Another related mental model is ad hominem (Latin for “to the person”), where the person making the argument is attacked without addressing the central point they made. “Who are you to make this point? You’re not an expert on this topic. You’re just an amateur.” It’s essentially name-calling and often involves lobbing much more incendiary labels at the other side. Political discourse in recent years in the U.S. is unfortunately littered with this model, and the usual names leveled are so undignified that we don’t want to include them in our book.
