Ad Hominem, or Hitler Said the Sky Was Blue

Ad Hominem

Insult the Intelligent

You find yourself at this page either because you are a rationalist in the making, or you were found guilty of the Logical Fallacy known as Ad Hominem. In short, instead of supporting your argument with solid points, you attacked the person you wee arguing in an attempt to discredit his argument entirely. This is used primarily as a defensive mechanism when the brain fails to find a proper argument for a sudden confusion in a preconceived paradigm... That is to say, you couldn't think of the reasons you believe what you do, and your brain chose to attack rather than retreat and consider the circumstances. This is a consequence of the Fight or Flight mechanism, which can be trained much like any muscle or skill in life. With proper adherence to the Rationalist arts, and self accountability of your own mistakes, the Ad Hominem Fallacy and other Positive Biases will seem second nature to notice.

Wikipedia and many other sites have excellent resources if you find yourself failing to support your own assertions.

You attacked your opponent's character or personal traits in an attempt to undermine their argument.

Ad hominem attacks can take the form of overtly attacking somebody, or more subtly casting doubt on their character or personal attributes as a way to discredit their argument. The result of an ad hom attack can be to undermine someone's case without actually having to engage with it.

Example: After Sally presents an eloquent and compelling case for a more equitable taxation system, Sam asks the audience whether we should believe anything from a woman who isn't married, was once arrested, and smells a bit weird.

Ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"^[1]), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a logical fallacy in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.^[2]

Ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, for example, when it relates to the credibility of statements of fact or when used in certain kinds of moral and practical reasoning.^{[3][not in citation given]}

Fallacious ad hominem reasoning is normally categorized as an informal fallacy,^[4][5][6] more precisely as a genetic fallacy, a subcategory of fallacies of irrelevance.

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