Attacking straw men - People often spend time discounting weak objections to their views in order to avoid other objections that they know are harder to counter. Another common trick is to discount objections no one would raise. This is called attacking straw men. Consider the following remark: “A new building would be great, but it won’t be free.” This does not actually say that the speaker’s opponents think we can build a new building for free, but it does conversationally imply that they think this, because otherwise it would be irrelevant to discount that objection. The speaker is thus trying to make the opponents look bad by putting words in their mouths that they would never say themselves. attribute a bad argument to his opponents and then reject it in an indignant. useful to ask whether anyone would actually argue or speak in the way suggested