The IQ argument

Sometimes you’re arguing with someone and they say that their side is correct since they have a high IQ.  Obvious counterarguments to this are that:

1. They must argue that having a high IQ must be correlated to being right regarding the argument topic
2. They must argue that their IQ is as high as they claim

A less obvious counterargument is that they must argue that they actually believe what they are arguing.

As far as I can tell, if they can argue all 3 points, the IQ argument works.  In general, if someone can argue successfully that some kinds of people are likely to get the correct answer to an argument, that they are one of these kinds of people, and that they are arguing what they believe, that is a reasonable argument.

If you have a logical argument against the claim of the other person in the argument, then the weight of the logical argument should be stronger if the 3 points in the previous paragraph are weaker.

Going in the other direction, an ad hominem attack works logically if:

1. A certain type of person is particularly likely to believe the incorrect conclusion of a result
2. A person is of that type of person
3. That person is arguing for what he believes

In this case, when arguing the first point, one would hope to show that this type of person is more likely to get the incorrect conclusion than a random guess – for example, just claiming that someone is stupid isn’t sufficient to show this unless you argue that being stupid biases what he will think of in a way that causes his conclusions to be incorrect more than just picking a random thing.  If the bias towards incorrect conclusions isn’t worse than that of a random picker, then the fact that the person chose something as an answer doesn’t suggest that it is wrong.