Ad hominem

"Untimely Meditations" has its first troll! I'm excited. My troll does not seem to know, among many other things, what "ad hominem" means, although he uses the phrase a lot. So for fun, here's a reminder to us all, in the context he chose.

"Ad hominem" would be "You can tell Steven Levitt is an asshole because he wears his shirt collars all folded up for a bow tie, but is too gutless to put the bow tie on". "Ad hominem" would be "Freakonomics Boy did his academic training in Chicago. Obviously he shoots people, so of course his ideas about the crime rate are crap". "Ad hominem" would be "His essay on prostitution makes it sound like a great career choice, so I won't believe he means anything he says until he sucks cock for a living himself".

My argument was "Levitt has repeatedly published unreliable and misleading social science, so his social science work should be distrusted". That's called "inductive reasoning". It's nowhere near as fun to write, so it better have some advantage.

One curiosity. My troll is opposed to ad hominem attacks, so the following must not be one: "Impugning a liberal, to you, is far worse than rape or murder". Noted!