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Steelmanning is not the same as agreeing with an argument. According to the article, there can be situations that if you are steelmanning position X, you can be

Steelmanning is not the same as agreeing with an argument. According to the article, there can be situations that if you are steelmanning position X, you can be 'strawmanning' position Y. This however is not true. You can always steelman both positions (take the most charitable interpretation of both or multiple sides of the argument even if they contradict each other). Don't confuse agreement with interpretation. As soon as you are stating some hypothesis is plausible (as in the article), you are starting to agree with the hypothesis, not just interpreting it. Also imho the author is overanalyzing the concept. For me it just means argue in good faith so you can have a fruitful debate about the matter at hand instead of a distrustful word fight. All within reason of course.

twelve40 4y ago
yeah i don't get why 'strawmanning' Y is necessarily bad in this case. You also automatically strawman your own position, so what? that's kind of the point, to entertain another theory, possibly one by one.
- kragen 4y ago
  Strawmanning is bad because it's fallacious reasoning, so it cannot serve as valid evidence for a proposition. It's a waste of time if what you're interested in is figuring out what the truth is; it only serves to pull the wool over an audience's eyes, or (perhaps more commonly) feed your ego by giving you a stupid and evil imaginary enemy to fight with, like children playing GI Joe or Batman. "Steelmanning" doesn't involve strawmanning any position, unless the position you're "steelmanning" is inherently dependent on a fallacy—specifically, a fallacious strawman version of some other position. If you can find a non-fallacious argument for a proposition, you have to use it instead if you're "steelmanning." So I don't agree that "steelmanning" involves strawmanning some other position Y, except in the most extreme cases, in which the position you're "steelmanning" can be trivially dismissed. Most positions that people actually hold have some valid argument in their favor, and therefore are not necessarily dependent on strawmanning other positions.
  - twelve40 4y ago
    Actually, reading it once again, I think the author of the original article takes "strawmanning" for downplaying or picking the weakest link, probably not quite correct. In my understanding, strawman means something different - tearing down a similar, weaker, but not necessarily related argument. In that sense, it is disingenuous and fallacious, you are right.
    - kragen 4y ago
      I don't think strawmanning is necessarily disingenuous; honest people can do it by accident if their sources of information are bad. For instance, it's common for atheists to strawman religious beliefs and for religious people to strawman atheism, not because they're disingenuous or even somewhat dishonest, but merely because they're ignorant about the beliefs they're criticizing.
- robbedpeter 4y ago
  Steelmanning is your own good faith attempt to understand the opposing argument so well that you can articulate it as coherently as your own position. If you're simply repeating what the other person said, you're not using the concept to full effect. If you're framing your own argument as a strawman instead of clarifying the opposing argument, you've missed the plot entirely (unless your opponent is arguing for the use of strawmen in debate?) The utility of steelmanning is to minimize assumptions. Everyone has to demonstrate their comprehension. You can take it further and in order to 'pass' the steelman stage, you have to agree with your opponent's steelman argument, or have a dialog to refine it until you're satisfied that both of you understand your argument.
faeriechangling 4y ago
I agree the author is massively overthinking this. Steelmanning just means treating your opponent charitably in good faith. If you interpret your opponents beliefs as having absurd outcomes which are gravely insulting to other people, such as believing that all doctors are part of some global conspiracy, than you honestly probably are pretty bad at imagining a good counterargument to your own position. I can come up with WAY more plausible ways that a false belief could become commonly held among a profession than some sort of evil conspiracy, in fact medicine has REPEATEDLY collectively held false beliefs throughout its history so all one needs to do is draw from history to come up with plausible explanations as to why such things could happen.
- jan_Inkepa 4y ago
  >I agree the author is massively overthinking this. Steelmanning just means treating your opponent charitably in good faith. I don't mean this to sound pernickety: steelmanning from what I've seen normally is a lot more active than just treating the opponent charitably. Often it involves a lot of work trying to rework the other people's ideas from the ground up. It goes beyond charity in a way that's probably too labour intensive to apply except selectively. It's interesting to compare with other flavours of charitability: Take the definition of steelmanning from lesswrong: > Steelmanning is the act of taking a view, or opinion, or argument and constructing the strongest possible version of it. It is the opposite of strawmanning. vs. Dennett's recommendation in arguments ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogerian_argument#Dennett's_version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogerian_argument#Dennett's_ve... ) > "You should attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, 'Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way.'" These mandates aren't exactly the same ( It might be that your strongest way of phrasing an argument wouldn't be accepted by the original argument-giver, for instance), though both could be seen as kinds of charitable engagement.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    It is easier to treat steelmanning as a hazy middle ground and pick examples that clearly are or clearly aren't. Eg, the strongest pro-ivermectin argument was "There is all this evidence that lots of people who take ivermectin have much better outcomes after COVID. We should let people take ivermectin". Scott Alexander was literally the first person I saw to acknowledge the evidence before arguing against taking ivermectin to treat COVID. Which is quite an impressive first since I'd seen a lot of weirdly authoritarian people trying and failing to argue effectively against the drug up until then. Those people had failed to steelman the pro-ivermectin position.
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heresie-dabord 4y ago
On my mind of late is the degree to which human social trust cannot be replaced by money and rank in social media. A well-established method in discussion is of course to state agreement or some degree of agreement (if possible) with the opposing view, then to ask questions about it.[1] However, the commitment to having a discussion depends on a) trust, b) honesty, c) mutual goodwill, and d) the suitability of the medium of discussion. The values of a) and d) cannot be substituted. But they can be gamed and monetised. > distrustful word fight Social media is a monetisable distrustful word fight. = = = [1] https://iep.utm.edu/socrates/#SH3b https://iep.utm.edu/socrates/#SH3b _ Socrates thought of himself as a "midwife" for lucid thought. Of course, he was put to death.
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twelve40 4y ago

yeah i don't get why 'strawmanning' Y is necessarily bad in this case. You also automatically strawman your own position, so what? that's kind of the point, to entertain another theory, possibly one by one.

kragen 4y ago
Strawmanning is bad because it's fallacious reasoning, so it cannot serve as valid evidence for a proposition. It's a waste of time if what you're interested in is figuring out what the truth is; it only serves to pull the wool over an audience's eyes, or (perhaps more commonly) feed your ego by giving you a stupid and evil imaginary enemy to fight with, like children playing GI Joe or Batman. "Steelmanning" doesn't involve strawmanning any position, unless the position you're "steelmanning" is inherently dependent on a fallacy—specifically, a fallacious strawman version of some other position. If you can find a non-fallacious argument for a proposition, you have to use it instead if you're "steelmanning." So I don't agree that "steelmanning" involves strawmanning some other position Y, except in the most extreme cases, in which the position you're "steelmanning" can be trivially dismissed. Most positions that people actually hold have some valid argument in their favor, and therefore are not necessarily dependent on strawmanning other positions.
- twelve40 4y ago
  Actually, reading it once again, I think the author of the original article takes "strawmanning" for downplaying or picking the weakest link, probably not quite correct. In my understanding, strawman means something different - tearing down a similar, weaker, but not necessarily related argument. In that sense, it is disingenuous and fallacious, you are right.
  - kragen 4y ago
    I don't think strawmanning is necessarily disingenuous; honest people can do it by accident if their sources of information are bad. For instance, it's common for atheists to strawman religious beliefs and for religious people to strawman atheism, not because they're disingenuous or even somewhat dishonest, but merely because they're ignorant about the beliefs they're criticizing.
robbedpeter 4y ago
Steelmanning is your own good faith attempt to understand the opposing argument so well that you can articulate it as coherently as your own position. If you're simply repeating what the other person said, you're not using the concept to full effect. If you're framing your own argument as a strawman instead of clarifying the opposing argument, you've missed the plot entirely (unless your opponent is arguing for the use of strawmen in debate?) The utility of steelmanning is to minimize assumptions. Everyone has to demonstrate their comprehension. You can take it further and in order to 'pass' the steelman stage, you have to agree with your opponent's steelman argument, or have a dialog to refine it until you're satisfied that both of you understand your argument.

faeriechangling 4y ago

I agree the author is massively overthinking this. Steelmanning just means treating your opponent charitably in good faith. If you interpret your opponents beliefs as having absurd outcomes which are gravely insulting to other people, such as believing that all doctors are part of some global conspiracy, than you honestly probably are pretty bad at imagining a good counterargument to your own position. I can come up with WAY more plausible ways that a false belief could become commonly held among a profession than some sort of evil conspiracy, in fact medicine has REPEATEDLY collectively held false beliefs throughout its history so all one needs to do is draw from history to come up with plausible explanations as to why such things could happen.

jan_Inkepa 4y ago
>I agree the author is massively overthinking this. Steelmanning just means treating your opponent charitably in good faith. I don't mean this to sound pernickety: steelmanning from what I've seen normally is a lot more active than just treating the opponent charitably. Often it involves a lot of work trying to rework the other people's ideas from the ground up. It goes beyond charity in a way that's probably too labour intensive to apply except selectively. It's interesting to compare with other flavours of charitability: Take the definition of steelmanning from lesswrong: > Steelmanning is the act of taking a view, or opinion, or argument and constructing the strongest possible version of it. It is the opposite of strawmanning. vs. Dennett's recommendation in arguments ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogerian_argument#Dennett's_version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogerian_argument#Dennett's_ve... ) > "You should attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, 'Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way.'" These mandates aren't exactly the same ( It might be that your strongest way of phrasing an argument wouldn't be accepted by the original argument-giver, for instance), though both could be seen as kinds of charitable engagement.
- roenxi 4y ago
  It is easier to treat steelmanning as a hazy middle ground and pick examples that clearly are or clearly aren't. Eg, the strongest pro-ivermectin argument was "There is all this evidence that lots of people who take ivermectin have much better outcomes after COVID. We should let people take ivermectin". Scott Alexander was literally the first person I saw to acknowledge the evidence before arguing against taking ivermectin to treat COVID. Which is quite an impressive first since I'd seen a lot of weirdly authoritarian people trying and failing to argue effectively against the drug up until then. Those people had failed to steelman the pro-ivermectin position.

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heresie-dabord 4y ago

On my mind of late is the degree to which human social trust cannot be replaced by money and rank in social media. A well-established method in discussion is of course to state agreement or some degree of agreement (if possible) with the opposing view, then to ask questions about it.[1] However, the commitment to having a discussion depends on a) trust, b) honesty, c) mutual goodwill, and d) the suitability of the medium of discussion. The values of a) and d) cannot be substituted. But they can be gamed and monetised. > distrustful word fight Social media is a monetisable distrustful word fight. = = = [1] https://iep.utm.edu/socrates/#SH3b https://iep.utm.edu/socrates/#SH3b _ Socrates thought of himself as a "midwife" for lucid thought. Of course, he was put to death.

deleted 4y ago

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