the 'straw man' trap

it's unfortunately that a lot of people, sometimes myself too, get into pitched debate thinking the other side is plain silly,
if not crazy or stupid,

but often it's only because we reduce the other side to the level of a punch bag,

then I found there is actually an academic term for that, here is excerpt from http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html

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Straw Man (Fallacy Of Extension):
attacking an exaggerated or caricatured version of your opponent's position.
For example, the claim that "evolution means a dog giving birth to a cat."

Another example: "Senator Jones says that we should not fund the attack submarine program. I disagree entirely. I can't understand why he wants to leave us defenseless like that."

On the Internet, it is common to exaggerate the opponent's position so that a comparison can be made between the opponent and Hitler.