12 ms·
this sort of thing is known as argument ad hominem.
by hc 18y ago
this sort of thing is known as argument ad hominem.
- gaius 18y agoDude has just made up his own definition of a word in order to have something to rant about. What would you call it?
- likpok 18y agoBut you are still attacking the person, rather than his argument.
- stcredzero 18y agoOkay, then, Zed's argument fits the pattern of something formulated by someone outside of their area of expertise. Zed has exhibited difficulty with the precise use of terminology before. In the recent talk that was posted, you hear him saying for people not to come up and correct him on his use of terms like "Turing Complete." http://blog.cusec.net/2009/01/05/zed-shaw-the-acl-is-dead-cusec-2008/ http://blog.cusec.net/2009/01/05/zed-shaw-the-acl-is-dead-cu... There are other terms that he unintentionally abuses in the talk. (left as exercise) Still, I think it's a great talk and agree with a lot of what he says. He reminds me of a coworker of mine. This coworker is hazy on things like the laws of Thermodynamics and some aspects of Object Oriented Programming, but he seems to get things done, and I'd have to say he's a good programmer.
- gaius 18y agoI shudder to think what Zed's code is like. Did I say rm? I meant cp...
- mightybyte 18y agoThis is called a straw man fallacy. If you had originally said this, instead of resorting to another logical fallacy, you might have been taken more seriously.
- tome 18y agoNot really: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=376670 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=376670
- corentin 18y agoIt's quite obvious that the guy has no idea what he's talking about (e.g. "Money was very quickly given to corporations with no government oversight. Exactly how libertarians would want it.")
- stcredzero 18y agoActually, it fits a pattern that's been around since the Usenet days. We computer guys are masters of our digital domains. We often think that we can instantly understand anything that's well documented. The result is that the Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Economics guys are often annoyed at the stuff we post.