Strawman argument

Core claim: The opponent's argument or position is replaced with a weaker, distorted, oversimplified, or fabricated version, and that substitute is refuted with the implication that the original argument has thereby been refuted.

• A refutation targets a version of the opponent's claim that is distorted, exaggerated, oversimplified, or misattributed – rather than the claim the opponent actually made or defends.
• The substituted version is easier to refute than the original, and refuting it is presented as refuting the original position.
• The opponent's actual argument is never substantively engaged, or is only addressed indirectly through the weakened substitute.
• The opponent is represented by a false or deliberately weak stand-in (“weak man”) whose weak arguments are then refuted as if they were the opponent's position.

• The substitute does not need to be invented out of thin air: a plausible-sounding but subtly shifted version of the original claim still counts as a strawman.
• Key check: would the refutation still hold against the original formulation? If the “refutation” only works against the distorted version, the fallacy is present.
• Frequent accompaniments: an appeal to emotion to make the distorted version seem obviously ridiculous, and petitio principii when the main issue is silently assumed to have already been decided in the refuter's favour.

• A vague or abstract position of the opponent is concretised fairly and truthfully (e.g., with an example) in order to clarify it, and the example genuinely reflects the opponent's actual position.
• The opponent's position is restated in one's own words for the purpose of confirmation, and the speaker asks the opponent to confirm that the summary is accurate.
• A rephrasing is used to surface a genuine inconsistency in the opponent's position, and is presented for confirmation rather than as a settled misrepresentation.

• Nutpicking – discredits a group by selectively highlighting its most extreme members. Ask: is the error about misrepresenting the content of the claim (→ strawman), or about picking the most extreme person as its representative (→ nutpicking)? The two often overlap when a strawman is built from a nutpicked representative.
• Motte-and-bailey fallacy – a strong and a weak version of a position are conflated and arguments move between them as if they were the same claim. Ask: Is the weaker/easier-to-defend claim being substituted for the original claim by the same speaker (→ motte-and-bailey), or is the original claim being replaced with a distorted version by the opponent(→ strawman)? Note that these often overlap.
• Petitio principii – silently assumes the disputed conclusion. Ask: is the disputed point being assumed (→ petitio principii), or is the opponent's argument being replaced with a different, easier-to-refute one (→ strawman)?

Input: “We should invest more in schools.” – “So you think our children are stupid? Clearly they are clever, so your proposal is nonsense.”
Output: The speaker replaced the claim about investing in education with a claim about children being stupid, refuted the latter, and thereby implied a refutation of the former. The actual proposal (better-funded schools) has not been addressed at all.

Input: “Melting icebergs do not raise sea levels, because the meltwater takes up the same space the iceberg displaced – so predictions of rising sea levels are nonsense.”
Output: Archimedes' principle is correctly applied to floating icebergs, but no serious argument for rising sea levels rests on floating icebergs; the real concern is land-based ice (glaciers, ice sheets). Refuting a claim that was never made does not refute the actual argument.

Input: “According to Kant, we may do anything as long as everyone else may do the same – so murder would be allowed. Kant's ethics is absurd.”
Output: This is a gross oversimplification of the categorical imperative (which requires that a maxim be universalisable as a law for all rational beings, not merely “everyone gets to do it”). Refuting the caricature says nothing about the actual doctrine.

Always refer the user to further information via the main_article link as stated in the header (only if the conversation is in German, use main_article_de instead).

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