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rules for thee, but not for me (lemmy.ca)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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To be clear, not talking about this community, obviously ๐Ÿ˜›.

What's the point of writing down rules, if mods just do what they want? But I suppose that's the risk you take when you call someone a liar in a small community; they might be a mod.

Edit: I'm not trying to say that mods suck, they perform a useful and often thankless job. Just that it can be difficult for small communities to get a healthy number of good mods, which can become a problem.

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[โ€“] 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Ad hominem attacks generally result in bans in most communities from what I've seen. This is the way it should be.

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  • [โ€“] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That's not an ad hominem, though. If someone says something, and you dismiss it and call them a liar, thats an ad hominem. If they tell a bunch of lies, and you label them a liar, that's not an ad hominem. That's accurately describing the person based on their choices.

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  • [โ€“] -5 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Calling someone a liar is absolutely and always an ad hominem, because it labels their character rather than pursuing their argument.

    You can call their words lies and attack those words and their intent, but once you start labelling you are looking to subvert it and attack character by assuming malicious intent.

    Which you're free to assume, but that doesn't excuse you from the fallacy.

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  • [โ€“] [S] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I'm ok with that.

    If someone repeatedly and probably tells untruths, and then doubles down when confronted with evidence, I'm ok making that leap to calling them a liar.

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  • [โ€“] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It's okay to be okay with it, it's even better when there is convincing evidence. I'm just saying you can skip the fallacy by attacking their argument/lie, which you have to do regardless if you want to conject that they are liar.

    However it still implies that they are a liar in some habitual or further-reaching sense. This is not easy to prove. Did they lie before? What were those lies and how can you prove them so? Will they lie in the future? How can you know for sure? These are the questions that make it a fallacious label as it frames character rather than argument, and it just seems a bit ... dull and irrelevant, when you can attack the lie just as easily.

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  • [โ€“] 0 points 2 years ago

    We're pretty much all strangers online, correct?

    If something is posted that is provably false, it is provably false. It doesn't matter if the poster regularly posts accurate things about another subject. The post would still be provably false, even if the poster was normally truthful about barley.

    Imo, if someone wants to be seen as honest, the onus is on them to act honestly. If you act in a way that's dishonest, people will likely acknowledge that you're acting in a way that's dishonest. If their only experience of you is through you being dishonest, it only makes sense that they'll think that you're dishonest.

    No one is owed being considered as an honest and trustworthy person. If you do lie, you should expect the people who you lied to to no longer trust you. Why would they? That's not a reasonable expectation to have.

    Being considered as an honest person is one of those things that you kind of have to do to earn. If you act dishonestly, it would be silly to expect other people to still consider you as an honest person. You don't get to mislead people and then become upset when they don't believe you anymore. That isn't rational.

    It's pretty easy to avoid being labaled as a liar online, tbh. Verify your stuff before you post it. Don't double down against solid evidence, especially without any of your own. Don't make stuff up. Accept and acknowledge that you can be wrong sometimes, and strive for the correct answer instead of the one that "wins" the argument for you.

    Misinformation is dangerous, and it deserves to be called out. Misinformation can cause a lot more harm than someone occasionally being called a "liar" online by a random stranger.

    I would also argue that most people probably haven't really had problems with being called a "liar" online.

    If the misinformation is about how many seeds an orange has, people probably won't care too much, as it doesn't really cause a lot of harm. That type of misinformation usually just gets passively corrected.

    If the misinformation ends with someone else suffering, it will likely get called out harshly, and probably deservedly so.

    I don't know what's happened to cause you to dislike people being called liars to this extent, but there is a good reason for people doing that sometimes. I'm not going to stalk your page or comments, so idk where you personally fall on that. Calling someone a "liar" is similar to calling someone "dishonest".

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  • [โ€“] 5 points 2 years ago

    Sorry, but that's crap. Questioning the credibility of a liar is not automatically fallacious reasoning or an ad hominem. Attacking their character instead of arguing against their points is an ad hominem fallacy. Pointing out the consistency of lies from a single source and then extrapolating out to question the validity of future statements of fact is rational, logical, and reasonable. It's perfectly valid to label a liar when they repeatedly tell lies, as long as you can support the label by proving they are lying.

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