Lynn Pettis - Wednesday, January 17, 2018 8:50 PM
You've misunderstood me. Tom accused me of not knowing any SQL. You accused me of being hard headed. You also accused me of thinking I was always right and the rest of the world is wrong. All of these are accusations against a person. Yours are accusations against my character. His is an accusation against my underlying expertise on a subject. None are attacks on an argument. All are ad hominem.
Accusing someone of being a "git" is precisely the same kind of thing. It's claim about someone's character, and an ad hominem But at least I first made the effort to engage Tom's absurd argument and demonstrate that it was plainly absurd, and from the nature of the absurdity thus established, I concluded that Tom was being a git. You, on the other hand, have engaged in ad hominem as the entirety of your argument per se, rather than drawing it as a conclusion.