This technique really changed the way I engage with others' ideas [0], the way I approach language design [1], and even my relationships. It's so easy for us humans to get caught in a "me vs. you" mentality, but steel-manning really helps break out of that pattern and meaningfully connect with what others are saying.
It also unlocks the next level of rationality: the ability to admit you're wrong. After that one just needs to learn to actively test their own beliefs, and they can harness the true powers of the human mind.
My favorite snippet from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: [2]
"But make no mistake, Draco, true science really isn't like magic, you can't just do it and walk away unchanged like learning how to say the words of a new spell. The power comes with a cost, a cost so high that most people refuse to pay it."
Draco nodded at this as though, finally, he'd heard something he could understand. "And that cost?"
I think I'd disagree with his take on steelmanning though. He seems to think that in steelmanning, you need to assume the same assumptions as your opponent, thus precluding alternate possibilities.
But, in steelmanning, you need to ask the opposing side if your understanding of their point is correct, and also list out all the assumptions made along the way to get to that claim.
Once the assumptions are spoken out loud, it's easy to identify and focus on the first branch of disagreement. It saves a lot of time. That's the true power of steelmanning a hostile opponent.
I agree with your assessment, but if your opponent is truly hostile it's not going to work. One person steelmanning and the other person strawmanning has a tendency to suffer from the same problem as always: to a superficially interested or poorly educated audience, defending against strawmen looks weak.
Draw parallels to other domains where those axioms come into conflict, to try and get some references on how to weigh them. Eventually you just live with the fact that some people have different moral axioms and weightings. It’s a big part of what it means to know someone well, and does not at all preclude having a strong relationship with someone.
As I commented when that article was posted to HN last time[1], it's important to recognize that there is an important distinction between accepting an argument and contemplating it as a hypothetical.
As long as one is able to maintain this distinction -- something most mature individuals should be perfectly capable of -- I think Andrew Gelman's criticism falls short.
This; it’s been one of the biggest disappointments in my adult life to realize how many legal adults are so incredibly immature, with such inflated yet fragile egos, that merely apologizing to even someone in their own family is totally out of the question. Another is realizing how many people are so willfully ignorant yet dogmatic. I had some suspicions growing up, and even into my twenties I was still quite naive. Being surrounded by nerdy friends who were also generally professionals in a technical field definitely insulated me from the general public enough that it took another decade for it to really sink in. These days it just all feels a bit lonely (especially with COVID), but the spark of meeting kindred spirits still makes it worth it to attempt to have a social life. True friends are rare.
It's a problematic word. Barring death or a rare physical condition, all human children biologically reach maturity. The colloquialism of 'mature' (or as the opposite of 'immature') varies notoriously person to person, to the point one could argue that it's immature to use it sincerely in debate.
As far as I am concerned, if one actually cares about the debate they should just replace "mature" for what they think it means or implies for the behaviour of the individual
Replacing the symbol for a definition is quite handy. People get all defensive over being called privileged, but change "privileged" for "having good circumstances" ( or similar ) and they don't feel called out for it despite having the same meaning
IMO it's something of a shame how much the human cognition is crap at that kind of stuff
1 : having or enjoying one or more privileges, privileged classes
2 : not subject to the usual rules or penalties because of some special circumstance
"having good circumstances" does not have the same meaning. For example you can have good circumstances by luck, or by good timing, without having any privileges.
There seems to be two subtly different definitions of steel manning.
The first one, and the one I think should always be done, is to engage with the best argument that has actually been presented by someone holding the opposing view.
The second version, and this one I don't fully understand, seems to involve defining your own strongest argument for the other view.
This version, in my experience, can go a few directions. Most often it turns into a more elaborate version of strawmanning ("and so we see, even with this strongest possible argument it still fails!"). It can also be a way toward compromise ("so if you're right, this much more limited form of my proposal still has value"). Or it can go to talking past each other (refuting vegetarianism without touching on the suffering of animals because you don't care about that, but many vegetarians do).
The first version is a requisite for truly debating rather than sloganeering. The second version is a mixed bag.
I think you've nailed why I've always felt slightly uncomfortable with "steelmanning" and I vastly prefer the alternative mentioned in the above rebuttal, "benefit of the doubt". So often "steelmanning" is indeed just another form of strawman, because at some level it's usually easy to misunderstand the perspective from which someone else is arguing (often the whole reason for getting into a heated debate in the first place). Giving someone the benefit of the doubt doesn't require any (possibly false) projection of having mutual understanding, but simply an attitude that "I may not understand it, but your argument is probably just as valid as mine". IMHO the real way to oppose the strawman fallacy or any other is simply to argue coherently in good faith, not to adopt a new potential fallacy on principle.
I think the second form is supposed to be a superset; you try to find all the best arguments you can for every position. That includes the ones other people are using, but if you can think of a better case to make for them then you should answer that as well. In no event should you ever say "you're arguing X but Y is a better argument and that's false so you're wrong" without also answering X, but "you're arguing X, which is wrong because X', but a better argument for your position is Y" is still legitimate.
he seems to present it as giving the "benefit of the doubt", but that's not correct. What you are doing is trying to make the best version of the argument before critiquing it. This avoids strawman type situations. It doesn't mean discarding weak arguments, but you may end up dropping weak parts of the argument that aren't necessary to the central argument. Basically it try's to avoid needless back and forth that doesn't really address actual argument at hand.
I think he's confusing accepting a conclusion with accepting a premise. Which is what steelmanning is supposed to be, granting your opposition a premise and then pointing out why even in that scenario, why their conclusion is still wrong. Or maybe it's not. In which case, you need to investigate/challenge the premise.
And then there's the issue that for some people, they just don't want to be reached. They want to believe a specific way on a specific issue for whatever personal reasons. You can't steelman crazy.
And let's not forget, steelmanning isn't about others, it's about yourself. It's about trying to find out if you are wrong.
I still can't rightly tell the difference between (the most generous definition of) steelmanning and just thinking things all the way through in a balanced way.
I am a bit puzzled that learning to admit that you are wrong is sometimes treated as attaining some kind of superpower. I would say it is just part of growing up. (Having said that, some people seem to never grow up.)
"This is true" and "Let us imagine that this is true" are radically, radically different positions. People who have a nuanced enough understanding to separate the two in an argument are rare.
Entertaining the even more nuanced idea that someone else has a strong argument that is wrong is, effectively, a superpower. Not many people who are willing to argue can do that. Especially if they are capable of doing that in a persuasive, public fashion.
“Let X” is a context bound hypothetical — we’re assuming it is true within some argument; we have perfect confidence in the hypothetical, but only within that context.
That’s distinct from an assertion, which is a statement about how the world is with some associated confidence.
It’s not about admitting that you’re wrong. It’s about discovering what the right answer is without being swayed towards the thing you previously thought/said.
To be in a position to admit that you’re wrong you’ve already got to be trying to argue that you’re right.
Given that the method of engineering generally starts with something like, "These various assertions and principals may be taken as gospel". So admitting you might be wrong is like reversing gospel. And reversing gospel is quite a feat.
There's also the consideration that literal religious gospel is taken as fact by some people who use that assumption to push particular ideas in government and law
HPMoR is a national treasure. If, as a Harry Potter and science fan, you ever find yourself with a few days free to read something ridiculous yet insanely entertaining, give it a go.
>"But steel-manning really helps break out of that pattern and meaningfully connect with what others are saying."
Steelmanning means that you ignore the argument your interlocuter makes, in favour of the argument you think they should have made. It runs diametrically counter to trying to 'meaningfully connect with what others are saying'.
If someone says 'X because Y', and you respond 'I think you mean X because Z but that's wrong', you have simply spoken past your interlocuter. Perhaps they actually meant 'X because Y2', but you didn't give them time to expand upon what '2' is. Or perhaps there's some other subtlety or depth that they have yet to expatiate.
There are lots of associated problems:
1. It is very difficult to say what a different version of the 'same' argument is. Perhaps you reason from different premises to the same conclusion. Perhaps you reason from the same premise to a better conclusion. Perhaps you use a similar style or tradition of argument. Really, only your interlocuter knows what 'their' argument is.
2. What you think is the strongest version of an argument is, may not be what a second or third person thinks the strongest argument is. In some realms - moral and political - there are no mind-independent facts in reference to which one argument can be objectively justified over another. 'Strongest' is therefore relative.
3. If you default to talking about an argument your opponent did not make, that is liable to create enormous confusion. If they did the same thing, you would end up never actually talking to one another. It would be like Chinese whispers, each rationally reconstructing the other's last statement.
What you really want to do is both 'interpret and understand' another's point of view, and then argue it through. The OP's link actually does a pretty good job of describing just that, but I think describing that as 'steelmannanning' is a misnomer. It's just philosophy as it has been understood for millennia. Steelmanning is supposed to be something more original.
Looking it up, this is claimed to be the original coinage of the word:
'Then we would be steelmanning, the art of addressing the best form of the other person’s argument, even if it’s not the one they presented.'[1]
I strongly disagree with this interpretation. To the strength of your claims, the steelmanner is more engaging with themselves rather than the other person. Imagine a chess player playing both sides.
This of course isn't what steelmanning looks like. It's simply an extension of good faith. The other person needs to be there and needs to have their personal claims and beliefs represented in the steelman.
The most common steelman tactic is, after your opponent finishes a point, saying something to the effect of "Just so we're on the level, I'm going to restate what I believe your argument is and you can correct me if I've misinterpreted something".
Then you restate a summary of the argument in your own words and in good faith, bolstering it or lending structure where needed, or perhaps adding an obvious missing caveat. Then the person has a chance to correct you. They can kick out any supports they don't want you to add or recind any caveats.
From there, you can progress.
This is what steelmanning looks like. The form of an argument and the crux of it are not the same. It's good faith to interpret the form favourably.
Even in the most poorly stated arguments the core concept can be derived. You can give the person a better path to this central idea so as to ignore time waste arguments about the route, and instead attack that core idea.
You've ironically painted a hollow and one dimensional view of steelmanning.
> you restate a summary of the argument in your own words and in good faith, bolstering it or lending structure where needed [...] Then the person has a chance to correct you.
Where are y'all seeing these debates actually happen?
I always assumed steelmanning was a process you conduct entirely in your mind, while deciding your opinion or writing your editorial.
> Steelmanning means that you ignore the argument your interlocuter makes, in favour of the argument you think they should have made. It runs diametrically counter to trying to 'meaningfully connect with what others are saying'.
That's not quite steelmanning.
Steelmanning means that you rephrase the argument your interlocuter makes, with your own words, until they agree that it's the same or close enough. That's what creates the connection.
The agreement is the important distinction and what creates the connection. Even if you disagree, at least there is a level of respect that comes from hearing the person out and not misrepresenting their point.
Your definition is quite close but is skipping that last step that makes all the difference.
Thanks for the clarification. I recently read of steelmanning too by coincidence and have been fascinated with how it might work in practice.
I think it also means you should assume good faith too, right? So if someone says they are anti-abortion but pro-death penalty (for example) you don't jump on the hypocrisy as you see it but say "I see, so for you there is some material difference between the life of an unborn child and the life of a convict." When put this way it is easy to see where the other person's rationale is coming from.
I guess it like the Socractic method (except a little less confrontational) in which you restate the opponents statements in terms they can agree with, then follow up with questions exploring that until you trap them in a contradiction even they are forced to recognise.
Things in the realm of anti abortion and pro death penalty break down when you get down to the root of things, which is free will and innocence of the unborn soul
From my understanding that's what is behind both of these ideologies, and both of those things are 100% made up fiction
There is literally no evidence for an immaterial soul and there is actually evidence that free will is an illusion, but the people who believe things things have their beliefs rooted in religion
> Things in the realm of anti abortion and pro death penalty break down when you get down to the root of things, which is free will and innocence of the unborn soul
...no?
The essential point of steelmanning is understanding your opponent's perspective, perhaps even finding a better argument for it than they have, even if you disagree with them.
It's perfectly possible to do that even if you think their position is nonsense.
Sometimes you may even find that your perception of their arguments and ideas is incorrect.
> There is literally no evidence for an immaterial soul
There's no hard evidence, but there are things that are, let's say, weird. The hard problem of consciousness is one, and the steady trickle of reports of veridical observations from medical staff treating unconscious NDE patients is another. For that matter, NDEs themselves are odd in absentia the supernatural.
I don't expect people to grant souls or the supernatural based on those things, but they're certainly observed phenomena that some people interpret as evidence for those things.
> there is actually evidence that free will is an illusion
If you're referring to Libet's analysis of the Bereitschaftspotential experiments, there has been some acceptance in the past few years that this paper shows he misinterpreted the data:
Consciousness is the experience if processing information, there is no reason to believe its anything more than that
There are also other studies besides the Libet ones, more recent ones using things like fMRI and in vivo electrophysiology in awake human patients.
If we think about how neurons and their networks function, there isn't a mechanism in the realm of biophysics that allows for nondeterminism. That alone precludes the possibility of what people classically think of as free will. I've had discussions with other neuroscientists about this and they came to the same conclusion.
Just because something seems "weird" doesn't actually mean anything and its likely the person's perception of the situation that instills that feeling.
Near death experiences are entirely subjective, again its perception and information processing. The brain is great at connecting concepts and generating ideas even while we're unconscious. Its not like we stop processing sensory information when we aren't active.
As someone who studies behavioral neuroscience, I would never use an NDE itself as evidence of anything besides the fact that it is a phenomena that happens sometimes
There is a decent overview on wikipedia, they do discuss criticisms as well:
As a side note, I don't think that paper on pnas concludes what you think it does. They state that a stochastic model could account for the buildup, in reality the stochastic model is simulating the chaotic environment of biochemistry. That environment is still deterministic and we absolutely could predict the entire system if we are able to simulate all of the variables.
Neurons are complex, but no matter how you slice it they are still a deterministic system
Your understanding misses that there are secular and philosophical arguments to be made against both of those things, no need to invoke religion or go on an antitheist tirade.
That's certainly one pro-abortion position, but not the only one.
The more general position is that whatever interests a fetus may or may not have to continued life is outweighed by the bodily autonomy interests of the mother in a given scenario. The Violinist Argument is a classic thought experiment that argues even if the continued life in question belongs to fully-grown adult human who happens to be a world-class artist, bodily autonomy still wins.
Generally, pro life people arent going to find the violinists argument forceful:
1) the violinist is framed as being particularly valuable due to their talent, this is not a shared assumption between the two camps, and even if it was - every baby is a potential violinist.
2) the violinist is not offspring, and there is no parent-child relationship
3) extraordinary means were and are required to maintain the violinist, this is unlike a pregnancy - where extraordinary means are required to end it.
The Violinist Argument is not without its caveats and flaws. I'm just highlighting it as an example of a pro-abortion position that does not need to concede that the fetus is not a child.
Anti abortion people don't see mothers potential as something ever worth preserving - even when she is excessively young.
So no, this argument does not work, be abuse it is not about potential. Had it been, women who will loose potential or have higher risk of death in case of dangerous pregnancy would had some "potential" consideration too.
The argument is about who is entitled to potential or consideration and who does not deserve one.
Well, that's what they think isn't it? That's what I understand the steelmanning technique to be. Frame the argument as best you can in the way they see it, then you discover the assumptions that led them to their conclusion.
I know that assumption. What I object to is that OP uncriticslly accepts that assumption as true. His comment is literally making reader think equivalence between features and Baby is accepted fact.
I love the original podcast and voices (and musical choices). There's another new audiobook version coming out chapter-by-chapter with a new narrator, which is also turning out quite well.
The problem is that steelmanning is only useful in one kind of argument (the kind in which each party would rather discover the correct answer than "win"), which is increasingly rare compared to the other kind (in which each party already knows their opponent to be evil, deluded, or both). Debates that include an audience are almost without exception the latter sort, in which steelmanning is worse than useless.
It's also not especially useful in the type of argument in which your opponent is simply factually incorrect and not interested in changing that; you can't steelman something where step 1 of any possible line of argument is false.
But I've found it a very effective approach when having a conversation about the best solution to a problem, for instance.
I also like the double crux technique: collaborate to find the crux for each party, the most important point upon which the argument rests, such that if it turned out to not hold you would change your mind. Turns an argument into a collaborative exploration.
> I also like the double crux technique: collaborate to find the crux for each party, the most important point upon which the argument rests, such that if it turned out to not hold you would change your mind. Turns an argument into a collaborative exploration.
In theory it's nice. In practice this doesn't get you anywhere nearly as often as you'd hope. Because IRL disagreements are almost often over the magnitude of a problem, not over their existence.
Trivial example for the sake of illustration:
Teammate 1: {writes some code}
Teammate 2: "That's hard to read, can you do it {this} way? It's much easier to understand the code that way if we find a bug."
Teammate 1: "That's too brittle though, can we do it {that} way? That way it's much less likely for the code to break in the first place."
Both sides can understand each others' positions perfectly fine. They just think their own concerns/priorities are a bigger deal than those of the other person.
Same goes with many political and other issues; this was just a silly example to illustrate.
The way I try to cut through that kind of disagreement is to clearly identify the source of my opinion, and the situation in which it would apply. Ie. "Instinctively, I'd presume that in a few months when the customer inevitably notices that the thing they asked for was not what they should have wanted, having done it that way is going to come back to bite us." "Too brittle" or "too hard to read" are borderline unempirical; it can be beneficial to construct the actual situation that makes it relevant, so the argument can be brought back to empirical disagreements about reality.
And of course ultimately, if something is a subjective statement it's easy to reach agreements on the facts - Ie. "I feel like X", "well I feel like Y", where both are true statements - at which point you can stop pointlessly arguing and fall back on negotiation. "Well, I'll accept your PR if you at least Z."
> at which point you can stop pointlessly arguing and fall back on negotiation. "Well, I'll accept your PR if you at least Z." Or, for example, your coworker (and/or yourself for that matter) might feel "negotiation" is the wrong kind of approach toward engineering problems in the first place.
Again, nice in theory, and sometimes that might work, but it has lots of failure modes. For example, you can end up with nonsensical Z's that neither of you would otherwise find particularly worthwhile or compelling, even though you both agree that, yes, Z would improve things slightly.
Exaggerated example: imagine the original debate had been over "we should leave the bike by the road so it's convenient to grab it and go" vs. "we should lock the bike by the house so it's harder to steal it", which is a debate over a 2-minute task. Your compromise Z might end up being an additional 1-week task like "well I'll let you leave it near the road if you/we first build a brown bikeshed for it so it at least looks nicer". You might both agree that it would indeed looks nicer that way, so there needn't be any disagreement on Z itself, but neither of you would've felt it appropriate to spend any time or resources on Z in the absence of the negotiation.
Usually it's not that stark of a contrast, but I've seen milder versions of this play out frequently in practice. Even when both people play along a few times (which often doesn't happen), they end up getting tired of having to go through it every time there's a disagreement.
> Again, nice in theory, and sometimes that might work, but it has lots of failure modes. For example, you can end up with nonsensical Z's that neither of you would otherwise find particularly worthwhile or compelling, even though you both agree that, yes, Z would improve things slightly.
I think that's where negotiation is a stronger frame though, because that sort of debate generally comes down to "how do I get through this faster", and the negotiative framing is "I disagree, but it doesn't matter, because the thing I actually want is for us to stop having this conversation, how can I achieve this with the greatest efficiency", or phrased otherwise, "what do I need to give you to make you go away?" Which there is much less to talk about.
“Let’s make a framework!”
YAGNI. Best code is no code. Fix the people and process problems as much as possible before opening up the IDE or even writing the JIRA.
In one group I worked in the first rule in the coding guidelines was "Don't sweat the small stuff." I was surprised by how many back and forths were quashed by someone just asking, "Is this small stuff?"
It may be useful in that if even step one is a no go, at least you’ll find out early that discussion is useless and you can spend your time in others ways
I used to argue religion on Facebook a lot (I know, I know). But I stopped accepting invitations to debate when I started asked my opponents to agree before hand that they would agree to change their minds if I was right (as I agreed to change if I was wrong). When I realized they weren’t interested in learning anything, the point of debate went away.
Double crux can work in that case, if someone is operating in good faith. Not all values are sacred values that someone won't brook discussion of. I've had values-difference discussions on programming language design that went productively.
In my life the "tenth man" approach the article mentions and links to is more often what's called for.
The theory is essentially to refuse to participate in an echo chamber. If everyone in a group is feeding off each other in bashing an unpopular viewpoint, then you represent that viewpoint as strongly as possible rather than joining in.
I've used this technique with a lot of success, even in some pretty aggressive and opinionated groups. At a minimum it diffuses the echo chamber and the conversation turns to other topics, but I've also had good conversations come from it, where people leave understanding the other side better than they did before.
Because you're representing a party that is not present, you're less likely to end up making them feel patronized than with steelmanning, but it has a similar effect on your own understanding. It's even better if you're able to help someone else see the other perspective, too!
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.
Most 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.
Well 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.
The 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.
That 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.
If 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.
No, 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.
Although 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.
It'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.
That might be true of politics and cable news, but I think active listening and being able to succinctly restate someone else's line of reasoning, position, feelings, or argument is incredibly useful in normal life. I find myself doing it several times a day, mostly in business meetings, but in personal things too. I don't think of it as a debate technique, but just a way to show to a person that you really are listening to them. That can be very effective. It's a great rule of behavior even for small disagreements or suggestions.
In arguments in which the opponent is more concerned with winning as opposed to discovering the correct answer, I don't believe any strategy is particularly effective.
That being said, what steelmanning can offer, is to change the nature of the argument. If done correctly, you can sometimes de-escalate your opponent enough in order to tap into their humanity, and make the argument not about winning. Steelmanning is just a logical way of empathizing with your opponent.
With very few exceptions, nobody is evil in their own head-canon. If you think the other party is evil, deluded, or both, then in my experience that is a definite indication that you do not understand the opposing viewpoint very well, and could benefit from steel-manning.
Even in debates seeking truth, I think it's only an effective technique in a small subset. It doesn't work if the disagreement is because you're both just aware of a different set of facts. It doesn't work if the disagreement is because you have different fundamental goals. It doesn't work if the "debate" is actually a misunderstanding where you and someone else understand a term to mean different things. Amongst truth seeking debates, I feel like most casual ones end up falling into one of the above categories (more "academic" debates, the kind you find in philosophy classes, might be less likely too, because topics you can usefully debate are the ones actively discussed in those contexts).
Also I'm not sure I agree that debates seeking truth are rare, they are just publicly broadcast less frequently so you come across more of them. Certainly I debate close friends and family matters on a fairly regular basis (for fun and learning).
> Debates that include an audience are almost without exception the latter sort
I think a big exception is debate societies that meet regularly, where the folks doing the debating actually know each other and care about their long-term relationships with each other. But yeah, this isn't exactly a widespread hobby.
Steelmanning is most useful in one kind of argument, the argument that goes on when you, I mean you, encounter an argument that you consider wrong and dangerous, and threatening to your core values.
There are a couple reactions you can have to that.
In those situations the adage that arguing against bad faith arguments is self defeating. To outside observers it just makes the bad faith arguments look credible.
It's even worse online where just silencing your opponent is considered a victory.
HN was particularly bad about this with post flagging a few months ago. It was weaponized to hide posts which _someone_ disagreed with, even if the post was later restored the hour to twelve it was offline was enough to astroturf debates.
I'm seeing less of this since GP started getting his own posts flagged. Shame Dang didn't do his job till his boss told him to.
For me, the problem with "Steelmanning" is that it is extremely useful in exactly the same set of circumstances were it is also completely unnecessary; arguments in non-debate settings where the goal is optimal decision making, and where neither side has any motivation to use deceptive tactics to promote their argument.
In the presence of a motive for underhanded argumentation, strengthening your opponent's argument while allowing intentional weakening of yours is not a good recipe for useful outcomes.
Yea, also I’ve come to understand that in a loaded, bad faith or ideological discussion there is no useful outcome and it makes sense to BATNA the shit out of it, usually in the form of not engaging or just walking away.
In politics the BATNA is to find allies to outvote your opponent. That's what voting is for: when you absolutely, positively cannot come to an agreement, you choose the opinion of the majority.
This an absolutely terrible option. It's rife with abuse, and even when fair, is only right slightly more than it's wrong. It doesn't resolve any of the underlying issues, which continue to exist. It seems to be better than any of the other last-ditch options, but it's incredibly bad.
Even among your allies, you're still stuck with the same problem. Being allies you're hoping that their core agreements with you will enable tactics like steelmanning to work, though in a lot of cases it still doesn't.
In politics the BATNA will be different as there are real costs (like some bad, faith, actor is going to tell you what you can or cannot do with your own body).
That's a bit different from a bad faith actor or intent to deceive. There are entire branches of human endeavor (basically all the liberal arts, but here philosophy and theology are particularly relevant) built on discussing the immaterial or that without evidence.
To take your example of the abortion issue in America, your steel man argument has to explain why an acorn is the same as an oak tree, or perhaps the difference between an acorn and a fertilized human egg. They have to account for the mass murder of fertility clinics and researchers throwing out thousands of fertilized embryos per day.
Or you could choose to accept their philosophical argument about the start of life as a given, and discuss the consequences of it. E.g. you have a right to kill another human in self defence, unless the person threatening your life is inside a womb. Or the conditions under which you have a right to another person's life and body. Is there an innocence test we could do for organ transplant recipients, where the top end of the scale gives you a right?
Lots of room for good faith discussion there, even on immaterial subjects.
It's true, emotions and argumentivity require a different tact than just "steelmanning". I can think of plenty of reasons where steelmanning is not the best rhetoric in those kinds of situations.
On the flip side, steelmanning is a really good "high ground maneuver". A good faith effort at trying to understand and strengthen the argument of someone who is being argumentative is a way to take the emotion out of the argument. You might find you have endeared yourself to them, and doing so have created a chance to shift their thinking a degree.
1. I've been on HN long enough - as a member and lurker - to have a pretty good idea on how the discussion would go.
2. I think the best discussions are had between people who can assume good faith. I don't think a public "debate" with randoms on the internet is the place for that.
If you really want to know, you can email me. But I don't think it's that important.
Comments would be made for the benefit of the peanut gallery. People want to hear incisive comments, zingers, cleverness, impassioned rants, etc etc. This is what imaginary internet points rewards.
With a one on one conversation, you're being judged by one person and one person only. You can express ignorance, honest but controversial beliefs you may not wish to commit to the internet for all eternity, and so on.
Public forums with imaginary internet points are a skinner box. HN may be better than a lot of others but it's still the same beast.
Another formulation of this excellent technique is courtesy of Bob Taylor [1]:
A Class Two disagreement is when each can explain to the other’s satisfaction the other’s point of view.
I've actually tried this, and it was pure torture for the subjects. They would start out, reluctantly, "He says X, Y, and Z ... [long pause] but he's wrong! "
You could see them try to state the other's POV, but they just couldn't do it.
I think reading a more in-depth explanation like these might help a lot
> They would start out, reluctantly, "He says X, Y, and Z ... [long pause] but he's wrong! "
I mean, a lot of people have trouble clearly articulating an argument for their own position, much less somebody else's. It's a skill like riding a bike or throwing a ball -- something that seems natural once you've had some practice, but not something we're born with. (NB I'm not talking about being correct; you can be right and know you're right without being able to articulate it well.)
If anyone wants some practice, I found the book "The Logic of Real Arguments" by Alec Fisher [1] really fun and useful.
Bryan Caplan came up with a similar idea, the ideological turing test: Can you make the case for something so that it's impossible to say whether you really believe it or not?
Any time I see it in practice, it always comes across as incredibly condescending and frequently flat-out wrong, because the person attempting to steelman has usually not done the work to understand everything that goes into the other position.
I prefer charitable interpretation (https://effectiviology.com/principle-of-charity/) which is a good platform for learning about the other's position, and potentially helping them strengthen their position for themselves.
There's a danger, while steelmanning, that you might come up with an argument that sounds good to you, but it's actually weaker to the opposition. Therefore, while trying to steelman their argument, you actually fill it with holes.
This can happen because you don't understand it deeply enough, but it can also happen because of a difference in values. This is why I think steelmanning is difficult, and frankly a little dangerous. To truly do it, you have to embed yourself not just in their rational thought but also in their worldview.
And I really mean the part about it being dangerous. In all honesty, we aren't the purely rational creatures we think we are. Honestly steelmanning an argument changes you. And maybe that's for the better in some situations, but I certainly wouldn't take that for granted.
Being able to steelman someone else's argument without adopting their presuppositions, while understanding and possible experiencing the emotional/intuitive phenomena that got them to embrace them is a true test of your faith in your own worldview. If you "fail" that test, you will be absorbed into the outgroup and lose sight of your old emotional/intuitive presuppositions and worldview. You will lose a lot of friends and sunk costs, and be subjected to new rules. The risk is to literally lose your old self. That's horrifying, that idea can feel something like being abducted by the borg from star trek and converted into one of them.
No, it isn't. Immersing yourself in someone else's propaganda just propagandizes you. The easiest victims are the ones who think they're genuinely too smart for it to have an effect on them. There's a reason country's pump this stuff out despite it seeming, on a cursory glance, so ridiculous and overt.
I think this gets at the related, but distinct, idea of the intellectual Turing test. The idea there is to present your opponent's argument in such a way that they can't tell if the argument came from you or someone on their side. If you can do that you have some assurance that you actually understand the argument they are making.
You're right that steelmanning is a bit different in that you're trying to formulate the argument in a way that is most convincing to you. That may not necessarily be the argument that is most convincing to your opponent.
> There's a danger, while steelmanning, that you might come up with an argument that sounds good to you, but it's actually weaker to the opposition. Therefore, while trying to steelman their argument, you actually fill it with holes.
That's why normal practice is to check: "So I hear you saying something like this: <steelman argument>. Is that right?"
> To truly do it, you have to embed yourself not just in their rational thought but also in their worldview.
Indeed; the best word I have for being truly persuasive is "incarnational": You have to enter into the situation of the person you want to convince, and see the way out of the cave they're in from where they are now.
> And I really mean the part about it being dangerous. In all honesty, we aren't the purely rational creatures we think we are. Honestly steelmanning an argument changes you. And maybe that's for the better in some situations, but I certainly wouldn't take that for granted.
I dunno; I have more faith in the power of truth. You certainly need to be careful that you're not taking information only from one source; if you only listened to Goebel's propaganda for 2 years you'd certainly start to have Nazi patterns of thought infect your thinking. But if you want to rescue someone who has only heard Goebel's propaganda for the last several years, you have to learn how to recognize the flaws in thinking from within it.
There is an assumption in this article and many of the critiques in the comments that steelmanning is primarily useful for debating someone else. But debating is usually a trap where neither side achieves much.
steelmanning is useful for having an actual conversation and to remind you in the words of Benjamin Franklin to "consult not contend".
For me, most of the value of steelmanning is internal: questioning beliefs by dropping them and making the case for both sides. And when you find someone else doing this in their writing (for example Lyn Alden), you know you have found a useful source of information.
Lex Friedman commonly asks this question for his guests on the podcast. The challenge of having to honestly explain - and then forcefully argue - your opponents case, enriches the conversation in a profound way. Tellingly, the guests who are unable to do this well, are invariably diminished. Excellent mental discipline, I suspect many of us here on HN could do with some practice on it
Recently listened to the Douglas Murray episode. As someone who has followed Douglas for a while, it was disappointing to see him completely skirt the request to steelman his opponents arguments in any meaningful sense.
This is a very good technique for rational inspection of an opposing argument, and a powerful tactic in debate clubs and mock trials.
But it’s still a heady, rationalist approach to communication and will often stir up feelings of distrust, frustration, or resignation in the normal, everyday people that are pretty sure they’re right and see you doing intellectual performance art with their words.
Of course, that’s also what makes it a very effective way to get under the skin of online trolls.
> But it’s still a heady, rationalist approach to communication and will often stir up feelings of distrust, frustration, or resignation in the normal, everyday people that are pretty sure they’re right and see you doing intellectual performance art with their words.
Maybe I'm in a weird corner of the world, but I find use for this technique constantly in my professional life. You're frequently in situations where as a group you need to make decisions, and sometimes emotions run high; trying to articulate everyone's position as clearly as possible helps cool people down and opens them up to listening to other ideas, as well as making sure that all the relevant aspects have been covered.
Steelmanning is a really interesting concept that has popped up in the last few years. It used to just be that "arguing in good faith" was what "steelmanning" is today, and strawmanning your opponent was rude. It says a lot about how we think that it is now considered special to try to figure out what your opponent in a debate actually believes so you can attack it on its merits.
> It used to just be that "arguing in good faith" was what "steelmanning" is today
Isn't steelmanning the practice of actively making your opponent's argument for them? This exercise goes beyond arguing in good faith, where you are arguing your own side, but in a way that doesn't strawman the other side.
I think of “arguing in good faith” as working to clearly communicate a position, as against working to distress, embarrass, confuse, gaslight or otherwise personally undermine your opponent/audience.
You can absolutely do it for a position you don’t hold, and it has nothing particular to do with steelmanning/strawmanning (and indeed, you can use both techniques bad faith).
Agree completely. BTW, I've seen your posts here and wondered if you happen to have gone to Swarthmore College, which students/alums refer to as 'Swat'.
Reminds me of a story about the Wright brothers, who when arguing would agree to switch sides and argue each others point to try and overcome their bias.
I don't find modern debate useful. I found myself with more "intellectual stakes" in an argument. In good faith, I would be more willing and able to change my mind or conclusions based on facts or good points made. Rather than make me more informed, it only served to weaken the side I presented in an argument, as the other sides of the debate would _not_ argue in an equivalently good-faith. In hindsight, I would identify some fallacy or point I didn't consider - usually well after the debate had ended, meaning I didn't even benefit from the good-faith approach that I took.
Nowadays, I try to read as much as I can and come to my own conclusions in quiet contemplation. The debate was merely a distraction from my real goal of improved understanding. In that context, I don't have any expectations on debating at all, let alone using a rhetorical technique like steelmanning.
One way that I've seen attempted steelmaning go wrong is that the the inferential distance between the disputants is much larger than they think it is[1], leading to a false steelman that is actually a far less persuasive argument than the original would have been if the steelmanner had the background to understand the argument. As part of a dialogue this can be very useful as it can get the participants to realize they differ in foundational assumptions rather than just whatever they're talking about. But outside dialogue it can make the practice dangerous if you're not careful.
Is it really likely that you can make a better case for the views of your opponents then they themselves? Is attempting that from scratch a better use of your time then reading the actual arguments that your opponents have? It seems to me that steelmanning often serves as an excuse to avoid that.
We use this technique all the time where I work for UX design. Often when stakeholders ask for things to be a certain way we try our best to do it the way that it was asked for before exploring other options.
Often we know it won't work because of intuition/experience but providing a best effort steelman option when presenting design options is very helpful in speeding through stakeholder reviews. Stakeholders will eat you alive in a review if you present a strawman of what they asked for.
I really like this technique because it forces you to think about what assumptions the other side had to have made in order to reach their conclusion. I've often found that the other side's argument _is_ the logical choice based on their assumptions and background knowledge. From there I can examine those assumptions, and my own assumptions, and see which parts are incorrect, or id additional information would cause the argument to be less conclusive. I'll then focus my argument on those incorrect assumptions, because attacking the argument head-on often has counterproductive results. And of course, it's not uncommon to find that my own assumptions were incorrect while researching the other side's arguments and data
I'd love to see a US presidential debate where each side represented their opponent's position, and the US electorate were somehow willing to make a quality understanding of the other sides' positions a key judgement criteria. A man can dream.
Several people here are conflating steelmanning with strawmanning, but the latter is, at best, an attempt to make a bad argument out of how the other person chose to express their position, and it is downhill from there, with tricks like willful misunderstanding, the introduction of non-sequiturs, and claims of tacit premises that were never intended.
Steelmanning can also be used as preemptive self-defense for your position, assuming that it is actually defensible (if it is not, the sooner you come to that conclusion, the better for all concerned, especially yourself.)
I'd really like to watch steelman debates. For instance a Marxist and a Hayekian debate from each other's point of view. Judges vote according to the quality of the steelmanning rather than the conclusion. So a partisan that makes a weak argument to protect his own inverse position loses even if his own position is obviously right.
Before the debate I would judge the quality of the position by the willingness of its proponents to honestly steelman its opponents, tending to give them a better grasp of the big picture.
Even just a segment where participants say 'what I think my opponent's main argument is and what are the argument's greatest strengths' would be fascinating. It would show how well the participants understand each other and that they actually engaged with the substance of each other's arguments rather than just angling for sound bites/pithy quotes.
A full steelman debate format would be very interesting.
The real problem with "steelmanning" is that not so clever people (who think they are oh so clever) believe they are capable of representing a position they do not hold. Perhaps seeking out others who actually advocate for the position (which you are attempting to steelman) and listening to their arguments would be better, but it doesn't stroke the ego in the same way, or allow arm-chair internet philosophers to make the same bold claims at objectivity.
Steelmanning is one of the ideas that sounds good in principle, but is usually a disaster in practice. In practice the only way I've ever seen it used was by building a straw man and then very loudly proclaiming that they're "steelmanning" while exploiting the second most stupid design flaw of the straw man.
Closely related, point two "Help to fix your opponents argument," apart from being inherently escalatory, there is a pretty good chance that your opponent just made the argument like it is supposed to be and you're just not understanding it.
If your point here is that arguing against the best version of someone's argument leads you to tackle their more credible claims, then I don't see the problem. It sounds like at worst, that might elevate a discussion a bit.
I've seen this approach in some oxford style debates and thought it made the debate better, as a viewer.
You don't engage in Steelmanning to be nice. It is for your benefit.
Demonstrating that you fully understand an argument better than your opponent, and being able to charitably represent them, just makes it all the more devastating when you knock them down.
If you really disagree with an argument vehemently, then you should steelman it. Strawmanning makes you look dishonest and fragile, only capable of attacking a weakened form of your opposition.
If someone who has really abhorrent opinions tries making their argument, then you are letting them win if you strawman them.
If you're so convinced that steelmanning is for the great benefit of everyone then why are you arguing with me instead of steelmanning my perspective? Or is not every position worthy of steelmanning?
I do not think anyone will disagree with you. I don't think debates are about communication, but I think some people here might be trying to address communication tactics.
No, I'm experienced enough to recognize a dishonest/disingenuous argument from the start and while I might pay it a little bit of lip service, I'm not seriously entertaining certain categories of conversation or argumentation.
It is not hard to think of examples where steelmanning would not be worthwhile, such as when someone thinks an entire group of people is inferior. And unfortunately these types of views underly a surprisingly large number of political opinions these days.
It feels good to be superior. And people really really like theries that make them feel superior. They also really really dislike walking away from then, catching any straws to be able to keep that feeling.
Your grand plan will fail the moment you finally get to the "incorrect" part. Cause there you dealing with additional feeling of loss you yourself just caused.
Why are you up and down this thread defending a technique while refusing to ever enunciate a single position you think you understand, or have had your mind changed on?
Afraid there might be some really good reasons they're not worth talking about?
Ironically, I haven't seen steelmanning demonstrated well in this comment section. Lots of praise, specious examples. The top comment claims that a heated back-and-forth where they recommend steelmanning is a successful discussion. Hmmm.
Steelmanning in practice may just be indistinguishable from trolling. The lazy redditor wants to look smarter than other redditors, by making a convoluted argument that no one believes in. It's intellectual posturing dressed up in "good faith".
It also unlocks the next level of rationality: the ability to admit you're wrong. After that one just needs to learn to actively test their own beliefs, and they can harness the true powers of the human mind.
My favorite snippet from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: [2]
"But make no mistake, Draco, true science really isn't like magic, you can't just do it and walk away unchanged like learning how to say the words of a new spell. The power comes with a cost, a cost so high that most people refuse to pay it."
Draco nodded at this as though, finally, he'd heard something he could understand. "And that cost?"
"Learning to admit you're wrong."
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31937109
[1] https://vale.dev/
[2] https://www.hpmor.com/chapter/7