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Why I’m skeptical of “steelmanning”

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

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Re: Why I’m skeptical of “steelmanning”

#121

Post by sdwr »

noduerme wrote: post #44

This is argument about argumentation, but it's worth examining what's wrong with the overall picture: Empathy is obviously not empathy if you make a spectacle of bending over backwards to look empathetic. It's an insulting act of selfishness unless the other person feels they've earned it. I think Jesus said something like this, but I can't recall it directly, since I'm drunk. To be an honest person you have to admit…

Was looking for someone who went for the moral heart, had to get past 50 comments hung up on definitions.

This whole thing is missing a trick and inverting genuine empathy. Empathy is being someone else, and this whole deal is "what if someone else was actually me". If you "steelman" someone else's stated position, you're filtering it through your values to make it more palatable to you. It's marking with a red pen, emotionally hollow.

I read a bit of the leaked supreme court roe v wade article yesterday, and had a moment of vertigo when it made sense for a second. There's a moral core there, something about consequence and family values and nosy neighbours and, yes, restricting women's freedom. Like, liberals try to make everything easy, but some things are supposed to be hard.

Re: Why I’m skeptical of “steelmanning”

#122

Post by jjeaff »

newbamboo wrote: post #95
roenxi wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that is steelmanning either. You're making a very common mistake of dismissing evidence ("the existing evidence is, at best, of extremely poor quality, and at worst, outright fraudulent") which with benefit of hindsight appears to be both accurate and in good faith [0]. Now that evidence wasn't conclusive (indeed, the argument for ivermectin in 1st world countries has been more or less demolished), but someon…

Never been pro-ivermectin as a primary tool for Covid, but can you actually back up, “indeed, the argument for ivermectin in 1st world countries has been more or less demolished.” I read Scott’s piece the day it was published and was over all impressed but don’t buy the conclusion. Westerners are filled with all sorts of parasites and as far as I’m aware we are not universally cleaner in that regard, for example with…

Is this just your feeling, that western countries have just as many parasites as developing countries?

That makes me think you don't have much experience in developing nations. Sanitation is a serious problem in large parts of the 3rd world. Availability of clean water is a problem. Sewage capture and treatment is a big problem. These are not big problems in most of the western world.

I'm sure there are studies finding that most people regardless of where they live have some parasites. But the question is whether you have large amounts of the kind of parasites that make you sick and more specifically, the kinds of parasites that can be treated with ivermectin.

Re: Why I’m skeptical of “steelmanning”

#123

Post by drdeca »

lupire wrote: post #115
drdeca wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand your explanation for the reason for your comment.

Polka is ironically cheaply insulting Jeff because Polka believes thet Jeff didn't steelman Gelman's argument and instead went for a cheap insult.

A correction is not an insult.

Re: Why I’m skeptical of “steelmanning”

#124

Post by newbamboo »

jjeaff wrote: post #122
newbamboo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never been pro-ivermectin as a primary tool for Covid, but can you actually back up, “indeed, the argument for ivermectin in 1st world countries has been more or less demolished.” I read Scott’s piece the day it was published and was over all impressed but don’t buy the conclusion. Westerners are filled with all sorts of parasites and as far as I’m aware we are not universally cleaner in that regard, for example with…

Is this just your feeling, that western countries have just as many parasites as developing countries? That makes me think you don't have much experience in developing nations. Sanitation is a serious problem in large parts of the 3rd world. Availability of clean water is a problem. Sewage capture and treatment is a big problem. These are not big problems in most of the western world. I'm sure there are studies findi…

“the question is whether you have large amounts of the kind of parasites that make you sick and more specifically, the kinds of parasites that can be treated with ivermectin.”

It would be a useful study, to the extent Covid remains a concern for public health agencies. If you are familiar with poverty in America, you wouldn’t think sanitation and parasites aren’t issues here. They just aren’t as common.

Re: Why I’m skeptical of “steelmanning”

#125

Post by memling »

dredmorbius wrote: post #119
Jiro wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If creationists argue based on a belief in God, yes, it's a core belief that's hard to undermine. But a lot of creationists argue in contexts relating to teaching creationism in schools. Youre not allowed to teach religion as truth in schools, so the creationists use flimsy scientific arguments, not religious ones.

Beliefs founded in faith cannot be argued or proven. If they can be proven, they're not based in faith. And if they are based in faith, then those beliefs themselves prove nothing, as once again, they beg the question. They merely confirm the conclusion as grounded in faith rather than some deeper argument.

> Beliefs founded in faith cannot be argued or proven.

Is there a continuum here? E.g., with statistics?

Re: Why I’m skeptical of “steelmanning”

#126

Post by dredmorbius »

memling wrote: post #125
dredmorbius wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beliefs founded in faith cannot be argued or proven. If they can be proven, they're not based in faith. And if they are based in faith, then those beliefs themselves prove nothing, as once again, they beg the question. They merely confirm the conclusion as grounded in faith rather than some deeper argument.

> Beliefs founded in faith cannot be argued or proven. Is there a continuum here? E.g., with statistics?

I'm not following.

If you're referring to mathematics, much of it is based on axioms, which are presumed true.

There's also the problem of Goedel's Theorem.

Statistics introduces the distinction of causal knowledge and inferrence.

Unless you're referring to something else.

Re: Why I’m skeptical of “steelmanning”

#127

Post by robbedpeter »

twelve40 wrote: post #22
blablablerg wrote: post #19

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…

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.

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.

Re: Why I’m skeptical of “steelmanning”

#128

Post by memling »

dredmorbius wrote: post #126
memling wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Beliefs founded in faith cannot be argued or proven. Is there a continuum here? E.g., with statistics?

I'm not following. If you're referring to mathematics, much of it is based on axioms , which are presumed true. There's also the problem of Goedel's Theorem. Statistics introduces the distinction of causal knowledge and inferrence. Unless you're referring to something else.

> Unless you're referring to something else.

Perhaps. Statistics seems like a way for us to quantify uncertainty under certain assumptions. We can formalize this, but I'm not sure that's helpful for me to help articulate my thoughts in the matter.

The Skeptic's Dictionary has a fairly lengthy definition of faith that I suppose is a suitable working definition for maybe making the question more clear:

>Faith is a non-rational belief in some proposition. A non-rational belief is one that is contrary to the sum of the evidence for that belief. A belief is contrary to the sum of the evidence if there is overwhelming evidence against the belief, e.g., that the earth is flat, hollow, or is the center of the universe. A belief is also contrary to the sum of the evidence if the evidence seems equal both for and against the belief, yet one commits to one of the two or more equally supported propositions.

I'm not sure how far we can take this, but there appear to be some shades of meaning in which:

1. Faith is a wrong belief. (The earth is flat, nothing you say can convince me otherwise.)

2. Faith is a wrongly-held belief. (I should be agnostic about which face is visible in my next coin flip, but I believe it will be heads in my heart of hearts.)

It's this second point that brings out more of my question, which I suppose could be phrased, "At what point is a belief warranted?" I've seen some arguments for example that physicists require five sigma to announce a discovery (or is it six?). Is that the point at which we say that faith is no longer faith?

Really the specific limit isn't of particular interest to me, but more understanding what constitutes reasonable belief in general and how far one can take skepticism before it sinks under its own weight.

Re: Why I’m skeptical of “steelmanning”

#129

Post by kragen »

twelve40 wrote: post #100
kragen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Why I’m skeptical of “steelmanning”

#130

Post by DubiousPusher »

zmgsabst wrote: post #113
DubiousPusher wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. Feel free to conduct that exercise in a context free mindset. But at a certain point litigants are just going to disagree on some fundamental aspect of reality. I can steelman young Earth creationism but that steelman now rests upon a foundation which assumes radio isotope dating doesn't work. Which I'm not going to accept. And I'm just not going to bother arguing the other aspects with that particular point thro…

Yes — it has: Having defined the steelman version of their argument, you can show why radio isotope dating is a contrary fact. Without that, you’re not demonstrating anything by yammering about radio isotopes — it’s a context free fact that can’t influence the debate. It’s only once you have shown that their argument depends on radio isotope dating not being true that the fact radio isotope dating does work becomes r…

Ok, so the philosophical scalpel approach is useful. I'm probably just cynical from seeing so many writers present two steelman arguments essentially to "both sides" an issue and then shrug themselves into their next article. So steelmaning is great, as long as you actually do the difficult work of making choice of what to believe or in the cases where the facts are inconclusive outline what information would actually make the difference.
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