Talk:Appeal to ridicule/Archives/2017

Merger proposal

This article, Appeal to ridicule should should not (see below) be merged with Reductio ad absurdum. I am not simply going ahead and doing it, because some important difference between the two articles might be eluding me. If so, please point it out. Otherwise, I will merge the two articles in a couple of weeks.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 05:15, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

I can't see any similarities except that one aspect of Reductio ad absurdum uses Appeal to ridicule. In any case, they are clearly different. You can ridicule ideas without exaggerating, and you can exaggerate without ridiculing. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:40, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Reductio ad absurdum is a logic that can be used correctly while Appeal to ridicule is plain fallacy. I see nothing in common within the two articles. They should not be merged. Maybe mentioning within each other that they are not the same even though their names sound similar might be useful. Koboushi (talk) 08:26, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely not. If you've failed to understand logic, don't edit articles to make them reflect your confusion.

In a reductio, you argue from a premise A you oppose to a conclusion C you believe all parties to the argument will accept is absurd (for instance, an actual contradiction). If due to your argument other parties change their beliefs and say A is absurd, it is only because they have accepted your argument that A implies C, they already agreed C is absurd, and so they inferred that A cannot be true. The standard counter to this is to deny that you've successfully shown that A implies C. If they surprise you by saying they don't agree C is absurd in the first place, then your argument breaks down.

An appeal to ridicule instead simply mocks the opponent's position (or their way of arguing, or them personally) in an attempt to make other parties believe your opponent's position is a joke. It is, as the article already states, a combination of appeal to emotion and irrelevancy, rather than an actual reasoned argument. It gives your opponent and audience no rational reason to concede that the opponent's position is ridiculous. 128.187.112.20 (talk) 22:22, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Hob Gadling and Koboushi for explaining the differences between the two. I stand corrected, and I appreciate learning this important distinction between the two terms. 128.187.112.20 - I also appreciate your (mostly) very well-written explanation. However, keep in mind that one of the problems we have at Wikipedia is the alienation of editors, particularly relatively new volunteers, when their sincere efforts are met with ridicule and scorn. I hope you don't berate other editors in a similar manner, i.e., "If you've failed to understand logic, don't edit articles to make them reflect your confusion." We need all the good editors we can attract and retain.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 11:02, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm glad you are beginning to see the distinction; based on your statement I'm reverting the merge tags. Advising you not to edit what you admittedly don't understand is not ridicule, scorn, or berating. You've been here 9 years and made thousands of edits, and likely don't need hand-holding. If I, as a non-psychologist, were to start placing merge requests between different personality disorders (e.g. schizotypal and schizoaffective) while saying "these seem to be the same to me, maybe there's some difference that's eluding me" then you would rightly ask me to avoid being disruptive by seeking first to understand the subject before making such edits. As an aside, in reference to your edit changing others' indentation on this talk page, comments should be indented one more level than the comment they are replying to, not one more level than whoever spoke last, so as to have threaded rather than flat discussions; all three users replied to you directly, so they were correct to put their replies at the same indentation level. Prodicus (talk) 20:12, 1 September 2017 (UTC)