throwaway_prnts

An ad hominem attack is when you attack someone's character, instead of their ideas or behavior. If you criticize sleep training because it is bad for the child and explain why, that is ordinary criticism and argument. If you insinuate that people who do sleep training do not care about their children, that is ad hominem.

To use another example: if I explained your behavior in this thread by claiming that you are a narcissist who holds yourself above others and so feels they have the right to (verbally) punish others, has trouble seeing any personal faults, and easily sees character flaws in others, that would be an ad-hominem. I have not done that, because I don't know you and your motivations, it wouldn't be constructive, and most people aren't narcissists. But similarly, most people care about their children, and arguing that they disagree with you because they don't care enough is not constructive.

I guess when you say things like this:

> I certainly have more respect for someone who does sleep training because they think it's best for the child, rather than for themselves. Of course, everyone will say that's why they're doing it

> I also think the reason people don't dig deeper is that they, perhaps unconsciously, would rather not discover something that is uncomfortable and inconvenient for them

> I just hope they won't do something that they know is worse for the kid because it's easier for them. In my opinion, sleep training generally falls in this category.

> People do it because they're exasperated and neither parent is willing to do something hard

> They generally don't do it because they genuinely believe it's best for the baby

> If your parenting philosophy is not based on any research or learning about what's best for your child, but instead on what's easiest and most convenient for you

> our self-absorbed approach to parenting

> because you might reach conclusions that conflict with a self-serving parenting philosophy is just another excuse.

it makes it seem like you are attacking the character of those that disagree with you.

> Your argument seems to be that questioning the morality of anything an otherwise well-meaning person does and might be sensitive about is “shaming” and “insulting” and an attempt to “control” the person. That strikes me as very opposed to the principles of free speech and open debate.

I am saying there is a difference between casting aspersions about the character of people who disagree with you, and trying persuade them that your position is correct. I see you added a link recently for some of the evidence that you found convincing. If the purpose of you posting here was to change peoples minds, that probably would have been more effective.

And no, I don't think ad hominem attacks are the same as free speech and open debate. And I don't think resorting to them so easily instead of other types of argument is a small thing either.

> I don’t think I did anything wrong

> it’s not like I was throwing out insults

> I don’t view downvotes as any indication of comment quality

I am not saying you are being downvoted because people feel shame, I said you are downvoted because you are shaming them. You are accusing others of knowingly harming their kids, because they don't care about them as much as you do.

I don't think this is fundamentally different from an insult in its role in a conversation, and in fact most people would find this incredibly insulting. Insults and shaming/humiliation are attempts to change people's behavior by punishing them or threatening to, but they don't work for convincing them of the correctness of your position. If you are in a position of power over someone you can control their behavior with threats while they still feel you are in the wrong, but of course if it's too often you may end up resented tremendously.

In this conversation you seem to be presupposing that deep down, most people view you as correct already and so don't need to be persuaded, only shamed into the right direction. I think in most things in life this is a risky assumption.

I don't have any opinion on sleep training, but you've been downvoted a lot here and I would just like to make an observation that I don't think has been stated explicitly so far.

IMO, you are coming across as someone who views themselves as morally superior and so feels entitled to try to control others via shaming them. This is probably not who you are in real life. But IMO this is the major reason why you have been so consistently downvoted in this thread, it is not mere disagreement on the sleep issue. Even if the evidence is easy to Google, linking to it and basing your argument on that would have gone a lot farther.

If you are sincere about taking the hard road (which I have no reason to doubt), I would do some self reflection about why your communication style has not been effective here.