Red Herring Fallacies: The Straw Man Argument Post: 302222608

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08-07-2008

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Red Herring Fallacies: The Straw Man Argument

Tim Bass
08-07-2008 02:40 AM
According to our friend Wikipedia, the Straw Man argument is a red-herring fallacy where one party in a debate describes a position that, on the surface, resembles an opponent’s actual view but is easier to refute.* Then, in counterpoint, the debating partner attributes an easily refutable position to the opponent (for example, deliberately overstating the opponent’s position). Wikipedia says:

1. Person A has position X.

2. Person B ignores X and instead presents position Y.
Y is a distorted version of X and can be set up in several ways, including:

Presenting a misrepresentation of the opponent’s position and then refuting it, thus giving the appearance that the opponent’s actual position has been refuted.

Quoting an opponent’s words out of context - i.e., choosing quotations that are not representative of the opponent’s actual intentions.

Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender and then refuting that person’s arguments, thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position, and thus the position itself, has been defeated.

Inventing a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs that are criticized, such that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical.

Oversimplifying an opponent’s argument, then attacking the simplified version.

3. Person B attacks position Y.

4. Person B draws a conclusion that X is false/incorrect/flawed.
This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself.

For example, there has been some lively discussions recently around the notion that CEP is overhyped.

Debate:***** “CEP is Overhyped.”

Person A:** “CEP has been overhyped.”

Person B:**** “CEP is just hype.”

The point of the discussion by person A was to point out that CEP has been overhyped.* Person B has exaggerated this to a harder to defend position, “CEP is mere hype.” or “CEP is just hype.”

From the customer perspective, I don’t think that fallacies and red-herring arguments are good for CEP. * Believe me, if we could take an “out of the box” stream processing rules-engine and bolt it on to a network and insure a client it would detect complex fraud, or diagnose network faults accurately, and not put my entire professional reputation on the line, I would do it in a heartbeat.

It is not the speed of the an engine which makes a good CEP engine, it is the capability of the analytics to deliver high-quality, high-confidence complex event detection in real-time.

Source...

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mdraw_default_line_break

mdraw_default_line_break(3m17n) 				 The m17n Library				   mdraw_default_line_break(3m17n)

NAME

       mdraw_default_line_break - Calculate a line breaking position.

SYNOPSIS

       int mdraw_default_line_break (MText * mt, int pos, int from, int to, int line, int y)

DESCRIPTION

       Calculate a line breaking position. The function mdraw_default_line_break() calculates a line breaking position based on the line number
       line and the coordinate y, when a line is too long to fit within the width limit.  pos is the position of the character next to the last
       one that fits within the limit.	from is the position of the first character of the line, and to is the position of the last character
       displayed on the line if there were not width limit.  line and y are reset to 0 when a line is broken by a newline character, and
       incremented each time when a long line is broken because of the width limit.

RETURN VALUE

	   This function returns a character position to break the line.

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Version 1.6.2							    12 Jan 2011 				   mdraw_default_line_break(3m17n)