@philosophyminis: 200 years ago, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote a sarcastic book about the 38 ways people argue badly. It was written in the 19th century, but all of the fallacies, biases, and bad philosophy are just as true today. And at the top of that list is what we now call the ‘straw man fallacy.’ The straw man fallacy is when you misrepresent or exaggerate somebody's position so it's easier to attack. For example, if somebody says that ‘we should tax billionaires more,’ you don't attack that position. You say they want to seize everybody's houses, abolish private property, and march the rich into the sea. That's not actually their position, but it's a much easier one to defeat and to ridicule. Schopenhauer argued that this trick works for two reasons. The first is that a flimsy argument is easier to beat than a real one. It's easier to fight a straw man than a steel man. And the second reason is that audiences hardly ever notice it has happened because they are pulled along by the rhetoric. Sometimes even the victim doesn't know they have been straw-manned. Schopenhauer thought a straw man is not a mistake. It's a deliberate tool. It's when a politician seeks to ridicule an opponent's position and how families will argue at Christmas. The straw man is everywhere that there is a disagreement someone wants to win rather than to understand. A straw man is a cheap and sly tactic, but it is pervasive, especially on social media. Labelling it and calling it out is the best thing we can do before the discussion goes too far, and your opponent has misrepresented what you are trying to say.

Jonny Thomson

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Region: GB

Thursday 28 May 2026 13:12:42 GMT