The strawman version is easier to get across and requires crossing less inferential distance in most cases I’ve experienced.
I’ve never found that to be true. It’s an absence of evidence issue—if the best you can do is explain a faulty version of your opponent’s argument, maybe you can’t actually explain the real argument. Thus, there’s no reason to trust the accuracy of your explanation.
Hmm, that’s something I hadn’t considered. Yes, maybe the real factor was that I wasn’t explaining the real arguments as well, even after multiple attempts (which is probably because I don’t understand them well, if true, because the lack of this common cause would imply statistical weirdness and that I should expect my next attempt at explanation to go remarkably well, right?).
I’ve never found that to be true. It’s an absence of evidence issue—if the best you can do is explain a faulty version of your opponent’s argument, maybe you can’t actually explain the real argument. Thus, there’s no reason to trust the accuracy of your explanation.
Hmm, that’s something I hadn’t considered. Yes, maybe the real factor was that I wasn’t explaining the real arguments as well, even after multiple attempts (which is probably because I don’t understand them well, if true, because the lack of this common cause would imply statistical weirdness and that I should expect my next attempt at explanation to go remarkably well, right?).