Doug_S. comments on The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ad Hominem - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 November 2008 09:47PM

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Comment author: Doug_S. 26 November 2008 03:08:44AM 0 points [-]

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:

There is a false premise that lies behind all ad hominem arguments: the notion that all people of type X make bad arguments.

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.