Over at Dubito Ergo Sum, Tom Foss has a lovely post about a bizarre notion:
This would make for a great game of spot the fallacy, wouldn’t it? Farley lists all these qualifications, but none of them are “noted anti-spam crusader” or “longtime anti-bigotry activist,” not that those would be excuses either. See, none of these qualifications are inconsistent with “abusive […] anti-feminists, MRAs, or all-round assholes” or “annoying and irritating”3. It’s possible to be an Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning comedian and also be an annoying asshole who delights in baiting feminists with disingenuous arguments, just as it’s possible to be a Ph.D. biochemist who believes in intelligent design. This is a pro hominem argument, an argument from false authority, that these people’s lofty credentials make them somehow incapable of being bigots, jerks, trolls, abusers, or just antagonistic assholes to specific groups of people.
You see, Tim Farley wrote a post suggesting that a group of people shouldn’t be listed on The Block Bot, even at Level 3 (Annoying), because they have done certain things:
- A Research Fellow for a U.S. think-tank who is also deputy editor of a national magazine, and author of numerous books
- A Consultant for Educational Programs for a U.S. national non-profit
- A long-time volunteer for the same national non-profit
- An organizer for a state-level skeptic group in the US
- A past president of a state-level humanist group in the US
- A former director of a state-level atheist group in the US
- An Emmy and Golden Globe award winning comedian
- A TED Fellow
- Co-founder of a well known magazine of philosophy and author of several books
- A philosopher, writer and critic who has authored several books
Now, as someone who has some of those people blocked myself, and who was already shaking my head at a few people who claimed to want to sue the BBC over the NewsNight segment on The Block Bot, some of those jumped out at me. And while Tom’s post does a very good job of talking about why Farley’s reasoning on this list is fallacious (seriously, go read it), I’m firmly in the camp of providing positive evidence as well. I tend to agree with Amanda Marcotte that making people look at this stuff is one of the more important things we can do. So, without further ado, let’s tackle one of these. Continue reading “A TED Fellow”