3 ms·

Is there a respectful way of suggesting a journalist is too senile to be reliable?

tptacek 4y ago
Yes. For starters, if you had kept "senility" out of it, and just made your case based on what he'd actually reported, you wouldn't have made it so easy for the thread to devolve into a referendum on "ad hominem" arguments. His age and "soundness of mind" --- which you don't know anything about --- has nothing to do with this situation. It's even worse than that, because really the whole ballgame on a thread like this is dodging what this blogger actually wrote, and instead pivoting to a credibility duel --- Hersh broke Abu Ghraib, and this guy... wrote a blog post? You've lost from the moment you accept that framing. Just read the post and consider what it says! The blogger did the work for you! On the off chance that getting this feedback from someone on "the same side" as your argument is helpful, that is.
- mannerheim 4y ago
  Well, I don't know if you noticed, but the part of the thread I responded to was already about discussing Mr Hersh's trustworthiness. And on the contrary, his soundness of mind has everything to do with this. I would love to discuss the merits of the evidence presented by Mr Hersh. Too bad he hasn't given any! We just have to take him at his word because apparently he's credible and we have to pretend that octogenarians are just as mentally present as the rest of us. Anyone calling this an ad hominem doesn't know what the fallacy even means - it's not attacking the person instead of the argument if the person is the argument in the first place.
dang 4y ago
You could start by editing out swipes, as the site guidelines request. By what logic did you think it was ok to post nastiness like "He's clearly cuckoo for cocoa puffs" and, worse, "time to send him to the nursing home"? That's an outright slur. Please don't do such things on HN. As tptacek correctly pointed out, it also discredits your argument, so it would also be in your interest to edit out. Either way, though, we need you to stop posting flamebait and/or snark to this site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mannerheim 4y ago
  Well, I can't really edit that anymore as it's been too long. And I simply used a bit of colourful language to describe relevant points to a discussion of Mr Hersh's trustworthiness: he is senile and old. Now, if you think 'The man is 85, he gets basic facts wrong in his articles, he takes a single anonymous source's word as gospel, and either won't do fact checking or fails to do so competently. He is senile and old.' is acceptable, I will stick to such less colourful language in the future.
  - pvg 4y ago
    The whole point is that namecalling/internet diagnosis is not acceptable. You can't 'it's just colourful language' your way out of that.
    - mannerheim 4y ago
      As I've said elsewhere, the question of whether or not Mr Hersh possesses a sound mind is relevant to the matter as the discussion was already revolving around whether or not he's a trustworthy figure in journalism. And again, this story is based entirely around his credibility in the first place, so there's really no other place for this discussion to end up.
      - pvg 4y ago
        the question of whether or not Mr Hersh possesses a sound mind is relevant It's not. It's just a rationalization for the name calling. No attempt to elevate it into some reasoned point about the article is going to make it not-name calling. there's really no other place for this discussion to end up. Whatever the place is, it's just not here because you just can't go 'story I don't believe' -> 'mentally deficient person'. It's a completely straightforward thing to not do.
        mannerheim 4y ago
        I haven't said it's not name calling, but only that it is not an ad hominem, as the very thing in question is Mr Hersh's credibility. Is it wrong to suggest someone who has made a number of outlandish claims in recent years and is quite elderly is suffering from a degraded mental state, as we all know is wont to happen to the elderly? If, say, Linus Pauling published in the 90s something along the lines of 'I've discovered the secret to immortality, and no, I won't provide any verifiable evidence for it, you just have to trust me' after decades of passing off Vitamin C as a cure for cancer, and everybody was saying 'well Linus Pauling is one of the greatest biochemists of our time, he's won the Nobel Prize', is it out of bounds to say, well, maybe at one point, but the man is 90 now and clearly lost his marbles some years ago?

Yes. For starters, if you had kept "senility" out of it, and just made your case based on what he'd actually reported, you wouldn't have made it so easy for the thread to devolve into a referendum on "ad hominem" arguments. His age and "soundness of mind" --- which you don't know anything about --- has nothing to do with this situation. It's even worse than that, because really the whole ballgame on a thread like this is dodging what this blogger actually wrote, and instead pivoting to a credibility duel --- Hersh broke Abu Ghraib, and this guy... wrote a blog post? You've lost from the moment you accept that framing. Just read the post and consider what it says! The blogger did the work for you! On the off chance that getting this feedback from someone on "the same side" as your argument is helpful, that is.

mannerheim 4y ago
Well, I don't know if you noticed, but the part of the thread I responded to was already about discussing Mr Hersh's trustworthiness. And on the contrary, his soundness of mind has everything to do with this. I would love to discuss the merits of the evidence presented by Mr Hersh. Too bad he hasn't given any! We just have to take him at his word because apparently he's credible and we have to pretend that octogenarians are just as mentally present as the rest of us. Anyone calling this an ad hominem doesn't know what the fallacy even means - it's not attacking the person instead of the argument if the person is the argument in the first place.

dang 4y ago

You could start by editing out swipes, as the site guidelines request. By what logic did you think it was ok to post nastiness like "He's clearly cuckoo for cocoa puffs" and, worse, "time to send him to the nursing home"? That's an outright slur. Please don't do such things on HN. As tptacek correctly pointed out, it also discredits your argument, so it would also be in your interest to edit out. Either way, though, we need you to stop posting flamebait and/or snark to this site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mannerheim 4y ago
Well, I can't really edit that anymore as it's been too long. And I simply used a bit of colourful language to describe relevant points to a discussion of Mr Hersh's trustworthiness: he is senile and old. Now, if you think 'The man is 85, he gets basic facts wrong in his articles, he takes a single anonymous source's word as gospel, and either won't do fact checking or fails to do so competently. He is senile and old.' is acceptable, I will stick to such less colourful language in the future.
- pvg 4y ago
  The whole point is that namecalling/internet diagnosis is not acceptable. You can't 'it's just colourful language' your way out of that.
  - mannerheim 4y ago
    As I've said elsewhere, the question of whether or not Mr Hersh possesses a sound mind is relevant to the matter as the discussion was already revolving around whether or not he's a trustworthy figure in journalism. And again, this story is based entirely around his credibility in the first place, so there's really no other place for this discussion to end up.
    - pvg 4y ago
      the question of whether or not Mr Hersh possesses a sound mind is relevant It's not. It's just a rationalization for the name calling. No attempt to elevate it into some reasoned point about the article is going to make it not-name calling. there's really no other place for this discussion to end up. Whatever the place is, it's just not here because you just can't go 'story I don't believe' -> 'mentally deficient person'. It's a completely straightforward thing to not do.
      - mannerheim 4y ago
        I haven't said it's not name calling, but only that it is not an ad hominem, as the very thing in question is Mr Hersh's credibility. Is it wrong to suggest someone who has made a number of outlandish claims in recent years and is quite elderly is suffering from a degraded mental state, as we all know is wont to happen to the elderly? If, say, Linus Pauling published in the 90s something along the lines of 'I've discovered the secret to immortality, and no, I won't provide any verifiable evidence for it, you just have to trust me' after decades of passing off Vitamin C as a cure for cancer, and everybody was saying 'well Linus Pauling is one of the greatest biochemists of our time, he's won the Nobel Prize', is it out of bounds to say, well, maybe at one point, but the man is 90 now and clearly lost his marbles some years ago?