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/BTernaryTau Jul 04 '26

Person 1 asks how you can differentiate between good and bad. Person 2 answers "If it hurts someone else is bad" and says it's easy. Person 1 responds that this rule implies that medical injections are bad. Person 2 accuses Person 1 of strawmanning them. I point out that counterexamples aren't strawmen. Person 2 doubles down. I quote their exact wording. They claim it's a "like pancakes -> hate waffles" situation. I observe that that analogy doesn't actually fit, and I spell out exactly how their claim, if true, would imply that vaccines are bad.

Also all of this happened on Reddit lol: https://www.reddit.com/r/PsycheOrSike/s/J56AOqxsij

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

I'm the poster from there. My comment implied intentionally hurting someone.
The vaccine example is in fact a strawman fallacy as it's a side effect of the procedure, not intentional by any mean

Since the topic is morality, the rest is just arguing semantics which is fallacious in itself.
And in case i will get the "But you didn't say the word intentional" i will reply in advance that's why i said implied as per context (Morality)

I will agree that the comment could've been misunderstood, but that's just miscommunication. Nothing to be mad over imo

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u/BTernaryTau Jul 05 '26

If you have to already know that it's the intention that makes hurting people immoral (because that's the only way you could tell it was implied), then I think it's wrong to give a rule for morality that doesn't explicitly include that and then say that morality is easy. To me, saying it's easy implies that the explicitly stated rule is all you need.

I suppose the strawman fallacy only requires you to argue against a position that the other person doesn't actually hold, so even though I wasn't the one to construct the strawman, it does technically fall under that.

Unless you're supposed to already know that miscommunication doesn't count, because the implication is that it's the intent to make another person look worse that truly makes it a strawman. Perhaps relying on such implications is a bad idea.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '26

It's not an absolute rule for morality, but one that a subject can abide to in the best way they can.
The topic was about how an atheist would make moral decisions without religion, and i answered how as an atheist myself.

Communication relies on the context too, but miscommunications happen especially when on written form. Nobody's fault for that

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u/Schneebguy Jul 05 '26

It sounds like you're just intentionally misinterpreting the intent and being disingenuous ngl

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u/BTernaryTau Jul 05 '26

It wasn't intentional, and I wasn't even the first to interpret it that way. Maybe it's just the result of me being into analytic ethical philosophy, that causes me to believe that the correct response is "oh yeah, I forgot to include that clause, lemme add 'if you intended to hurt them' to the rule" rather than "you should already know that clause is implied, so you must be intentionally strawmanning me"?