[spinlock]

I could be less of a dick but I am actually struggling with the idea that I’m guilty of an ad hominem attack. The inter webs gives me this definition:

> (of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.

Since the position she is maintaining is “why I’m a conservative“ I don’t feel like my analysis of her judgement is attacking her _rather_ than her position. Her position is about who she is. An analysis of that position must then address _who_ she is.

[xracy]

> "first and foremost, she seems stupid."

You are attacking her, and not her argument with that comment. The rest is about her argument, but that's an ad hominem attack.

I responded because I agree that it's not a well-thought position, but I don't think this betrays anything about her intelligence, which you are attacking with that comment.

[spinlock]

What I’m saying is that an ad hominem attack must avoid the subject to be a logical fallacy. So, saying it’s ok for cops to murder George Floyd because Candice Owens convinced me he wasn’t a good guy is an example of an ad hominem attack. Saying Floyd was a bad guy avoids the subject.

The blog post, however, is about the author. So, while I did call her stupid, that wasn’t avoiding the argument. I was addressing her point by saying that she’s not a conservative anymore than she was a liberal. She’s just easily swayed by faulty logic.

I just think this instance is interesting because it does look like I am guilty of a logical fallacy. But, given that the subject is the author, I don’t think I have committed a logical fallacy.

And, to be even more difficult, I think the author is stupid because she fell for the logical fallacy of an ad hominem attack.

[xracy]

Uhhhh, Imma suggest you don't know what an ad hominem attack is.

Ad Hominem comes from latin "To the person." It is when you attack the person rather than their argument. When you call the author stupid, you're ignoring her argument and attacking her person/character. You could call the argument stupid (and then hopefully go on to elaborate why you think it's stupid), and that would avoid it. But as long as you're commenting on the writer's intelligence, you're guilty of an ad hominem fallacy. It's also subjective and not rigorous. There's no way to measure "stupid".

The fact the writer is writing about her own experiences doesn't make it okay to insult them. It just means you have to separate why their experiences don't justify their beliefs.

> So, saying it’s ok for cops to murder George Floyd because Candice Owens convinced me he wasn’t a good guy is an example of an ad hominem attack.

I think you're talking about the Candace Owens bit as being ad hominem? The tricky piece of this, is that 'bad' is so vague that it could be properly labeling an outlook from our legal system or it could be, as you say, an ad hominem attack. It doesn't matter what George's character was because he should be innocent until proven guilty. But at the point he's guilty, he might be considered "bad". None of that is justification for what happened to him, so I think you might be correct that it's an ad hominem, but it's murky at best.

"Easily swayed by faulty logic" is a much better statement about the author, that I would agree with. It's also not an ad hominem, because it doesn't denigrate the author's character, because the same could be true of people who fall for phishing scams. There's nothing inherently character assassinating about having faulty logic. Whereas "stupid" is a subjective pejorative.

[spinlock]

> Uhhhh, Imma suggest you don't know what an ad hominem attack is.

I’d suggest I can at least identify one when I see it. For instance I’ve just quoted one ;)