Doug_S. comments on The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ad Hominem - Less Wrong
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Comments (15)
Is this an example of an "ad hominem" argument? Is it legitimate?
Bill: My amazing new medical breakthrough, explained in detail on my web page, will cure cancer! Joe: Bill is a known liar and con artist who has no special expertise in medicine. His so-called breakthrough is almost certainly worthless, and I'm not going to waste my time reading his page and writing a rebuttal.
To quote the page:
Probabilistically speaking, we only need to know that people of type X are more likely to make good-seeming bad arguments than average, to reduce our support of their arguments. We went over this once before.