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The Steel Man Technique: How to Argue Better and Be More Persuasive
- pineaux 2y agoI think people on the left and right of the political divide are not capable of doing this. I am also sceptical it works, but it is worth a try.
- pfdietz 2y agoIt comes into conflict with ideological thinking. Entertaining opposite positions invokes internal censorship, which can be painful.
- lo_zamoyski 2y agoThomas Aquinas would beg to differ. All he does is steel man and attack opponents at their strongest points. The result is an invaluable corpus of rigorous arguments. He would have accomplished nothing by being uncharitable. Whether your audience is receptive, that's a different matter, horse brought to water and all that.
- yummypaint 2y agoDid we read the same Aquinas? My experience with him was that all he does is repeat his unjustified starting assumptions ad nauseum, then declares he has proven that god exists or whatever nonsense he was claiming.
- lo_zamoyski 2y agoI don't know what you read, but this is patently false and an utterly absurd characterization (not to mention the strange contempt dripping off the screen). Did you read Aquinas himself, or some characterization all too eager to caricature him? Or, if you did read him, did you read whatever you read in the correct manner and light to do justice to the work? I don't know what "unjustified starting assumptions" you have in mind, but a stock caricature is the whole "Everything has a cause, so the universe has a cause" thing, which neither Aquinas nor any major proponent in the tradition has ever defended. I'll just link to a post by one such proponent instead of repeating or summarizing it here [0]. [0] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/07/clarke-on-stock-caricature-of-first.html https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/07/clarke-on-stock-car...
- KerrAvon 2y agoThe article here assumes all parties are arguing in good faith, and that both sides have a reasonable starting position, or at least something that approaches one. But it's not possible to engage in good faith with the extreme sides of the political horseshoe, because that looks like this: The left: good governance would be nice The right: you should die and we will kill you when we get into office You can't engage on those terms. They're either insincere or very sincere, and either way it's not solvable through dialogue. edit: formatting
- pfdietz 2y agoI don't think it assumes that. If one is arguing against a fundamentally bad position, the Steel Man of that position will still be bad -- and by addressing that, you will have cut off evasions at the pass. Steel Man can be used to preempt Motte-and-Bailey fallacies by better defining the point being attacked.
- unclebucknasty 2y agoAll of this is true, and it's the roadmap to tautological soundness. But, in these scenarios, it's rarely about tautology or perfecting the structure of your argument. Yes, you might win on a debate stage. But, you've not moved anyone.
- _blk 2y agoThe way your positining the left and right suggests that you're immune to the article's technique. I'd suggest a portion of good faith if I thought it was going to help but I'm at a loss here.
- jrflowers 2y agoThis is a good point because there is no example of violence around elections from the right in recent US history and even if there was it would be a failure of reasoning to acknowledge it.
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- jrflowers 2y agoI like how the left thinks the center and right can’t do this, the right thinks the center and left can’t do this, and the center thinks nobody to either the left or right of them can do this. It is almost like every group equally stakes claim to correctness and reason for itself.
- j45 2y agoRighteousness at the expense of, and over others is a flaw in many forms of thinking. Even if someone changes the jersey of the team they're on it doesn't change their ways or mindset without meaningful inner work of reflection + contemplation.
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago"You may not have heard, but jus primae noctis is legal in America again." One just needs to reduce bad ideas to more relatable, and provable facts. The whole notion of manipulating and monetizing other peoples misery for profit is not a sustainable philosophy. Despotic regimes in many political wing extremes traditionally rely on the same sycophantic idealism... Inspiring the naive to surrender their own responsibility to their community, and grandchildren. I don't really think modern disagreements are about conservative/liberal economic policy, but rather keeping people distracted while everyone gets robbed. Have a great day, =3
- patrickmay 2y agoI don't think the problem is left/right, it seems to me to be more about ego/less ego. If interlocutors are more interested in playing with ideas than with coming to a preconceived conclusion, steel manning works well. It also works in technical discussions. Being able to fairly explain an approach you disagree with demonstrates good faith, which is often returned.
- ranger_danger 2y agoI'm not on either side, and I think the only way to have some sanity going forward might be to find a way to compromise and meet in the middle somewhere. If anything else, the left cedes one issue they don't like in order to gain a positive one for themselves, or something like that.
- skybrian 2y agoI think you’re right for some people on both sides, but I suspect that there are more opportunities to find better arguments than it might appear. Bad arguments (particularly of the opposing side) tend to get a lot of attention though social media, making reasonable people seem rare. It’s easy to be dismissive and saves time.
- mjfl 2y agodon't forget the center, buddy. It's the center of politics in the USA that wants forever war. And they're in the center because they care about that more than they care about issues that matter to other Americans.
- paulryanrogers 2y agoCan you elaborate? The US center seems pretty undefined to me, united only by absence of strong feelings and a propensity for the new shiny, loud, and/or charismatic.
- mjfl 2y agoBill Kristol, Bret Stephens, Robert Kagan, Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, Madeline Albright, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, all the neocons and neoliberals, generally would consider themselves in the 'center' between the left and right, and at the same time have never seen a war or foreign intervention they didn't like. It is an enormous misconception that because they aren't considered 'extreme' right or left they are more rational. Both the extreme left and extreme right in the USA are more anti-war than the center and it's a huge problem in US politics.
- ajuc 2y agoI've seen it used as an excuse to change the subject. "Oh you wanted to say that X but you said Y, which is obviously wrong, so let me answer X instead" when Y was a perfectly valid proposition. What is "steel" and what is "straw" is subjective and open to manipulation. Jordan Peterson does this a lot, it's infuriating to listen to him. I like the alternative that does sth like the ideological turing test. It goes like this: - Alice says what she believes - Bob says what he thinks Alice said - if Alice disagrees - repeat from the beginning and then the other way. Eventually when both sides agree the other person understands their point - they can start the actual discussion.
- j45 2y agoI've never understood why people like Jordan Peterson aren't happy. Helps deliver a message a lot more. Whatever you do and say .. should give you some amount of peace to be at peace.
- paulryanrogers 2y agoPeterson has a public persona and schtick, based on what stuck after throwing things at the wall a while. Now he's cashing in on that. Diverging too far risks putting his earnings at risk, even if he doesn't consciously think that way. Pastors often fall into these ruts. They often want to help. The toolbox limits them, audience expectations limit them, their own financial needs depend upon telling people things that won't make them too uncomfortable, and their (ancient) world view has to harmonize with a (modern) world that doesn't fit.
- dpkirchner 2y agoI call this the stack overflow effect: I'm going to reply to what I wish you said, rather than what you actually said, because I'm a smarty.
- euroderf 2y agoBut I've heard this said about mathematicians (and mathematically-oriented people): First they translate what you say into their internal language. And then they reply to that.
- lo_zamoyski 2y agoWe ought to abandon an individualistic view of life. We are not individuals, but persons who are born into society, into social relations, molded by them, made in their image. Hierarchy and power are not meant to be fashioned into instruments for dominating another, but for multiplying the good. When common truth is seen for what it is, a common good, debate ceases to be an act of violence and domination. It takes on a different meaning, a different purpose, namely, the truth and the arrival at it for the common good of the participants.
- pixelatedindex 2y ago> We are not individuals, but persons who are born into society, into social relations, molded by them, made in their image. I think this is a fundamental difference between the East and the West. It’s also why in situations like the pandemic, the East can band together with less friction whereas places like the US fall apart completely. There are few reasons for westerners to rally toward a cause in unison - the last time it happened was during the civil rights movement. Hard to imagine people coming together like that today.
- mikewarot 2y agoI hear what you're saying. That individualism in the west makes us far less likely to engage in activities that are beneficial to all of society at some cost to ourselves. It can seem like that's true based on the view that those in authority in the United States and elsewhere had correct information, and disseminated it as soon as they could. However, the authorities in the US and in other countries did NOT properly use their authority, and acted in a manner that betrayed that trust. We in the West are far less trusting of authority, and this was reinforced by their failures during that public health emergency. Trusting completely in Authority was the main thing we fought against in WWII. "Just following orders" isn't a valid excuse for war crimes. On the smaller scale, we midwesterners, at least, band together to help each other out during the Winters when things get snowed in, and to recover from other urgent situations, it's deep in our DNA.
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- russianasset 2y ago[flagged]
- BiteCode_dev 2y agoBesides the fact this article avoids giving any concrete examples, showing the author probably doesn't use the technique himself, it's going to fail when the opposite side cannot be convinced by rationality, which is most of the time. Indeed, you cannot "patch up the weaknesses of the other side’s proposition" of someone supporting a sports team or a religious belief. Because there is no real argument, but rather some kind of emotional commitment. However, if you engage in the exercise a lot, you'll notice that a huge number of debates are around such notions, where ego, identity, and feelings are more important than ideas. It's certainly true for lots of political beliefs, but also many technical ones where your social situation depends on the result of the debates more than being wright or wrong (e.g: at work). Not to mention when you are debating, it happens regularly you win not by convincing the other side, but by winning over the popularity contest with the audience of the exchange. This again, has nothing to do with the logic of the discussion. So even if the technique works for, say, your discussion with your physicist or philosopher friend (in which you probably didn't need it anyway), there is really little value in it if it can't work in the situations with more at stake. Or to use a more scientific term: I call BS.
- patrickmay 2y ago> it's going to fail when the opposite side cannot be convinced by rationality, which is most of the time. As many people have noted, arguing on the Internet is a spectator sport. You don't need to convince your opponent, but by steel manning his arguments and addressing them, you have a greater chance of convincing the audience.
- adastra22 2y agoMaybe. Or you end up doing his work of making his arguments more accessible and reasonable sounding to a general audience.
- paulryanrogers 2y agoThat is often my reluctance to use it, especially when talking to folks prone to confirmation bias. I'm not sure there is a way to convince people who only accept evidence that fits their existing worldview. It took me years and a lot of reading to finally seriously entertain the idea that the religion I was raised in could be false. Once I really opened up and stepped back it unraveled pretty quickly. Yet being that open can be very socially costly, as it was for me. If I'd heard steel man arguments from opponents while still closed to inconvenient truths, then I'd just have accept them without critical thought. And any attacks on that steel man would have been dismissed with whatever was convenient. It devolves into Rube Goldberg levels of mental hoop jumping to stay in that mindset. Though if the alternative is strained relationships or losing ones church community then it becomes second nature, even unconscious.
- jader201 2y ago(2018)