Son of Snarky Tirade: a response to Seebach's new CTCN: part 1

[Willem]

spinoza1111 wrote:
) This is my reply (part 1) to Peter Seebach's new edition of "C: the
) Complete Nonsense" at http://www.seebs.net/c/c_tcn4e.html. Further
) parts of my complete reply will be forthcoming.
<snip>
) At this point, I shall end the first part of my reply to Seebach?s
) Snarky Tirade.

Your *entire* reply consisted of nothing but ad-hominem attacks.

It reads like you desire to find fault with every little thing that
Seebs writes and if you can't, you go for the man behind the words.


SaSW, Willem
--
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for any of the statements
made in the above text. For all I know I might be
drugged or something..
No I'm not paranoid. You all think I'm paranoid, don't you !
#EOT

 

[spinoza1111]

spinoza1111 wrote:

) This is my reply (part 1) to Peter Seebach's new edition of "C: the
) Complete Nonsense" athttp://www.seebs.net/c/c_tcn4e.html. Further
) parts of my complete reply will be forthcoming.
 <snip>
) At this point, I shall end the first part of my reply to Seebach?s
) Snarky Tirade.

Your *entire* reply consisted of nothing but ad-hominem attacks.

OED: "Ad hominem": A phrase applied to an argument or appeal founded
on the preferences or principles of a particular person rather than on
abstract truth or logical cogency.

1599 R. PARSONS Temp. Ward-Word vi. 79 This is an argument..which
logicians call, ad hominem. 1633 W. AMES Fresh Suit I. x. 105 Some
arguments, and answers are ad hominem, that is, they respect the thing
in quæstion, not simply, but as it commeth from such a man. 1748
HARTLEY Observ. on Man I. iii. §2. 359 The Argument here alleged is
only one ad hominem. 1787 BENTHAM Def. of Usury viii. 83 This argument
ad hominem, as it may be called.

No, when I taught Introduction to Logic using Copi, "ad-hominem" was
carefully described not to mean any argument which uses personal
characteristics, or even one with rhetorical invitations to perform
midair reproduction. It means "invalid" arguments (arguments in which
the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises) in which the premise
is the bad character of the person making the assertion you would like
to refute in a matter unrelated to his character.

Copi's central, organizing notion in Introduction to Logic is the idea
of a valid argument, one in which the conclusions cogently follow from
the conclusion, and one that can be tested easily for validity using
propositional logic: if the premises can be true while the conclusion
is false, the argument is invalid.

"Your honor, how can we take the word of a witness who is well known
to be the town drunk?" "Objection, your honor, the witness was sober
at the time, and he saw Injun Joe kill the victim; his testimony in
the court has standing by way of all known rules of evidence".

The most common Internet use of of "ad hominem" means:

"An unpopular person is sayin' bad things 'bout me or a popular guy
whom we all like, and he talks like fag, and his shit's all fucked up.
Thinks he's so smart, I'd whip his ass. Fuckin' guy is fucked.
Besides, I or one of my friends have a Master's degree and we don't
understand fucker's prose.".

An real ad hominem argument, to be so, must be invalid in that the
premise can be true and the conclusion false. A bad man can witness a
crime in progress and if he has no interest in the outcome his word is
as good as a good man.

I have not attacked Seebach's character as such, nor have I reasoned
FROM my conclusion that his behavior "in the matter of Herb Schildt"
TO the conclusion that he's wrong about the role of examples in a
computer book, or any other matter. Instead, I have reached the
conclusion that his behavior constitutes harassment, stalking and
libel of Schildt based on his misrepresentation of what Dr McClean has
found to be a biased document as a fair and neutral criticism. I have
reached this conclusion from my study of Seebach's code which is
rather less competent than the code in Schildt but is presented as
working code and not examples of code, as is Schildt.

For textbook examples of ad hominem, see Seebach's indirect replies to
me. They start with the axiom that I'm a moron and/or insane, and
invite the reader to draw the obvious conclusion that I must be wrong.
But this argument has two flaws. One is textbook ad hominem. The other
is textbook inconsistency because Seebach claims to have ADHD and
adult autism, which in traditional terms is being an "insane moron".

That is: a modern spirit of tolerance allows more people to have
personality quirks whereas in the "old" days (as recently as the
1970s) those people were unemployable.

Seebach relies on a sort of urban legend, popular in programming, that
one can be uncertified academically, be dumb or forgetful, and even
have quirks traditionally used as markers, in conservative
communities, of insanity but still good, here at programming.

But while this dog food has some problems, Seebach won't eat it with
regards to people who he hasn't taken a shine to.

Ad hominem arguments are often also question-begging petitio
principii. It is axiomatic for Seebach that I'm an insane moron, so no
matter how much research I do, no matter what I say, he will dully
repeat that I can't be "right", because I'm an insane moron. How could
I be right? Besides, a lot of people (wow, order 1.0e1) agree with
him.

Another useful logical fallacy is tu quoque, which usually emerges
with a third party seeing, or thinking she sees, a parallel mistake
such as a misspelled word in a grammar analysis that shows that the
plural was incorrectly used.

False charges of ad-hominem, petitio principii, and tu quoque are in
fact the stock in trade of many here.

It reads like you desire to find fault with every little thing that
Seebs writes and if you can't, you go for the man behind the words.

Hmm. Should I call him an insane moron and be done?

No, Seebach, out of the blue, in 1996, started a rumor about Schildt
out of pique that McGraw Hill wouldn't give him a lot of money to tech
review (the facts are certified by Seebach, although the "pique" is a
natural interpretation of the facts). He went for every little thing
including Herb's vivid description of what goes on at runtime using a
"stack", a word, Peter felt, Herb shouldn't use.

But: I wouldn't call this ad hominem. Surprise! That's because Seebach
did not start with the premise that Schildt was an "insane moron".
Instead, Seebach ineptly tried to do the right thing, which was to
demonstrate by error finding that Schildt was in general a "bad"
author, even though in terms of Schildt's total output across several
programming languages, Seebach has to date only found trivia, and
stylistic violations of coding standards necessitated or enabled by
Seebach's own failure to help standardize C semantics...not just its
syntax.

In the general programming community, Seebach was greeted with many
yawns and not a few horse laughs. He did find order 1.0e2 individuals
to support and cite him strictly within the Linux community owing to
C's prestige within that community, and that community's desire to
control C. That community's citation of CTCN-3 and CTCN-4 caused copy
and paste replication as well as Clive Feather's copycat drive-by on
The Annotated C Standard which has made the "evidence" only "large" to
"morons" who know not what they spew.

This has created a massive amount of misunderstanding over the years,
most seriously an ongoing violation of Wikipedia's policies on
Biographies of Living Persons. It's probably created a lot of bad
code, and unnecessary changes to code, although as a humanist I think
a man's reputation more important than code.

For example, since one cannot according to Seebach do printf to stdout
without newline, I can well imagine that a lot of buffers are
overflowing in loops that could be more naturally coded, on most C
platforms, using character output...which is certainly in the spirit
of C, while requiring a newline is an intellectual fossil, a survival
of mainframe "unit record" thinking.

So, mijn Heer, you take good care,
And get wise as regards ad hominem:
It's not what you think and say it is
It's a species of invalid argumentatium,
In which the conclusions don't follow,
The argument's hollow,
From the premises nothing does come,
Save sobbing, and the crunch of bone.

 

[Willem]

spinoza1111 wrote:
) OED: "Ad hominem": A phrase applied to an argument or appeal founded
) on the preferences or principles of a particular person rather than on
) abstract truth or logical cogency.
)
) 1599 R. PARSONS Temp. Ward-Word vi. 79 This is an argument..which
) logicians call, ad hominem. 1633 W. AMES Fresh Suit I. x. 105 Some
) arguments, and answers are ad hominem, that is, they respect the thing
) in qu?stion, not simply, but as it commeth from such a man. 1748
) HARTLEY Observ. on Man I. iii. ?2. 359 The Argument here alleged is
) only one ad hominem. 1787 BENTHAM Def. of Usury viii. 83 This argument
) ad hominem, as it may be called.
)
) No, when I taught Introduction to Logic using Copi, "ad-hominem" was
) carefully described not to mean any argument which uses personal
) characteristics, or even one with rhetorical invitations to perform
) midair reproduction. It means "invalid" arguments (arguments in which
) the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises) in which the premise
) is the bad character of the person making the assertion you would like
) to refute in a matter unrelated to his character.

And that is exactly what you did.
Your 'refutations' were based upon (your perceptions of) Seebach
as a person and had nothing to do with the criticisms themselves.

Your text is a textbook example of argumentam ad-hominem.


SaSW, Willem
--
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for any of the statements
made in the above text. For all I know I might be
drugged or something..
No I'm not paranoid. You all think I'm paranoid, don't you !
#EOT

 

[Seebs]

spinoza1111 wrote:
) This is my reply (part 1) to Peter Seebach's new edition of "C: the
) Complete Nonsense" at http://www.seebs.net/c/c_tcn4e.html. Further
) parts of my complete reply will be forthcoming.
<snip>
) At this point, I shall end the first part of my reply to Seebach?s
) Snarky Tirade.

Your *entire* reply consisted of nothing but ad-hominem attacks.

This is excellent news. One of my goals was to explain the technical
details well enough that there would be less room for nitpicking against
my document. Another was to, while preserving many nitpicks, identify
them as such and point out their limitations. I appear to have done so.

It reads like you desire to find fault with every little thing that
Seebs writes and if you can't, you go for the man behind the words.

The straw man behind the words, for the most part. I do think it would
be fascinating to meet the seebs he writes about, though!

-s

 

[Malcolm McLean]

spinoza1111 wrote:

It means "invalid" arguments (arguments in which
) the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises) in which the premise
) is the bad character of the person making the assertion you would like
) to refute in a matter unrelated to his character.

And that is exactly what you did.
Your 'refutations' were based upon (your perceptions of) Seebach
as a person and had nothing to do with the criticisms themselves.

Your text is a textbook example of argumentam ad-hominem.

Ad hominem is a bit more subtle than it might first appear. The ad
hominem fallacy is to assert that an argument is wrong or invalid
because of the person who is making it. However we do this all the
time. No-one's bothered what some schoolkid says about the deficit
reduction plan. If some central banker says "this is the only policy
which will reduce the deficit without substantial economic
dislocation", everyone sits up and takes notice.

"Seebs has no computer science qualifications" is a classic case of
the ad hominem fallacy that everyone makes, and in fact we have to
make, because we can't give equal time to everyone who asserts
something. We have to weight the more worthy speakers.

 

[Seebs]

Ad hominem is a bit more subtle than it might first appear. The ad
hominem fallacy is to assert that an argument is wrong or invalid
because of the person who is making it. However we do this all the
time. No-one's bothered what some schoolkid says about the deficit
reduction plan. If some central banker says "this is the only policy
which will reduce the deficit without substantial economic
dislocation", everyone sits up and takes notice.

Yes. However, *formally*, this is the ad hominem fallacy.

"Seebs has no computer science qualifications" is a classic case of
the ad hominem fallacy that everyone makes, and in fact we have to
make, because we can't give equal time to everyone who asserts
something. We have to weight the more worthy speakers.

It would be if this were an issue where it were in any way difficult
for an ordinary practitioner in the field to evaluate the claims made.
Since it's not, and since every practitioner who has looked at the claims
confirms them, the presenter becomes irrelevant.

-s

 

[Moi]

<snip bad acid trip>

You can't use "void main()"
; main returns float.

So, mijn Heer, you take good care,

Heer should not be capitalised. Capitalised "Heer" refers to God,
which is probably not your intention when you address Willem.

Willem has previously pointed this out to you, but you seem immune to
constructive critique.
Also, nowadays "mijnheer" is usually spelled as "meneer".

HTH,
AvK

 

[Nick Keighley]

This is excellent news.  One of my goals was to explain the technical
details well enough that there would be less room for nitpicking against
my document.  Another was to, while preserving many nitpicks, identify
them as such and point out their limitations.  I appear to have done so..


The straw man behind the words, for the most part.  I do think it would
be fascinating to meet the seebs he writes about, though!

-s

 

[spinoza1111]

spinoza1111 wrote:

) OED: "Ad hominem": A phrase applied to an argument or appeal founded
) on the preferences or principles of a particular person rather than on
) abstract truth or logical cogency.
)
) 1599 R. PARSONS Temp. Ward-Word vi. 79 This is an argument..which
) logicians call, ad hominem. 1633 W. AMES Fresh Suit I. x. 105 Some
) arguments, and answers are ad hominem, that is, they respect the thing
) in qu?stion, not simply, but as it commeth from such a man. 1748
) HARTLEY Observ. on Man I. iii. ?2. 359 The Argument here alleged is
) only one ad hominem. 1787 BENTHAM Def. of Usury viii. 83 This argument
) ad hominem, as it may be called.
)
) No, when I taught Introduction to Logic using Copi, "ad-hominem" was
) carefully described not to mean any argument which uses personal
) characteristics, or even one with rhetorical invitations to perform
) midair reproduction. It means "invalid" arguments (arguments in which
) the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises) in which the premise
) is the bad character of the person making the assertion you would like
) to refute in a matter unrelated to his character.

And that is exactly what you did.
Your 'refutations' were based upon (your perceptions of) Seebach
as a person and had nothing to do with the criticisms themselves.

Emotionally, perhaps (I can't stand him) but not logically.
Independently of my dislike (which is based on being repeatedly called
an "insane moron") I find that Seebach is stalking Schildt based on
trivia. I have shown this. Again, an ad hominem argument is NOT an
argument that concludes that someone's wrong, even if that person is
popular here, and his numerous mistakes and vicious attacks make his
remote friends look like they might have poor judgement.

 

[spinoza1111]

Yes.  However, *formally*, this is the ad hominem fallacy.

Incorrect. It's the nonfallacious use of authority. In your reasoning,
it's logically fallacious not to listen to the schoolkid because the
schoolkid MIGHT confirm to your own compensatory fantasy of being an
authority despite your lack of qualifications. It is not ad hominem to
do what we've done: simultaneously weigh (1) your lack of formal
academic qualifications, (2) your own serious coding errors, (3) the
failure to standardize C semantics and (4) the triviality of the
issues you raise.

 

[spinoza1111]

Ad hominem is a bit more subtle than it might first appear. The ad
hominem fallacy is to assert that an argument is wrong or invalid
because of the person who is making it. However we do this all the
time. No-one's bothered what some schoolkid says about the deficit
reduction plan. If some central banker says "this is the only policy
which will reduce the deficit without substantial economic
dislocation", everyone sits up and takes notice.

"Seebs has no computer science qualifications" is a classic case of
the ad hominem fallacy that everyone makes, and in fact we have to
make, because we can't give equal time to everyone who asserts
something. We have to weight the more worthy speakers.

Not quite my point. IF he'd made valid and important criticisms which
constituted a positive contribution to the field, I'd be the first, as
someone who's taught at university without a post BA degree, to waive
this requirement in his favor.

But as it happens he's stalked a single writer who's obviously "mass
market" in the sense that Schildt dumbed down C for programmers of
average skill, and Seebs has made far more serious mistakes, signally
the confusion of Linux and C. In his stalking, Seebs does not emerge
as an independent expert, reliable on C. Instead, he emerges as just
another dreary programmer of average skill who needs to use saws and
shibboleth to detect problems, and fails to detect problems in his own
code. In some cases, Seebs' shibboleths uglify praxis; for example, it
appears we're not to use printf() to output characters in a loop
without newlines. It was my interpretation that we'd have to use an
Ugly Buffer, but the consequence is this.

It is as I have said a conclusion and not a premise that Seebach is a
dork. We as always are ready to listen for insight from him but we
don't get it. We get it from Bacarisse who doesn't agree with us, but
from Seebach we get off by one code and claims that are false.

 

[Colonel Harlan Sanders]

Emotionally, perhaps (I can't stand him) but not logically.
Independently of my dislike (which is based on being repeatedly called
an "insane moron")

But you ARE acting like an insane moron....

I find that Seebach is stalking Schildt based on
trivia. I have shown this.

See, this is where you prove you are an "insane moron".

In recorded fact, Seebach wrote a one page critique of a book 14 years
ago. Occasionally the subject of Schildt's books came up, so for
convenience he put the CTCN page on his site so he could refer people
to it.

Then the subject stopped coming up, and it was forgotten FOR A DECADE
till YOU, Edward Nilges, decided that it was perfect hopeless cause
for you to flamewar with (whatever your stated motives, none of which
make any sense).

As part of this you deleted any disparaging reference to Schildt you
found in Wikipedia, and added tirades accusing anyone who disagreed of
all kinds of vile motives.

You were reverted, (and eventually banned for being a dick, generally)
but stimulated others to beef up the wiki page on Schildt, adding
citations, including Seebach, Feather and Summit.

Note that again: Seebach et. al. all DID NOT put themselves in the
wiki article, YOU DEMANDED CITATIONS and you got them.

You insist Seebach engineered all this, waiting 14 years to strike....
again only an "insane moron" could think this.

As for "stalking", YOU have attempted to get Seebach's publisher to
repudiate him, though this has absolutely nothing to do with them or
any book they have published.

THAT is quite easily defined as stalking, and again labels you as an
insane moron.

 

[Seebs]

In recorded fact, Seebach wrote a one page critique of a book 14 years
ago. Occasionally the subject of Schildt's books came up, so for
convenience he put the CTCN page on his site so he could refer people
to it.

Yes. I made one attempt to get the publisher to address the technical
errors, they were unwilling to pay an amount I thought reasonable at the
time for the service, I wrote up a page documenting it and forgot about
it.

Seriously, until Nilges started this stuff up again, I didn't even *know*
that there'd ever been a fourth edition of that stupid book. I had no
interest in the topic. As time passed and people stopped recommending
Schildt's books, and thus readers of those books stopped showing up
confused in comp.lang.c, it dropped completely off my radar.

Note that again: Seebach et. al. all DID NOT put themselves in the
wiki article, YOU DEMANDED CITATIONS and you got them.

And again, to amplify: I had no clue that anyone was linking to the
page. In fact, if you'd asked me if I had a page on the topic, I woulda
guessed that I used to but that it had been lost during site organization
at some point. I had no idea it was still there, let alone still in
any way relevant to any of this.

As to whether it's "trivia", I don't think a consistent, in-every-example,
failure to use getc() or getchar() correctly, as well as a precisely
false explanation of EOF, is "trivial" for a newbie C programmer. Neither
is failing to mention struct padding.

Are we done here yet? Nilges has been being unpersuadable on Usenet for
a *long* time. Nothing suggests that this is going to be the time he
finally seeks treatment for whatever he did to ruin his life. Arguing
with him does nothing. So far as I can tell, if people would just ignore
him and let him be, this would be an extremely good solution for
everything -- Nilges would be devoting his considerable time and effort
trying to defame me, and no one else would have to deal with it. Since
none of the people in the corporate hierarchy above me are dumb enough
to fall for his crap, this is pretty much the ideal output. Let Nilges
lie about me all he wants; it's not hurting anyone.

Please put [NILGES] in subject lines when responding to him or threads
about him so people can killfile them more easily, and let's get back
to talking about C. This has been about as amusing as it's going to
get unless he actually sues, and since that won't happen, we're done
here; this is now a sitcom in reruns, and there is No Point.

-s

 

[spinoza1111]

<snip bad acid trip>

You can't use "void main()"
; main returns float.


Heer should not be capitalised. Capitalised "Heer" refers to God,
which is probably not your intention when you address Willem.

Willem has previously pointed this out to you, but you seem immune to
constructive critique.

Also, nowadays "mijnheer" is usually spelled as "meneer".

Wow, the issue of importance < every other issue. The infinitesimal in
the flesh. Oh well.

Actually, you MIGHT be wrong, here, meneer. I do know that after WWII
Germanic languages (including Dutch) changed radically and seem to me
(as a layperson in these matters) to have become more "democratic".

I've certainly seen "Mijn Heer" in old books capitalized. It would
seem to me that "meneer" is a demotic simplification because after
WWII Dutch people wanted to escape the social distinctions of Germanic
languages as a source of Fascism, and to break connections with High
German.

Certainly, it remains the case in German (which is not Dutch) that
nouns are capitalized as many (but not all) cases in seventeenth-
century English.

I'm afraid, meneer, gnädiger Herr, that this is just one more case of
being a time traveler, in the sense that I read things call books, and
draw perhaps unwarranted conclusions from them. I then meet *ne
kulterni* people from foreign lands and they correct me usefully
enough on the (sometimes disastrous) impact an international (and
English-based, hein?) thug Kultur has had on their language and the
Geist undt Lebens-Welt of their people.

I dunno, by "meneer" looks like a surly and passive-aggressive mumble
of the old and more respectful usage, a false reconciliation of
Kamerad/Tovarish with the old ways forced upon Western Europe by
American anti-Communism.

Meneer is a sneer which partaketh in that which it abandons.

In fine, dear boy, "don't compete with me", as meneer Dijsktra said,
especially in making a mountain out of a molehill.

 

[spinoza1111]

<snip bad acid trip>

You can't use "void main()"
; main returns float.


Heer should not be capitalised. Capitalised "Heer" refers to God,

Interesting! Was that the case in older books? I'm pretty sure that
there the intent was to enforce a social distinction, but I can
understand that Dutch is not German, and that the good Dutch didn't
want upper class twittery to control.

Is my theory correct, that this is postwar Dutch. I would be genuinely
interested to know, gnädiger Herr.

which is probably not your intention when you address Willem.

No, it wasn't.

 

[Colonel Harlan Sanders]

Are we done here yet? Nilges has been being unpersuadable on Usenet for
a *long* time. Nothing suggests that this is going to be the time he
finally seeks treatment for whatever he did to ruin his life. Arguing
with him does nothing. So far as I can tell, if people would just ignore
him and let him be, this would be an extremely good solution for
everything

Sure.

 

[spinoza1111]

Yes.  I made one attempt to get the publisher to address the technical
errors, they were unwilling to pay an amount I thought reasonable at the
time for the service, I wrote up a page documenting it and forgot about
it.

This was malfeasance. If you post something that's cited, it's your
responsibility to keep it up to date.

It was also greed, and an exaggerated opinion of your worth.

Seriously, until Nilges started this stuff up again, I didn't even *know*
that there'd ever been a fourth edition of that stupid book.  I had no
interest in the topic.  As time passed and people stopped recommending
Schildt's books, and thus readers of those books stopped showing up
confused in comp.lang.c, it dropped completely off my radar.


And again, to amplify:  I had no clue that anyone was linking to the
page.  In fact, if you'd asked me if I had a page on the topic, I woulda
guessed that I used to but that it had been lost during site organization
at some point.  I had no idea it was still there, let alone still in
any way relevant to any of this.

Plausible deniability...sleazy. Actually, I don't believe you. I
believe instead you were gratified to be cited as an authority when
the wikipedia page appeared in 2006.

As to whether it's "trivia", I don't think a consistent, in-every-example,
failure to use getc() or getchar() correctly, as well as a precisely
false explanation of EOF, is "trivial" for a newbie C programmer.  Neither
is failing to mention struct padding.

As Dr McClean has pointed out but in my own words, you're criticising
an example or illustration. You rarely discuss the surrounding text,
and your main() point, your "main point", confuses the needs of the OS
with the programming language. Those two concerns need to be
separated.

It is true that a program with a void main needs to be trivially
changed if ported to a hosted environment; but because Windows doesn't
use the return outside of a command in a Windows shell, this means
that the examples in the old editions weren't intended for hosted use,
period.

Are we done here yet?  Nilges has been being unpersuadable on Usenet for
a *long* time.  Nothing suggests that this is going to be the time he

Perhaps, but I've learned and relearned more than thee.

finally seeks treatment for whatever he did to ruin his life.  Arguing
with him does nothing.  So far as I can tell, if people would just ignore

"Please ignore him"...hmm

How ill this Taper burnes. Ha! Who comes heere?
I thinke it is the weakenesse of mine eyes
That shapes this monstrous Apparition.
It comes vpon me: Art thou any thing?
Art thou some God, some Angell, or some Diuell,
That mak'st my blood cold, and my haire to stare?
Speake to me, what thou art.

Ghost.
Thy euill Spirit Brutus?

Why does Shakespeare make a victim into an evil spirit?

him and let him be, this would be an extremely good solution for
everything -- Nilges would be devoting his considerable time and effort
trying to defame me, and no one else would have to deal with it.  Since

Hmm...yes, I should perhaps learn the art of automated defamation.
Peter, you defamed Herb Schildt through inaction for several years,
since once you were cited, you needed to realize that you were cited
in wikipedia as a responsible NPOV source.

none of the people in the corporate hierarchy above me are dumb enough

To the people in the corporate hierarchy, you're a dime a dozen.

to fall for his crap, this is pretty much the ideal output.  Let Nilges
lie about me all he wants; it's not hurting anyone.

Please put [NILGES] in subject lines when responding to him or threads
about him so people can killfile them more easily, and let's get back
to talking about C.  This has been about as amusing as it's going to
get unless he actually sues, and since that won't happen, we're done
here; this is now a sitcom in reruns, and there is No Point.

A lawsuit is one option. A published paper citing your malfeasance is
another. And so is a wikipedia Biographies of Living Persons notice
which will demonstrate a serious misuse of wikipedia in which you
actively or passively took part, which might make you unable to post
at wikipedia.

However, my goal isn't to harm you. It's merely to get you to admit
wrongdoing in re "The Matter of Herbert Schildt", and to stop using
the Internet for drive-by shootings.

 

[Peter Nilsson]

... So far as I can tell, if people would just ignore
him and let him be, ...

Well there's a stone from the glass house.

 

[spinoza1111]

Ad hominem is a bit more subtle than it might first appear. The ad
hominem fallacy is to assert that an argument is wrong or invalid
because of the person who is making it. However we do this all the
time. No-one's bothered what some schoolkid says about the deficit
reduction plan. If some central banker says "this is the only policy
which will reduce the deficit without substantial economic
dislocation", everyone sits up and takes notice.

"Seebs has no computer science qualifications" is a classic case of
the ad hominem fallacy that everyone makes, and in fact we have to

Not correct, with all due respect:
Malcolm, in your case what is due is high
And so I
Shall be circumspect.

Cf Introduction to Logic (Nicholas Rescher 1964 St Martins.)

"In an argumentum ad hominem the premises address themselves 'to the
man' instead of to the issue. This fallacy has three principal forms:
abusive, circumstantial and *tu quoque*"

"Sometimes, in the heat of debate, or simply as an unscrupulous way of
compensating for lack of proper evidence for his case, a man will make
a personal attack on his opponent instead of trying to disprove what
he says. An instance of this 'abusive argumentum ad hominem' is
'Nietzsche's view that all moral valuations are of aristocratic origin
is incorrect, for it is a well-known fact that Nietzsche was an
unhappy, bitter and neurotic man, who ultimately became insane'".

"An argument of this sort is of course highly improper and thoroughly
fallacious: the personal or moral character of a man has nothing
whatever to do [ceteris paribus] with the correctness or incorrectness
[validity or invalidity] of the arguments he advances. The virtuous
can make mistakes, for no man is exempt from error, and, on the other
hand, even the most wicked or wrong-headed individual can utter a
truth."

"'Circumstantial argumentum ad hominem' does not directly abuse the
opponent but undercuts his position by suggesting that he is serving a
personal interest in advancing his views and does not adhere to them
for properly evidential reasons. For example, the argument:
'gentlemen, this rent control bill is unworkable and unust, for Mr.
Apartment and the other men who have joined him in sponsoring it are
all tenants and rentors: there isn't a single landlord in the group'
fixes on the fact that members of the opposition are personally
involved in the matter under discussion, though this is actually
immaterial to the question of whether their recommendations are
'unworkable and unjust'".

"The 'tu quoque form of argumentum ad hominem' contends that the
opponent has also on another occasion held the view he now opposes, or
adopts the practice he now condemns (the Latin phrase *tu quoque*
means 'you also')."

Now, Rescher's discussion has some flaws as we'll see, but it's a lot
better than the Internet usage applied by Willem, which is "a strong
and strange argument showing scholarship against a popular guy
advanced by someone who writes like a fag and whose shit's all fucked
up".

First, my comments on Rescher in light of Copi, whose Introduction to
Logic superseded Rescher and which I used in teaching Phil 210.

I inserted "ceteris paribus" in square brackets in Rescher's because
"The personal or moral character of a man has nothing whatever to do
with the correctness or incorrectness of the arguments he advances" is
true "all other things being equal" (the meaning of "ceteris
paribus").

Rescher, unlike Copi, misses the fact that a bad man testifying in his
own defense will often lie. But in the abstract "ceteris paribus"
sense Rescher is right. Watson and Crick were bastards, but right on
DNA. Einstein was a good guy, right on the Special Theory, wrong
(perhaps) on the Copenhagen interpretation. Seebach is a buffoon but
correct in saying that the Linux C programmer shouldn't void main.

In refuting the "conspiracy theory" of JFK's assassination in his book
"Reclaiming History", former LA district attorney Vincent Bugliosi
does mention that many of the sources of alternate claims were louche
characters from the wild side of Dallas and New Orleans. But he uses
this only to show where they might lie to cover up their own bad
behavior. He also draws the conclusion that the major conspiracy
theorists were bad men because they concealed evidence which he has.
Oliver Stone's movie validly points out that it would be ad hominem to
globally mistrust hustlers, and Bugliosi knows this. Therefore, he
shows that the hustlers lie, not on their hustling, but about material
facts concerning the assassination. Similarly, Seebach lies about the
standard because it doesn't mandate int main(), it allows a hosted
implementation to expect something in the stack after the termination
of main().

Also, following Copi, I'd replace "correctness or incorrectness" with
"validity or invalidity". This is because the traditional logic of
Rescher is pre-scientific in the sense that it's a taxonomy and not a
theory without an organizing rule (like, sadly, Seebs' inchoate view
of C). Copi organizes his presentation of informal logic using the
modern notion of validity and invalidity based on modern propositional
logic, in which (the problems of material implication in modern logic
aside), any argument can be shown invalid when in fact its premises
are true and its conclusion false.

Now, what type of Rescher-AAH is meneer Willem charging me with?
Clearly the "abusive" form. He's not charging me with having a dog or
financial interest in the fight, and he's not charging me with *tu
quoque*.

But, if we apply a sequence of transformations to Rescher's example
(name, tense, and view), what do we get?

"Nilges' views on are incorrect, for it is a well-known fact that
Nilges is an unhappy, bitter and neurotic man, who is insane"

But that is a summary of the views of Seebach, the Kentucky Colonel,
et aliter, isn't it.

Whereas I don't start with an axiom "Seebach is a stalker". Instead,
that's a conclusion from a great deal of research.

Case closed.

make, because we can't give equal time to everyone who asserts
something. We have to weight the more worthy speakers.

But here we cannot. In fact, the appearance of worth is so rare that
when it appears, it talks like a fag and its shit's all fucked up, and
like Hypatia, she is stripped and beaten, and like Stravinsky's Chosen
One, forced to dance herself to death.

 

[Seebs]

Well there's a stone from the glass house.

I have him killfiled; I haven't yet got the tools to autokill any thread
he starts, or anything.

-s