A field guide to the ways reasoning breaks
Distraction and distortion
Also called Misrepresentation
Replacing an opponent's position with a weaker version and refuting that instead.
You want fewer meetings, so you want no communication at all.
Restate the original position in the opponent's own words before answering it.
A straw man is a training dummy: stuffing in human shape, easy to knock down. The metaphor for attacking a stuffed imitation of your opponent's position — light, flammable, and victorious in every bout — became standard fallacy vocabulary in the twentieth century.
She suggested trimming the conference budget; her opponent thundered that she wanted to abolish professional development entirely.
A parent asks for less homework on weeknights; the school newsletter warns against 'parents who don't believe in education'.
A reviewer calls the film's third act slow; defenders respond that critics hate any movie without explosions.
An engineer proposes one weekly on-call rotation instead of two; management replies that some people simply refuse to support the team.