[coldtea]

>Can't you evaluate his claims on their own merits?

As with most things, it takes too much time to do that in detail for every argument one hears.

Thankfully with the magic of brain's pattern matching and previous experience to BS arguments we don't have to.

We can eliminate tons of opinions from the list of "potentially interesting to investigate" by their mere showing of certain characteristics we already know lead to bogus thinking. ("Hey man, I made a perpetual motion machine. Wait, where are you going? Don't you wanna hear how I made it? You're so close minded" -- or "I don't believe in climate change, it's all bogus. Here's what I think about educational reform...").

Sure, we might get a few false negatives (some good suggestions lost because their originator is a bigot etc), but the system overall works wonders for reducing the signal to noise ratio.

[coldtea]

>You are conflating a property of the claim itself (violating the laws of physics) with a straw-man property of the person making the claim. They aren't the same thing - one enables a simple proof by contradiction, the other is ad-hominem.

I don't see why you think I haven't considered that.

My whole argument is based on the idea that ad-hominens are pefectly fine in some cases.

When? For people with a bogus claims record.

How? Under the observation that a person making some bogus claims is also likely to make more bogus claims -- and thus the person can be dismissed as a general bogus-claims-maker.

Why might lose some good arguments he might make here and there, but life's too short, and dismissing the person completely gives us time to listen to people with a better "claims" track record.

In essense, the very basic of filtering, that everybody does (more or less well), and you undoubtly do as well.

>I call your "climate change, it's all bogus" claim a straw man, and indicative more of your thinking than of reality, because that's not even a claim that skeptics make.

Actually lots of "spectics" make it. Some make a lesser claim, that's its not human-caused, but others also claim it's not happening altogether. There's even a term for that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial

>I get the impression you are just looking for ways to dismiss arguments which make you emotionally uncomfortable.

Nope, I'm looking for ways to dismiss arguments which waste my time.

[c22]

I'm going to dismiss everything you have to say because it doesn't look like you know how to properly respond to threads when there's a comment cooldown timer.

[coldtea]

>I'm going to dismiss everything you have to say

Feel free!

>because it doesn't look like you know how to properly respond to threads when there's a comment cooldown timer.

I actually do, but am too lazy to click on the message to open alone...

[yummyfajitas]

You are conflating a property of the claim itself (violating the laws of physics) with a straw-man property of the person making the claim. They aren't the same thing - one enables a simple proof by contradiction, the other is ad-hominem.

Further, your "climate change, it's all bogus" ad hominem isn't even a real claim that skeptics make, and is more more indicative of your thinking than of reality.

I get the impression you are just looking for ways to dismiss arguments which make you emotionally uncomfortable. Consider religion instead, it's a lot more unapologetic about simply declaring who the heretics are.