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I sort of lean towards weak-manning not being a thing, and any view that anyone holds is fair game. But treating every member of a group as if they have to defend every weak position of their side is a form of waging the culture war. It commonly happens in the real world, but I'd hope to avoid it here.
One specific reason why I find weak-manning ok, is that the arguments themselves don't play fair, and so I'm not gonna play fair in trying to tear them down.
Consider something like humor and comedy. A funny thing does not have to be true. So false and true ideas can both be supported by comedy. Humor can work as a an argument for something because people like laughing, they might be laughing at a viewpoint, or laughing with the presenter. But ultimately its just an association of a happy emotion with a certain political viewpoint. It is one of the purest examples of "arguments as soldiers".
Arguments that might be "weak" around here, because they are objectively foolish or devoid of logic/evidence, could actually be some of the strongest arguments out in 'the wild'. Religion is a good example to bring up. One of the reasons I've seen people start to believe in the Christian faith is because they are fundamentally broken people, and being convinced that someone loves and cares about them is a salve to their wounded minds. That there is no evidence the sky-god exists and actually loves them is not something that they appreciate people pointing out. They aren't seeking truth. They are seeking medicine. And you are ruining their placebo. However, when they try to shove the religion down my throat the kid-gloves that I'd normally use come off.
Similar things with politics. Some of the people I know that support one of the major parties seem to do it out of the same tribal part of their brain that supports sports teams. Evidence and reason don't actually matter very much to them. I don't go to sports games and point out that many of the athletes are probably using steroids. Because sports games don't come after me or my bank account. Politicians do come after me. So again, the kid gloves are off. All the stupid arguments are getting called out. What I once did, and no longer bother to ever do, is to seek out the strongest arguments for a position and try to knock those down.
There are a complex set of economic arguments for why minimum wage might be good. It has to do with elasticities of prices, monopsony, and some complex models. But luckily ~100% of people arguing for minimum wage don't know any of those arguments. If you brought out those arguments to try and knock them down they'd just get annoyed and angry at you. "No, I support a higher minimum wage because people should be paid enough to survive!"
I'd like everyone here to consider that what they think are "weak-man" arguments might actually be the strong arguments for a thing. We are coincidentally in a place where logic and evidence have some advantages as argumentative techniques. But that is by design, and something that has to be enforced.
I think they are more thinking along the lines of why is it that some of the other employees of the firm they work for earn manyfold as much as they do and that they are thinking about minimum wage increases for them being funded by decreases in the wages of the higher earners, but in reality that scenario requires the government to regulate all wages not just the minimum.
Basic math should be used to address those concerns. A million dollar salary can only be split twenty times to pay 50k salaries
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I think weak man is sort of a strange way to put it. I would give as a principle that a good representation of the position of your opponent is one that a reasonably studied adherent would argue for himself.
It would be disingenuous to argue that Christianity is true because Constantine saw a vision of a cross. No one who’s studied the issues would hold that position. As such refuting Christianity on the basis of debunking the conversion of Constantine isn’t a good faith argument. It’s irrelevant to the issues at hand. Better would be arguing from history or Jewish scriptures or something along those lines. The argument being that the scripture doesn’t actually say what you think it says, or that history doesn’t record what you think it records.
Well sure. Because he saw a chi-ro. =P
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