3 ms·
No, ad hominem is "You're wrong 'cause you're a jerk." DanBC pointed out that their opinion might not be as above reproach as is often assumed because of past l
by yock 15y ago
No, ad hominem is "You're wrong 'cause you're a jerk." DanBC pointed out that their opinion might not be as above reproach as is often assumed because of past lapses in good judgment.
- SoftwareMaven 15y agoAd hominem is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it.[1] That sounds pretty much like what happened above. The truth item is whether RSA's cipher chops can be respected. The negative characteristic is an HR person succumbing to a social engineering attack. Ad hominem isn't just calling names. Let me put it differently: in what way does the HR rep's mistake reduce the quality of ciphers that have come from RSA? 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
- icebraining 15y agoAd hominem is an attack on the person whose argument you're trying to disprove. Here, that person is the one who wrote the article, not RSA. The argument "X is safe because its creator, Y, has a good reputation" can certainly be refuted by attacking the claim that Y has a good reputation. It's not an ad hominem. The fact that the error by the HR person doesn't actually invalidate RSA's reputation as cryptographers is more a Non sequitur.