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Steelmanning is actually pretty effective against hostile opponents. Once you both agree to what your opponent is claiming, you can identify and ask about all
by verdagon 4y ago
Steelmanning is actually pretty effective against hostile opponents.
Once you both agree to what your opponent is claiming, you can identify and ask about all the assumptions that lead up to that claim, and from there, you can discuss and dismantle any false assumptions.
It's a way to "shortcut past the nonsense" and get straight to the root differences.
- ineptech 4y agoThat only works if your opponent is playing along. I don't mean they have to be nice or civil, but they do have to be consistent. There's no point trying to e.g. establish shared definitions for a key term if your opponent is not bound by it. At best, steelmanning might help you realize you're talking to someone who is not acting in good faith slightly faster.
- verdagon 4y agoIf you ask your opponent, "Just so I understand, are you saying ___?", they'll usually help you understand what they're claiming. People generally like to be heard and understood, even if they violently disagree with you. There's the occasional troll who is intentionally wasting your time, but I find that to be pretty rare, especially on HN. People are most often just bad at communication, not malicious.
- swatcoder 4y agoMost non-academic arguments resolve to value differences, not false assumptions. And people often feel very vulnerable when they feel like somebody’s making an effort to expose and challenge their values. Much of the time, the nonsense is there to keep things civil: you rehash tired tropes to talk around the issue for a while, get tired, and then somebody buys the next round of beers.
- verdagon 4y agoWell put, I've also had it boil down to value differences pretty often. The nice thing about steelmanning is that you can identify those value differences more quickly. One time I was in an argument that was looking to get pretty heated, but with steelmanning I was able to find the underlying value difference, point out that we disagreed on it, and then we just kind of sat there in awkward silence for a second and moved on to play Starcraft. It was a good day.
- rexpop 4y agoBy "hostile," do you mean "bad faith"?
- jimmygrapes 4y agoAlthough sometimes bad faith does come into play, I find that the phrase is often used as an accusation to dismiss the other person even when the other person is not actually arguing in bad faith. It's increasingly one of those rhetorical tactics people learn online and apply willy-nilly.
- tinco 4y agoNo, it doesn't have to be bad faith. It's common (nowadays) to have such opposite beliefs that one or both opponents believe the other person is acting in bad faith or has amoral motivations. I recently had such a debate on HN and as we were talking people would pitch in saying the guy was a liar or trolling. He just truly didn't believe climate science for whatever reason. I also think he was a bit of an asshole personality wise, but I've never met him in real life so who knows.
- gamblor956 4y agoSteelmanning is useless against hostile opponents because they won't engage in rationale discussion.
- kbelder 4y agoIt's not useless, because steelmanning isn't a process to win an argument. It's to improve yourself. A hostile, irrational person can still (occasionally) be right, and if they are, you'd be better off knowing that.
- gwd 4y agoThe major advantage of steelmanning I haven't seen mentioned so far: The psychological benefits of it. The fact is most of us are eager to feel heard; and when we don't feel heard, we have an instinctive desire to shout our own viewpoint louder, making it more difficult to hear other people's viewpoints. The result is that situations where people feel strongly you get everyone shouting and nobody listening. Stating the other person's point as clearly and strongly as you can not only helps you potentially be less wrong; it helps them feel heard, which makes them in turn more open to hearing other points of view.