Coopertition - Not As Easy As It Looks!

[ThirteenOfTwo]

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

Though I probably shouldn't dignify your repetition of baseless attacks with a response, I'll simply point out that I'm pretty sure I have an adequate academic background to make reasonably strong statements about engineering, law and policy. What's more, I suspect I have as much FRC experience as you do—as a team member, mentor and lead official. There's a traceable lineage between rules I co-developed and the past and present FVC, FTC and VRC competitions. I've built a big flying robot, consulted on a solar car, and worked in enough actual engineering positions to know my way around a production line or design shop in a few different industries—and there's stuff I directly developed in thousands of vehicles and several factories. Moreover, I've worked for governments on actual technical codes and policies—and am reputedly quite good at it, at least according to real-world experts. While I'm impressed by the fact that games you designed are played on tabletops all over Western New York, I didn't dismiss your expertise as a substitute for a cogent argument.

So let's not make this about us as individuals, and agree to avoid the personal attacks in future.

Your post is otherwise cogent and well developed, but these last two paragraphs seriously taint your credibility as someone whose moral beliefs should be agreed with. Your mistake is one that I see made all too often, and it's really frustrating for me when it occurs.

Essentially, you're making ad hominem attacks just as much as he was--perhaps more so, in that you actually call your shot by declaring you are aware the nature of such arguments before proceeding to make one. Listing your own accomplishments in a way like this is generally intended not just as a defensive response but also as a way of defamation, as in "you aren't as good as me": see the passive-agressive comment about tabletop games.

Then you turn around and say that the argument should not be personal. Right after making the argument personal. Essentially, all that a paragraph like this says to a reader like me is "I'm better than you, and if you disagree then that's an ad hominem attack, so I get the last word. Ha."

In the future, a better response would be to dismiss his ad hominem claims by pointing them out for what they are without bothering to refute them. If his technique is already fallacious, the factual correctness of what he is saying about you is of no import.

My two cents.