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Comment by eli | Hacker News Reader

No reason to go ad hominem on the judge.

Seems like it's more a disagreement on the legal definition of "substantial"

Ad Hominem is a logical fallacy. Unless the OP was saying "The judge is wrong because he's seventy years old" he was not committing ad hominem, just commenting on a (possibly irrelevant) quality of the judge.

that's exactly what he was saying.

Nope. He argued that the judge was wrong, and then suggested that it was the judge's age that caused him to make an error.

What he didn't do is to use the judge's age in support of the first argument -- that would have been ad hominem.

http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html

he did: "[suggest] that it was the judge's age that caused him to make an error"

he didnt: "[use] the judge's age in support of the first argument"

forgive me; perhaps you could clarify the difference?

It was a side note and not part of the argument.

Is this a first year philosophy class? Reminds me of kids in law school. Ad hom this, straw man that...pointless discussion. We can all go look up the definitions if we want & decide for ourselves. Let it go & discussion the actual issue.

Fact is having a second means to communicate (a .me or whatever address) doesn't mean speech isn't an issue here.

http://www.thedomains.com/2011/08/05/federal-court-rules-dom...

It is the difference between

> My opponent is an idiot and believes X to be true, therefore X is false. (ad hominem)

and

> X is false. My opponent believes X to be true, therefore they are an idiot. (Not ad hominem.)

No, he's looking at causality, not logical entailment. He's not saying the judge is old, therefore he must be wrong on Internet matters; he's saying that the judge being old is likely an influential cause of his being wrong on Internet matters. Ad Hominem only refers to fallacy of using personal qualities to present logical arguments; it has nothing to do with the use of personal qualities to ascertain causality.

ad hominem is not always a logical fallacy, the judge's age may very well be relevant.

a more web savvy judge would have never made such a comment.

The only evidence you have to assert that the judge isn't "web-savvy" is his age. Creepy! A comment this dumb is evidence for how toxic the whole thread is, so let's all stop debating what is and isn't "ad hominem" and move on.

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