What's a straw man argument?

[Anonymous]

I know is a fallacy but it's hard to understand. Make it simple as possible please I'm so confused and Google isn't helping.

[SomeGuyCalledTom]

Okay so let's say you've got two people, Bill and Jane.

Bill believes in a redistributive tax system based on income to alleviate poverty in the worst affected communities.

Jane believes in a purely meritocratic system where people who worked hard for their wealth should be entitled to reap what they've sowed, without being punitively taxed for their own success.

Now, Bill and Jane meet up tp debate their views.

A healthy debate would be one where they both recognise one another's different opinions. They accurately summarise one another's stances, in articulate language, without insulting or demeaning the other person. Then they map out the reasons why they disagree with one another's stance. And this goes back and forth until some kind of mutual understanding is reached (even if that's merely an agreement to "respectfully disagree").

Now, a strawman version of such a debate might look like this:

Bill: "so what you're saying is, you wanna shit on poor people and suck rich people's cocks all day? Typical cuckservative."

Jane: "Well at least I'm not an sjw libtard who wants to spend other people's money just to give free handouts to benefit scroungers".

The strawman fallacy on both sides is that they demean and minimise each other's arguments, rather than engage them at a thorough, intellectual level of discourse. It's the coward's way out, coz if you turn your opponent's position into a strawman [ie: an oversimplified and distorted second-hand representation of what they actually believe], then you can conveniently ignore their *actual* argument, and instead you just have to "debate" the weakened strawman of your own creation. A skilled debater wants to summarise and understand their adversary's position thoroughly and comprehensively, with the conviction of "my adversary makes strong points, but we'll just see whose points are strongest...".

In a mature argument, you prove your point by strengthening your own rationale. In a strawman argument, you seek only to discredit your adversary by intentionally misrepresenting and belittling their arguments. Check out the channel 4 interview on YouTube where Cathy Newman interviews Jordan Peterson (the full 30 Minute version), it's a textbook example of strawman fallacies on Newman's part. Its like:

Peterson: "free speech is paramount, even if it can be offensive."

Newman: "so you're saying you hate LGBTQ+ minorities?"

Peterson doesn't let those strawman presuppositions go unchallenged, to his credit. When someone tries to strawman you, the best you can so is call out their strawmanning as an inherently flawed and corrupted framing device. Make them reformulate their question to a non-strawman form, or else refuse to answer them at all.

[Volk_]

In simple terms a "straw man argument" is when one makes a statement and the other ones argues against a very similar but different statement. For example taking words out of context, or altering the oponents intended meaning. Basically you create something new "the strawman" instead of the original argument and then defeat it.

[nolabels]

https://effectiviology.com/straw-man-arguments-recognize-counter-use/

[FakeName123]

Its slightly misrepresenting someones argument to make it easier to argue against. But still keeping it close enough to not be spotted.

[winterfox10]

You're taking the most extreme form of the person's argument as a means of disproving it.