Words are Important
The business world seems to generate more jargon and buzzwords than goods and services these days. Words are being misused and abused. This is a disaster because words are important. When words can be made to mean anything, they mean nothing. Without precise meaning, we can’t form rational thought and the world is lost. So, in the interest of saving the world, I humbly present the first installment of this series on words:
Straw Man
What it means
A “straw man” is a kind of argument where you don’t attack your opponent’s position. Rather, you construct a flimsy, superficially-similar position to your opponent’s and then attack that. In other words, you don’t fight a real man, you fight a man made of straw. Obviously, this is not a valid kind of argument, and so is called a logical fallacy.
How it’s used
The phrase “straw man” is increasingly being used to mean something like “first draft that you intend to pick apart”. The only bit brought over from the real meaning of the phrase is “flimsiness.” Even more hideous, the phrase is sometimes used as a verb, meaning “to create a flimsy first draft” (e.g., “Let’s setup a meeting and straw man the new sales pitch”). Even writing that as an example of what not to do makes me want to throw up a little.
Why it’s important
First, we have a perfectly good English word that means “draft”. It’s the word “draft”. Second, by diluting the meaning of “straw man” we are less likely to recognize these bad arguments camouflaged in our public discourse. The reason why straw man arguments are so nasty is that they sort of seem to hold water.
For example, during the public debate over the recent health care reform legislation, Sarah Palin famously posted on Facebook that the law would institute “death panels” that would sit in judgement of a patient’s worthiness to society, and force Medicare to euthanize those the panel saw to be unfit. Surely, nobody wants death panels, or wants to encourage suicide as a cost-saving measure. The only problem is that the law in question didn’t include any provision like this whatsoever. What the law actually said was that if a terminally-ill patient wants end-of-life counseling services, then Medicare has to pay for it. Patients aren’t mandated to get the counseling and doctors are not obligated to offer it.
So, Palin deliberately misrepresented the content of the health care bill to build opposition to it. This was not just a lie. It was a special kind of lie – a straw man argument.
