> this (extremely dumb) article

What's dumb about it? People often use labels in bad faith. I'd think that learning to recognize that is a good thing.

Of course the larger issue is that you are unlikely to be able to have a constructive dialogue with someone who is engaging in such tactics. Pointing out that someone is behaving poorly rarely solves the issue. I think it's still useful to be able to recognize the pattern though.

>The idea and significance of the proper noun 'The Geneva Convention' is a much different class than just a noun like 'criminal' or 'murder'. The point of invoking it is not to hide behind an abstraction, but in fact to appeal to something specific.

What is it appealing to then? When you say "violates the Geneva convention", I'm thinking of things like genocide, killing of civilians, and soldiers in trenches choking to death because they couldn't put their gas mask in time. None of that applies to tear gas.

Insofar as you want to continue to charge this fallacy here, it doesn't really matter because "the Geneva Convention" is not, per the cited article, a "category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction." It is something specific that happened/exists, and in that it has no "archetypal member." Whether you specifically have an emotional reaction to it is beyond the point, and in fact beyond gp's point. If you take the argument minimally charitably its just pointing out an inconsistency between what was at once point judged to be bad by an international community, and the actions of one member of that community today.

But further, do you really, in good faith, think gp was trying to form some airtight logical argument against the use of tear gas? Do you think its possible they were maybe just pointing something interesting out? What actual motive could you have to try and create this very thin gotcha here? Can you maybe step back and see how sealioning like this just adds noise?

>Insofar as you want to continue to charge this fallacy here, it doesn't really matter because "the Geneva Convention" is not, per the cited article, a "category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction." It is something specific that happened/exists, and in that it has no "archetypal member."

The exact phrasing used in the quoted post was "violate the Geneva convention". I don't know about you, but "violate the Geneva convention" does give me an emotional reaction.

>If you take the argument minimally charitably [...]

Like you're doing above by some clever rewording?

>its just pointing out an inconsistency between what was at once point judged to be bad by an international community, and the actions of one member of that community today.

I seriously doubt any member of "the international community" thinks that tear gas is somehow comparable to a war crime or using mustard gas, or that it's somehow extra bad because it's a chemical weapon. Moreover if you really want to cling onto what was written (ie. "no chemical weapons") vs what's intended (ie. "no mustard gas deployed in the trenches"), the geneva convention also has a specific carve-out for domestic use.

>BBut further, do you really, in good faith, think gp was trying to form some airtight logical argument against the use of tear gas? Do you think its possible they were maybe just pointing something interesting out? What actual motive could you have to try and create this very thin gotcha here?

Because I think it's interesting to point out how the non-central fallacy might apply here :^)