straw man

You beat an argument nobody made. Impressive, irrelevant.

Wrong: “We should test this before shipping.” “So you want to delay it forever?”

Right: “How long would testing take?”

Nobody said forever. A weaker version was invented because it’s easier to beat.

The move is to swap someone’s actual position for a flimsier one, knock that down, and act like you’ve won. It works because the audience often can’t remember exactly what was claimed thirty seconds ago.

How to answer it: restate your position and ask them to address that one. If they can’t do it without the exaggeration, the exaggeration was doing all the work.

Now go argue with what they actually said.