Monday 19 November 2012

Ad hominem

People speaking the truth in really ignorant or confusing ways doesn't make it less true. It just makes that person a bad communicator. You can't negate the truth of a statement by shooting the messenger, even if they failed to get their message across properly. That's called an "ad hominem" attack, and it is a recognised logical fallacy. You can talk about the expression of the idea, but you must make an effort to understand it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Wikipedia actually calls it an "informal fallacy" or an irrelevancy.
PPS - Which doesn't make it any better.

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