Roger Pielke, Jr. writes:
Brad DeLong emailed me with a verbatim version of comments entered on my post about his attack-by-proxy on me by someone named “brad”. I had assumed that “brad” was not Professor Brad DeLong because “brad“‘s comments were so sophmoric and inane, but apparently they are one and the same person.
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A comment shows up:
Roger, I find […]
There are three ways to explore the world: philosophy (when we speculate without actually checking), science (when we try to test models based on speculations), religion (when we build dogmas directly from speculation and pass the testing anyway).
Gods need worshipers, culture needs creators, laws need execution. Otherwise they are all dead.
@ john b
In some kind of idealised Platonic world where all discussion is based on syllogisms and indisputable facts, ad-hominem would be a fallacy. In a world where people actually lie about the facts all of the time, knowing whether a person is credible is just as important as the logical consistency of what they say.