The fallacy that I choose is Ad Hominem. This fallacy is when someone decides to insult another person based on their looks or history or personality or whatever they can think of in order to weaken whatever argument the other person is saying. An example would be if two friends were talking and it is at first just a normal conversation. They then start to get into a heated argument about whatever they were discussing prior to arguing. After arguing for a while if one side starts to feel like they lose they might start to do a Ad Hominem fallacy to make the others arguments sound worse. They could say something like “What would you know anyway? Every time we get our report cards back your grades are worse than mine by a lot.” By bringing up the others grades the person is hoping to make the others argument sound worse because what would someone who has worse grades know. This only happens because the person insulting the other is incapable of coming up with a good counter argument to their argument and they do not want to lose the argument, so they must resort to making insults to undermine their argument.
One thought on “Alvin Tan Discussion Board #7”
Hello Alvin, I tend to see the fallacy, Ad Hominem mostly on TV. Particularly, on rap battle TV shows, or in stand-up comedy. A lot of insults are thrown at people based on looks and behavior when it comes to comedy and shows.