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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LEARN ABOUT REDHAT

xmtextfieldpostoxy

XmTextFieldPosToXY(library call)										  XmTextFieldPosToXY(library call)

NAME

       XmTextFieldPosToXY -- A TextField function that accesses the x and y position of a character position

SYNOPSIS

       #include <Xm/TextF.h>
       Boolean XmTextFieldPosToXY(
       Widget widget,
       XmTextPosition position,
       Position *x,
       Position *y);

DESCRIPTION

       XmTextFieldPosToXY  accesses the x and y position, relative to the upper left corner of the TextField widget, of a given character position
       in the text buffer.

       widget	 Specifies the TextField widget ID

       position  Specifies the character position in the text for which the x and y position is accessed. This is an integer number of	characters
		 from the beginning of the buffer. The first character position is 0.

       x	 Specifies  the pointer in which the x position is returned.  The returned position is the distance from the left side of the wid-
		 get to the left border of the character.  This value is meaningful only if the function returns True.

       y	 Specifies the pointer in which the y position is returned.  The returned position is the distance from the top of the	widget	to
		 the character's baseline.  This value is meaningful only if the function returns True.

       For a complete definition of TextField and its associated resources, see XmTextField(3).

RETURN

       This function returns True if the character position is displayed in the TextField widget; otherwise, it returns False, and no x or y value
       is returned.

RELATED

       XmTextField(3).

														  XmTextFieldPosToXY(library call)