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Ad hominem? Really? How do you know he hasn’t made any hard choices? As I stated, it’s relatively easy to sit on the sidelines and have the benefits of hinds

by gregd 11y ago

Ad hominem? Really? How do you know he hasn’t made any hard choices? As I stated, it’s relatively easy to sit on the sidelines and have the benefits of hindsight, to call someone out on their choices. What’s unfair is the absurd cost of college and why it’s primary ethos has been to make money.

notacoward 11y ago
When you tried to imply that I had "sat on the sidelines" that was ad hominem. It suggests that I'm unqualified to have an opinion, which is not only inherently fallacious but also absurd in light of how closely my own experience actually does match that of the author. Next time, instead of making assumptions and then using them to undermine the source of a statement, try addressing the statement itself.
- gregd 11y ago
  I wasn't suggesting that you were unqualified to have an opinion. We are all sitting on the sidelines of each others lives. I am no more a part of your life, than you are of mine. But what I was suggesting is that it’s easy for us to sit in judgment of the choices he articulated, as well as the outcomes of those choices, and say that he, “can’t make good choices”. It doesn’t matter what you think your background was in comparison to his. You’re still projecting your reality and the outcomes of your reality, onto another complete stranger and coming to negative conclusions about his life. I call this judgment. Each of our lives is nuanced enough to affect outcomes even given very similar circumstances or “choices” as you call them. Because Siegel’s outcomes ended in him defaulting on his student loans and articulating that, doesn’t mean he can’t make good choices.
  - notacoward 11y ago
    Conflating circumstances and choices is absurd. Siegel's default wasn't the inevitable result of circumstances. It was a choice. Whatever the outcome, he can't deny agency. He can't say it was all somebody else's fault, and that he only did what he had to do. He had to do one of several things, and he chose one. Millions of people, none of them in identical circumstances but statistically close enough, made different choices and had those choices work out fine, without the life of self-loathing Siegel predicted for himself if he had chosen differently. That prediction was convenient, but ill-founded in fact.

by gregd 11y ago

notacoward 11y ago

When you tried to imply that I had "sat on the sidelines" that was ad hominem. It suggests that I'm unqualified to have an opinion, which is not only inherently fallacious but also absurd in light of how closely my own experience actually does match that of the author. Next time, instead of making assumptions and then using them to undermine the source of a statement, try addressing the statement itself.

gregd 11y ago
I wasn't suggesting that you were unqualified to have an opinion. We are all sitting on the sidelines of each others lives. I am no more a part of your life, than you are of mine. But what I was suggesting is that it’s easy for us to sit in judgment of the choices he articulated, as well as the outcomes of those choices, and say that he, “can’t make good choices”. It doesn’t matter what you think your background was in comparison to his. You’re still projecting your reality and the outcomes of your reality, onto another complete stranger and coming to negative conclusions about his life. I call this judgment. Each of our lives is nuanced enough to affect outcomes even given very similar circumstances or “choices” as you call them. Because Siegel’s outcomes ended in him defaulting on his student loans and articulating that, doesn’t mean he can’t make good choices.
- notacoward 11y ago
  Conflating circumstances and choices is absurd. Siegel's default wasn't the inevitable result of circumstances. It was a choice. Whatever the outcome, he can't deny agency. He can't say it was all somebody else's fault, and that he only did what he had to do. He had to do one of several things, and he chose one. Millions of people, none of them in identical circumstances but statistically close enough, made different choices and had those choices work out fine, without the life of self-loathing Siegel predicted for himself if he had chosen differently. That prediction was convenient, but ill-founded in fact.