The straw man fallacy describes an argument that misrepresents an opponent’s stance to make rebuttal more convenient. The straw man fallacy is a type of informal logical fallacy, defined as a flaw in the structure of an argument that renders it invalid.
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Understanding the straw man fallacy
When Person A makes a claim during an argument, Person B creates a distorted version of that claim, otherwise known as the straw man. Then, Person B attacks the distorted version to refute the original and now unrelated assertion of Person A. Effectively, Person B creates a straw man and passes it off as Person A’s idea – thereby making it easier to attack.
In many instances, the degree of distortion is such that it has little relevance to the original assertion or indeed reality. Distortion occurs when Person B:
Exaggerates, generalizes, or oversimplifies.
Takes things out of context.
Becomes preoccupied with minor or insignificant details.
Argues against fringe or extreme opinions.
Examples of the straw man fallacy
Straw man arguments are frequently used in discussions about myriad topics. Here are some examples:
Teacher’s argument – some students struggled greatly with the last assignment. I think we should allocate extra marks to those who completed it.
Professor’s (straw man) argument – giving students extra marks toward a perfect score for no reason will result in them working less hard in the future. It’s a foolish suggestion.
The professor has misrepresented the teacher’s stance in three ways.
First, the professor is referencing all students when the original argument referenced some students. The professor then asserts that each student will get a perfect score while the teacher mentions that only a few will receive extra marks. Lastly, the teacher argues that marks would be awarded for no reason when the teacher wanted to award marks for higher effort.
In business
Budget manager’s argument – I believe that more funds should be allocated to customer support. We are struggling in this area and need to lift our game.
Department manager’s (straw man) argument – spending all our money on customer support means we will go bankrupt within 6 months.
Here, the department manager exaggerates the budget manager’s request for more funds by suggesting that all funds be allocated. This is a distorted argument against a fringe or extreme opinion that the budget manager does not hold.
Avoiding the straw man fallacy
Arguing effectively is a skill that must be learned. To minimize vulnerability to the straw man fallacy, Person A must use clear and concise language that leaves little room for interpretation.
Having said that, there is nothing stopping someone from distorting an argument if that is their primary goal.
If this happens, use these strategies:
Call out the opponent by explaining why their argument is fallacious. Logic is the best defense against a fallacy. Ask the opponent to clarify how their distortion aligns with the original stance.
Ignore them. Continuing to stand behind the original stance can be effective in keeping the conversation topical. But if the other person continues to use fallacious reasoning then walking away must be considered.
Engage with the straw man argument but continue to state why it is unrelated or irrelevant to the original stance. This is most effective when paired with stats or other supporting information.
Case studies
Political Debates:
Person A: “I think we should invest more in healthcare to improve access for everyone.”
Person B (Straw Man): “So, you’re saying we should bankrupt the entire country by giving away free healthcare to everyone without considering the costs?”
In this case, Person B distorts Person A’s argument by exaggerating it to suggest that it would lead to financial ruin, which was not Person A’s original point.
Product Development:
Product Manager A: “We should consider adding more features to our app to make it more competitive in the market.”
Product Manager B (Straw Man): “So, you want us to add every feature under the sun and make our app so complicated that nobody can use it?”
Here, Product Manager B misrepresents Product Manager A’s suggestion by making it seem like an extreme, all-or-nothing approach.
Environmental Policy:
Environmentalist A: “We need to reduce carbon emissions by transitioning to renewable energy sources.”
Environmentalist B (Straw Man): “You want to destroy jobs in the fossil fuel industry and leave thousands unemployed.”
In this example, Environmentalist B distorts Environmentalist A’s argument by portraying it as a job-destroying agenda, which wasn’t the main point of the original argument.
Marketing Strategy:
Marketer A: “Our marketing campaign should focus on the product’s unique features to differentiate it from competitors.”
Marketer B (Straw Man): “So, you’re saying we should only talk about these features and ignore all other aspects of our product?”
Marketer B misrepresents Marketer A’s suggestion by making it appear as if they want to exclusively focus on one aspect of the product, which wasn’t the original intent.
Technology Design:
Engineer A: “We should prioritize improving the user interface for a better user experience.”Engineer B (Straw Man): “So, you want us to completely abandon all other technical improvements and only work on the interface?”
Engineer B exaggerates Engineer A’s argument by making it seem like they want to neglect all other technical aspects.
Educational Policy:
School Principal A: “We should consider implementing a new curriculum that includes more hands-on learning activities.”
School Principal B (Straw Man): “So, you’re suggesting we completely abandon traditional teaching methods and let students run wild without any structure?”
School Principal B distorts Principal A’s proposal by making it seem like an extreme shift, whereas Principal A simply wanted to introduce more interactive learning.
Financial Planning:
Financial Advisor A: “Diversifying your investment portfolio can help reduce risk.”
Financial Advisor B (Straw Man): “So, you’re saying we should sell all your assets and put everything into risky stocks?”
Financial Advisor B exaggerates Advisor A’s recommendation by presenting it as an all-or-nothing approach.
Healthcare Reform:
Policy Advocate A: “We should explore options to improve healthcare accessibility and affordability.”
Policy Advocate B (Straw Man): “So, you want to implement a government-run healthcare system and eliminate private healthcare entirely?”
Policy Advocate B misrepresents Advocate A’s suggestion by portraying it as an extreme policy change.
Teamwork in the Workplace:
Employee A: “We should encourage better teamwork among different departments to improve project collaboration.”
Employee B (Straw Man): “So, you’re saying we should have mandatory team-building exercises every day and never let anyone work alone?”
Employee B distorts Employee A’s proposal by presenting it as an impractical and exaggerated idea.
Legal Reforms:
Legal Expert A: “We should review and update our outdated laws to better reflect the needs of society.”
Legal Expert B (Straw Man): “So, you’re proposing that we should abolish all existing laws and start from scratch?”
Legal Expert B misrepresents Expert A’s suggestion by making it appear as an extreme call for legal reform.
Key takeaways
The straw man fallacy substitutes the argument of an individual with a distorted, misrepresented, or exaggerated version of that argument.
The straw man fallacy results in distorted arguments that have little basis in reality or fact.
Individuals can guard themselves against the straw man fallacy by calling out the opponent’s reasoning or simply ignoring them. However, little can be done to guard against someone who intentionally uses fallacious reasoning.
Straw Man Fallacy: Misrepresenting Arguments for Easy Rebuttal
Definition: The straw man fallacy involves distorting or misrepresenting an opponent’s argument to make it easier to refute. It’s an informal logical fallacy that weakens the structure of an argument.
Process: Person A makes a claim, and Person B creates a distorted version of that claim (the “straw man”). Person B then attacks this distorted version to refute Person A’s original argument.
Forms of Distortion:
Exaggeration, generalization, or oversimplification.
Arguing against extreme or fringe opinions that the opponent doesn’t actually hold.
Examples:
Teacher’s Argument: Allocate extra marks to students who struggled with the assignment. Professor’s Straw Man: Giving all students perfect scores will lead to laziness. Misrepresentation: Overgeneralizing to all students.
Budget Manager’s Argument: Increase funds for customer support. Department Manager’s Straw Man: Spend all money on customer support, leading to bankruptcy. Misrepresentation: Exaggeration and extreme interpretation.
Avoiding the Fallacy:
Use clear and concise language to minimize misinterpretation.
Call out fallacious reasoning by explaining the distortion.
Ignore or disengage from fallacious arguments.
Engage while highlighting irrelevance and provide supporting evidence.
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The concept of cognitive biases was introduced and popularized by the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972. Biases are seen as systematic errors and flaws that make humans deviate from the standards of rationality, thus making us inept at making good decisions under uncertainty.
Second-order thinking is a means of assessing the implications of our decisions by considering future consequences. Second-order thinking is a mental model that considers all future possibilities. It encourages individuals to think outside of the box so that they can prepare for every and eventuality. It also discourages the tendency for individuals to default to the most obvious choice.
Lateral thinking is a business strategy that involves approaching a problem from a different direction. The strategy attempts to remove traditionally formulaic and routine approaches to problem-solving by advocating creative thinking, therefore finding unconventional ways to solve a known problem. This sort of non-linear approach to problem-solving, can at times, create a big impact.
Bounded rationality is a concept attributed to Herbert Simon, an economist and political scientist interested in decision-making and how we make decisions in the real world. In fact, he believed that rather than optimizing (which was the mainstream view in the past decades) humans follow what he called satisficing.
The Dunning-Kruger effect describes a cognitive bias where people with low ability in a task overestimate their ability to perform that task well. Consumers or businesses that do not possess the requisite knowledge make bad decisions. What’s more, knowledge gaps prevent the person or business from seeing their mistakes.
Occam’s Razor states that one should not increase (beyond reason) the number of entities required to explain anything. All things being equal, the simplest solution is often the best one. The principle is attributed to 14th-century English theologian William of Ockham.
The Lindy Effect is a theory about the ageing of non-perishable things, like technology or ideas. Popularized by author Nicholas Nassim Taleb, the Lindy Effect states that non-perishable things like technology age – linearly – in reverse. Therefore, the older an idea or a technology, the same will be its life expectancy.
Antifragility was first coined as a term by author, and options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Antifragility is a characteristic of systems that thrive as a result of stressors, volatility, and randomness. Therefore, Antifragile is the opposite of fragile. Where a fragile thing breaks up to volatility; a robust thing resists volatility. An antifragile thing gets stronger from volatility (provided the level of stressors and randomness doesn’t pass a certain threshold).
Ergodicity is one of the most important concepts in statistics. Ergodicity is a mathematical concept suggesting that a point of a moving system will eventually visit all parts of the space the system moves in. On the opposite side, non-ergodic means that a system doesn’t visit all the possible parts, as there are absorbing barriers
Systems thinking is a holistic means of investigating the factors and interactions that could contribute to a potential outcome. It is about thinking non-linearly, and understanding the second-order consequences of actions and input into the system.
Vertical thinking, on the other hand, is a problem-solving approach that favors a selective, analytical, structured, and sequential mindset. The focus of vertical thinking is to arrive at a reasoned, defined solution.
Metaphorical thinking describes a mental process in which comparisons are made between qualities of objects usually considered to be separate classifications. Metaphorical thinking is a mental process connecting two different universes of meaning and is the result of the mind looking for similarities.
Maslow’s Hammer, otherwise known as the law of the instrument or the Einstellung effect, is a cognitive bias causing an over-reliance on a familiar tool. This can be expressed as the tendency to overuse a known tool (perhaps a hammer) to solve issues that might require a different tool. This problem is persistent in the business world where perhaps known tools or frameworks might be used in the wrong context (like business plans used as planning tools instead of only investors’ pitches).
The Peter Principle was first described by Canadian sociologist Lawrence J. Peter in his 1969 book The Peter Principle. The Peter Principle states that people are continually promoted within an organization until they reach their level of incompetence.
The straw man fallacy describes an argument that misrepresents an opponent’s stance to make rebuttal more convenient. The straw man fallacy is a type of informal logical fallacy, defined as a flaw in the structure of an argument that renders it invalid.
The Google effect is a tendency for individuals to forget information that is readily available through search engines. During the Google effect – sometimes called digital amnesia – individuals have an excessive reliance on digital information as a form of memory recall.
The Streisand Effect is a paradoxical phenomenon where the act of suppressing information to reduce visibility causes it to become more visible. In 2003, Streisand attempted to suppress aerial photographs of her Californian home by suing photographer Kenneth Adelman for an invasion of privacy. Adelman, who Streisand assumed was paparazzi, was instead taking photographs to document and study coastal erosion. In her quest for more privacy, Streisand’s efforts had the opposite effect.
Single-attribute choices – such as choosing the apartment with the lowest rent – are relatively simple. However, most of the decisions consumers make are based on multiple attributes which complicate the decision-making process. The compromise effect states that a consumer is more likely to choose the middle option of a set of products over more extreme options.
In business, the butterfly effect describes the phenomenon where the simplest actions yield the largest rewards. The butterfly effect was coined by meteorologist Edward Lorenz in 1960 and as a result, it is most often associated with weather in pop culture. Lorenz noted that the small action of a butterfly fluttering its wings had the potential to cause progressively larger actions resulting in a typhoon.
The IKEA effect is a cognitive bias that describes consumers’ tendency to value something more if they have made it themselves. That is why brands often use the IKEA effect to have customizations for final products, as they help the consumer relate to it more and therefore appending to it more value.
The overview effect is a cognitive shift reported by some astronauts when they look back at the Earth from space. The shift occurs because of the impressive visual spectacle of the Earth and tends to be characterized by a state of awe and increased self-transcendence.
The house money effect was first described by researchers Richard Thaler and Eric Johnson in a 1990 study entitled Gambling with the House Money and Trying to Break Even: The Effects of Prior Outcomes on Risky Choice. The house money effect is a cognitive bias where investors take higher risks on reinvested capital than they would on an initial investment.
As highlighted by German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer in the paper “Heuristic Decision Making,” the term heuristic is of Greek origin, meaning “serving to find out or discover.” More precisely, a heuristic is a fast and accurate way to make decisions in the real world, which is driven by uncertainty.
The recognition heuristic is a psychological model of judgment and decision making. It is part of a suite of simple and economical heuristics proposed by psychologists Daniel Goldstein and Gerd Gigerenzer. The recognition heuristic argues that inferences are made about an object based on whether it is recognized or not.
The representativeness heuristic was first described by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The representativeness heuristic judges the probability of an event according to the degree to which that event resembles a broader class. When queried, most will choose the first option because the description of John matches the stereotype we may hold for an archaeologist.
The take-the-best heuristic is a decision-making shortcut that helps an individual choose between several alternatives. The take-the-best (TTB) heuristic decides between two or more alternatives based on a single good attribute, otherwise known as a cue. In the process, less desirable attributes are ignored.
The bundling bias is a cognitive bias in e-commerce where a consumer tends not to use all of the products bought as a group, or bundle. Bundling occurs when individual products or services are sold together as a bundle. Common examples are tickets and experiences. The bundling bias dictates that consumers are less likely to use each item in the bundle. This means that the value of the bundle and indeed the value of each item in the bundle is decreased.
The Barnum Effect is a cognitive bias where individuals believe that generic information – which applies to most people – is specifically tailored for themselves.
The anchoring effect describes the human tendency to rely on an initial piece of information (the “anchor”) to make subsequent judgments or decisions. Price anchoring, then, is the process of establishing a price point that customers can reference when making a buying decision.
The decoy effect is a psychological phenomenon where inferior – or decoy – options influence consumer preferences. Businesses use the decoy effect to nudge potential customers toward the desired target product. The decoy effect is staged by placing a competitorproduct and a decoy product, which is primarily used to nudge the customer toward the target product.
Commitment bias describes the tendency of an individual to remain committed to past behaviors – even if they result in undesirable outcomes. The bias is particularly pronounced when such behaviors are performed publicly. Commitment bias is also known as escalation of commitment.
First-principles thinking – sometimes called reasoning from first principles – is used to reverse-engineer complex problems and encourage creativity. It involves breaking down problems into basic elements and reassembling them from the ground up. Elon Musk is among the strongest proponents of this way of thinking.
The ladder of inference is a conscious or subconscious thinking process where an individual moves from a fact to a decision or action. The ladder of inference was created by academic Chris Argyris to illustrate how people form and then use mental models to make decisions.
Goodhart’s Law is named after British monetary policy theorist and economist Charles Goodhart. Speaking at a conference in Sydney in 1975, Goodhart said that “any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.” Goodhart’s Law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
The Six Thinking Hats model was created by psychologist Edward de Bono in 1986, who noted that personality type was a key driver of how people approached problem-solving. For example, optimists view situations differently from pessimists. Analytical individuals may generate ideas that a more emotional person would not, and vice versa.
The Mandela effect is a phenomenon where a large group of people remembers an event differently from how it occurred. The Mandela effect was first described in relation to Fiona Broome, who believed that former South African President Nelson Mandela died in prison during the 1980s. While Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and died 23 years later, Broome remembered news coverage of his death in prison and even a speech from his widow. Of course, neither event occurred in reality. But Broome was later to discover that she was not the only one with the same recollection of events.
The bandwagon effect tells us that the more a belief or idea has been adopted by more people within a group, the more the individual adoption of that idea might increase within the same group. This is the psychological effect that leads to herd mentality. What in marketing can be associated with social proof.
Moore’s law states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years. This observation was made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965 and it become a guiding principle for the semiconductor industry and has had far-reaching implications for technology as a whole.
Disruptive innovation as a term was first described by Clayton M. Christensen, an American academic and business consultant whom The Economist called “the most influential management thinker of his time.” Disruptive innovation describes the process by which a product or service takes hold at the bottom of a market and eventually displaces established competitors, products, firms, or alliances.
Value migration was first described by author Adrian Slywotzky in his 1996 book Value Migration – How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition. Value migration is the transferal of value-creating forces from outdated business models to something better able to satisfy consumer demands.
The bye-now effect describes the tendency for consumers to think of the word “buy” when they read the word “bye”. In a study that tracked diners at a name-your-own-price restaurant, each diner was asked to read one of two phrases before ordering their meal. The first phrase, “so long”, resulted in diners paying an average of $32 per meal. But when diners recited the phrase “bye bye” before ordering, the average price per meal rose to $45.
Groupthink occurs when well-intentioned individuals make non-optimal or irrational decisions based on a belief that dissent is impossible or on a motivation to conform. Groupthink occurs when members of a group reach a consensus without critical reasoning or evaluation of the alternatives and their consequences.
A stereotype is a fixed and over-generalized belief about a particular group or class of people. These beliefs are based on the false assumption that certain characteristics are common to every individual residing in that group. Many stereotypes have a long and sometimes controversial history and are a direct consequence of various political, social, or economic events. Stereotyping is the process of making assumptions about a person or group of people based on various attributes, including gender, race, religion, or physical traits.
Murphy’s Law states that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Murphy’s Law was named after aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy. During his time working at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949, Murphy cursed a technician who had improperly wired an electrical component and said, “If there is any way to do it wrong, he’ll find it.”
The law of unintended consequences was first mentioned by British philosopher John Locke when writing to parliament about the unintended effects of interest rate rises. However, it was popularized in 1936 by American sociologist Robert K. Merton who looked at unexpected, unanticipated, and unintended consequences and their impact on society.
Fundamental attribution error is a bias people display when judging the behavior of others. The tendency is to over-emphasize personal characteristics and under-emphasize environmental and situational factors.
Outcome bias describes a tendency to evaluate a decision based on its outcome and not on the process by which the decision was reached. In other words, the quality of a decision is only determined once the outcome is known. Outcome bias occurs when a decision is based on the outcome of previous events without regard for how those events developed.
Hindsight bias is the tendency for people to perceive past events as more predictable than they actually were. The result of a presidential election, for example, seems more obvious when the winner is announced. The same can also be said for the avid sports fan who predicted the correct outcome of a match regardless of whether their team won or lost. Hindsight bias, therefore, is the tendency for an individual to convince themselves that they accurately predicted an event before it happened.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
