Straw Vulcan - Television Tropes & Idioms

Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions

-David Hume

A straw man used to show that emotion is better than logic.

It starts by having characters who think "logically" try to solve a problem. And they can't. Either they can't find any answer, or they're caught in some kind of standoff, or they're even stuck in a Logic Bomb-type loop. Once this is established, someone who uses good old human emotion comes up with a solution that the logical thinker can't. This proves An Aesop that emotion is superior and that the logical thinker shouldn't trust logic so much.

This is, of course, completely broken. Fiction often gets the concept of logic wrong in a number of ways.

The most common mistake is to assume that logic and emotion are somehow naturally opposed and that employing one means you can't have the other. Excluding emotion doesn't make your reasoning logical, however, and it certainly doesn't cause your answer to be automatically true. Likewise, an emotional response doesn't preclude logical thinking — although it may prevent you from thinking in the first place — and if an emotional plan is successful, that doesn't make logic somehow wrong.

Fiction often mixes up logical with other concepts as well. For one thing, authors sometimes say "illogical" when they mean "counter-intuitive." Correct logic is very often counter-intuitive, however, which is to be expected, as logic is meant to prevent errors caused by relying on intuition. As such it has more in common with mathematics than with Common Sense.

Authors also routinely conflate "logical" with "reasonable" or "rational". To be logical, something has to meet very strict requirements. For a plan to be reasonable or sensible, it just has to get you in the direction you want to go by avoiding the stuff you don't want to happen. The rational plan, in the strictest sense of "rational", is the one that best achieves this. It is therefore by definition impossible for the plan with the best chance of working to be irrational.

Logic ultimately exists to make sure you can never arrive at a wrong answer from true premises. As such it is supposed to make sure that you don't make errors in your reasoning, for example by contradicting yourself. It won't, however, make up for incorrect or incomplete information. If the premises you start with are false, like "the sun is green" or "Superman isn't a dick," then logic can't be relied upon to give you a true answer; as computer scientists say: "Garbage in, garbage out".

Because neither the Straw Vulcan nor the author know what logic is about, they will misuse and distort the concept to create contrived examples where it doesn't work. Examples of these include:

The Straw Vulcan will only accept a guaranteed success. A plan that only has a chance of success is not "logical", even if the chance is the highest possible. This is called the "perfect solution fallacy".
The story assumes a "logical" plan is one where every step makes the goal visibly closer, and accepting a short-term disadvantage for a long-term advantage is not "logical". In fact, if that's what has the best chance of working then by definition it's perfectly rational, which is often what the writer means be "logical".
The Straw Vulcan will be completely unable or unwilling to plan for unexpected and even illogical behavior from other parties.
The story assumes that self-sacrifice isn't "logical", even though logic is about how to achieve goals based on your premises, not about what those goals and premises are — if you value other people's lives more than yours, self-sacrifice is logical.
The story assumes that anything which doesn't fit a particular mathematical model of logic isn't "logical".
- For instance, assuming that "logic" means "using syllogisms". Even speculation and testing hypotheses can then be called "illogical", despite being the foundation of modern science. Hell, even logicians don't use syllogisms all the time.
- Or assuming that all logical choices must make one side better off on an individual basis, without considering cooperation; this is known as a Nash equilibrium, although you'll never find the actual term mentioned, mostly because the word "equilibrium" is far too logical-sounding for authors claiming its inferiority.
The Straw Vulcan, and by extension all logical thinkers, will be uncreative, or at least less so than emotional people. (Which is ironic, since often the smartest, most logical mathematicians and scientists have to be very creative in their work). He will be unable to come up with an imaginative answer to an unusual problem, while the emotional protagonist, often despite having no real experience with this kind of situation, will be able to save the day. This is supposed to show that "logic" is inferior to "emotion" in that emotion can provide a third and more favorable option to the logician's bad and worse options.
- This is usually done by having the "emotional" character deny or ignore one of the premises. In fact, it is very logical — or rather, rational — to carefully identify and question the premises of a logic problem. Many puzzles revolve around forcing the player to break an implied premise. (For example, in the famous connect-nine-dots puzzle, most people will assume that they're not allowed to draw lines outside the nine-dot box.) Of course, sometimes the premise they wind up breaking is "You must follow the rules."
If there is no clear reason or benefit to taking one option over another, the story will assume that the Straw Vulcan sees no logical answer and will default to inaction as the only option, even when inaction will clearly be worse than either. This may even go so far as to completely freeze the Straw Vulcan in a life-threatening situation. He will, for example, be unable to flee from a pursuing enemy on a crossroad because he can go either left or right with no added benefit to either. This ignores the fact that making an arbitrary (random) decision is perfectly rational in a situation where there is no logical basis for choosing.
A Straw Vulcan will have to consider everything about the problem in full detail even in time-critical situations, while the emotional person will make the snap second decisions necessary in this sort of situation. This will demonstrate how the "logical" Straw Vulcan is useless under pressure and therefore inferior to the emotional protagonist. A possibly wrong choice that will definitely be executed is often a more logical choice than a definitely correct choice that will never be tried.
There's also the case where the emotional person suggests a course that shouldn't work, period, but the Straw Vulcan's ideas all involve sacrificing someone, using tactics that seem below the belt, or something else that Captain Emotion and the Emotioneers object to. So Straw Vulcan is outvoted, they go with the dumb emotional plan, and lo, it works... due to sheer dumb luck. This is then lauded as a victory for emotion, when in fact it's a victory for the Million To One Chance principle.
Any of these can be combined with an argument ad misericordiam, an appeal to the viewers' pity which seeks to make the Straw Vulcan a less sympathetic character by tugging on the viewers' heartstrngs. A dog has to be shot? Make the dog an adorable little puppy and the viewers will see the dog shooting as a Moral Event Horizon, even when there was no other way.