I wrote:
PROBLEM: How do you know what airplane is going to hit?
I meant "what floor the airplane is going to hit." Sorry about that.
Did he conclude the building was brought down by explosives? Then
he is a flake with a PhD, like Steve Jones.
Why do we need that kind of comment in a serious discussion? Why the
ad hominem?
Actually, this is not ad hominem. Calling into question a person's
qualifications to make a technical judgment, or pointing out that he
has no relevant experience, or that he has made grievous errors in
previous similar technical arguments is a valid criticism. It was
intemperate, and it was an Appeal to Ridicule which is a logical
fallacies, but not ad hominem. See:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
"An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or
argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the
author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. . . .
The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the
character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most
cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made
(or the quality of the argument being made)."
Also, by the way, I have not committed an Appeal to Authority error,
but Jones did:
"An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy with the following form:
Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.
Person A makes claim C about subject S.
Therefore, C is true.
This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a
legitimate authority on the subject. More formally, if person A is
not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument
will be fallacious.
This sort of reasoning is fallacious when the person in question is
not an expert. . . ."
Jones committed this fallacy by pointing to people like Max Cleland
in a discussion of thermite. I point to real experts in the subject, at NIST.
If we are discussing high-level Washington conspiracies then Cleland
is as expert. That's a different topic.
Hey, if you vehemence here is some kind of show ... say, trying to
somehow divorce yourself, as a spokesperson for one controversial
subject (LENR) . . .
Nothing like that. I oppose the 9/11 thermite hypotheses on the same
grounds that I support cold fusion: because experts are right.
(Usually.) In both cases we have unqualified flakes contradicting
careful expert research with bogus reasons.
Also, let me get make it clear that I have no opinion about the
likelihood of a conspiracy by the administration. That has nothing to
do with this discussion. The only question at issue here is: what
caused the building to fall? Not who caused it, or why, but only how.
It was the airplanes.
- Jed
