How to 'Star-Man'

Anyone who has spent time arguing on social media has heard of the straw man fallacy. It’s a flaw in argumentation in which a caricature of a point is substituted for the real thing, making it easier to refute. If someone posits, for example, that universal basic income (UBI) could ameliorate the loss of jobs due to automation, a straw man would be, “So you want people to sit at home all day and collect free money?” Recently, the term has become a cudgel in the culture wars, with both ends of the horseshoe cynically wielding it for their own purposes. This is unfortunate, because the value of the straw man is that it highlights a communication error and offers us an opportunity to correct it. Read Full Article »