Question 3 Strawmen

I want to talk about Strawmen because it was brought up in my other class so i figured it'd be interesting to bring it up once again. A strawman is taking down another person's arguement by saying it's something it was never meant to be. My teacher was telling us that good essays have statements that we're supposed to convince people other wise, but we're not supposed to lie about that statement. Below i've included a statment from wikipedia that explains it better than the book does. Somebody says something on once stance, but the person arguing says that that's not what he's saying at all. Thus knocking down the argument and seeming like the victor, but in reality he just forced his way into a tie. In fact he really lost, but the people who aren't smart enough to recognize this win at all cost argument would see the arguer as the winner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Person A has position X.

Person B disregards certain key points of X and instead presents the superficially-similar position Y. Thus, Y is a resulting distorted version of X and can be set up in several ways, including:

1. 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.^[1]
2. Quoting an opponent's words out of context – i.e. choosing quotations that misrepresent the opponent's actual intentions (see contextomy and quote mining).^[2]
3. Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, then refuting that person's arguments – thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position (and thus the position itself) has been defeated.^[1]
4. Inventing a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs which are then criticized, implying that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical.
5. Oversimplifying an opponent's argument, then attacking this oversimplified version.

Person B attacks position Y, concluding that X is false/incorrect/flawed.