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A strawman would be a weak version of his opponent's position. This is different. This is his pointing out a contradiction in (a nice strong version) his oppone

A strawman would be a weak version of his opponent's position. This is different. This is his pointing out a contradiction in (a nice strong version) his opponent's position.

ftxbro 3y ago
it's possible or even likely that his opponents like deterrence but don't like family punishment
- hollerith 3y ago
  Good point.
blargey 3y ago
That argument is about as strong as "oh you like retribution? That means you support <vile torture / mutilation>!" Deliberately confounding "reasoning for choice of punishment" and "severity/extremeness of punishment" and "other moral guidelines outside the 'punishment-reason-axis' that inform the option-space of punishment" is obvious rhetorical trolling, who cares what the precise "fallacy-name" is for this sort of behavior. Now that I think about it from the other end, I don't see how "hurting their family" is excluded from "retributive justice" solely by the definition of "retributive" either. It's been treated as a perfectly valid act of retribution in many cultures across history (and the present day, probably) - see every story about feuding clans killing each others members; they don't do that because they think it's going to dissuade the other clan from enacting their own vengeance in turn.
XorNot 3y ago
But it is a weak version of his opponents position, empowered by the fact his argument is pathetic: "unless you commit to maximal deterrence then you don't really believe in deterrence". It's a slippery slope fallacy variant: "if you have laws to deter actions by individuals, then why not have laws which might create greater deterrence" - and then simply assumes all other considerations can be handwaved away. If the argument: "the psychological harm of knowing there is famine is bad, therefore we should simply kill all people suffering from famine..." sounds ridiculous to you, then so should this person's argument because it's doing the exact same trick. That's not withstanding the utterly absurd "opposite" he constructs his position as: "I believe in creating suffering as a morally noble goal" is not some sort of counter-argument, it's just him arguing for his own sociopathy in pretty-prose.

A strawman would be a weak version of his opponent's position. This is different. This is his pointing out a contradiction in (a nice strong version) his opponent's position.

ftxbro 3y ago

it's possible or even likely that his opponents like deterrence but don't like family punishment

hollerith 3y ago
Good point.

blargey 3y ago

That argument is about as strong as "oh you like retribution? That means you support <vile torture / mutilation>!" Deliberately confounding "reasoning for choice of punishment" and "severity/extremeness of punishment" and "other moral guidelines outside the 'punishment-reason-axis' that inform the option-space of punishment" is obvious rhetorical trolling, who cares what the precise "fallacy-name" is for this sort of behavior. Now that I think about it from the other end, I don't see how "hurting their family" is excluded from "retributive justice" solely by the definition of "retributive" either. It's been treated as a perfectly valid act of retribution in many cultures across history (and the present day, probably) - see every story about feuding clans killing each others members; they don't do that because they think it's going to dissuade the other clan from enacting their own vengeance in turn.

XorNot 3y ago

But it is a weak version of his opponents position, empowered by the fact his argument is pathetic: "unless you commit to maximal deterrence then you don't really believe in deterrence". It's a slippery slope fallacy variant: "if you have laws to deter actions by individuals, then why not have laws which might create greater deterrence" - and then simply assumes all other considerations can be handwaved away. If the argument: "the psychological harm of knowing there is famine is bad, therefore we should simply kill all people suffering from famine..." sounds ridiculous to you, then so should this person's argument because it's doing the exact same trick. That's not withstanding the utterly absurd "opposite" he constructs his position as: "I believe in creating suffering as a morally noble goal" is not some sort of counter-argument, it's just him arguing for his own sociopathy in pretty-prose.