Scribe of wisdom

Straw man

A straw man fallacy is a specific misrepresentation of another person’s position and arguing against that false position. A straw man fallacy occurs when someone takes another person’s argument or point, distorts it or exaggerates it in some kind of extreme way, and then attacks the extreme distortion, as if that is really the claim the first person is making.

Example

In a sentence
The marketing team didn’t have all of the details, so they created a straw man draft of what new markets they wanted to conquer.

In a situation

Person 1:
I think pollution from humans contributes to climate change.

Person 2:
So, you think humans are directly responsible for extreme weather, like hurricanes, and have caused the droughts in the North Eastern part of India? If that’s the case, maybe we just need to go to the North East and perform a rain dance.

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