Tips on Arguing - Straw Man

Inquiry:

The straw man is one of the most common tactics used in arguing. It involves deliberately mischaracterizing your opponent’s position in order to create a weaker argument that can be more easily attacked.

The name “straw man” comes to us from combat training exercises, where a dummy stuffed with straw would be set up for soldiers to attack so that they wouldn’t be harming a real person. One criticism of this training method was that the soldiers weren’t receiving a realistic experience by fighting dummies that couldn’t retaliate (and were therefore weaker). Straw men are still used in modern rodeos, where they serve literally as a distraction for the bull. The hope is that the bull will attack the dummy and miss the rider.

Straw man arguments work in a fashion similar to those rodeo dummies. Let’s say that you are arguing with someone, and you say, “Jobs that involve heavy labor, such as construction, shouldn’t be required to have the same number of female workers as male workers, because men tend to be more powerfully built.”

If your opponent wants to create a straw man out of your statement, he might respond by saying, “Don’t try to protect gender inequality. Any woman who tries can do those jobs just as well.”

Your opponent has just built a straw man. It’s easy for him to discourage gender inequality. But what you were arguing against was something much different: that gender quotas should not be artificially imposed in jobs that depend on a certain body type.

When you encounter such distractions, your best bet is to call it out for what it is, and redirect the discussion back to the original position. In the above case, you’d say something like, “That wasn’t what I said. Women should be allowed to work in those jobs if they have the physical capacity. What I said was that more men tend to be physically qualified.”

Never allow anyone to reshape your own statements. If you do, they’ll take you down faster than a peeved bull.

Media Ethnocentrism and Copyright Controversy: Video

Discovery:

It's been a big week for intellectual property.

Michele Boldrin and David K Levine published a book not too long ago that argues for the elimination of most intellectual property legislation based on principles of economics and competition. "Against Intellectual Monopoly," is available as a free e-book through the authors' website. Hard copies are also available, but not for free.

You can listen to Boldrin talk about some key ideas from his book with Professor of Economics Russ Roberts on the most recent episode of the Econ Talk podcast.

Watch my video on copyright below!

Why the Fairness Doctrine was Dumb.

Inquiry:


The Fairness Doctrine was a regulation created by the FCC in order to ensure that news broadcasters presented controversial issues in a balanced manner. It was abolished in 1987 because it was deemed as a restriction of free speech. Since then, some supporters have called for its reinstatement.

It does not make any sense to revive the Fairness Doctrine. The Doctrine is vague and therefore easy to exploit.

The Fairness Doctrine demands that broadcast media “air and engage in controversial-issue programs that affect their communities.” But what is a “controversial issue?”

Consider, for instance, the idea of perpetual motion machines. Anyone with a high-school education in physics can understand why such machines are impossible. Yet every few months, another self-described “amateur engineer” breaks news with his or her claim of some new device that defies the laws of thermodynamics. When these misinformed individuals find their work criticized by legitimate scientific organizations, they often end up railing against the “scientific establishment.”

Does a case like this constitute a worthy controversy? If the Fairness Doctrine were to be followed to the letter, then the answer would appear to be ‘yes.’ After all, a machine that could keep working forever without a regular influx of fuel/energy would impact every community in the world. It would solve every major resource problem known to mankind. And there are clearly two opposing sides – those who defend the integrity of observable science, and those who imagine they’ve had a breakthrough that just isn’t recognized.

But few would seriously suggest that we should place empirical fact and unsubstantiated nonsense in an equal forum on a regular basis. Once the facts are demonstrated to enough of the public, the time and money spent on presenting false material will simply become a waste for the broadcaster.

The above example may seem far-fetched, but this is exactly what happened with anti-smoking campaigns in 1971, just in reverse. It was clear to the tobacco companies that their advertisements would appear to be hollow propaganda when presented side-by-side with the facts. So they bowed out altogether. But observe – assuming all other things to be equal, if the Fairness Doctrine were still in effect, every anti-smoking campaign or warning would have to be coupled with an equal amount of space for pro-smoking advocacy.

There is simply no reason for the Fairness Doctrine – or any other similar regulation - to exist in today’s world of multiple media formats. Between the Internet, hundreds of cable channels, extended radio platforms, and other forms of media, any controversies that need to play out have plenty of options. It should no longer be the responsibility of any single station to represent the broad span of the “public interest.” Rather, people need to become more proactive in seeking out and supporting the stations that carry programming relevant to their individual interests.

Eating For a Better Future

Journey:

Next time you order that quarter-pounder from McDonalds, chew on this: according to John Robbins book Food Revolution, it can take as much as 5,000 gallons of water to produce (raise and kill) a single pound of beef. A stalk of wheat, on the other hand, uses about 25 gallons.

That’s no small matter in a world where resources are intricately linked to global warming and the preservation of our environment. The costs of consumption go way beyond what you pay in the grocery store. As we move towards a sustainable future, we cannot afford to ignore how our most vital resource is produced, packaged, and distributed.

Changing our eating habits to reflect the delicate balance of nature has an added benefit as well: it’s good for us. At a time when obesity in the United States is slamming our children and our health care system, it’s reassuring to know that what’s best for the environment also happens to be what’s best for our bodies.

In a study conducted by scientists at Cornell University and published last summer in the journal Human Ecology titled “Reducing Energy Inputs in the US Food System,” it was noted that about 19% of American’s energy consumption is tied to food. When they examined all of the factors that go into this, they concluded that it would be feasible to cut this use by nearly 50%. Some of this could be accomplished through changes in farming methods, but the bulk of the savings was related to the eating and buying habits of ordinary people. If Americans simply changed the way we eat, we could reduce the nation’s total energy use by a tenth – more than the amount that we currently produce from wind and solar sources combined.

So what can we do? For starters, we can eat less meat. In a January 27, 2008 article for The New York Times titled “Rethinking the Meat Guzzler,” reporter Mark Bittman pointed out that Americans account for only 5% of the world’s population, yet we process more than 15% percent of the world’s livestock.

“Americans are downing close to 200 pounds of meat, poultry and fish per capita per year (dairy and eggs are separate, and hardly insignificant), an increase of 50 pounds per person from 50 years ago,” wrote Bittman. "We each consume something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal government’s recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein.”

There’s no reason that we should get so much of our protein from animals. Plenty of other protein-rich sources exist in the plant world: soybeans, almonds, lentils, quinoa, and chick peas are just a few examples. Other common foods contain smaller amounts of protein that add up throughout the day. These include potatoes, breads, pastas, broccoli and spinach.

The Cornell study also made other recommendations for ways to cut our energy expenditures when it comes to food. One suggestion involved the consumption of less “highly processed” foods. Most foods go through some kind of processing procedure in order to ensure quality and safety. But certain types of foods – especially snack foods – have to be processed in multiple ways just to put them together.

Take the venerable Twinkie. Read the packaging, and you’ll see that the number of chemicals and food items that go into it is long enough to fill a page. They include enriched wheat flour, sugar, corn syrup, water, high fructose corn syrup, vegetable and/or animal shortening, soy lecithin, polysorbate 60, dextrin, calcium caseinate, and added colour (yellow 5, red 40). And that’s just a handful.

Every one of the ingredients that goes into a Twinkie is either grown on a farm or engineered by chemists. Then they have to be packaged and transported to a single location, where they get combined into the “food” that we recognize. Finally, the finished products have to be reprocessed and distributed to stores, vending companies, and so on. Every one of these steps adds to the Twinkie’s carbon footprint.

Highly processed foods are usually comparatively unhealthy. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), these foods “tend to be high in fat, sugar, and calories. Choosing many foods from these areas, and consuming any food in excessive portions, contributes to overweight and obesity. Overweight and obese individuals are at increased risk for many diseases and health conditions, including high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, and stroke.”

Highly processed foods are pretty easy to spot. If you read the ingredients list on anything in your local grocery store, it will give you clues as to the level of processing. In general, the more ingredients listed, the more processed it is. Pay special attention to whether there are many chemical names on the list. Mixed nuts, for example, likely have a number of ingredients, but most of them are recognizable. Anything that had to be concocted in a lab is going to increase energy consumption.

The final thing you can do to decrease your carbon food-print is to reduce the amount of packaging that goes into a meal. Recycling is helpful, but assuming that you can generate all of recyclable waste you want doesn’t actually make things better, because recycling plants require immense amounts of energy to clean, break down, and reconstitute various products. The first goal of any good environmental strategy is to reduce what you take in to begin with.

This ties in with the previous suggestion, because less processed foods also tend to involve less packaging. Tomatoes, for instance, come without any packaging. But some healthy foods are also wrapped in inordinate amounts of packaging. Most cereals come in a box that has a bag in it. There’s no reason for this doubled approach. If you walk to the end of the cereal isle, you’ll notice a number of generic brands that are only bagged. These brands are often just as good for you – and they cost less. So why pay extra for a box?

One of the most insidious packaging-related marketing campaigns in recent years has involved bottled water. Over the past two decades, bottled water has become incredibly popular. Many people began buying it because they assumed it was of better quality than tap water. But according to a report by the FDA, Henry Kim, Ph.D., a supervisory chemist at the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, “over the years, the FDA has adopted EPA standards for tap water as standards for bottled water.” The two are only separated by minor differences that largely involve the way they’re distributed. In fact, in 2007 PepsiCo became embroiled in a controversy over its Aquafina brand after it was discovered that the company had been misleading customers about the fact that it was using municipal tap water as its source. All they were really paying for was a bottle.

There are many, many ways that we can change our eating habits to better reflect the needs of our planet and our bodies. All it takes is a little education and creativity.

Grapes: nature’s candy, without the wasteful wrapper.

Photograph by Brandon T. Bisceglia