Straw Person

This is a commonly used logical fallacy. It occurs when, rather than attack their actual opponent's argument, an arguer creates a fake, more extreme version, which is then easier to attack, and attacks that.

Depending on how extreme the "straw man" is created, this fallacy can border on becoming an ad hominem.

Example: "Environmentalists care more for snail darters and spotted owls than they do for people."

While an environmentalist might advocate for certain creatures, this does not mean that they rank them above people. In fact, some might argue that having a well-balanced environment with healthy populations of all animals is good for people.

Snail Darter

(Paper clip for scale)

Example:

Q: How should we help the homeless?

A: Lazy bums who don't want to make any effort to work shouldn't be helped.

The truth is, people become homeless for many, many reasons, some of them no fault of their own. Many homeless people would work many jobs if they could. Those people are difficult and possibly unethical to attack, so the respondent creates an extreme version of homeless people, who are much easier to attack. Then, the respondent simply attacks this small group of "straw people" instead of considering the larger population of homeless people who may have reasons from their difficulties.

Example:

Former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was misrepresented in this video.

By misrepresenting his words, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin created an extreme, fictional character (a "straw person") who was easier to attack. The end result was that, to those who were well-informed, the Democratic Party looked dishonest and, therefore, untrustworthy. Their ethos was lowered.

That said, many people who are not critical of what they are seeing were manipulated into thinking these were Governor Walker's properly synched words and actions.

Either way, this type of misrepresentation (regularly engaged in by both political parties, BTW) is reckless and harmful to true democracy.

Can you see why we need a highly educated, highly critical population of voters? It takes skill and hard work to sift through nonsense like this.

Essentially, when a person's words are taken out of context to make them look bad, a Straw Person fallacy is being used because the words don't actually represent what the person intended.

Words taken out of context are extremely convincing to the audience because they are the arguer's actual words... they just don't fairly show what was fully said.

Out-of-context: "I like Nazis..."

In-context: "I like Nazis only when they are in jail."

Example:

Nhi: "Mom, can I spend the night at Phuong's house?"

Mom: "Honey, shouldn't you stay home and study, so you can get your Math grade up?"

Nhi: "Why do you want to ruin my life?"

Page Adapted from: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-kit-carl-sagan/

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