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Comment by dmak | Hacker News Reader

Ad hominems aside. I am guessing you are working in the renewable energy industry since you are pretty confident in other ways of increasing adoption. I'm not familiar on the topic, so I would like to hear from an expert like yourself. Could you elaborate how?

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Maybe the parent comment was edited, but I see no ad hominem there.

(Edit: if you're going to downvote me, please briefly explain what I missed, I can be reasoned with... lol)

> putting down minorities, being racist, sexist and all around offensive and acting with the maturity of a spoilt teenager.

That's not really an ad hominem, it's a criticism of the manner by which Elon (according to the commenter) goes about trying to achieve his objectives.

You can disagree with that characterization or interpretation, but it's not an ad hominem because it's the main subject matter in this context.

Ok, but is there actual evidence of Elon Musk behaving in a racist or sexist way? Because if not then this is just a generic attack on the man, not an attack on his ideas.

There are allegations (probably in the form of guilt by association), vaguely suggestive tweets (or tweets that have obvious potential for misinterpretation), and things like that.

I think you could make a very good case against that comment, but "ad hominem" isn't it IMO. I'd argue {{citation needed}}, "lacks substantiation", "slightly hyperbolic", or something like that.

Just a sample from before 2022:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/elon-musk-twitter-te...

And he has been significantly worse since acquiring Twitter.

Is anyone bothering to even click your “proof”?

Half of the list is “didn’t take covid as seriously as we think he should”.

The only potentially sexist thing on that list is calling Warren “senator karen”.

Ok so do you have proof of him being racist or sexist or not?

A partisan, prejudiced listicle is the online version of the Gish Gallop.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

You can say that the article is partisan, prejudiced, or even stupid, but neither the article nor the comment are a gish gallop.

Seriously people, if you're going to call out logical fallacies, make sure you don't call out the wrong thing.

Gish Gallop isn’t a logical fallacy, it is a debate tactic. Seriously people, if you’re going to call out misuse of logical fallacies, make sure it is one.

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