Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by baakss 3590 days ago
>Witness the poster you're replying to, suggesting we accept human extinction rather than taxes and regulation.

Straw man or False dilemma?

1 comments

Neither, unless you can propose a third option.
>The potential solutions that come to mind range from, on the pessimistic end, apocalyptic, to technological if we are to be optimistic. We'll either think our way out of the crisis with cleaner sources of energy, or nature will have it's way and our population will dwindle.

That was the original statement. To me, the fact that 'range' is included, means there's more than just two choices implied. I do believe it misrepresents the argument to suggest that there's only two 'extremes' of "taxes and regulation" or else "we go extinct."

So taxes and regulation are an "extreme". I call that extremist thinking.