From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Dec 12 2001 - 08:17:19 MST
KPJ wrote:
>
> 'Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear.
> Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub
> together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the
> unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty," "meaningless,"
> or "dishonest," and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their
> motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too
> well at best.'
> RA Heinlein: Time enough for love
Behold: Robert Heinlein uses an ad hominem argument.
(And a strawman, and a false dualism.)
I thus agree with John K Clark that we should substitute "name calling"
for "ad hominem", since the latter is a subtle logical flaw that need
involve no name calling at all.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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