No it's not. It's a technical term which means that the person is knowingly making an argument that is not valid.
See the definition of validity [0] in logic.
When I say they are "intellectually dishonest" I mean they are attempting to persuade others with an appeal to emotion in a subtly-crafted paragraph that looks like a rational argument, but technically is not a rational argument --- because it is invalid --- and they know it is invalid.
They are attempting to win by emotional persuasion rather than a series of rigorous rational conclusions.
How my statement that someone is intellectually dishonest is a personal attack, I do not know. Perhaps people skip over the "intellectually" qualifier and jump straight to the "dishonest" part?
"Knowingly making". You don't know. And, in fact, I wrote the comment that you were replying to, and I was absolutely not knowingly making an argument that is not valid, and I still disagree with your argument where you claim that it is invalid.
You're not psychic; you're not omniscient. You're wrong sometimes. And you're wrong here in your judging of my honesty.
And when you act like you can judge what you can't, and you judge negatively, and you say so publicly, that is at least indistinguishable from a personal attack.
So: Calling someone dishonest is almost always going to be considered a personal attack, whether you intended it that way or not. And if you do it here, it will eventually get you banned. Attack the logic or the data, not the person's intentions.
I'm sorry, I'm still not trying to personally attack anyone. I didn't even realize my comment would be interpreted as offensive rather than a statement of fact.
This is the definition of intellectual dishonesty according to Wikipedia:
"Intentionally committed fallacies in debates and reasoning are called intellectual dishonesty."
I read your argument as "this man emotionally affected me via a personal connection I have, therefore his argument is invalid" and interpreted it as a logical fallacy. I assumed you made this knowingly because that is like a super basic logic 101 fallacy. I wasn't trying to personally attack you or say anything about your character or intellect. I was just trying to point out that you had committed a logical fallacy and that I assumed you already knew this.
I've replied to you more fully at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36277721, but want to mention something here too. The problem with what you're saying here is that word "intentionally". You can't know someone else's intent from internet comments. Overwhelmingly, when person A says something negative about B's intent, B will react with hurt feelings, anger, or outrage, because they don't think that was their intent at all. (This is exactly what happened in this case, as you can see from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36277408.)
It will get you a very long way indeed if you simply remind yourself that you can't know someone else's intent and edit your comments until they no longer include any assumptions about intent. If, in addition to that, you make your comments without pejoratives (and especially without pejoratives that have anything to do with other commenters), you should be in good shape.
I believe that you're sincerely asking for clarity here, so I hope this helps!
See the definition of validity [0] in logic.
When I say they are "intellectually dishonest" I mean they are attempting to persuade others with an appeal to emotion in a subtly-crafted paragraph that looks like a rational argument, but technically is not a rational argument --- because it is invalid --- and they know it is invalid.
They are attempting to win by emotional persuasion rather than a series of rigorous rational conclusions.
How my statement that someone is intellectually dishonest is a personal attack, I do not know. Perhaps people skip over the "intellectually" qualifier and jump straight to the "dishonest" part?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity_(logic)