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Comment by mnemonicsloth | Hacker News Reader

A straw man is a proxy, a fake, a stand-in for the real thing. So to make a straw man argument, I have to distort something you've said so that it becomes easier to refute. Feel free to explain how I can do this when your post is reproduced verbatim above mine.

You meant argumentum ad hominem (advanced by a loaded question, even!). Technically, it's not relevant to startups' degree of ease whether you've been successful as a founder or not, but it is valid for me to ask you to cite your evidence.

You claim to be an expert on startups based on evidence you can't reveal. That's a circular appeal to authority (yourself) established by an appeal to a higher power (all your friends' top-secret successes).

I don't want to be (too much of) a pompous ass here, but I get jumpy when people try to convince me of things that are both improbable and highly desirable.

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Alright, you can't post something like this and then hope that adding "I don't want to be a pompous ass" will help. Nobody is trying to convince you of anything, he was simply stating his opinion on the subject.

He said he didn't want to be too much of a pompous ass. Clearly he agrees (rightly) that he was being at least a bit of a pompous ass.

Also his level of pompousness was funny.

No, the strawman you were presenting was that I had no idea about this topic because I had not experienced it myself. That is a fallacy, and it is untrue in this situation. I did not mean it was a loaded question, I wasn't sure whether you were being a jerk or not.

Clearly, you were trying to be a pompous ass, and are again with this second comment. I hardly claim to be an expert, I CLEARLY stated to have some anecdotal evidence. I was simply giving some comments based on my experiences, and whether you choose to believe me is your prerogative.

Lastly, how is it improbable that starting a startup is easy? Any software developer can write their own software in a short period of time, and try to start a business based on it.

Your use of 'strawman' is incorrect.

I hate 'arguing' this way, but no it is not. Straw man: Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, refute that person's arguments, and pretend that every upholder of that position, and thus the position itself, has been defeated.

He was presenting me as someone who had no experience with a startup, thus shooting down my arguments about the ease of starting up. Explain how this is incorrect? He presents me as an individual with no experience with startups. He then uses that to attempt to shoot down my arguments.

For mnemonicsloth to make a strawman argument, he'd first have said something like "some people say <poor argument for $x>" and then go on "however, <picks apart argument>, so we know $x is false". Therein lies the fallacy -- a disproof of a proof of $x is not a disproof of $x.

In other words, it's not about presenting a person as a poor defender, it's about presenting a poor defense. Cutting straight to a person's worth as a commentator -- as mnemonicsloth did -- is argument "ad hominem" ("to the person").

mnemonicsloth, mrtron - are you two dating?

(serious question, you sound like a couple I know)

This is my first meeting with mrtron, so I don't think we're dating (unless you mean 'by LiveJournal standards', in which your guess would be as good as mine).

I'm engaged in the real world. We fight all the time.

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