Ad Hominem and Thumbs down.
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 10:07:22 -0500
Message-ID: <04OdnTg-weEuPxrcRVn-oA_at_comcast.com>
In a recent post, I failed to mark the purpose of my use of the word "drivel" as ironic. As a consequence, some readers took my remarks concerning Pascal as seriously intended, rather than as serving as an illustrative counterexample to the point I was trying to make.
Gene called my remarks "ad hom", which they were.
That got me to thinking. What's the connection between the "thumbs down"
signal and "ad hominem" attacks.
Well, if I trace them both back to ancient Rome, I think there's a
connection. The thumbs down signal was used by the crowds in the coliseum
to indicate to a victorious gladiator that he should kill the vanquished
gladiator. It doesn't get any more "ad hominem" than that.
And I think the "thumbs down" signal still carries the ad hominem overtone, regardless of whether it is applied to a person, or to that person's work. It's like calling someone's writing "drivel". That's such an extreme characterization of the person's work that it amounts to an ad hominem attack on the person who issued it.
Surely we can point out what's wrong with someone else's work without descending to that level. Received on Tue Nov 02 2004 - 16:07:22 CET