Talk:Proof by intimidation

Merge with Proof by verbosity?

An editor has added a banner to this article, proposing that it be merged with Proof by verbosity. I would oppose this, because the current article is well-referenced, while the other article has no sources at all. There would be no problem with adding a 'See also' to the other article if its material can be supported by sources. EdJohnston (talk) 23:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

See 2018 thread below about this merger probably having been a mistake.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:42, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Jab at Derrida

Is the jab at Derrida essential to this article? It is hardly illuminating and has no given justification. It's a highly contentious issue, largely unjustified but nevertheless echoed, repeated and "argued" by those philosophers who do not provide the same rigor to their reading of Derrida as they would to their own. Even if you disagree with me, the placement of Derrida's name in this article is misleading, loaded, and requires at least some justification beyond putting his name in the same sentence as the fallacy. nerdfiles (talk) 04:18, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Merge with Shotgun argumentation?

On March 9 an editor placed a merge tag on this article, recommending a merge with Shotgun argumentation. The case for this merge appears weak. I am doubtful that the other article is on a notable topic, and it has no reliable sources at all. We are supposed to avoid neologisms. There is no indication that the sources listed for the present article, proof by intimidation, mention shotgun argumentation. If someone has the patience to search through the present article's references, maybe they can find the term 'shotgun' somewhere. EdJohnston (talk) 04:38, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Merge has been proposed because both articles seem to talk about the same thing.

If the synonym term ("Shotgun argumentation") is not notable (something which I doubt but let's assume it for the sake of discussing the adequacy of the merge), then it would be even more important to delete the contents of the other article and save the few pieces of useful information from that article into this article. --Antonielly (talk) 11:42, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Have you found any reliable sources that believe the two techniques are the same? EdJohnston (talk) 13:56, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Too terse

This article is terse and to-the-point. Perhaps that could be fixed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.182.55.28 (talk) 15:02, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Lack of neutrality

This article does not sound neutral at all. It does not define what exactly makes certain claims, "Terrible" or who decides it. Ths is a pointless article simply that a group of facts can be considered terrible if one person does not agree with the facts implications. Change it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by PowerWiki112233 (talk • contribs) 22:47, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Removed unsourced items?

Gian-Carlo Rota's memoir looks to be a good source for the usage of 'proof by intimidation' to describe a specific mathematician. I assume that Rota may not be the only writer who ever used 'proof by intimidation' in print, and there might be competing theories for how the term originated. Nonetheless there is much other material in the article that has no sources and I suggest it be removed. No source is provided for proof by verbosity or argumentum verbosium. Even terms that have the flavor of jokes ought to be traced to a source if they are going to be included here. There is also an old merge tag for Shotgun argumentation that has no basis that I can see. (That article has no reliable sources at all). Unless anyone sees value in the unsourced items, I propose to remove them soon. In terms of future expansion for this article, notice this search in Google Books, showing more uses of the phrase in print publications. Checking MathSciNet could be worthwhile also. EdJohnston (talk) 00:05, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead the reverted the article to an earlier version that does not contain any of the unsourced material. Please comment if you think that this has removed significant text. Suggestions are welcome for where to find additional sources. I also left off the POV tag since I assume it was referring to the recent additions. Replace the tag if you still think it's appropriate. EdJohnston (talk) 06:21, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Proof by verbosity

We're not actually addressing half the alleged conventional meaning of this fallacy. Another site defines proof by intimidation/verbosity as "an argument that is far too complicated and verbose for an opponent to reasonably address all the particulars, or the person making the argument is so well-reputed that one takes his claims as truth." It doesn't look like a reliable source, though I see similar assertions elsewhere. The more I look at this, the more these appear to be completely unrelated fallacies. Proof by verbosity appears to be a variant of the argumentum ad nauseam tactic (or its Gish gallop variant), frequently with a dollop of proof by assertion (a.k.a. proof by repetition) or any other "too long; didn't read" blather approach. That one, under the assertion name can be confused with proof by intimidation in the "because I'm eminent and I say so" sense. And the intimidation fallacy name is easily confused with some of the red herring fallacies, especially appeal to fear and argument to authority. Finally, it's not clear how even our present definition of proof by intimidation is meant to be distinguishable from ipse dixit. In short, I think we have a mess here, including some OR and some of what we'd call OR here except it was done off-site by people commingling multiple fallacies. If it can be determined that p. by intimidation and p. by verbosity are really separate, then both are probably variants of other fallacies and we might be able to separate the two and then merge one or both of them to better-developed pages.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:41, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

PS: See also related thread immediately above this one, and first post on this talk page objecting to merging p. by verbosity into this article in the first place.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:43, 2 June 2018 (UTC)