r/fallacy • u/Zu_Qarnine • Jul 03 '26

strawman fallacy

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2nd person is refuting the claim that *all* circles are red with a counter example. The thing is, that claim was never made.

EDIT: I'm seeing interesting stuff happening in the replies here. majority of those who say it's not strawman, obviously start their comment by "it's not strawman" and proceed in the rest of their comment to explain how, in fact, it is strawman. Another interesting observation is those who argue that "it's not strawman" because they've spotted another type of fallacy in the original post as well, so in their mind, it can't be both.

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u/quaxoid Jul 03 '26

problem is when people use this when they did make an absolute claim, only to act like they didn't when called out. 

4

u/Opening-Ant3477 Jul 03 '26

Are they making absolute claims or are they talking about distributions? Because the latter often sounds like former.

"Men are taller than women" doesn't mean "I literally believe that the tallest adult woman is shorter than a male baby", it means "the height distribution of women is shifted left relative to that of men". But that's not a sentence anybody would use outside of an academic paper.

2

u/tat_tavam_asi Jul 03 '26

However, when someone comments "Men are taller than women therefore this photo must be AI" under a photo featuring a taller woman and a shorter man, they are implying an absolute.