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.
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.