That name doesn’t seem to convey the full impact of the argument for me, though. Perhaps a more evocative name, similar to “the strawman fallacy”, might be more effective in terms of memetics and remembering the correct form of the argument without mixing it up with other fallacies. The well-known Reductio ad Hitlerum is a good example of this, and is actually very close to this argument AFAICT.
I’ve been playing with plays on reduction, oxidation, redox, etc., but haven’t settled on a particular one I prefer yet. The argument often feels like a “reduction” (of something like taxation to what it is in essence, aka theft, for example) to those without the ability to disentangle this, yet could be considered to do the reverse—an “oxidation” ;) - since it attempts to merge the point of contention into an overarching category that already has “known values”.
P.S. Completely agree on the main point of your comment.
That name doesn’t seem to convey the full impact of the argument for me, though. Perhaps a more evocative name, similar to “the strawman fallacy”, might be more effective in terms of memetics and remembering the correct form of the argument without mixing it up with other fallacies. The well-known Reductio ad Hitlerum is a good example of this, and is actually very close to this argument AFAICT.
I’ve been playing with plays on reduction, oxidation, redox, etc., but haven’t settled on a particular one I prefer yet. The argument often feels like a “reduction” (of something like taxation to what it is in essence, aka theft, for example) to those without the ability to disentangle this, yet could be considered to do the reverse—an “oxidation” ;) - since it attempts to merge the point of contention into an overarching category that already has “known values”.
P.S. Completely agree on the main point of your comment.