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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (380984)	4/28/2008 2:44:28 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578422

"1 : a weak or imaginary opposition (as an argument or adversary) set up only to be easily confuted " Yep. "The "imaginary opposition" is my supposed support of nothing less than a "full-scale nuclear strike." " This is where you go off the rails. "Like I said CJ, I can understand basic English, and I can use a dictionary for terms that I don't know." That is, at best, questionable. For one, the whole essence of a straw man argument is that an actual argument is made. You might have had a case if bentway or I had then pretended you had actually made a statement about a nuclear response being your answer and argued how stupid that was. Although that would be more along the lines of a confused argument than an actual straw man argument. But no argument was made. And that means it was a comment. Which is why I question your abilities here. You clearly didn't understand, or chose to ignore, the part of the definition where it talks about "as an argument or adversary". "If you want to use Clintonian logic and claim that you didn't make a straw man argument because you said "I guess," go right ahead." That isn't Clintonian logic. That is actual, bona fide logic based on actual facts. In this context, "I guess" does, in fact, mean "I don't know, maybe it means...". So even if an argument had actually followed based on that, it would not have technically been a straw man argument, but a confused one. However, given that no argument was ever presented... So, in summary, you have demonstrated you don't understand what a straw man argument is, much less the difference between an argument and a comment. And you persist in arguing about it. And, no doubt, will claim you won because I have not presented a link and have resorted to dictionary definitions. Maybe an example would help. This would have been a straw man argument. "Well, according to Tenchu, nothing less than a full scale nuclear strike would have been an adequate response to bin Laden. But, that would have been a dumb move. Not only would it have been totally disproportionate, lobbing a few cruise missiles his way would have been more like it, but as was later learned, bin Laden wasn't even there.". Note the actual putting of words in your mouth. Here I actually claim you have taken a position that you haven't to my knowledge. Then I proceeded to argue against it. If I had said "Well, according to Tenchu, nothing less than a full scale nuclear strike would have been an adequate response to bin Laden.", and left it there, that wouldn't have been a straw man argument since there is no actual argument presented. It just would have been a mis-statement or an outright lie, depending on whether or not I actually thought you had taken that position. And demanding a link to that would have been perfectly appropriate. As it stands, I can only provide a link to your ridiculous assertion that 75 cruise missiles isn't a substantial response. Despite the fact that is a bit more than a B52 can carry in iron bombs with less explosive power and not nearly as precise targeting. And a single B52 can mess up a small town in a big way.