Why I’m skeptical of “steelmanning”

An argument in favour of steelmanning is that it is efficient.

Using Paul Graham's hierarchy of disagreement[1][2], one reason steelmanning is efficient is because if your counterparty's best or most central argument is wrong then all of it is wrong.

It's also highly likely that numerous arguments hinge on that same point. After all, creationists continue to pull out Pangloss's "noses are for eyeglasses" argument despite the original being proposed as a parody in the first place.... Having a refutation of such a point can be useful in countering future bogosity.

Your counterparty may not participate. I'd attempted to establish any credible basis for a key point in a recent discussion, to which the response was an ever-escallating set of rationales for not answering the question. I wasn't even interested specifically in winning the debate, only in whether or not there was a foundation for the claim presented. Apparently there isn't.

It's also worth considering that reason and debate are not an especially useful method for arriving at truth. This has been a challenge since the days of the philosphers and sophists. Ultimately, it was Francis Bacon who provided an alternative: scientific method based on empirical observation and hypothesis testing. Here again the focus is on key propositions or empirical behaviours from which other consequences follow.

If you're engaging with someone who acts in bad faith, or who is simply incapable of grasping, accepting, or admitting truths, steelmanning won't do much to convince them. It may be of use when you're carrying on that discussion before others, however.

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Notes:

1. http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

2. Diagram: https://issuepedia.org/File:Graham's_Hierarchy_of_Disagreeme... [3]

3. Issuepedia itself is a useful resource for exploring didactic discussion and methods. Graham's Hierarchy is referenced on the "Hierarchy of Truth" article: https://issuepedia.org/Hierarchy_of_truth RationalWiki is another generally useful site, with a broader coverage and authorship: https://rationalwiki.org

I didn’t know this was true for the rest of Europe but it’s certainly true for Germany. At least in the US you have interesting personalities the likes you’ll find on podcasts. On the other hand the discourse in Germany isn’t nearly as extreme. I suspect those things correlate.

> “strawman” (argue against your opponent’s weakest point).

That's not what a strawman is -- if it was, it wouldn't be considered an informal logical/argumentative fallacy.

A strawman means taking your opponent's position to a new extreme, turning it into a caricature of itself. E.g. if they argue for lower taxes, the strawman version could be acting as if they want no taxes whatsoever. It's bad form because it's not something they actually said, or implied; and realistically, the extreme form of almost any position is bad.

There's two problems I see with steelmanning:

1. People are often not, in fact, arguing in good faith. It's easier to see this if we look at things in hindsight, though sometimes it's super obvious even in the present. One could look at Russian state media on Ukraine as an example where trying to take their arguments at face value would have you contorting yourself into knots. This takes you further from reality, further from the truth.

2. There are often good points to be made on exactly where your opponent is weak. That they're weak on some point isn't a reason to shy away -- if the end goal is more knowledge and understanding for all, then ignoring certain aspects of an issue just because you're trying to be "nice" is a net negative.

To use #2 against myself: I'm generally pro multi-modal transportation, but it's true that car dominance has some advantages for larger families, and that the 'transition period' where you're taking away car resources but transit/walking/biking still aren't all that great is awkward. Someone arguing against my points should not just ignore these areas because they're areas of weakness for me. They're things people deserve to know about, issues that would have to be handled.

I'm agnostic and currently neutral on the abortion question. Both sides have good points, neither side is completely convincing.

I do want people to have autonomy over their bodies, and the extent to which a fetus can be considered a separate person seems like an unsolvable philosophical question to me.