eli5 Whats a “Straw man fallacy”?
In: Other
“I think abortion should be legal”
*You want to MURDER babies!?!?!?*
Hopefully you can see how easy it is to attack a position that wants to murder babies. Here we are arguing against something that isn’t their actual position, AND we’ve strategically made it a position that is particularly easy to defeat (because who would defend murdering babies as a position?)
Usually a straw man is purposeful and dishonest. The “straw man” is the fake opponent you created that cannot fight back.
It is not the same as misunderstanding a position, which commonly gets accused of creating a straw man.
There are several “good” responses here, but I haven’t seen a true “ELI5” answer, so I’ll attempt to simplify a little further:
**A “straw man” is what happens when two people have a debate and one side tries to publicly misrepresent their opponent’s argument and then easily defeat it.**
This is usually done by finding a related issue where people have a lot of emotions.
For example, a politician can say, “We need to to change how we handle immigration.” Their opponent might then respond with, “Why do you hate immigrants? You must be a racist!”
This forces the first person to defend a position or claim that isn’t theirs, and this makes them lose time and look foolish.
This happens on Reddit all the time.
Say you’re on one side of a fight, and the people on the other side are making reasonable arguments you find difficult to argue against, but you want to get your way anyways. What do you do?
Build a scarecrow. They’re not a real person, but they sort of look like one. Then use it like a puppet, and have the scarecrow take the opposing side. Only, have the scarecrow take the opposing side _badly._ Have your fake person present fake, ridiculous arguments that no sane person would agree with.
Then, argue against your own scarecrow. The scarecrow you made is on the same side as your actual opponents, so you pretend that, by winning the argument against the scarecrow, you’ve now refuted all the sane, reasonable arguments that the real people were making.
You aren’t _really_ winning the argument against the opposing side, but that only matters if the opposing side recognizes your straw man and calls you out on it. Their other two options are that they could agree with you, joining forces against your straw man, which you can treat like their surrender and your victory. Or, they can fall into the trap of trying to defend your straw man, at which point they adopt your new fabricated arguments as their own, and it will be easier to win future arguments the legitimate way.
A straw man is when you intentionally misrepresent something or someone, so you can attack it unfairly.
PBS Idea Channel had a series focused on that, with individual videos about specific fallacies.
So, you’re asking why people use straw men in arguments, assuming it’s a good tactic? That’s not a smart approach to arguing. Relying on straw men only shows a lack of ability to engage in real debate.
that above is straw man. you didn’t even mention anything about your intention with the answer yet i distorted the question (viewpoint argument etc) and argued against that new made up premise.
distorting the idea/viewpoint/argument and arguing against that is straw man.
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