Steve: Straw Man

By: steve-wang

The Straw Man fallacy is where someone misrepresents an opponent's situation so that it is easier to attack or refute them. The oversimplification makes it easy and easy things make attacking smoother and more efficient. It would be easier to make others attack them too because they understand what they should be attacking. Understanding makes it easier to come up with arguments because they are so obviously wrong, and this argument also makes the straw man maker seem righteous. To create a straw man, twist or oversimplify the opponent's argument to make it obviously wrong and easy to refute. Then, attack the straw man and try to get others do the same. Once the attack starts, it will be easier to continue. An example would be, a team is facing a lack of progress on their projects. I knew that we were behind because we have worked slowly and too little. To foster team spirit, I blamed it on our superiors. Those guys tried to stop us from finishing out work to a high standard. It gave all of us a common enemy to work and against. I would then say that the only way to defeat the enemy was to complete the project. Not just complete it, but complete it well. They, the superiors, did not debate it directly because they did not know. Also, even if they knew, they also wanted the project completed and the straw man was working. Even though, it was not the truth, I chose to create a straw man because directly criticising the team would do us no good. We had to work together as a team and having a common “enemy” was the most effective way of doing that. To identify a strawman, we can check if the argument given is directly against the issue or if it is not completely related or diverting attention away from the issue. This is a fallacy because it encourages people to have mistaken beliefs based on unsound arguments.