7 ms·

how would you steelman his position?

by dnissley 1y ago

beeflet 1y ago
I wouldn't. It's a position selected specifically to troll immature leftist college students and score youtube views.
- qcnguy 1y ago
  Steelmanning that position, though, would go like this. The purpose of debate is to challenge people's views, even if they strongly disagree, in order to convince if not participants then bystanders to change their mind. Good debate makes good viewing, which is why debates have audiences. And young people in particular tend to be impressionable because they don't have a lifetime of commitment to one position. So if you want to engage people politically via debate, then university campuses are a good place to do that and thus - to someone extraordinarily uncharitable - any such debate could be described as "trolling immature leftist college students to score YouTube views". The same activity done by an academic would be described as "presenting the youth with mind-expanding dialogue", and they'd be doing it to score tuition fees, but nobody would quibble with that phrasing.
  - camgunz 1y ago
    > The purpose of debate is to challenge people's views, even if they strongly disagree, in order to convince if not participants then bystanders to change their mind. Debates are not two parties seeking the truth together. Unless you're very, very careful and good faith, and your counterpart is very, very careful and good faith, debates are a race to the bottom of psychological manipulation. They're not contests of facts; there's no way to objectively score them; they're not good ways for participants or bystanders to learn. Facially, they're theater. But a system's purpose is what it does, and these performances serve as a venue/foundation to hone/push messaging. You'll almost never see right-wing "debaters" go up against "big" left-wing names like an Ezra Klein or Destiny (Ben Shapiro is kind of the exception, but he's far more conciliatory with someone like Klein--he did do one with Destiny, it went pretty badly for him, so it of course became a one-time thing). Kirk et al lose--they lose frequently! You rarely see it because they have far bigger megaphones than their victorious rivals. But have these (many) losses changed their views? No. Debates are not two parties seeking the truth together.
    - yostrovs 1y ago
      One could say the same about this very debate you're participating in. And since that's how you see debates, one has to immediately assume that you're not acting in good faith.
      - camgunz 1y ago
        Only a small subset of conversations are debates, and personally I don't feel like I'm arguing with anyone (including you!), just discussing
    - johnnyanmac 1y ago
      Debates SHOULD be about 2 parties seeking truth. In reality, it's about brining people over to your viewpoint and garnering support. There's many ways to do that, but centuries of debate etiquette describe bad form and dishonest means to "win a debate". Despite the events here, it is generally bad form in an exchange of words to incite violence against an opponent. And that's often what Kirk does, or did. >Facially, they're theater. But a system's purpose is what it does, and these performances serve as a venue/foundation to hone/push messaging Yes. Before we sigsrcoated it, we just called this propaganda. Propaganda is not a debate. The most dangerous discovery in early social media was that a spewing of propaganda (aka, arguments not all based on reason nor a goal to further humanity) will still get you a following, no matter how badly you use. Becsuse saying those words rouse the thoughts of those who are either prone to propaganda, or simply embolden those who already had those thoughts but werre too scared to admit it. A decade of refinement later, and look where we are.
bccdee 1y ago
A position like his doesn't really take well to steelmanning… It's not really the kind of viewpoint that's meant to be spelled out explicitly. You're supposed to shroud it in euphemisms. I guess the steelmanned version of his beliefs would be something like, "racial and sexual minorities are an enemy to the white Americans who own this country; they threaten things we value about our culture and society, and we have no obligation to tolerate or accommodate them if we don't want to." He spoke out against the Civil Rights act. He said the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory (that immigration is a deliberate attempt to dilute and ultimately replace the white race) is "not a theory, it's a reality." He said the Levitican prescription to stone gay men is "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters." (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#Social_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#Social_policy) Coverage of Kirk's killing has largely skirted around his views, because to describe them at all feels like speaking ill of the dead. If you bring up the fact that Kirk was a loathsome hatemonger, it somewhat tempers your message that political violence is never acceptable
- collingreen 1y ago
  I'm comfortable saying both that charlie kirk was a loathsome hatemonger and that he also shouldn't have been murdered. This hurts everyone.
  - bccdee 1y ago
    I agree wholeheartedly.
  - TheCoelacanth 1y ago
    He absolutely shouldn't have been murdered and the rise of political violence is terrifying for the country's future. However, he has directly stated that empathy is bad and that shooting victims are an acceptable price to pay to avoid gun control. I refuse to feel sympathy for someone who vigorously argued against doing anything to prevent what happened to him and who vigorously argued against caring about the people it happened to.
    - 1y ago
miltonlost 1y ago
[flagged]
greekrich92 1y ago
[flagged]
- disgruntledphd2 1y ago
  Those are exactly the positions you should try hardest to steelman. Fundamentally the purpose of steelmanning is to convince yourself of the strongest arguments for a position, which you can then counter.
  - cosmicgadget 1y ago
    You are thinking of a good faith opposing argument. Not an argument where the other person is just trying to waste your time.
  - mock-possum 1y ago
    Very much disagree - in a bad faith argument, countering does nothing, because the point is not to prove their position, the point is to hurt you, or play to their base, or to tire you or distract you and generally just to waste your time. It’s more of a “the only winning move is not to play” situation. You win by refusing to take the bait, and shutting down the attempt to coerce you into playing along with the bad faith argument game. Or, if you like - when faced with “heads I win, tails you lose,” the strategy is not to figure out a way to get the coin to land on its edge, or to end up suspended in midair, or to propose some sort of infinite ‘best two out of three’ regress - the strategy is to recognize the rigged game and walk away.
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    There's understanding disagreeable viewpoints and the there's failing to adhere to the paradox of tolerance. There's no reason to steelman "black people shouldn't exist in the US", as the most extreme example. I can steelman it, but what am I getting out of this? What am I professing to an audience to steelman this? Steelmans are used to build empathy and sh synthesize solutions taking multiple viewpoints into account. This is the opposite.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
jennyholzer 1y ago
I've never heard of the "steelman" thought experiment I'm familiar with the "strawman" concept that it derives from, although in my experience this is typically presented as a logical fallacy. What is the purpose of "steelmanning" a political actor's political perspectives? What is this supposed to achieve? Where did you and the people responding to this comment hear about this concept? Are there articles out there making the case for "steelmanning"?
- jackothy 1y ago
  It's just that a lot of people argue badly, either because of lacking skill or lacking goodwill. That doesn't mean their arguments are necessarily wrong. It is necessary to try to reframe such badly made arguments in a way that presents the message properly in order to be able to actually compare competing ideas and find truth. If you compare one well-crafted argument to a poorly crafted argument, the well-crafted argument would seem to come out on top even if its underlying ideas were actually wrong. E.g. if I say "Apples are good because my grandma loved apples and you are stupid!" And my opponent says "Apples are bad because there are other fruits that can be grown much more efficiently and feed people better" Then my opponent would probably "win" the argument. But that doesn't mean apples are actually bad. Try to remake the argument for why apples are good in a better way, in order to fairly compare the two sides and find the truth.
- collingreen 1y ago
  I've seen this jargon around and use it myself but now that you ask I'm not sure where I first saw it. tl;dr - good faith requires you to understand and do your best to represent the other side, not cherry pick sneaky "wins" When I use the term my intent is to frame the opposing argument as strongly and clearly (and fairly!) as possible so that you can make your own point strongly and fairly. The critique of a "strawman argument" is a metaphor about arguing/fighting a training dummy instead of an actual enemy, usually by addressing only part of an argument or by ignoring context or using logical fallacies like motte and baily or false dichotomies. The idea is that it's very easy to look like your point wins when you fight the scarecrow; if it's actually a good argument face it off against the knight in armor actually fighting back.
- 1y ago
kiitos 1y ago
before "how" the question is "why" would you steelman his position? should you?

how would you steelman his position?

beeflet 1y ago

I wouldn't. It's a position selected specifically to troll immature leftist college students and score youtube views.

qcnguy 1y ago
Steelmanning that position, though, would go like this. The purpose of debate is to challenge people's views, even if they strongly disagree, in order to convince if not participants then bystanders to change their mind. Good debate makes good viewing, which is why debates have audiences. And young people in particular tend to be impressionable because they don't have a lifetime of commitment to one position. So if you want to engage people politically via debate, then university campuses are a good place to do that and thus - to someone extraordinarily uncharitable - any such debate could be described as "trolling immature leftist college students to score YouTube views". The same activity done by an academic would be described as "presenting the youth with mind-expanding dialogue", and they'd be doing it to score tuition fees, but nobody would quibble with that phrasing.
- camgunz 1y ago
  > The purpose of debate is to challenge people's views, even if they strongly disagree, in order to convince if not participants then bystanders to change their mind. Debates are not two parties seeking the truth together. Unless you're very, very careful and good faith, and your counterpart is very, very careful and good faith, debates are a race to the bottom of psychological manipulation. They're not contests of facts; there's no way to objectively score them; they're not good ways for participants or bystanders to learn. Facially, they're theater. But a system's purpose is what it does, and these performances serve as a venue/foundation to hone/push messaging. You'll almost never see right-wing "debaters" go up against "big" left-wing names like an Ezra Klein or Destiny (Ben Shapiro is kind of the exception, but he's far more conciliatory with someone like Klein--he did do one with Destiny, it went pretty badly for him, so it of course became a one-time thing). Kirk et al lose--they lose frequently! You rarely see it because they have far bigger megaphones than their victorious rivals. But have these (many) losses changed their views? No. Debates are not two parties seeking the truth together.
  - yostrovs 1y ago
    One could say the same about this very debate you're participating in. And since that's how you see debates, one has to immediately assume that you're not acting in good faith.
    - camgunz 1y ago
      Only a small subset of conversations are debates, and personally I don't feel like I'm arguing with anyone (including you!), just discussing
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    Debates SHOULD be about 2 parties seeking truth. In reality, it's about brining people over to your viewpoint and garnering support. There's many ways to do that, but centuries of debate etiquette describe bad form and dishonest means to "win a debate". Despite the events here, it is generally bad form in an exchange of words to incite violence against an opponent. And that's often what Kirk does, or did. >Facially, they're theater. But a system's purpose is what it does, and these performances serve as a venue/foundation to hone/push messaging Yes. Before we sigsrcoated it, we just called this propaganda. Propaganda is not a debate. The most dangerous discovery in early social media was that a spewing of propaganda (aka, arguments not all based on reason nor a goal to further humanity) will still get you a following, no matter how badly you use. Becsuse saying those words rouse the thoughts of those who are either prone to propaganda, or simply embolden those who already had those thoughts but werre too scared to admit it. A decade of refinement later, and look where we are.

bccdee 1y ago

A position like his doesn't really take well to steelmanning… It's not really the kind of viewpoint that's meant to be spelled out explicitly. You're supposed to shroud it in euphemisms. I guess the steelmanned version of his beliefs would be something like, "racial and sexual minorities are an enemy to the white Americans who own this country; they threaten things we value about our culture and society, and we have no obligation to tolerate or accommodate them if we don't want to." He spoke out against the Civil Rights act. He said the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory (that immigration is a deliberate attempt to dilute and ultimately replace the white race) is "not a theory, it's a reality." He said the Levitican prescription to stone gay men is "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters." (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#Social_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#Social_policy) Coverage of Kirk's killing has largely skirted around his views, because to describe them at all feels like speaking ill of the dead. If you bring up the fact that Kirk was a loathsome hatemonger, it somewhat tempers your message that political violence is never acceptable

collingreen 1y ago
I'm comfortable saying both that charlie kirk was a loathsome hatemonger and that he also shouldn't have been murdered. This hurts everyone.
- bccdee 1y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly.
- TheCoelacanth 1y ago
  He absolutely shouldn't have been murdered and the rise of political violence is terrifying for the country's future. However, he has directly stated that empathy is bad and that shooting victims are an acceptable price to pay to avoid gun control. I refuse to feel sympathy for someone who vigorously argued against doing anything to prevent what happened to him and who vigorously argued against caring about the people it happened to.
  - 1y ago

miltonlost 1y ago

[flagged]

greekrich92 1y ago

[flagged]

disgruntledphd2 1y ago
Those are exactly the positions you should try hardest to steelman. Fundamentally the purpose of steelmanning is to convince yourself of the strongest arguments for a position, which you can then counter.
- cosmicgadget 1y ago
  You are thinking of a good faith opposing argument. Not an argument where the other person is just trying to waste your time.
- mock-possum 1y ago
  Very much disagree - in a bad faith argument, countering does nothing, because the point is not to prove their position, the point is to hurt you, or play to their base, or to tire you or distract you and generally just to waste your time. It’s more of a “the only winning move is not to play” situation. You win by refusing to take the bait, and shutting down the attempt to coerce you into playing along with the bad faith argument game. Or, if you like - when faced with “heads I win, tails you lose,” the strategy is not to figure out a way to get the coin to land on its edge, or to end up suspended in midair, or to propose some sort of infinite ‘best two out of three’ regress - the strategy is to recognize the rigged game and walk away.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  There's understanding disagreeable viewpoints and the there's failing to adhere to the paradox of tolerance. There's no reason to steelman "black people shouldn't exist in the US", as the most extreme example. I can steelman it, but what am I getting out of this? What am I professing to an audience to steelman this? Steelmans are used to build empathy and sh synthesize solutions taking multiple viewpoints into account. This is the opposite.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

jennyholzer 1y ago

I've never heard of the "steelman" thought experiment I'm familiar with the "strawman" concept that it derives from, although in my experience this is typically presented as a logical fallacy. What is the purpose of "steelmanning" a political actor's political perspectives? What is this supposed to achieve? Where did you and the people responding to this comment hear about this concept? Are there articles out there making the case for "steelmanning"?

jackothy 1y ago
It's just that a lot of people argue badly, either because of lacking skill or lacking goodwill. That doesn't mean their arguments are necessarily wrong. It is necessary to try to reframe such badly made arguments in a way that presents the message properly in order to be able to actually compare competing ideas and find truth. If you compare one well-crafted argument to a poorly crafted argument, the well-crafted argument would seem to come out on top even if its underlying ideas were actually wrong. E.g. if I say "Apples are good because my grandma loved apples and you are stupid!" And my opponent says "Apples are bad because there are other fruits that can be grown much more efficiently and feed people better" Then my opponent would probably "win" the argument. But that doesn't mean apples are actually bad. Try to remake the argument for why apples are good in a better way, in order to fairly compare the two sides and find the truth.
collingreen 1y ago
I've seen this jargon around and use it myself but now that you ask I'm not sure where I first saw it. tl;dr - good faith requires you to understand and do your best to represent the other side, not cherry pick sneaky "wins" When I use the term my intent is to frame the opposing argument as strongly and clearly (and fairly!) as possible so that you can make your own point strongly and fairly. The critique of a "strawman argument" is a metaphor about arguing/fighting a training dummy instead of an actual enemy, usually by addressing only part of an argument or by ignoring context or using logical fallacies like motte and baily or false dichotomies. The idea is that it's very easy to look like your point wins when you fight the scarecrow; if it's actually a good argument face it off against the knight in armor actually fighting back.
1y ago

kiitos 1y ago

before "how" the question is "why" would you steelman his position? should you?