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Comment by lvs | Hacker News Reader

i don't totally disagree with the article, but it's probably worth pointing out that this guy is apparently a "proud homophobe." great. one might question his judgement after reading this drivel.

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2010/05/washington...

http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/defense.html

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I find the trend in our society that "if you say anything I disagree with, everything you say is invalid" to be very disturbing (the corollary of "if you agree with something important to me then I will forgive much, if not all, bad behavior" seems to be true as well). McCarthyism in any form is evil, yet people will hold up their own beliefs and say "this is the only right way to believe". I fear what this will do to important rights like free speech. It doesn't matter if you have the "right" if cultural pressure squashes any ability to use it.

This is a textbook ad hominem attack. Although I have very little respect for homophobes, this doesn't automatically torpedo every other argument a person makes. (Especially when it is on a completely unrelated subject).

Both of these are questions of judgement and rational thinking. Should one take career advice from a bigot? I leave it up to you.

How is that relevant???

Just because you have very extremist and incorrect views about something outside your profession, doesn't mean that you are automatically incorrect when talking about your profession.

I didn't say he's automatically incorrect, and I think if you reread my comment, that should be clear. I do think a person's subjective judgement on serious issues are relevant to their subjective judgement on any one issue.

I understand your point and I'm in no way advocating homophobia, but isn't your point still ad hominem?

Everyone wants to dismiss this as an ad-hominem attack but it's still a valuable datapoint. At best maybe it would make one more skeptical of the arguments put forward by katz because I think even the brightest person can be easily persuaded by a written piece or incorporate its "facts" into their beliefs and not pursue further scrutiny of it.

No, people should be skeptical of arguments made for things and pursue further scrutiny of them regardless of the author's views and opinions in other non-relevant fields.

Not that I'm supporting his other radical views but this is an ad-hominem attack by definition and his views on irrelevant subject matter should not affect, in any way, how you interpret his opinion here.

I agree. Ideally we scrutinize everything but we don't. If the guy believed the earth was flat you would take whatever else he said with a grain of salt.

I don't think any of this has much relevance to the article, but there ended up being quite an ironic twist to his proud homophobia: http://www.studlife.com/news/faculty-news/2010/10/11/son-of-...

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