The Straw Man Fallacy: Reducing Depth to Shallowness

The straw man logical fallacy—where an argument or character is distorted into a weaker, oversimplified version to be easily attacked—serves as a potent tool for misrepresenting individuals of depth and complexity. A person of depth, marked by nuanced ideas, emotional richness, and intricate reasoning, becomes a target for those with agendas or those too biased or dimwitted to grasp such complexity. Whether driven by malice or ignorance, these critics erect […] Read more »

The Capitalism Straw Man

It is very common in our current society to conflate consumerism, and by extension materialism (material reductionism), for capitalism, thus making a straw man and convenient scapegoat out of capitalism from what is actually just a lack of self-ownership, as self-ownership, personal responsibility, and personal accountability is the only way decentralized free market systems, aka capitalist societies, are able to actually work. Consumerism is the attempt to satisfy the hole […] Read more »

The Single Cause Fallacy and False Accusations

Beware of making and giving credence to the “single cause fallacy” (causal reductionism, complex cause, fallacy of the causal oversimplification, reduction fallacy), for it “typically leads to a myriad of false claims and accusations”, as noted below. It is also connected to the straw man fallacy, as it can be used to reduce a person or argument to a single motivation or reason for being something, thus misrepresenting their complex […] Read more »