Critical thinking
This topic shows you how to think critically, find hidden contexts and read between the lines
Straw-man fallacy
"The 'straw-man' fallacy isn't as much fallacy as it is a way of life" T-Rex cartoon by Ryan North
It is one of the most known and the most interesting manipulative techniques. How does it work? Manipulator at first creates false replica of opponent’s argument - so called straw-man - and afterwards s/he tries to humiliate this “argument”.
There are more variants of this technique, but their core is still the same - to put to someone’s mouth an argument s/he has not said, or to explain this argument in other way than it was originally meant, or in some cases to cherry-pick some banal part of the argument trying to show that it is important.
Examples:
“Did you hear that? The Minister of Defence would like to stop financing our tank division. I am absolutely against - I cannot understand why he would like to leave us so defenceless.”
Explanation: The Minister of Defence said that he does not want to finance tank division, but his opponent tries to suggest that he would like to weaken the defence of the country. However, it cannot be understood from the original statement as tanks are definitely not the only possible defence measure. They can be too old or minister would like to transfer this money to buy new jets, which could defend country more effectively.
Person A: We should liberalise the law on marijuana
Person B: No way, unlimited access to drugs would contribute to massive increase of drug abuse
Explanation: Person A said that we should liberalise, it means soften, the law on marijuana. Person B exaggerated it and put the statement of person A to the position impossible to defend - unlimited access to drugs. But person A has never said anything like that. Maybe s/he meant, for example, change of law so students would not have their lives ruined after being caught smoking a cigarette of marijuana or to allow marijuana to be used for medical treatments.