I recalled a joke, today, I had heard years ago, and it made me think
of all of these ad hominem arguments, circumstantial and abusive, that
I've seen floating around the group. And those informal fallacies are
still used even after being exposed. I suspect that this
joke/anecdote was probably first used by some logician somewhere to
illustrate the flaw in the ad hominem;

A man was driving on his customary route to work one morning, a route
which took him past the grounds of a local asylum. His car jolted
suddenly, and shuddered violently, upon which he immediately pulled
over to the side of the road. Somewhat shaken, he failed to notice a
man with fairly long grey hair dressed in a blue jump suit leaning
face first into the security fence that ran along the road bounding
the grounds of the asylum where his car had come to rest. The driver
of the car checked his vehicle to find that his rear passenger tire
had come off. He walked the tire back to his vehicle, and realized
that he had no nuts to put on the lugs to hold the tire on. He began
looking along the road for the nuts, but he couldn't manage to find
even one of them. By this time he had become aware of the man
standing erect against the fence on the opposite side; but, he was
determined to ignore the asylum patient. He stood over the tire
trying to weigh his options when a scruffy voice behind him said,
"Mister, take one nut off of each of the other tires and put those
three nuts on your tire that came off your car. You can drive the car
to the service station and have the missing nuts replaced." The
driver, amazed by what he heard, turned around and asked, "What are
you doing in an asylum? You're a genuis!" The patient, still leaning
into the fence, not looking at the driver, churlishly replied "I'm in
here for being crazy, not for being dumb."

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