| Of course since I didn't take offense at being accused of making a "major strawman" argument, I won't mind being accused of another dishonest rhetorical tactic. At least it's not major ad hominem, yay. When a discussion is devoted to trying to resolve a technical question, it is indeed bad to get distracted by personalities and sociology. But Crichton's article is not a technical article, it's an article on some meta-level like sociology. Not every thread has to resolve technical questions, and it is not a fallacy to talk about sociology in a thread started by a sociological analogy. There is a technical question underneath, certainly. But there are also entire websites (and professional journals, and other things) devoted to the underlying technical question. This thread doesn't need to be devoted to the underlying technical question too. Imagine if the thread had started from an article analogizing Singularity attitudes today to Christian millenarian attitudes ca. 1000 AD. (Riffing on the "rapture for nerds" idea.) On such a thread, it would not be off topic to talk about personalities and behavior. Sociological discussion isn't necessarily trumped by the question of whether Singularity ideas are technically correct. Of course, it would be bad if some reader got confused and thought that sociological considerations settle technical questions. If someone correctly perceived that was a major danger, it might even be OK to remind people: "let's remember not to delude ourselves into thinking that talk of personalities and sociology trumps the underlying physical truth." But it would be bad if a reader started firing off accusations of attempted rhetorical trickery at selected nontechnical/sociological remarks. Such a reader would himself be falling prey to the fallacy of being a major twit. "What are you trying to say, Anti-GW people are nice people and GW-people are rude, therefore we should believe the Anti-GW? I highly doubt such a generalization, sorry." You have willfully misunderstood my argument and then attacked the misstated version. Do you know any technical terms for that? I stated explicitly some of the things I was trying to say. One thing I was trying to say is that martythemaniak's remark "the horrible politicization by GW opponents is perhaps the second-best example of politicized science being overshadowed only by the disbelief in evolution by creationists" looks like a repetition of a common ad hominem attack on AGW skeptics. I remain unconvinced by your analysis that it is merely an appropriate response given Crichton's provocation. ("It's as if you say 'AGWs are like Creationists', then AGWs reply 'no we are not' and you claim victory by saying 'see, AGWs think their opponents are creationists'." Indeed? It looks to me like someone wrote an article saying AGWs are like creationists, and the top-ranked response was "the irony is overwhelming, because the truth is that AGWs are the modern eugenicists." Though neither analogy is quite fair to martythemaniak, since both make it sound like he was merely posting an ad hominem attack. At least he had the good grace to back up his general rhetorical slam with a paragraph of actual technical information.) Have a selectively outraged day. |
So what else was the point of Crichton's article? I am seriously asking. Did he really wrote that lengthy article just to point out that some unnamed GW defenders chose the wrong words in defending their theory? That seems highly unlikely.