My comment is not an ad hominem. An ad hominem attack would be if someone is arguing point X and you distract from X by attacking their character. I was questioning only Remmelt’s ability to distinguish good research from crankery, which is directly relevant to the job of an AISC organizer, especially because some AISC streams are about the work in question by Forrest Landry. I apologize if I was unintentionally making some broader character attack. Whether it’s obnoxious is up to you to judge.
Semantically, you could have said the same thing in far less muckrakey language - ‘Remmelt has posted widely criticised work’, for example. Yes, that’s less specific, but it’s also more important—the idea that someone should be discredited because someone said a bad thing about something they wrote is disturbingly bad epistemics.
Etymologically, your definition of an ad hominem is wrong—it can also be about attacking their circumstances. Obviously circumstances can have evidential importance, but I think it’s also poor epistemics to describe them without drawing the explicit line of inference to your conclusion—e.g. ‘Remmelt has posted and linked to widely criticised and controversial work. Will that that be represented on the curriculum?’
If you think the curriculum was or is likely to be bad, you should say that—and preferably give some specific reasons why, beyond the inferences above. Maybe just extend a tiny principle of charity when thinking about how to people who are doing their best to make the world better, and have a track record of decent work which they’ve almost certainly done for far less pay and job security than you have.
You can do all of the above and still raise at least as strong and clear questions about whether the project deserves funding.
Thomas’ comment was not ad hominem. But I personally think it is somewhat problematic.
Arepo’s counterresponse indicates why.
Collecting a pile of commenters’ negative responses to someone’s writings is not a reliable way to judge whether someone’s writing makes sense or not.
The reason being that alternative hypotheses exist that you would need to test against:
Maybe the argument is hard to convey? Maybe the author did a bad job at conveying the argument?
Maybe the writing is unpopular, for reasons unrelated to whether premises are sound and the logic holds up?
Maybe commenters did not spent much time considering the writing (perhaps it’s hard to interpret, or they disfavour the conclusion?), but used already cached mental frameworks to come to an opinion?
Maybe, for reasons like the above, this is an area where you cannot rely on the “wisdom of the crowd”?
If you have not tested against those alternative hypotheses, you are conveying more of a social intuition (others don’t seem to like this and I guess they have reasons) than a grounded judgement about whether someone else is reasoning correctly.
My comment is not an ad hominem. An ad hominem attack would be if someone is arguing point X and you distract from X by attacking their character. I was questioning only Remmelt’s ability to distinguish good research from crankery, which is directly relevant to the job of an AISC organizer, especially because some AISC streams are about the work in question by Forrest Landry. I apologize if I was unintentionally making some broader character attack. Whether it’s obnoxious is up to you to judge.
Semantically, you could have said the same thing in far less muckrakey language - ‘Remmelt has posted widely criticised work’, for example. Yes, that’s less specific, but it’s also more important—the idea that someone should be discredited because someone said a bad thing about something they wrote is disturbingly bad epistemics.
Etymologically, your definition of an ad hominem is wrong—it can also be about attacking their circumstances. Obviously circumstances can have evidential importance, but I think it’s also poor epistemics to describe them without drawing the explicit line of inference to your conclusion—e.g. ‘Remmelt has posted and linked to widely criticised and controversial work. Will that that be represented on the curriculum?’
If you think the curriculum was or is likely to be bad, you should say that—and preferably give some specific reasons why, beyond the inferences above. Maybe just extend a tiny principle of charity when thinking about how to people who are doing their best to make the world better, and have a track record of decent work which they’ve almost certainly done for far less pay and job security than you have.
You can do all of the above and still raise at least as strong and clear questions about whether the project deserves funding.
To lay a middle ground here:
Thomas’ comment was not ad hominem. But I personally think it is somewhat problematic.
Arepo’s counterresponse indicates why.
Collecting a pile of commenters’ negative responses to someone’s writings is not a reliable way to judge whether someone’s writing makes sense or not.
The reason being that alternative hypotheses exist that you would need to test against:
Maybe the argument is hard to convey? Maybe the author did a bad job at conveying the argument?
Maybe the writing is unpopular, for reasons unrelated to whether premises are sound and the logic holds up?
Maybe commenters did not spent much time considering the writing (perhaps it’s hard to interpret, or they disfavour the conclusion?), but used already cached mental frameworks to come to an opinion?
Maybe, for reasons like the above, this is an area where you cannot rely on the “wisdom of the crowd”?
If you have not tested against those alternative hypotheses, you are conveying more of a social intuition (others don’t seem to like this and I guess they have reasons) than a grounded judgement about whether someone else is reasoning correctly.