I’ve read the definition, I’ve tried to figure it out, I feel so stupid.
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Maybe thinking about it literally will help.
What is a strawman? It is a bunch of straw stuffed into a person’s clothes. Like a scarecrow, if you’ve seen the Wizard of Oz, but without magic animating it.
Have you ever tried to push over a bag of straw? Super simple. Anybody can do it, because the straw doesn’t do a good job of standing up in the first place.
But if you were watched from far away, by somebody that doesn’t know it’s a bag of straw, you could pretend that it’s a bag of cement or steel or something heavy. You can pretend that you are strong and did something impressive.
A strawman argument is dressing up something easy to counter (a bag of straw or an exaggerated/tangential argument) to look like what you are arguing against (looks like an opponent or your debate target to an onlooker) so that it’s easy to knock over and look like you are winning the argument.
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