If I’ve learned anything from the Wizard of Oz it’s that tin men have no hearts and straw men have no brains; so it comes as no surprise that brain dead people throw around terms such “straw man argument.” It’s a cop out to actually having a discussion, and in many ways is just creating a “straw man” by falsely presenting someone’s argument as misconstruing what you said. This isn’t to say that straw men arguments don’t crop up, only that every time I’ve been accuse of a “straw man argument,” I was the victim of being grouped with a group of people who I generally disagree with. You see this all the time, Republicans say you’re an “Obamanite” if you so much as take up for anything he does; the opposite is true you are called a “Paul-ite” if you take up for Ron Paul, a “Tea Bagger” if you take up for the “Tea Party” and a racist if you take up for Rand Paul. After these claims are made and you try to have an argument, about half way through you are accuse of a “straw man argument.” Wait a minute buster, what was that you just said? Did you just use a “straw man” 30 minutes ago and I ignored it? You can’t have a discussion without sometimes misconstruing someone’s beliefs on occasion, but likewise getting a fact or two wrong is completely different than grouping people together with a belief, so that you can let your mind at ease and ignore what the other person is saying. I’m just going to start throwing out the term “Representativeness heuristic” so that these people have to go look it up and I can go find a match.

Anyhow here’s a song about Cognitive bias: