We all know that debates happen, from the smallest of things such as favorite burger joint to the largest of things such as those involving politics. However, what a lot of people don't know is that debating is good - up until fallacies are introduced. Some include the "straw man" argument - that is, attacking a position that the opponent doesn't really hold in order to strengthen your own position; the "false dilemma" - that is, unnecessarily narrowing down an argument to two positions and setting the other up as inherently evil (though many argue against such a thing actually existing); and "circular arguments" - that is, restating a position while making it look like an argument. Which one is your least favorite? Mine is the "ad hominem" argument, which attacks the debater rather than the arguments being put forth. It is the most demeaning and dehumanizing of all the fallacies (not to mention the easiest one to combine with most other fallacies) and makes true debate impossible.
I argue the point of the debate lol if you're going to attack me instead of the subject I instantly end the argument
Ad hominem is truly weak. It's the "I'm out of ammo or the target is too hard for me to hit!" of responses/attacks. Like countering "I think medicine is helpful" with "I'm not going to just take that as truth from someone who can't even do long division", like the equivalent of when you're being roasted by all your friends and you're out of counter-jokes so you just start mocking their laughs. It really just shows that you're done. The other fallacy I dislike most, I don't know what it's called but here's an example. About 5 years ago, Bill Nye had a public debate with Ken Ham (young-Earth creationist) regarding the age of Earth and the universe taking the obvious sides: Nye in the billions of years corner and Ham in the thousands of years corner. Bill Nye spent the entire debate teaching "this is how isotopes decay and how we learned it" "this is how fast topsoil accumulates and how it's layered and how we learned those things" "this is how fossils are formed and how long it takes them to form and how we learned that", while 100% of Ham's replies were "there are plenty of young-Earth creationists who are smart. The man who invented the smoke detector, for instance. Lots of doctors, too. All of my friends. Are you saying they're stupid and their faith is harmful?" to which Nye could only reply with "I said nothing about their faith or their intellect, they're all good at the things that they do, in fact I believe religion is generally helpful to society, stop putting words in my mouth to write your own narrative about me, by the way this is how relativity explains the origin, age, and fate of the universe because that what we both said we're coming here to discuss". TL;DR when people ignore their opponent entirely and just talk about their one secure impression and can't actually engage in an exchange. (PS: That debate can probably be found on Youtube, and either side of any debate can be the one to utilize that fallacy).
