I have never claimed that you had nothing persuasive or informed on the subject, either; quite the contrary, I have honestly asked you to improve the quality of your discourse so that I could learn more . If this last post is any indicator, you have already been somewhat persuaded; you didn’t say “Bill, you are a drooling moron beneath contempt.” That’s a start.

If you fill in more of your assumed premises with information from your decades of networking experience, or even links to where you or others have done so in the past (rather than ad homs), perhaps you’ll persuade more people to come to your side. Even if you invented the internet and I’ve never turned one on until this week, your opinion won’t hold much weight for me until and unless you can connect it (in writing or via a link) to some facts about networking.

No ad homs, no appeals to authority, and no hasty g’s. Then, maybe you’ll persuade somebody.

If you want to know why I consider the Snowe-Dorgan and Markey amendments short-sighted and destructive, you have only to read my blog. If you want me to write a customized summary for you, you’ll have to do more to motivate me that to say I’m a meanie. I’ve seen this type of critcism before, and it doesn’t impress me.

It’s an easily provable fact that the vast majority of people writing in favor of these regulations don’t understand their technical or economic significance, but only to people who do. And that’s the problem. We’re all entitled to hold opinions, but our opinions don’t hold equal weight.

“[T]he character of an individual is logically irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of what that person says, or to the correctness or incorrectness of that person’s reasoning. To contend that proposals are bad, or assertions false, because they are proposed or asserted by ‘radicals’ or ['assholes'] is a typical example of the fallacy ad hominem, abusive.

Abusive premises are irrelevant; they may nevertheless persuade by the psychological process of transference. Where an attitude of disapproval toward a person can be evoked, the field of emotional disapproval may be extended so as to include disagreement with the assertions that person makes.” (p. 122)

In other words, attempts to discredit people based on hostile rhetoric will generally qualify as ad homs.

Bennett, you claim to substantiate your claims that X, Y, and Z are morons and liars. Essentially, you are claiming that what I have identified as premises are actually proven conclusions. They are neither your conclusions nor are they substantiated.

Surely, you’re not spending all this online energy with the primary intent to prove claims like “David Isenberg is an asshole and a moron.” Quite the contrary, your regularly personalized attacks on net neutrality proponents are consistently couched within calls not to enact neutrality legislation. (Exception: the above comment. The personalized attack therein is couched in a defense against the claim that you make too many personalized attacks.)

If you’re willing to claim that the ultimate goal of your posts—your ultimate conclusions—is to show that people are stupid, then you are right that I have premise and conclusion reversed. Yet even if you prove that all of your opponents are morons–even if you pull us all into an educational testing lab and our collective average IQ is 64–using this demonstrated conclusion in building the case that we are wrong about network neutrality is still a fallacious ad hom. You are still building your “don’t regulate” case, at least in part, on attacks on other people. Even if the attacks are carefully proven, they are still ad hominems.

(If I thought ad homs were worthwhile, I’d say, “Who doesn’t understand logic now?” But I would never say such a thing!)

Additionally, if these claims that X is dumb and Y is a liar really are your conclusions, they are not proven very well, to say the least. If your conclusion on June 8 really is that “fear and smear is what [Lessig] does for a living,” the premises in that post are wholly inadequate to demonstrate the claim. Considering that you cite, at best, two examples (the second being an appeal to the authority of commenters on Lessig’s blog), this is a fallacy of hasty generalization.

Ditto the attacks on David Isenberg; “asshole” and “moron” are large claims, and these small examples come nowhere close to the requisite number of examples. The AeA post is entirely dedicated to bemoaning this single research report, making it an even hastier generalization. And you never, in any way, substantiate the claim that Jon Stewart sells “the cynicism of the stupid to the clueless.” If these really are your intended conclusions, you have done a terrible job proving them.

But even if they are proven to be true, all these arguments stand as examples of ad hominem attacks in the broader network neutrality debate. Combined with the examples in the link (and the response to this blog post, to boot), I’ve established that “Bennett has a pattern of dropping ad hominems which reaches back years.” That, sir, is a conclusion about a person, and one that I have demonstrated.

Once I realized that was my thesis, I decided it would be of little value to PK’s readers and brought it to an appropriate place for demonstrating it–my own blog. (When I want to shamelessly plug my blog using PK’s blog, I’ll login to the blog and make a real post, and I’ll announce that it’s been cross-posted here.) Once it’s personal, why pretend that it still has value to the NN debate? Remember: attacks on the person (“Bill Herman has no brain” or “Richard Bennett drops too many ad homs”) do not affect the truth or falsehood of a conclusion (“Congress should enact legislation to protect network neutrality.”) That’s why I wrote this post in the first place, and I repeat my plea presently.

Listen, Richard, you know a lot about networks and the networking business. I’d like to know more about why a reasonable person would apply that knowledge to building a case against network neutrality. You can do more to help this cause. Rather than urging everyone to ignore you (I cite your resume in a positive way), I’m begging you to use your knowledge of networking to engage the substantive debate. Don’t call me dumb. Don’t call Isenberg an asshole. Don’t accuse Lessig of wearing white shoes after Labor Day. Demonstrate why network neutrality is a bad idea using the facts of the case, gleaned from your years of experience.

Then, I’ll either respectfully respond to your arguments or, if you convince me, concede. I’ll retract my forthcoming Federal Communications Law Journal article on the subject. I will even log on to the PK boards to amplify the volume of my conversion.

Let me see if I can advance your education by one little bit today. An “ad hominem” argument has the form: “X is a moron or a liar, therefore X’s argument is wrong.” An argument that has the form: “X is wrong about this because of that, and that other, and that still more other, therefore X is a moron or a liar” is not an ad hominem argument.

There are subtle differences in these two constructions, which any person with a brain can see. Because you don’t see them, well, QED.

PS: I liked that business about moving the cat-fight here from PK in order to save PK from nastiness. There is no debate on PK at all except when I comment there, so it’s obvious that your real motive is just to get some attention for your blog. Well, here it is.