The Hardy defense is an argumentative tactic, analogous to the "Chewbacca Defense" (made famous by the late Johnie Cochran, in a
South Park episode). The Chewbacca Defense itself, is a satirical term for any legal strategy that seeks to overwhelm its audience with nonsensical arguments and thus confuse them into failing to take account of the opposing arguments and, ultimately, to reject them.
It is thus, a kind of logical fallacy, specifically a red herring fallacy, and non sequitur similar to argumentum ad nauseam. The Hardy defense not only supercedes the Chewbacca defense in every regard, it is also not limited to the legal arena. Any argument, from the most profound, to the most mundane, will fall prey to the Hardy Defense.
The origin of the Hardy defense is the cesspool that is #efnet.org where I had made a comment about what is probably the most notable real-life ugly duckling
story. I had made what I thought was a fairly
innocent comment of, "Kurt Nilsen is cool."
Little did I know, that I was about to face the most awe-inspiring and dramatic chownage known to any IRCer.
(For those that are unfamiliar with Kurt Nilsen, he was the most unlikely
winner of the Norweigan idol competition, and even MORE unlikely
winner of the World Idol title. He was voted as such almost unanimously at that. To
say the least, it is by far one of the best
underdog stories I've
ever witnessed personally.)
I was then posed with a question by Hardy, "Why is he cool?" Before I was
even given a chance to qualify my statement, I was
faced with the barrage of verbal carnage that we have now come to know as The Hardy Defense. "I have
admin flags in 3 EFnet regions, does that make me cool?" (*Note: The quotes aren't direct quotes, and have been paraphrased for effect. Please contact me for actual logs of the conversation.)
I was completely and utterly dumbfounded. My fingers experienced momentary atrophe and my fingertips
even went
cold. It was a few moments before I regained my composure to where I responded, with a noteworthy performance of my own, but we will save that for another
day, and another /alias. Till then we must be shocked and awed with the immortalized Hardy Defense.
--- piggy @ EFnet
