Arguments From My Opponents Believe Something

[chris_gerrib]

I mentioned that I was going to talk more about this link - arguments from my opponents believe something. Well, here goes.

The tl;dr version of the above is "my opponent believes X, therefore he's wrong." I find it an extremely irritating argument, for two reasons:

1) I frequently don't believe whatever I'm accused of. I don't, for example,

Comments

[baron_waste]

Item 1: But I like that phrase, “a vast sea &c.” The best way to sell even an inherently bad idea is with a catchy phrase!

Item 2: Speaking of bad ideas, if you DID believe government is the answer to all problems, then (by definition) you would believe that Government CAN provide a valid satisfactory solution, whether they've yet done so or not, and that any situation CAN be solved by a sufficient overdose of Government, so if the problem isn't yet solved, throw more tax money at it!

In that case, that this might not be true becomes literally unthinkable. This attitude has not proven out in practice.

p.s. Welcome back.

[baron_waste]

An “argument” I used to find irritating when such still mattered to me was, “Sufficient education in the subject leads inevitably to my own expert opinion. That you disagree merely shows you are ignorant of your subject.”

This airily dismissive ad hominem crap got thrown at me by leftist pseudo-intellectuals frequently - quite often it was their preferred tactic. Comrade Sagan's old saw about, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” is closely related: It allows the self-appointed arbiter to dismiss views contrary to his own by saying the evidence is insufficiently extraordinary. How convenient is this standard!

[Evidence is evidence. If you find an Egytian faience bead in a British passage-grave (as we have) then there is the evidence that contact and trade existed between Bronze-Age Britain and ancient Egypt. Were a self-styled 'authority' to demand nothing short of unearthing a complete Egyptian reed boat still with identifiable Nile mud upon it or he won't believe it, is simply childish.]
- James Hoagland,