One method I’ve seen no mention of is distraction from the essence of an argument with pointless pedantry. The classical form is something along the lines of “My opponent used X as an example of Y. As an expert in X, which my opponent is not, I can assure you that X is not an example of Y. My opponent clearly has no idea how Y works and everything he says about it is wrong.” which only holds true of X and Y are in the same domain of knowledge.
A good example: Eliezer said in the first paragraph that a geologist could tell a pebble from the beach from a driveway. As a geologist, I know that most geologists, myself included, honestly couldn’t tell the difference. Most pebbles found in concrete, driveways and so forth are taken from rivers and beaches, so a pebble that looks like a beach pebble wouldn’t be suprising to find in someone’s driveway. That doesn’t mean that Eliezer’s point is wrong, since he could have just as easily said “a pebble from a mountaintop” or “a pebble from under the ocean” and the actual content of this post wouldn’t have changed a bit.
In a more general sense, this an example of assuming an excessively convenient world to fight the enemy arguments in, but I think this specific form bears pointing out, since it’s a bit less obvious than most objections of that sort.
One method I’ve seen no mention of is distraction from the essence of an argument with pointless pedantry. The classical form is something along the lines of “My opponent used X as an example of Y. As an expert in X, which my opponent is not, I can assure you that X is not an example of Y. My opponent clearly has no idea how Y works and everything he says about it is wrong.” which only holds true of X and Y are in the same domain of knowledge.
A good example: Eliezer said in the first paragraph that a geologist could tell a pebble from the beach from a driveway. As a geologist, I know that most geologists, myself included, honestly couldn’t tell the difference. Most pebbles found in concrete, driveways and so forth are taken from rivers and beaches, so a pebble that looks like a beach pebble wouldn’t be suprising to find in someone’s driveway. That doesn’t mean that Eliezer’s point is wrong, since he could have just as easily said “a pebble from a mountaintop” or “a pebble from under the ocean” and the actual content of this post wouldn’t have changed a bit.
In a more general sense, this an example of assuming an excessively convenient world to fight the enemy arguments in, but I think this specific form bears pointing out, since it’s a bit less obvious than most objections of that sort.