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Here’s my test for whether you’re qualified to post to Hacker News. Pair the following five comments with their corresponding definitions: 1. “Raganwald is a
by raganwald 15y ago
Here’s my test for whether you’re qualified to post to Hacker News.
Pair the following five comments with their corresponding definitions:
1. “Raganwald is a blowhard whose pathetic attempts to score karma reveal him as an insecure dweeb who can’t get over being kicked around in grammar school. He and his mumblings should be should be flushed down the toilet bowl like the turds that they are.”
2. “What, raganwald is talking about beauty in code? Have you seen some of his code? Ignore him.”
3. “Raganwald sounds a lot like a Ruby fanbody, and we all know how those people think."
4. “Anyone who has spent that much time on Java clearly has no taste in software and cannot be relied upon for sound reasoning. Ignore raganwald.”
5. "Of course raganwald would say that there’s something wrong with Waterfall, he’s a Certified Scrum Master, he’s just pimping his own credentials.”
And the definitions:
A. Fallacy: Ad Hominem Abuse
B. Fallacy: Circumstantial Ad Hominem
C. Fallacy: Tu Quoque (“You Also”)
D: Fallacy: Guilt by Association
E: Not a Fallacy: Insults
Example: 1-E, This is an insult, but not fallacious.
- mfontani 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
- corin_ 15y agoI know people smarter than the vast majority of HN users (how can this really be judged, sure, but I'd place money on it, certainly far, far smarter than me) who wouldn't know those, and I know many, many people who are damn smart (just not fitting them into the "smarter than most people here", but definitely smart enough to belong here if they wanted to) who also wouldn't know them.
- raganwald 15y agoI beg your pardon, I was trying to crack a funny. It seems it is impossible to parody an extremist belief without somebody mistaking it for the general article. I was attempting to parody the fundamentalist debating pedant point of view. Poe’s Law strikes again: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poes_Law http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poes_Law
- corin_ 15y agoThe depressing thing is I can imagine people genuinely making the exact suggestion you made, with no humour at all. Sorry!
- Bud 15y agoEr, HN already does limit access via arbitrarily-chosen tests of user quality. They just chose different tests. :) I don't think it'd be a 100% bad idea to implement some sort of knowledge-based testing, wire it up to varying levels of initial access/privs on a site, and see what happens, as an experiment. User privs could then evolve once the user had actually posted or commented or rated things.
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- burgerbrain 15y agoReally I think you could just get away with testing to see if the user knows the difference between an Ad Hominem and a standard insult. There is little more annoying than someone who thinks they see logical fallacies where none exist and take the conversation from bad (real arguments intermixed with old fashioned insults) to worse (nothing but an argument from fallacy) "I don't claim to know what an Ad Hominem is." would also be a passing response in my book...
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoShowing a person's argument to be fallacious doesn't show there position is wrong. Many it seems fail to grasp this point.
- SkyMarshal 15y ago<3 it. Reminds me of all the good reads on the multitudes of logical fallacies out on the net: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=list+of+logical+fallacies http://duckduckgo.com/?q=list+of+logical+fallacies
- intellection 15y agoAnyone else think it is someone else posting, before seeing it is self-referenced? Very measured writing about yourself. Copacetic shield.
- tomelders 15y agois this a trick question?
- narag 15y agoI can't know but, after reading the comment, it ocurred to me that identifying "idiots" with bad spellers is fallacious.
- hammock 15y ago1E 2C 3D 4A 5B Do I pass?
- kenjackson 15y agoI thought you were trying to be really clever by responding in hex.
- Luyt 15y ago42 75 74 20 79 6f 75 20 73 68 6f 75 6c 64 20 68 61 76 65 20 73 65 65 6e 20 74 68 61 74 20 73 6f 6d 65 20 6f 66 20 74 68 65 20 63 6f 64 65 73 20 61 72 65 20 6e 6f 6e 2d 70 72 69 6e 74 61 62 6c 65 20 63 68 61 72 61 63 74 65 72 73 20 3b 2d 29
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoWRT 1. you're saying that >"He and his mumblings should be should be flushed down the toilet bowl // So arguably you're making the case to ignore his [implied] argument based on, in the antecedent sentence, his character. Sounds ad hominem to me. Just saying.
- Jach 15y agoIt's possibly an ad hominem, but not likely to me. http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html