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Ad hoc

Masterhawk

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Ad hoc is latin for "for this". In debate, it's basically making excuses.

In the scientific world, a good theory not only correctly models how something works (or happened) but can also be used to make future discoveries. Ad hocs do not do this and are meant as an escape hatch to get out of a failed argument.

The problem was perfectly summed up by Carl Sagan with the short story about the "dragon in my garage"


What's especially irksome is that when you've talked your opponent into a corner, they pull this trick on you. One common variant is if the experts disagree with you, discredit the experts by calling them shills or close minded.

Here are some examples:

Socialist: Capitalism is unstable and will collapse soon

Me: Then why does history show that your system ends up being the one that collapses?

Socialist: It wasn't real socialism (bonus points if they praised it as a working example of socialism beforehand) / Capitalists sabotaged it / Gorbachev ruined everything



Creationist: All the proof points towards the fact that the world is only 6,000 years old.

Me: What about the starlight problem?

Creationist: Light was faster in the past.



Climate change denier: Global warming is fake news

Me: 97% of scientists say otherwise

denier: They were obviously paid to say that.

Me: By who and what's with this conspiracy.

denier: They want to destroy America's economy with expensive renewable energy.




Socialist: Capitalism is making everything worse with inequality growing.

Me: Actually, the data shows that extreme poverty is going down.

Socialist: The World Bank messes with the numbers.


Person 1: GMOs are harmful.

Person 2: The majority of scientists say otherwise and there are studies proving it.

Person 1: They're just corporate shills.

Antivax: There's no proof that vaccines work.

Me: Then why have diseases declined after the vaccines were invented?

Antivax: That's all due to improved sanitation and medical practices.


Christian: If you want a problem to go away, pray and you'll receive.

Me: There's a study showing that prayer does not reduce illness.

Christian: God doesn't play by man's rules.

This is not to say that all explaining is fallacious. In fact, pretty much every hypothesis started as such (at least the ones which started out with indirect evidence as opposed to observation). Speculation is perfectly acceptable. The problem is when it becomes unfalsifiable.
 
Person 1: GMOs are harmful.

Person 2: The majority of scientists say otherwise and there are studies proving it.

That's ignorant.

The concern with GM crops is not personal health. There exists a lightning strike chance of horizontal gut transfer of an antibiotic resistance or other gene beneficial to a pathogen already existing within a person, but this has never been observed.

The concern with GM crops is social and ecological.

Socially, they create a chemical treadmill by which a farmer becomes beholden, financially and ecologically, to the supply company in order to maintain yields. The chemical treadmill takes decision making power of various sort away from farmers and gives it to the company. Other social concerns include IPR and the purpose or functions of genetic modifications.

Ecologically, there are several concerns. Impact on non-target species. Super-weeds. Pesticide resistance acceleration. The expansion of monocultures. The overuse of pesticides. We could spend days on the ecological concerns alone. The Earth is basically being used as an open laboratory.


To believe the concern with GMOs is merely regarding personal health is abysmally ignorant and to believe a few studies showing those to be near non-existent (which is the case) in no way sweeps aside the harm of GMOs.
 
That's ignorant.

The concern with GM crops is not personal health. There exists a lightning strike chance of horizontal gut transfer of an antibiotic resistance or other gene beneficial to a pathogen already existing within a person, but this has never been observed.

The concern with GM crops is social and ecological.

Socially, they create a chemical treadmill by which a farmer becomes beholden, financially and ecologically, to the supply company in order to maintain yields. The chemical treadmill takes decision making power of various sort away from farmers and gives it to the company. Other social concerns include IPR and the purpose or functions of genetic modifications.

Ecologically, there are several concerns. Impact on non-target species. Super-weeds. Pesticide resistance acceleration. The expansion of monocultures. The overuse of pesticides. We could spend days on the ecological concerns alone. The Earth is basically being used as an open laboratory.


To believe the concern with GMOs is merely regarding personal health is abysmally ignorant and to believe a few studies showing those to be near non-existent (which is the case) in no way sweeps aside the harm of GMOs.

There are people who think that they are dangerous. I'm sure many people are making reasonable arguments such as concerns with intellectual property but those who make the more looney arguments exist.
 
There are people who think that they are dangerous. I'm sure many people are making reasonable arguments such as concerns with intellectual property but those who make the more looney arguments exist.

Even the personal health argument has a grain of truth. It is lightning strike chance to have an antibiotic resistance gene horizontal gut transfer. There's a little to the nutrition argument as well. Worrying about personal health is kinda loony but there's more reality to it than some hysterical concerns. It's a travesty when ground corn is rejected by a hungry nation, which I think only happened once or twice.

The social and ecological issues are real. We know the chemical treadmill is a problem for farmers and their land. We know non-target species are affected, such as insects and animals that eat insects. We know weeds acquire pesticide resistance. We know some farmers over-apply as a result of pesticide resistance. We know pesticide production through genetic modification greatly increases pesticide in the environment and pests overcome those pesticides more quickly.


If someone is worried about personal health, they haven't really studied the issue. The real, documented and troublesome harm is social and ecological.
 
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