Straw man

Someone says “We should have fewer cars in the city centre” and hears back “So you want to ban cars.” The second sentence answers a claim nobody made.

Knocking down a figure you built yourself

A fallacy, in the sense used by logic textbooks, is a bad argument that is easy to mistake for a good one. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes the straw man as what happens when an opponent’s point of view is distorted in order to make it easier to refute. The name comes from the training dummy: a figure stuffed with straw does not fight back, so knocking it over proves nothing about a real opponent.

Here is a made-up exchange. Mina: “The school should offer a vegetarian option at lunch.” Junho: “Mina thinks nobody should be allowed to eat meat. That would leave half the students hungry.” Junho’s reply may be true about a meat ban, but Mina never proposed one. She asked for one more choice. The argument looks like a win because the distorted claim really is weak.

Common ways to build a straw man

• Exaggeration: “some” becomes “all”, “reduce” becomes “ban”.
• Quoting out of context: one sentence is lifted out of a longer, more careful argument.
• Picking the weakest supporter: answering a careless comment online as if it were the best case for a view.
• Changing the subject slightly: answering a question about cost as if it were a question about safety.

Headlines can do the same thing in a few words. A made-up headline reads “Scientist says coffee is poison.” The study behind it reported that drinking very large amounts was linked to poorer sleep. Readers who argue against the headline are arguing against a straw man of the study.

A straw man is not always deliberate. Summaries shrink as they are passed on, and the version of a view we remember is often the most extreme one we happened to hear. Someone who has only ever met a position through its critics may sincerely believe the distorted form is what its supporters think. That is one more reason to go back to what was actually said, in full, before arguing with it.

How to answer one

The fix is to restate the other person’s view in a form they would accept before you reply. If Junho had said “Mina wants a vegetarian option; I worry it will cost more,” he would be arguing with the real claim, and the discussion could move forward. When you are the one being misread, a calm restatement works better than an angry denial: “I didn’t say ban meat. I said add one option.” A useful check on your own writing is to ask whether the people you disagree with would recognise their position in your summary of it.