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Laurence Tennant
Personal blog · laurencetennant.com/bondsphilosophyscience
Laurence Tennant's personal blog at laurencetennant.com covers philosophy and science. Since 2014, 20 different Hacker News readers have linked it 31 times, most often “The Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-14, and you can follow it by feed.
31mentions?
20HN people?
2014–2026first – last linked?
Too few sampled comments (26) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this site mainly for 'The Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy', which argues that criticising a speaker is not automatically ad hominem. Also cited are its Bayes/Yudkowsky critiques and the 'bdksucks' essay.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 26 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy6 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2018-11-05
- Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2014-11-07
- The Cult of Bayes' Theorem2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-12-10
What Hacker News says?
MIRI is basically an organization surrounding Yudkowsky's cult. He's a senior "research fellow" who hasn't published anything in respected peer review generals, and generally holds some pretty questionable beliefs. http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html
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on “Introducing OpenAI”Submitted The Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy as a story · 10 points
HN discussionAd hominem fallacy fallacy: http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html Pointing out that someone is not trustworthy when considering whether or not to trust their conclusions is not ad-hom.
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on “What's Really Warming the World?”Submitted Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy as a story · 2 points
HN discussionGP was addressing the argument. Using the word "you" in the reply does not make it ad hominem. (For more than you ever wanted to know about this, The Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy covers it exhaustively and entertainingly: https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html )
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on “Correctness and composability bugs in the Julia ecosystem”Submitted Why Cars are Crazy as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe concept you're looking for is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy , a broader form of ad hominem. Also, they didn't say it's bad because it's from reddit, the statement could be interpreted as saying that it's bad, and also that it's from reddit. Imagine http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html applied to the genetic fallacy, and you'll see what I mean.
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on “1/999999999999999999999998999999999999999999999999”Submitted Your Baloney Detection Kit Sucks as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> I cannot judge to which degree these theses are bullshit. Go the link, go to references, read about them. I'll outline the gist: Most of what Yudkowsky says is extremely sci-fi, no real basis in scientific fact, but stretching the current technological progress to the point where his opinions on things (stuff like transhumanism, singularity) can be justified. What he's preaching isn't science. Certainly not rigoro…
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on “Bayes's Theorem: What's the Big Deal?”Submitted The Cult of Bayes' Theorem as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI think Stephen Bond did some excellent takedowns of the identity politics that has arisen around Bayes' Theorem back in the day. I wonder where he's at these days. The Cult of Bayes' Theorem http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html > One of Yudkowsky's constant refrains, appropriating language from Frank Herbert's Dune, is "Politics is the Mind-killer". Under this rallying cry, Lesswrong insiders attempt t…
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on “Bayes's Theorem: What's the Big Deal?”Shame they didn't map some of the Fighting Fantasy books ( http://www.fightingfantasy.com/ ) or Steve Jackson's Sorcery Series ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcery ! - now made into a series of mobile apps http://www.inklestudios.com/sorcery/ ). Jackson & Livingstone really pushed this format far more than the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. Most of all I remember "Creature of Havoc" ( https://en.wikipedia.org…
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on “Maps reveal the structures of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books”I don't think so. Parent asserts, > this movement appears to be a kind of hyper-empiricism informed by cognitive psychology, AI research, and Bayesian statistics. Opening intro from wiki for Logical Positivism asserts, > Logical positivism and logical empiricism, which together formed neopositivism, was a movement in Western philosophy that embraced verificationism, an approach that sought to legitimize philosophica…
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on “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today”I’m going to hijack this comment to repost a link to “The Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy,” a favorite essay of mine. Anybody who thinks this article is an ad hominem should read it. It’s short and fun. https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html
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on “Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers”It’s the “ad hominem fallacy fallacy”—in a nutshell, thinking that abuse (or mere criticism, in this case) is an ad hominem attack. I love this article on the subject: https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html Ironically, the GP is ad hominem; as the above link says, “while he pretends to deal with A's argument, in using the term "ad hominem" incorrectly, B is in fact trying to dismiss the argument by imputin…
Comment linking /bonds/adhominem.html
on “Thought Leaders and Chicken Sexers”It wasn't ad hominem. He had addressed the argument, and refers to that, before adding that Popper was an egocentric jerk. That might be abusive, but it's not ad hominem (because it's in addition, not instead of, a rebuttal of the argument). See the excellent "Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy": https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html
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on “Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress”> For something to be an ad hominem you simply need to address the speaker rather than what was said No, this is a common misconception. Addressing the speaker is part of it but is not sufficient by itself. People who are quick to claim “ad hominem!” have been getting this wrong basically forever, so please feel free to educate yourself by reading this excellent post: https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html…
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on “EFF is leaving X”> Appeal to grossness is fallacious. I've already said this once in this thread. Stephen Bond says it better than I can: https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/bdksucks.html
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on “Political betting site PredictIt to shut down after CFTC withdraws approval”> The number of logical fallacies at play are impressive Stephen Bond says it better than I can: https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/bdksucks.html . > Seems like you have a rather rose colored view Sorry, no, the law isn't my "view," it's just the law. . > and fall into a Fallacy Of Expertise to believe that because the law was "crafted" over many years by "professionals" that is somehow makes it infallible I didn't s…
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on “Political betting site PredictIt to shut down after CFTC withdraws approval”http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html
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on “Vanishing Point: How to disappear in America without a trace (2012)”There were dozens of such series in the late '80s and early '90s. My first guess is the "Lone Wolf" series mentioned above (launched 1984). It has a grimdark flavor; if you remember creepy illustrations, I'd look there first. Other options on my bookshelf include "Fighting Fantasy" (including the famous "Creature of Havoc") — https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/creatureofhavoc.html Or "Middle-Earth Quest" (1985-ish) —…
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on “Choose Your Own Adventure”I also had a similar idea a few years ago for a CTF challenge, coming at it from a "modern Caesar cipher" perspective: https://laurencetennant.com/unicode-shift-cipher Also a crude "modern Bacon cipher" using Punycode characters as the B's and ASCII-range characters as the A's.
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on “Rot8000”Yes, the "appeal to authority = fallacy" can be employed to shut down legitimate arguments, as well as the "ad hominem = fallacy". There is a great clarification here: "The ad hominem fallacy fallacy" EDIT: debunking -> clarification https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html
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on “Logical Fallacies”Please read "the ad hominem fallacy fallacy": http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html
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on “How the FBI made the world a more dangerous place by shutting down Silkroad 2.0”> No, he's not right because his entire argument was a straw man Respectfully, there is no straw man there. [A straw man is when someone attempts to replace your argument with something else that's easier to argue with]( https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/bdksucks.html ). He claimed that you are making the claim that someone can merely opt out of regulation by deciding that it does not apply to them. That is what it…
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on “Some sketchy behavior coming out of the SEC recently”It would be ad hominem if I said that they are nutcases with bad English, and therefore their arguments were invalid. It would be an appeal to authority if I said that the Drosten has received Germany's Federal Cross of Merit (twice), is co-discoverer of SARS-CoV (the previous one), has researched MERS-CoV, and has been called "one of the world’s foremost experts on coronaviruses" by Science magazine, and therefore…
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on “Many scientists citing two scandalous Covid-19 papers ignore their retractions”No, but next time please learn about what an ad hominem fallacy is[0], because you just committed one. [0] https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html
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on “The Debian Publicity Team will no longer post on X/Twitter”His point is simple. Argument poster was wrong, isn't being helpful, and has a pattern of doing this. By the by, there was no ad hominem there. Ad hominem is when you insult someone as a way to avoid what they're saying. What this person is saying has not been avoided. Probably put the fallacies away: https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/bdksucks.html
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on “Ask HN: What does a developer need to know to build their own Lisp from scratch?”Useful reading: http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html The post you're responding to is making the argument "Claiming that you aren't unbiased does not make you unbiased. Trying to be unbiased does not necessarily make you unbiased." That's certainly not ad hominem at all.
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on “Women, Tech Conferences and the Bullshit Surrounding It”I can't do better than this post: https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html ... and to say that most instances in which ad-hom is invoked on HN result in stupid debates about whether an argument is (a) actually ad-hom and (b) fallaciously ad-hom (a subtlety most invokers on HN don't really grok). I think we already have a culture that rejects personalized arguments, and "ad hominem", which gets deployed becau…
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on “'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam”
