JPL said:
Suit yourself, resistor. Maybe I'm spending too much time in the grownup world right now, because I'm thinking about the real purposes behind this sort of boilerplate user agreement, and the real world consequences, and not some sort of abstract moral issue or worst-case scenario.
Raven, I just do not foresee any even remotely likely scenario where WotC invokes this contractual language unfairly, but again, if you are really worried that fifty years from now WotC will sell all your old posts to Satan and then Satan will sue you and you will have to pay Satan's legal fees, then don't use it.
Is this just intentionally insulting, or what?
RC
EDIT:
Ad Hominem (Argument To The Man): attacking the person instead of attacking his argument. A common form is an attack on sincerity. For example, "How can you argue for vegetarianism when you wear leather shoes?" The two wrongs make a right fallacy is related.
A variation (related to Argument By Generalization) is to attack a whole class of people. For example, "Evolutionary biology is a sinister tool of the materialistic, atheistic religion of Secular Humanism." Similarly, one notorious net.kook waved away a whole category of evidence by announcing "All the scientists were drunk."
Another variation is attack by innuendo: "Why don't scientists tell us what they really know; are they afraid of public panic?"
There may be a pretense that the attack isn't happening: "In order to maintain a civil debate, I will not mention my opponent's drinking problem."
Sometimes the attack is on intelligence. For example, "If you weren't so stupid you would have no problem seeing my point of view." Or, dismissing a comment with "Well, you're just smarter than the rest of us." (In Britain, that might be put as "too clever by half".) This is related to Not Invented Here, but perhaps it is more connected to Dismissal By Differentness and Changing The Subject.
Ad Hominem is not fallacious if the attack goes to the credibility of the argument. For instance, the argument may depend on its presenter's claim that he's an expert. (That is, there is an Argument From Authority.) Trial judges allow this category of attacks.
Needling: simply attempting to make the other person angry, without trying to address the argument at hand. Sometimes this is a delaying tactic.
Needling is also Ad Hominem if you insult your opponent. You may instead insult something the other person believes in ("Argumentum Ad YourMomium"), interrupt, clown to show disrespect, be noisy, fail to pass over the microphone, and numerous other tricks. All of these work better if you are running things - for example, if it is your radio show, and you can cut off microphones. A compliant host or moderator is almost as good.
Straw Man (Fallacy Of Extension): attacking an exaggerated or caricatured version of your opponent's position. For example, "Senator Jones says that we should not fund the attack submarine program. I disagree entirely. I can't understand why he wants to leave us defenseless like that."
On the Internet, it is common to exaggerate the opponent's position so that a comparison can be made between the opponent and Hitler.
(excerpted from
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#familiarity)
Let us also add:
Excluded Middle (False Dichotomy, Faulty Dilemma, Bifurcation): assuming there are only two alternatives when in fact there are more. For example, assuming Atheism is the only alternative to Fundamentalism, or being a traitor is the only alternative to being a loud patriot.
Appeal To Authority: "Albert Einstein was extremely impressed with this theory." (But a statement made by someone long-dead could be out of date. Or perhaps Einstein was just being polite. Or perhaps he made his statement in some specific context. And so on.)
To justify an appeal, the arguer should at least present an exact quote. It's more convincing if the quote contains context, and if the arguer can say where the quote comes from.
A variation is to appeal to unnamed authorities .
Appeal To False Authority: a variation on Appeal to Authority , but the Authority is outside his area of expertise.
For example, "Famous physicist John Taylor studied Uri Geller extensively and found no evidence of trickery or fraud in his feats." Taylor was not qualified to detect trickery or fraud of the kind used by stage magicians. Taylor later admitted Geller had tricked him, but he apparently had not figured out how.
A variation is to appeal to a non-existent authority. For example, someone reading an article by Creationist Dmitri Kuznetsov tried to look up the referenced articles. Some of the articles turned out to be in non-existent journals.
Another variation is to misquote a real authority. There are several kinds of misquotation. A quote can be inexact or have been edited. It can be taken out of context. (Chevy Chase: "Yes, I said that, but I was singing a song written by someone else at the time.") The quote can be separate quotes which the arguer glued together. Or, bits might have gone missing. For example, it's easy to prove that Mick Jagger is an assassin. In "Sympathy For The Devil" he sang: "I shouted out, who killed the Kennedys, When after all, it was ... me."
So let's see what we have:
Suit yourself, resistor. Maybe I'm spending too much time in the grownup world right now,
ad hominem, perhaps needling
because I'm thinking about the real purposes behind this sort of boilerplate user agreement, and the real world consequences,
appeal to authority, or appeal to false authority
and not some sort of abstract moral issue or worst-case scenario.
argument by ridicule; strawman
Raven, I just do not foresee any even remotely likely scenario where WotC invokes this contractual language unfairly,
appeal to false authority
but again, if you are really worried that fifty years from now WotC will sell all your old posts to Satan and then Satan will sue you and you will have to pay Satan's legal fees, then don't use it
strawman at the very least, ad hominen most likely.
The entire post relies upon the excluded middle; that WotC cannot meet its stated goals without pursuing this "boilerplate" language.
RC
