The sunk cost fallacy: Following through on a project or decision because we have already invested time, effort, or money into it, even if the current costs outweigh the benefits For example, to disarm her husband’s straw man, the wife can reply as follows: “I said that I prefer the beach over the big city; I never said that I hate big cities.” Person 1: I think we should mute debaters’ microphones when it’s their opponents’ turns to speak so they can’t interrupt each other. This is the “proofreading” in Scribbr’s standard service. It can only be selected in combination with editing.

Asking your opponent to elaborate on their claim: Depending on the claim, ask them where they got their data or how they came to that conclusion based on what you’ve said and done.The two parts of the first book that I really enjoyed were the idea of The Straw Men and John Zandt and neither one played prominent parts in this volume. Zandt was peripheral, popping up here and there throughout the story. There was a moment where The Straw Men were discussed in relation to the lost settlement of Roanoke and the mysterious Croatoan but that was about it. This story was primarily about Ward and Nina and the search for the Upright Man. Straw man fallacy occurs when someone distorts their opponent’s argument by oversimplifying or exaggerating it, for example, and then refutes this “new” version of the argument—called a straw man argument. Straw man fallacy is an informal logical fallacy. In other words, the problem lies in the content of the argument, rather than its structure (in which case it would be a formal fallacy). More specifically, it is a fallacy of relevance: these fallacies use evidence, examples, or statements that are irrelevant to the argument at hand. Why is the straw man fallacy used? Free thinkers are concerned with knowing and understanding what’s true. When it comes to evaluating other people’s arguments and viewpoints, they don’t misrepresent others’ arguments to make them seem weaker. They respond to the real argument. At their best, they go a step further than that: they reconstruct opposing arguments to make them as strong as possible. In other words, they don’t build straw men; they build steel men.

an essay on the subject of criminal mentality, with examples of past cases and debates about nature vs. nurture in deviant behaviour, including the role of media and of economic or political influences. Person 1: We welcome guests of all ages before 8 p.m., but at night, we maintain an adults-only atmosphere. But apart from his girlfriend Nina, a discredited FBI agent, the only other person who believes the Straw Men exist is John Zandt, a former homicide cop turned lone vigilante. This is a wonderful rich dark tale which the author manages to balance with a growing feeling of uneasiness and fear. It is also an observational study of access and the true value of existence..”They were doing it for some god, some ideology, some fallen comrade or ancient grievance. They weren’t just doing it for themselves. Bobby realized this made a difference, and also that if we were all the same species, there was little hope for us; that nothing we ever did in the daytime would bleach out what some of us were capable of at night. Some aspects of human behaviour were inevitable, but this was surely not. To believe so was to accept that we had no downward limit. Just because we were capable of art didn’t mean what lay in front of him could be dismissed as aberration, that we could take what we admired and fence that off as human, dismissing the rest as monstrous. The same hands committed both. Brains didn’t undermine the savagery. They made us better at it. As a species we were responsible for all of it, and carried our dark sibling inside.” The base-rate fallacy: Ignoring base-rate or statistically significant information, such as sample size or the relative frequency of an event, in favor of less relevant information e.g., pertaining to a single case, or a small number of casesAdrian Desmond and James Moore [2009] 'Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution' Houghton Mifflin Harcourt If that last sentence was confusing a “ strawman ” refers to a proposition floated solely for the purpose of being shot down, giving something away that you never thought you’d get. For example, if a party proposed something really absurd like a referendum on the Treaty, you’d know that was a strawman, because it’s ridiculous and surely can only be intended to gain concessions. In the quote, he responds to arguments of the Roman Catholic Church and clergy attempting to delegitimize his criticisms, specifically on the correct way to serve the Eucharist. The church claimed Martin Luther is arguing against serving the Eucharist according to one type of serving practice; Martin Luther states he never asserted that in his criticisms towards them and in fact they themselves are making this argument.