their abettors, in the name of advancing science.
    - imgabe 6y ago
      You're missing the point. You don't have to ignore their behavior. The behavior and the work are two separate things, and can be regarded separately. If you require everyone to be a saint to learn anything from them, you'll never learn anything.
      - selfishgene 6y ago
        A speeding ticket or a disorderly conduct charge is very different from aiding and abetting sex-trafficking of minors. Epstein was facing a life sentence in federal prison and forfeiture of an estimated $500 million estate for his crimes if you need help understanding the seriousness of them. The law views aiding and abetting sex-trafficking just as seriously as the crime itself. Some of us are still holding out hope that Prof. Nowak will serve some hard time behind bars for what he did. He has no shame, but apparently still quite a few apologists.
        imgabe 6y ago
        > A speeding ticket or a disorderly conduct charge is very different from aiding and abetting sex-trafficking of minors. You're missing the point. The crimes and the research are unrelated. The fact that you consider this some kind of apologia for Nowak demonstrates that you are either unable or unwilling to understand. If Nowak tells you 2+2=4, are you going to say "No that must not be right, because you hung out with Epstein"?

imgabe 6y ago

Logical arguments don't depend on credibility. If I say All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal, I'm not asking you to trust me. It's a logical argument and you can defend or attack its validity based on the argument itself, not whether I have a vested interest in Socrates being mortal.