I’ve read the definition, I’ve tried to figure it out, I feel so stupid.
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A strawman fallacy is when you misrepresent a person’s argument to make it easier to attack. For example, as a Democrat, I can say that a common strawman fallacy committed against us liberals is something along the lines of, “You just think everyone should have everything for free and no one should have to work for anything. Well here’s why that’s wrong…” The problem is, most Democrats don’t actually think that everything should be free, but it’s a classic strawman argument to make our position easier to attack. To be fair, I would say we liberals can sometimes also be guilty of strawman arguments against the right. Does that make a little more sense?
A strawman argument is where you deliberately take the weakest possible form of someone’s argument – a version that no one reasonable would support because it’s dumb as a bag of hammers – and defeat it. You then claim, since you’ve knocked down the strawman, you’ve defeated their position.
The problem with this approach, of course, is that the strawman was never being argued in the first place. Someone who defeats a strawman isn’t actually participating in the argument so much as lying about your position in order to make themselves look correct and you, therefore, look incorrect.
Contrast this with the steelman argument, where you take the strongest possible version of the opponent’s argument – one that’s even better than the actual argument that they’re presenting – and defeat it. By defeating the very best version of their argument you can conclusively say that their position is wrong.
Making a lesser, easier defeated argument loosely based off of the original point rather than approaching the original topic.
Nobody wants to fight a tank with their bare hands, right? But how about a minicooper? Sure I might not be able to stop a minicooper but I have better odds than stopping the tank.
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