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Comment by CWuestefeld | Hacker News Reader

I think that in making an ad hominem argument like that, you ought to at least provide documentation rather than just sling accusations.

In my experience, her reasoning has been sound and I'm not aware of a high degree of factual errors in her writings.

If you're right, please help us understand. Otherwise you sound like a partisan yourself.

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I've posted an example in response to one of the other comments. In the future I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from conflating source criticism with ad hominem attacks; someone who has, in the past, been demonstrated to misrepresent or misreport facts in service to political goals is an unreliable source, and there's no fallacy in pointing this out.

I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from conflating source criticism with ad hominem attacks

I only conflate them because a criticism of the source (as opposed to a criticism of the argument, or objection to a fact) is an ad hominem attack.

See wikipedia: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ad_hominem

An ad hominem, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "to the man"), is an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.

You cite an (alleged) characteristic of Ms. McArdle, that she's had factual errors in the past. You have not even mentioned the facts of this article: your argument is based on that characteristic of Ms. McArdle. QED

An ad hominem attack is, or is usually understood to be, fallacious and as such an invalid point. But bringing up a past record of unreliability in a given source is neither fallacious nor invalid; it is in fact extremely relevant when considering how carefully to examine claims made or how thoroughly to check sources cited.

In other words: "this person has been known in the past to misrepresent/misreport things" is perfectly valid to point out, as such a source should be taken with a grain of salt and subjected to scrutiny. Megan McArdle is one such source.

I went back and looked at your original post. You said Bear that in mind when considering arguments she makes.

Based on this, I think I may have been a little harsh. You didn't cite specifics in her history, nor did you make specific objection to the argument or facts of the OP. However, you also didn't explicitly say they're wrong; you advised vigilance. As there's nothing wrong with that, I now think I owe you some apology.

That said, I still believe that you came across like a partisan mudslinger. And I stand by my claim that an effort to defeat an argument by addressing its author rather than its argument or facts, is by definition an ad hominem attack.

If you go read the OP, you'll find that it's really an exercise in balance. There's not much factual in it, nor does there need to be. Nor does she really come out on one side of the argument or the other. All she's saying is that the situation isn't as simple as "the government identified a problem and fixed it for us", and I think she makes that point well.

But it's very difficult to argue against reasoning if you don't believe the facts they are derived from. If you don't have time to do the research yourself, you tend to trust past behavior. She's been caught manipulating facts to support her point-of-view -- so, I can't accept her "givens" without research. I think pointing out that someone has been documented doing this in the past is enough to warrant not accepting the premise until verified.

There are many, but this one is lengthy

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/01/22...

and another

http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2010/07/25/megan-mcardle-is-jus...

It's not her reasoning -- usually it's her "facts".

Can we get a new Internet-Meme-Law like Godwin's, to say the moment anyone invokes ad hominem without specifying what the personal insult was, they automatically lose the argument?

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