Strawman Has a Point/Other Media

Examples of in  media include:

Engineering

 * A somewhat famous example from Computer Science: "Worse is Better", a famous paper describing two methodologies of software development. The "New Jersey" methodology (called "Worse is better", thus giving the paper its name) is purposefully set up as a strawman, to contrast with the approach the author was trained in, the "MIT Approach" (called "The Right Thing" methodology); and yet, it turns out to be "better" at certain things, even in strawman form. Acknowledging this fact is part of the point of that section of the paper.

Religion

 * The Epicurean trilemma is probably a forgery by Christian philosophers who were unhappy with some of his other ideas (like Cessation of Existence and ataraxia), since it first shows up in anti-Epicurean/anti-Stoic works written under Constantine and doesn't quite fit with the theology of Hellenistic Athens. 1400 years later, Hume felt Epicurus, well, had a point, and "his" presentation of the problem of evil has since been a fixture in works attacking the idea of a single, benevolent God.

Tropes

 * Most Robot War stories want us to sympathize with the humans. But in most every case, the humans started it, and the robots are defending themselves, if being extreme about it.
 * In almost any given story where the hero argues that If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him, the point of the opposing side — usually that the ends justify the means and that taking one murderous life to save many innocent ones is nothing like taking many innocent lives for selfish reasons — will come off as this to a fair amount of people.
 * It's also difficult to get audiences to condemn a fictional hero for acting like how we expect police officers to act IRL - i.e., be willing to shoot the bad guy if it's necessary to keep him from shooting civilians. There is an obvious tendency to take examples of legitimate authority figures acting in legality and with good faith as, well, legitimate role models for behavior.

Back to