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Context: The James G Martin Center is a small conservative think tank funded by the Pope Foundation. They routinely call for budget cuts to the UNC system. htt

Context: The James G Martin Center is a small conservative think tank funded by the Pope Foundation. They routinely call for budget cuts to the UNC system. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_G._Martin_Center_for_Academic_Renewal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_G._Martin_Center_for_A... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_William_Pope_Foundation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_William_Pope_Foundation University administration is a juicy target and I’m certainly not defending them wholesale. But the article’s written by rich people who want to lower state taxes.

i_am_proteus 4y ago
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem (Latin for 'argument to the person'), refers to several types of arguments, most of which are fallacious. Typically, this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jonstewart 4y ago
  HNers need get a grip on what’s ad hominem and what isn’t. I didn’t say their mothers were hamsters. There are oodles of think tanks and institutes, many have a particular policy agenda, and it’s useful to consider that before deciding whether to spend precious attention on an article from one.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Then show the flaw in the argument. For all we know, your reasoning might be as motivated as theirs. Ad hominems, even when not fallacious, don't tend to contribute to the discourse. If you don't have a good rebuttal to the argument, saying that the person who wrote it did so because they have an agenda is inane. Of course they had an agenda: they wrote an essay!
    - etherael 4y ago
      By his own logic, he probably can't, he said he used the heuristic to decide whether the article was worth spending attention on, which would result in a no, and thus the conclusion that he hadn't read it. Not having done so, he can't address the argument. So it is ad hominem, but maybe by accident if you want to be very generous.
    - jonstewart 4y ago
      I mean, I’m not an expert on this topic, I’m in my 40s and decades away from my own university experience, and I don’t particularly feel like arguing with strangers on HN. One thing I did learn in college was Wittgenstein’s TLP maxim that whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should not speak. I’ve certainly had friends with soul-crushing experiences in academia and I’m well aware there are cost disease concerns about academia. At the same time, state universities allocations from state government have been greatly reduced over the past few decades. I think attacking university administration is an easy target, but is it, perhaps, a target in support of a larger goal of defunding public education? I don’t think this article’s really worth much intellectual engagement, and I think it’s generally helpful for readers to understand authors’ policy agenda — I’m old enough that this was called “critical thinking” when I was in school.
      - pclmulqdq 4y ago
        So you aren't an expert on the topic, you note the bias of the think tank, and therefore you choose not to read it, regardless of the expertise of the author. Despite not reading it, and not wanting to argue with internet strangers, you feel the need to warn other people of its supposed flaws. Got it. It sounds like you are trying to make a bad-faith argument here and this absolutely is an ad hominem fallacy (regardless of how well you cloak it in Wittgenstein).
        smackeyacky 4y ago
        We all should be aware of the biases of our sources. Some of these organisations have a long history of producing misinformation, pay-to-play commentary (oil companies, tobacco companies) and outright lies in defence of their ideology. There is no way to read anything from thie cluster of bullshit factories like heritage.org (for example) without questioning their motives, because they are obviously compromised and will go to extremes to push an agenda. We all know information sources like this and it saves a lot of time to simply dismiss everything they have to say about anything, because if you can't trust them to be truthful on one subject, why would they be truthful about anything? The right love to call this kind of wholesale dismissal "cancel culture" but really, it's just the natural filtering of bullshit that everybody should do.
  - alvah 4y ago
    I don't think you get to decide what ad hominem means.
- topaz0 4y ago
  > The most common form of ad hominem is "A makes a claim x, B asserts that A holds a property that is unwelcome, and hence B concludes that argument x is wrong". Note here that B did not claim that argument x was wrong. You're fallacy hunting and you missed.
  - i_am_proteus 4y ago
    I strongly encourage you to read the article from wikipedia dot org, it highlights other forms of ad hominem beyond the most common form!
    - topaz0 4y ago
      If it's going to be a logical fallacy there has to be a logical argument, which there is not here. So I'm at a loss. Maybe you're referring to poisoning the well, which the wikipedia page refers to as an "informal fallacy". I disagree in any case -- OP is only presenting relevant context that can be a guide in assessing motivations.
Siddarth1977 4y ago
This isn't "context" this is literally the definition of an ad hominem attack. "Attacking a person's character or motivations rather than a position or argument" If universities have a massive, bloated and overly expensive legion of administrators, does it matter if the person pointing that out is doing so because they want to reduce the burden on students who are forced to take out massive loans or to reduce the burden on the taxpayers who ultimately pay those loans when the government "forgives" them?
- rektide 4y ago
  Ad hominem is a problem when you are arguing with people who argue in good faith & who can demonstrate unbiased willingness to engage in open discussion, who can hold & respect a broad set of interests when they argue. But when the person you are arguing with has a permanent bent that will distort & warp every argument, it's just a defense of open society to call the person out on that bias, on their forever grinding that axe. This mention was an excellent & valuable warning to me. That it happens to resemble an attack to some people, is, in my view, far secondary to the broad public good this post served.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > Ad hominem is a problem when you are arguing with people who argue in good faith & who can demonstrate unbiased willingness to engage in open discussion, who can hold & respect a broad set of interests when they argue. No, this is changing your standards of logic to support intolerance. You don't get to decide people's motivations against their will, or accuse them of bad faith without an example of the display of that bad faith.
    - rektide 4y ago
      In this case I think there is some pretty significant examples linked showing exactly what kind of faith this group has. I think it's up to the reader to decide for themselves whether this group deserves positive, neutral or negative bias against them. I have significant reservations about my statements on when ad-hominem is ok or not. I think there's more than the logic of debate that is important: that I re-affirm. But how & when & where the things beyond the logic happen is still a big question for me. In this case, I think this is pretty core & vital context that everyone is going to have to parse & interpret for themselves. Running into an article like this online & not knowing the context isn't good. The meat of the top post here, to me, set some basics about who this group is & linked some wikipedia articles. This is obvious public benefit. The top post & I both have additional editorial things to say, that these people are actively detrimental to society for their own good & we should be careful reading this. That's a bit of an attack, but neither of us have said to reject the article or disbelieve it; we have not put to the audience logical conclusions; there is context (who the carrier is), and (designated opinioned) caution/hazard about the meta-message being delivered.
incone123 4y ago
Administrations are entirely responsible for making themselves a juicy target. If nobody from the centre ground is going to do anything about that then it falls to the political extremes (and I've seen much the same criticism coming from the left too)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> But the article’s written by rich people who want to lower state taxes. Yes? Are you saying that's bad? Because it would have made sense if you'd argued that they just want to cut costs in a way that won't work or that will have outsized problems associated with it, but it kind of sounds like you're complaining about a good thing.
8note 4y ago
I read their conclusion "unc is unsuitable for a market based education, and that the bad incentives come from having to compete for money from students" as the opposite? They're saying the more government funding is needed to avoid needing all the administrators
slibhb 4y ago
Sometimes conservatives and even -- gasp -- rich people are right
barry-cotter 4y ago
Hey look. It’s an attack on the source of the argument that is irrelevant to the argument itself! This can be used as evidence jonstewart is a person of bad faith until the sun goes cold.
bee_rider 4y ago
Thanks for the context. Other folks might be constructing, I dunno, formal logic proofs about how universities ought to operate (or so I gather, they seem to be really interested in discussing logical fallacies). But since I’m not, I haven’t constructed a framework where I can objectively evaluate every single argument about this. So, at least for this little mortal, it is necessary to consider the bias of the parties presenting the arguments.
TreeRingCounter 4y ago
I'm not rich and I also want to reduce the amount of taxes I pay to university PMCs.
- rdtwo 4y ago
  Aren’t you part of the PMC. That definition extends to most knowledge workers including professors.

i_am_proteus 4y ago

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem (Latin for 'argument to the person'), refers to several types of arguments, most of which are fallacious. Typically, this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jonstewart 4y ago
HNers need get a grip on what’s ad hominem and what isn’t. I didn’t say their mothers were hamsters. There are oodles of think tanks and institutes, many have a particular policy agenda, and it’s useful to consider that before deciding whether to spend precious attention on an article from one.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Then show the flaw in the argument. For all we know, your reasoning might be as motivated as theirs. Ad hominems, even when not fallacious, don't tend to contribute to the discourse. If you don't have a good rebuttal to the argument, saying that the person who wrote it did so because they have an agenda is inane. Of course they had an agenda: they wrote an essay!
  - etherael 4y ago
    By his own logic, he probably can't, he said he used the heuristic to decide whether the article was worth spending attention on, which would result in a no, and thus the conclusion that he hadn't read it. Not having done so, he can't address the argument. So it is ad hominem, but maybe by accident if you want to be very generous.
  - jonstewart 4y ago
    I mean, I’m not an expert on this topic, I’m in my 40s and decades away from my own university experience, and I don’t particularly feel like arguing with strangers on HN. One thing I did learn in college was Wittgenstein’s TLP maxim that whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should not speak. I’ve certainly had friends with soul-crushing experiences in academia and I’m well aware there are cost disease concerns about academia. At the same time, state universities allocations from state government have been greatly reduced over the past few decades. I think attacking university administration is an easy target, but is it, perhaps, a target in support of a larger goal of defunding public education? I don’t think this article’s really worth much intellectual engagement, and I think it’s generally helpful for readers to understand authors’ policy agenda — I’m old enough that this was called “critical thinking” when I was in school.
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      So you aren't an expert on the topic, you note the bias of the think tank, and therefore you choose not to read it, regardless of the expertise of the author. Despite not reading it, and not wanting to argue with internet strangers, you feel the need to warn other people of its supposed flaws. Got it. It sounds like you are trying to make a bad-faith argument here and this absolutely is an ad hominem fallacy (regardless of how well you cloak it in Wittgenstein).
      - smackeyacky 4y ago
        We all should be aware of the biases of our sources. Some of these organisations have a long history of producing misinformation, pay-to-play commentary (oil companies, tobacco companies) and outright lies in defence of their ideology. There is no way to read anything from thie cluster of bullshit factories like heritage.org (for example) without questioning their motives, because they are obviously compromised and will go to extremes to push an agenda. We all know information sources like this and it saves a lot of time to simply dismiss everything they have to say about anything, because if you can't trust them to be truthful on one subject, why would they be truthful about anything? The right love to call this kind of wholesale dismissal "cancel culture" but really, it's just the natural filtering of bullshit that everybody should do.
- alvah 4y ago
  I don't think you get to decide what ad hominem means.
topaz0 4y ago
> The most common form of ad hominem is "A makes a claim x, B asserts that A holds a property that is unwelcome, and hence B concludes that argument x is wrong". Note here that B did not claim that argument x was wrong. You're fallacy hunting and you missed.
- i_am_proteus 4y ago
  I strongly encourage you to read the article from wikipedia dot org, it highlights other forms of ad hominem beyond the most common form!
  - topaz0 4y ago
    If it's going to be a logical fallacy there has to be a logical argument, which there is not here. So I'm at a loss. Maybe you're referring to poisoning the well, which the wikipedia page refers to as an "informal fallacy". I disagree in any case -- OP is only presenting relevant context that can be a guide in assessing motivations.

Siddarth1977 4y ago

This isn't "context" this is literally the definition of an ad hominem attack. "Attacking a person's character or motivations rather than a position or argument" If universities have a massive, bloated and overly expensive legion of administrators, does it matter if the person pointing that out is doing so because they want to reduce the burden on students who are forced to take out massive loans or to reduce the burden on the taxpayers who ultimately pay those loans when the government "forgives" them?

rektide 4y ago
Ad hominem is a problem when you are arguing with people who argue in good faith & who can demonstrate unbiased willingness to engage in open discussion, who can hold & respect a broad set of interests when they argue. But when the person you are arguing with has a permanent bent that will distort & warp every argument, it's just a defense of open society to call the person out on that bias, on their forever grinding that axe. This mention was an excellent & valuable warning to me. That it happens to resemble an attack to some people, is, in my view, far secondary to the broad public good this post served.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > Ad hominem is a problem when you are arguing with people who argue in good faith & who can demonstrate unbiased willingness to engage in open discussion, who can hold & respect a broad set of interests when they argue. No, this is changing your standards of logic to support intolerance. You don't get to decide people's motivations against their will, or accuse them of bad faith without an example of the display of that bad faith.
  - rektide 4y ago
    In this case I think there is some pretty significant examples linked showing exactly what kind of faith this group has. I think it's up to the reader to decide for themselves whether this group deserves positive, neutral or negative bias against them. I have significant reservations about my statements on when ad-hominem is ok or not. I think there's more than the logic of debate that is important: that I re-affirm. But how & when & where the things beyond the logic happen is still a big question for me. In this case, I think this is pretty core & vital context that everyone is going to have to parse & interpret for themselves. Running into an article like this online & not knowing the context isn't good. The meat of the top post here, to me, set some basics about who this group is & linked some wikipedia articles. This is obvious public benefit. The top post & I both have additional editorial things to say, that these people are actively detrimental to society for their own good & we should be careful reading this. That's a bit of an attack, but neither of us have said to reject the article or disbelieve it; we have not put to the audience logical conclusions; there is context (who the carrier is), and (designated opinioned) caution/hazard about the meta-message being delivered.

incone123 4y ago

Administrations are entirely responsible for making themselves a juicy target. If nobody from the centre ground is going to do anything about that then it falls to the political extremes (and I've seen much the same criticism coming from the left too)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

> But the article’s written by rich people who want to lower state taxes. Yes? Are you saying that's bad? Because it would have made sense if you'd argued that they just want to cut costs in a way that won't work or that will have outsized problems associated with it, but it kind of sounds like you're complaining about a good thing.

8note 4y ago

I read their conclusion "unc is unsuitable for a market based education, and that the bad incentives come from having to compete for money from students" as the opposite? They're saying the more government funding is needed to avoid needing all the administrators

slibhb 4y ago

Sometimes conservatives and even -- gasp -- rich people are right

barry-cotter 4y ago

Hey look. It’s an attack on the source of the argument that is irrelevant to the argument itself! This can be used as evidence jonstewart is a person of bad faith until the sun goes cold.

bee_rider 4y ago

Thanks for the context. Other folks might be constructing, I dunno, formal logic proofs about how universities ought to operate (or so I gather, they seem to be really interested in discussing logical fallacies). But since I’m not, I haven’t constructed a framework where I can objectively evaluate every single argument about this. So, at least for this little mortal, it is necessary to consider the bias of the parties presenting the arguments.

TreeRingCounter 4y ago

I'm not rich and I also want to reduce the amount of taxes I pay to university PMCs.

rdtwo 4y ago
Aren’t you part of the PMC. That definition extends to most knowledge workers including professors.